by John Varley
"Missed me," Gaby said.
"Sit down," Cirocco told her. "You make a great target standing up like that. And it did not miss you. it changed its mind at the last moment; I saw it stop the swing."
."Why did it do that?" She crouched beside Cirocco and scanned the horizon.
"I don't know. Most likely because you don't have four legs. But the next one might not be so observant."
They watched another angel approach from a slightly different angle. It sliced through the air, legs together, some kind of tail surface extending behind its feet, arms at its sides, wings twitching just enough to maintain speed. In grace and economy of motion, Cirocco had never seen its equal.
They saw another build speed by flying straight at the ground. It pulled out at the last possible instant, kissing the ground until
it vanished over the brow of the hill. Any crop duster in the world would have been hollow-eyed and white-faced.
"They're very good," Gaby whispered.
"I wouldn't want to get in a dogfight with them," Cirocco agreed. "They'd fly the pants off me."
A chilly wind blew up from the east, raising dust from the dry ground.
Then the Titanides came charging around the hill, followed by a flock of angels. Cirocco recognized Lullaby and Clarino and Foxtrot. Clarino's left foreleg was red with blood. The Titanides carried wooden lances tipped with brass, and bronze swords.
They were no longer giving voice to their battle song, but the frenzy was still in their eyes. Steam puffed from their nostrils and the ones with bare skin glistened. They thundered by, then wheeled to face the angels.
"They're using the wagon for cover!" Gaby shouted. "We're going to be caught in the middle. Get, off, quick!"
"What about Bill?,, Cirocco yelled. Gaby's eyes locked with hers for an instant. She seemed about to speak, then growled something unintelligible and took her sword from Cirocco. With a lot more courage than common sense, she stood at the back of the wagon and faced the oncoming angels. Once again, all Cirocco could see was her back as she stood between her love and approaching danger.
The angels ignored her. She stood with her sword ready, but they went around the sides of the wagon to reach the Titanides who were making a stand behind it.
The noise was beyond belief. The wail of the angels mixed with the shriek of the Titanides while scores of giant wings tore the air.
A monstrous shape loomed out of the dust cloud, a nightmare painted in shades of brown and black, wings moving like shadows come to life. It was blind, sword and lance jabbing aimlessly as the angel tried to get its bearings in the miasma. It seemed no larger than a child of ten. Dark blood ran from a wound in its side.
It was above them when it hurled its lance. The brass tip passed through the sleeve of Gaby's robe and bit into the floor of the wagon, twanging like a bowstring. Then the angel was past them, and a wooden spear was growing from its neck. It fell, and Cirocco could see nothing more.
As quickly as the battle had come to them, it was gone. The wailing took on a different note and the angels rose, dwindled, became nothing but flapping shapes high in the air, headed cast.
There was a commotion on the ground beside the wagon. The three Titanides were trampling the body of the fallen angel. it was hard to tell that the body had ever looked human. Cirocco looked away, sickened by the blood and the murderous rage on the faces of the Titanides.
"^at do you think made them go away?" Gaby asked. "Just a couple more minutes and they'd have wrapped it up."
"They must know something we don't," Cirocco said. Bill was looking to the west.
"There," he said, pointing. "Somebody's coming."
Cirocco saw two familiar figures. It was Hornpipe and Banjo, the shepherds, approaching at full gallop.
Gaby laughed, bitterly. "You'll have to show me something better than that. One of those kids is only three years old, Rocky said."
"There," Bill said again, pointing the other way.
Over the hill came a wave of Titanides, like a motley cavalry.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
It was six days after the angel attack, the sixty-fmt day of their emergence in Gaea. Cirocco was prone on a low table with her feet in improvised stirrups. Calvin was down there somewhere, but she refused to watch him. Lullaby, the white-haired Titanije healer, watched and sang as the operation progressed. Her songs were soothing, but nothing helped a great deal.
"The cervix is dilated," Calvin said.
"I'd just as soon not hear about it."
