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She worried. What is Renna doing, right now? Earlier, while twilight settled, Maia had spoken to Brod about these quandries. He was a good listener, for a man, and seemed genuinely understanding. Maia felt grateful for his company and friendship. Nevertheless, after a while she had run out of energy. In darkness, she eventually lay quietly, letting Brod's body warmth help stave off the night chill. Breathing his male musk, Maia dozed while an odd sensation of well-being pervaded within the circle of his arm. Half-dreaming, she let images glide through her mind — of aurorae, streaming emerald and blue-gold sky curtains above the glaciers of home. And Wengel Star, brighter than the beacon of Lighthouse Sanctuary, at the harbor mouth. Those summertime themes blended with a favorite memory of autumn, when men returned from exile, singing joyously amid swirls of multicolored, freshly fallen leaves.

Seasons mixed in Maia's fantasy. Still asleep, her nostrils flared in sudden, unprovoked recollection — a distant scent of frost.

She awakened, blinking rapidly, knowing too little time had passed for it to be dawn. Yet she could see a little. Moonlight shone through cracks in the cave entrance. The whites of Brod's eyes were visible.

"You were quivering. Is something wrong?"

She sat up, embarrassed, though she knew not why.

Within, Maia felt an odd stirring, an emptiness that had nothing to do with hunger for food.

"I . . . was dreaming about home."

He nodded. "Me too. All this talk about heretics and rads and Kings, it got me thinking about a family I knew, back in Joannaborg, who followed the Yeown Path."

"Yeown?" Maia frowned in puzzlement. "Oh, I've heard of them. Isn't that where . . . it's the clone daughters who go out to find niches, and the vars who stay behind?"

"That's right. Used to be some of the cities along the Mediant had whole quarters devoted to Yeown enclaves, surrounded by Getta walls. I've seen pictures. Most boys didn't go to sea, but stayed and studied crafts along with their summer sisters, then married into other Yeown clans. Kind of weird to imagine, but nice in a way."

Maia saw Brod's point of view. Such a way of life offered more options for a boy — and for summer girls who stayed where they were born, living with their mothers. …

And mothers, she supposed, finding it hard to conceive.

Without her recent studies, Maia might not have perceived how, unfortunately, the Yeown way ran counter to the drives of Stratoin biology. There were basic genetic reasons why time reinforced the tendency to need a winter birth first, or for mothers to feel more intense devotion to clone-daughters than their var-offspring. Humans were flexible creatures, and ideological fervor might overcome such drives for a generation, or several, but it wasn't surprising that Yeown heresies remained rare.

Brod continued. "I got to thinking about them because, well, you mentioned that book about the way people lived on Florentina World. You know, where they still had marriage? But I can tell you it wasn't like that in the Yeown home I knew. The husbands . . ." He spoke the word with evident embarrassment. "The husbands didn't make much noise or fuss. There was no talk among the neighbors of violence, even in summer. Of course, the men were still outnumbered by their wives and daughters, so it wasn't exactly like a Phylum world. With everyone watching, they kept real discreet, so as not to give Perkie agitators any excuse …"

Brod was rambling, and Maia found it hard to see what he was driving at. Did the lad have his own heretical sympathies? Did he dream of a way to live in one home year-round, in lasting contact with mates and offspring, experiencing less continuity than a mother, but far more than men normally knew on Stratos? It might sound fine in abstract, but how did the two sexes keep from getting on each other's nerves? Clearly, poor Brod was an idealist of the first water.

Maia recalled the one man she had lived near while growing up. An orthodox clan like Lamatia would never condone the sort of situation Brod described in a Yeown commune, but it did offer occasional, traditional refuge to retirees, like Old Coot Bennett.

Maia felt a shiver, recalling the last time she had looked in Bennett's rheumy eyes. Demi-leaves had swirled in autumnal cyclones, just like the image in her recent dream — as if subconsciously she had already been thinking about the coot. I used to wonder if he was the only man I'd ever know more than in passing. But Renna, and now Brod, have got me thinking peculiar thoughts. Keep it up, and I'll be a raving heretic, too.

This was getting much too intense. She tried returning things to an abstract plane.

"I imagine Yeownists would get along with Kiel and her Radicals."