by John Varley
The trip took nearly an hour, and for that time he thought of nothing. He emerged beneath the mind-numbing curved sky of Gaea, stood on her terrifying curved ground, glanced around, failed to be terrified or numbed. He was at the limits of numb. Overhead, a thousand-meter blimp was passing by. He looked at it blankly and thought of pigeons. He waited.
6 Tent City
Nasu was in a terrible mood. Robin bore two fresh stigmata on her forearm to attest to her demon's temper. Anacondas do not react well to washing and prodding; the snake was terrified and bewildered by the events of the last two days, and her way of expressing it was to lash out at the nearest target, which was Robin. In all the time they had been together, Nasu had bitten Robin only three times before.
Robin was not doing much better herself. Some of the things she had been warned about had turned out to be chimeras. But the heat was terrible.
The temperature was thirty-five degrees. She had verified that astonishing fact-announced by the guide who met her group at the surface-by finding a thermometer and staring at it in disbelief. It was preposterous to run an environment that way, but the people shrugged it off. They complained but expressed no determination to do something about it.
Her urge was to tear off her clothes. She fought it as long as she could, but her mother had been wrong about so many other things she decided it was safe to disobey her in this. Many of the people in the dusty streets of Titantown were nude; why shouldn't she be? She compromised, keeping her loins covered as a signal she would fight any rape attempt. Not that she really feared rape anymore.
The first penis she saw, in the mass showers of quarantine, had made her laugh and earned her a sour look from the proud owner. All the rest had been just as comical. She couldn't imagine its swelling enough to harm her but reserved judgment until she could observe a man raping with one.
But there wasn't any raping the first night, though she stayed awake a long time to watch for it and fight off attackers. The second night there were two men raping in one corner of the barracks. The bunks all around the couples were empty, so Robin sat on one and watched. The hilarious dangling things had swollen more than she thought they would, but not really very much. The women did not seem to be in pain. Neither had been knocked unconscious, nor were they face down. One, in fact, was on top of the man.
One woman told Robin to go away, but she had seen enough. If someone managed to knock her out, the experience would be distasteful but not very dangerous. She regularly dilated herself more than that for cervical exams.
She watched the women after the raping was over, looking for signs of shame. There did not seem to be any. So at least that much was true; peckish women had been taught to take degradation in stride. Slaves usually did, she remembered, at least outwardly. She wondered what rebellions smoldered inside.
No one made love for as long as she observed. Robin supposed they had to hide it from the men.
Titantown had begun under a huge tree but, with the end of the Titanide-Angel War many years before, it had spread to the east. Most Titanides still lived under the tree or in its branches. Some had moved out into tents of multicolored silk bordering the crazy thoroughfare that was the nearest thing in Gaea to a tourist attraction. It was chockablock with salons and saloons, hippodromes and nickel pitches, emporia, divertissements, hijinks, kickshaws, bagatelles, burlesque, and buffoonery. Sawdust and Titanide droppings were trampled underfoot, and the dusty air was thick with the smells of cotton candy, perfume, greasepaint, marijuana, and sweat. The place was laid out with the customary Titanide disdain for formal streets and zoning regulations. A casino faced the Intergalactic Primitive Baptist Church, which stood next to an interspecies bordello-all three structures as flimsy as a promise. The sweet voices of Titanides at choir practice mixed with the clatter of roulette wheels and the sounds of passion coming through thin tent walls.
In a high wind, the whole bewildering hurly-burly could be swept away in moments, to reappear a few hours later in a new configuration.
The elevator to the hub ran once in a hectorev-which she learned was five Coven days or four point two Earth days-so Robin found herself with thirty-six hours to kill. Titantown looked educational, though she was not sure what it was for. Coven concepts of amusement had not prepared her to regard this kind of carnival as a place to have fun. The witches' idea of a good time tended toward athletic contests, feasts, and festivals, though they loved practical jokes and tellers of lies.