"Sorry." He straightened briefly, and sirocco saw his eyes and forehead above the surgical mask. He was sweating profusely. Lullaby wiped it away and his eyes showed his gratitude. "Can you move that lamp closer?"
Gaby positioned the flickering lamp. it threw huge shadows of her legs onto the walls. Cirocco heard the metallic click of instruments taken from the sterilizing bath, then felt the curette rattle through the speculum.
Calvin had wanted stainless steel instruments, but the Tita nides could not make them. He and Lullaby had worked with the best artisans until he had brass tools he felt he could use.
"It hurts," Cirocco gritted.
"You're hurting her," Gaby explained, as if Calvin could not understand English.
"Gaby, you'll,either be quiet or I'll find someone else to hold the lamp." Cirocco had never heard Calvin speak so harshly. He paused, wiped his brow on his sleeve.
The pain was not intense, but persistent and hard to place, like an ache of the inner car. She could hear and feel the scraping, and it set her teeth on edge.
"I've got it," Calvin said, softly. "Got what? You can see it? "
"Yeah. You're further along than I thought. It's a good thing you insisted we get it done." He resumed his scraping, pausing from time to time to clean the curette.
Gaby turned away to examine something in the palm of her hand. "It's got four legs," she whispered, and started to come to Circocco's side.
"I don't want to see it. Get it away from me."
"May this one look?" Lullaby sang.
"No!" She was fighting nausea, and could not sing the answer to the Titanide but shook her head violently. "Gaby, destroy it. Right now, do you hear me?"
"It's done, Rocky."
Cirocco let out a deep breath that turned into a sob. "I didn't mean to yell at you. Lullaby said she wanted to see it. I probably should have let her. Maybe she'd know what to make of it."
Cirocco protested that she could walk, but Titanide ideas of medicine included much cuddling, body warmth, and songs of reassurance. Lullaby carried her across the dirt street to the quarters the Titanides had given them. She sang the song of support in times of mental anguish while lowering her into a bed. There were two empty ones beside it.
"Welcome to the veterinary hospital," Bill greeted her. She managed a weak smile as Lullaby arranged the covers.
"Your humorous friend cracks jokes again?" Lullaby sang. "Yes, he calls this the place-of-healing-for-animals."
"He should be ashamed. Healing is healing. Drink this, and you will relax."
Cirocco took the wineskin and drank deeply. It burned all the way down and warmth spread through her. The Titanides drank fermented beverages for the same reasons humans did, one of the more pleasant discoveries of the last six days.
"I've got a feeling my wrists were just slapped," Bill said. "I know that tone of voice by now."
"She loves you, Bill, even when you're naughty."
"I was hoping to cheer you up."
"It was an interesting try. Bill, it had four legs."
"Ouch. And me making jokes about animals." He reached across and took her hand.
" It's okay. It's over now, and all I'd like to do is sleep." She took two more deep pulls on the wineskin, and did just that.
Gaby spent the first hour after her operator! telling everyone she felt fine, then she threw up and was feverish for two days. ,August came through with no ill effects at all. Cirocco was sore but healthy.
> Bill was doing well in that he was healing but Calvin said the bone had not been set properly.
"So how much longer will it bell, Bill asked. He had asked the question before. There was nothing to read, no television to watch; nothing but the window looking out over a dark street in Titantown. He could not speak to his nurses except in pidgin ditties. Lullaby was learning English, but very slowly.
"At least two more weeks," Calvin said. "I feel like I could walk on it now."
"You probably could, and that's the danger. ltld pop like a dry stick. No, I won't let you up, even on crutches, for another two weeks."
"What about taking him outside?" Cirocco asked. "Would you like to go outside, Bill?"
They took Bill and his bed out the door and a short distance along the street before putting him down beneath one of the ca- nopied trees that made Titantown invisible from the air, and provided the nearest approach to night they had seen since their exploration of the cable base. The Titanides kept their homes and streets lighted all the time.