Her mother had given her several hundred UN marks. Robin stood on the plank balcony of her tree house-hotel room, looked out over the noise and dust and bright colors below, and felt rising excitement in her breast. If she couldn't find a way to raise hell down there, she'd turn in her third Eye.
Gambling was a bust. She won a little, lost a little, lost a little more, and could not bring herself to care. Money was a crazy peckish game, and she did not pretend to understand it. Her mother had said it was a means of keeping score in the great dominance display of the penile culture. That was all Robin needed to know.
She decided to keep an open mind, though many things seemed quite unpromising as amusements. At first, she followed the people who seemed to be having the best times, then did what they did. For half a mark she purchased the use of three knives to throw at a man who capered and taunted in front of a wooden target. He was very good. She couldn't hit him, and neither could anyone else while she watched.
She followed a drunken couple into Professor Potter's Wonder Zoo, where Gaean animal oddities were displayed in cages. Robin thought it fascinating and couldn't understand why the couple left after only a perfunctory glance, looking for some "action," as the man put it. Well, then, she would find action.
In one tent she witnessed a man raping a woman on a stage and found it very boring. She had already seen this, and even the contortions could not make it of further interest. Then two Titanides repeated the performance, and it was well worth seeing, though semantically troubling. She thought one Titanide was raping the other, but then the rapist pulled out and was penetrated by the rapee. How could that be, logically? If both sexes could rape, was it still rape? Of course, the problem applied only to Titanides. Each had a male and a female organ in the rear, and a male or a female in front. The announcer presented the show as "educational" and explained that Titanides thought nothing of engaging in public anterior sex, but reserved frontal lovemaking for private moments. He also taught Robin a new verb: to fuck.
The Titanide anterior penis alarmed Robin. Normally sheathed and partially concealed by the hind legs, it was a formidable instrument when revealed. It looked exactly like the human model, but was as long as Robin's arm and twice as thick. She wondered if her mother had been confused, attributing this fearsome thing to human men.
There were other educational and scientific sideshows. Many of them featured violence. This did not surprise Robin, who had expected nothing more of peckish society and who was no stranger to violence herself. In one small tent a woman demonstrated the powers of some form of yoga by sticking pins in her eyes, driving a long saber through her midriff until it emerged from her back, then deftly amputating her own left arm with scalpel and saw. Robin was sure the woman was a robot or a hologram, but the illusion was too good to penetrate. At the next show she was as good as new.
She bought a ticket to an all-Titanide production of Romeo and Juliet, then found herself giggling so much she had to leave. A more apt title might have been The Montagues and the Capulets Join the Cavalry. It was also apparent that the script had been tampered with. Robin doubted the bard would have minded having Titanides play the roles but thought she would have resented having Romeo turned into a man by peckish revisionists.
Drawn by the sound of music, she wandered into a medium-sized tent and gratefully sat down on one of many long benches. In the front, a line of Titanides sang under the direction of a man in a black coat. It seemed to be yet another show, but for the lack of a ticket-taker. Whatever it was, i
t felt good to get off her feet.
Someone tapped her shoulder. She turned and saw another man in black. Behind him stood a Titanide wearing steel-rimmed glasses.
"Excuse me, would you please put this on?" He was offering her a white shirt. He had a friendly smile, and so did the Titanide.
"What for?" Robin asked.
"It's customary in here," the man said apologetically. "We believe it improper to uncover ourselves." Robin saw the Titanide was wearing a shirt: the first time she had seen one cover his or her breasts.
She shrugged into it, willing to humor screwy beliefs if she could sit and listen to the lovely music. "What kind of place is this anyway?"
The man sat beside her and grinned wryly.
"Well you may ask," he sighed. "Sometimes it tests the faith of the most devout. We're here to bring the Word to the outer planets. Titanides have souls just as humans do. We've been here twelve years now. Services are well-attended; we've performed a few marriages, a few baptisms." He grimaced and looked toward the group in front. "But I think when all is said and done, our flock comes here for the choir practices."