"Have you seen Gene today?" Cirocco asked. "Depends on what you mean by today," Calvin asked, with a yawn. "You still have my watch."
"But you haven't seen him?"
Calvin shook his head. "Not for a while."
"I wonder what he's been up to."
Calvin had found Gene following the Ophion through steep terrain as it wound its way among the Nemesis Mountains of Crius, the day region just west of Rhea. He said he had emerged in the twilight zone, and had been walking ever since, trying to hook up with the others.
When asked what he'd been doing, all he would say was "surviving." Cirocco didn't doubt that, but wondered just what he incant by it. He brushed off his own experiences in sensory deprivation, saying he had been worried at first but calmed down when he understood the situation.
Cirocco wasn't sure she knew what he meant by that, either. At first she was happy to have someone who seemed as minimally affected as she had been. Gaby still moaned in her sleep. Bill had gaps in his memory, though it was returning slowly. August was chronically depressed and verging on the suicidal. Calvin was happy but wanted to be alone. Only she and Gene seemed relatively unchanged.
But she knew she had been touched by mystery during her stay in the darkness. She could sing to the Titanides. She felt more had happened to Gene than he was talking about, and she began to look for signs of it.
He smiled a lot. He kept assuring everyone he was okay, even when no one asked. He was friendly. Sometimes it was too hearty, but other than that he seemed fine.
She decided to find him and try once more to talk about the missing two months.
She liked Titantown. it was warm under the trees. Since the heat in Gaea came from the ground up, the high vault acted to trap it. It was a dry heat; by wearing a light shirt and no shoes, Cirocco found her body cooled itself at peak efficiency. The streets were pleasantly light ed with paper lantems that reminded her of the Japanese. The ground was hard-packed earth, moistened by things called sprinklerplants that sprayed mist once per revolution. When that happened it smelled like a summer night's light rainfall. Hedges were so crusted with flowers that petals fell from them in a steady rain. They grew quite well in perpetual darkness.
The Titanides had never heard of urban planning. Dwellings were scattered haphazardly on the ground, under the ground, and even in the trees. Roads were informally defined by traffic. There were no signs or named streets, and a map of the town would soon have been covered with corrections as new homes were grown in the middle of the road and pedestrians trarnpled their way through hedges until a new equilibrium was estab- lished.
Everyone had a cheery song of greeting for her. "Hello, Earth monster! Still balanced, I see."
" Oh,look, it's the two-legged oddity. Come and feast with us, Sheer-ah-ko."
"Sorry, folks," she sang. "Got business. Have you seen C- sharp Meistersinger?"
It amused her to translate their songs that way, though in Titanide, monster and oddity held no insult.
But the invitation to feast was a hard one to tum down. After two months of raw meat and bland fruit, the Titanides' food was too good to be true. Their cuisine was their greatest art form, and with a few minor exceptions the humans could eat anything the Titanides could eat.
She found the building she called City Hall more by luck than design, stopping frequently to ask directions. (First left, second right, then around the ... no, that was blocked last kilorev, wasn't it?) The Titanides understood the layout, but she didn't think she ever would.
It was City Hall simply because Meistersinger lived there, and he was the Titanides' closest approach to leadership. Actually, he was a warlord, but even that was limited. It was Meistersinger who led the reinforcements on the day of the battle with the angels. Since then, he had behaved like everyone else.
Cirocco had meant to ask if he knew where Gene might he found, but it was not necessary. Gene was already there.
"Rocky, so glad you could drop by," he said, getting up and putting his arm over her shoulder. He kissed her lightly on the cheek, which annoyed her.
"Me and Meistersinger were just talking over a couple things you might be interested in."
"You were... you can speak to them?"
"His phrasing is atrocious," Meistersinger sang, in the difficult aeolian mode, "in the manner of the Crian peoples. His voice will not settle decently, and his ear is more suited to the... shall we say unmodulated words of your own pipes. But we can sing together, after a fashion."
"I heard some of that," Gene sang, laughing. "Thinks he can talk over my head, like spelling words in front of a baby."
"Why didn't you tell me this before, Gene?" she asked, searching his eyes.
"I didn't think it was important," he said, waving it off. "I got a dose of what you got, but it didn't take so well."
"I just wish you'd told me, that's all."
"I'm sorry, okay?" He seemed irritated, and she wondered if he had meant her to know. Surely he didn't think he could have concealed it much longer.
"Gene has been telling me many interesting things," Meistersinger sang. "He has made lines all over my table, but they make little sense to me. I would understand, and pray that your superior song might clear away the darkness."
"Yeah, Rocky, you take a shot. I can't get this dumb son-of-a- donkey to see it."
Cirocco glanced sharply at him, relaxed when she recalled Melstersinger knew no English. She still thought it bad mannered and childish. The Titanide was anything but stupid.
Meistersinger was kneeling beside one of the low tables the Titanides preferred. He had dull orange fur a few centimeters long, with only his face hare. The skin was chocolate brown. His eyes were light gray, set in a face that had at first seemed identi- cal for Titanides, but now seemed to Cirocco to have as many variations as human faces. She could now tell one from another without reference to coloring.
But the face was still a female one. She could not shake that cultural conditioning, even when the penis was visible.
Gene had used skin paint to draw a map on Mcistersinger's table. Two parallel lines ran east and west, and other lines cut the space between into rectangles. it was the inner rim of Gaea, spread out and seen from above.
"Here's Hyperion," he said, jabbing with a paint-reddened finger. "On the west, Occanus, on the cast... what did you call it?"
"Rhea. "
"Right. Then comes Crius. There's support cables nunning here, here, and here. Titanides live in east Hyperion, and west Crius. But there are no angels in Rhea. Do you know why, Rocky? Because they live in the spokes."
"What's this about, anyway?"
"Bear with me. Make him understand, will you?"
She did her best. After several attempts, he looked interested and put one orange-nailed finger near a dot in west Hyperion.
"This, then, would be the great stairway to heaven near the village?"
"Yes, and Titantown is next to it."
Meiste
rsinger frowned. "Why do I see it not?"
"I got that," Gene said, in English. "'Cause I've drawed it not," he sang. With a flourish, he made another dot beside the larger one.
"How will these lines-kill all of the angels?" Meistersinger asked.
Gene turned to Cirocco. "Did he ask why I'm drawing all this?"
"No, he asked what this has to do with killing angels, and I'd like to add a question of my own, which is, what in hell are you doing? I forbid you to go on with this discussion. We can't aid either side of two warring nations. Didn't you read the Geneva Contact Protocols?"
Gene was silent for a moment, looking away from her. When he looked back, he spoke quietly.
"Don't you remember that slaughter, or did you really miss it all? They got wiped out, Rocky. Fifteen of these jackasses jumped. All but one died, and so did two more that were with you. The angels lost two, plus one wounded."
"Three. You didn't see what happened to the third." It still made her sick to think of it.
"Whatever. The thing is, it was a new tactic. The angels hitched a ride on top of the blimp. At first we thought the angels had made an alliance with the blimps, but it turns out the blimps are upset, too. They're neutrals. The angels got aboard during a storm, so the blimp thought the extra weight was just water. He gains a couple tons when it rains."
"What's all this 'we' stuff? Are you making an alliance? You don't have that power. I do, as ship's Captain."
"Maybe I should point out that your ship is gone." If he had meant to wound her, his aim could not have been better. She cleared her throat, and went on. "Gene, we're not here as military advisors."
"Hell, I just thought I'd show them a, few things. Like this map. You can't plan strategy without a map. Theyll need some new tactics, too, but-~"
Meistersinger made the high whistle that served as a throatclearing sound. Cirocco realized they had been ignoring him.
"Pardon me," he sang. "This drawing is a fine thing indeed. I will have it painted on my chest at the next tricity jamboree. But we were speaking of ways to kill angels. I would be pleased to hear more of the gray powder of violence you mentioned earlier."