"Not true, Brother Daniel," the Titanide said, in English. "I believe-in-godthefather-maker-of-heav'n'earth-and-in-jesuscrise-hisonly-sonourlord - "
"Christians!" Robin yelped. She leaped to her feet, making the two-fingered protective sign with one hand, holding Nasu out with the other, and began to back away, her heart pounding. She did not stop running until the church was lost in the dust.
She had been in a church! It was her one big fear, the one bogey from her childhood about which she had no doubts. Christians were the very root and branch of the peckish power structure. Once in their hands, a merry pagan would be injected with drugs and subjected to hideous physical and mental tortures. There could be no escape, no hope. Their terrible rites would soon warp one's mind beyond all hope of redemption; then the convert would be infected with a nameless disease that rotted the womb. She would be forced to bear children in pain to the end of her days.
Gaean cuisine was interesting. Robin found a place that smelled good and ordered something called a Bigmac. It seemed to be mostly carbohydrates wrapped around ground grease. It was delicious. She ate every bite, feeling reckless.
While she was mopping up mustard with her fingers, she became aware that a woman at the next table was watching her. She watched back for a while, then smiled.
"I was admiring your paint job," the woman said, getting up to slide in next to Robin. She had scented her body and wore a carefully artless collection of thin scarves that just happened to cover most of her breasts and all of her groin. Her face looked fortyish until Robin realized the lines and shadows were cosmetics intended to make her look older.
"It's not paint," Robin said.
"It's... ." Real wrinkles appeared on her brow. "What is it then? Some new process? I'm fascinated."
"An old process, actually. Tattooing. You use a needle to drive ink into the skin."
"That sounds painful."
Robin shrugged. It was painful, but there was no labra in talking about it. You cried and screamed when it was happening, and never mentioned it again.
"My name's Trini, by the way. How do you take it off?"
"I'm Robin, may the holy flow unite us. You don't take it off. Tattooing is forever. Oh, you can edit a little, but the pattern is there to stay."
"How ... what I mean is, isn't that rather inflexible? I like to get a three- or four-day skin job as much as the next person, but I get tired of it."
Robin shrugged again, getting bored. She had thought this woman wanted to make love, but it appeared she didn't.
"You don't rush into it, of course." She craned her neck to see the wall menu, wondering if she had room for something called sauerkraut.
"It doesn't seem to hurt the complexion," Trini said as she lightly ran her fingertips over the coil of snake that looped Robin's breast. Her hand dropped and came to rest on Robin's thigh.
Robin looked at the hand, annoyed that she could not read this peckish woman's signals. The face was no help, either, when she looked there. Trini seemed to have made a study of being casual. Well, she thought, it never hurts to try. She had to reach up to put her arm over the bigger woman's shoulder. She kissed her on the lips. When she pulled away, Trini was smiling.
"So what is it you do?" Robin leaned forward to take the reefer from Trini, then settled back on her elbows again. They were reclining side by side, facing each other. Trini's disheveled mop of hair was backlighted by the open window of her room.
"I'm a prostitute."
"What's that?"
Trini rolled onto her side, doubled up with laughter. Robin giggled with her for a while but subsided long before Trini did.
"Where the hell have you been? Don't answer that, I know, cooped up in that big tin can in the sky. You really don't know?"
"I wouldn't have asked if I did." Robin was annoyed again, not liking to feel ignorant. Her gaze, looking for a place to light, settled on Trini's calf. She stroked it absently. Trini shaved her legs, for no reason that Robin could see, and left the hair on her arms alone. Robin shaved anywhere she had a tattoo, which was her left arm and right leg, part of her pubic area, and a wide circle around her left ear.
"I'm sorry. It's called the oldest profession. I provide sexual pleasure for money."
"You sell your body?"
Trini laughed. "Why do you say that? I sell a service. I'm a skilled worker with a college degree."
Robin sat up straight. "Now I remember. You're a whore."
"Not anymore. I free-lance."
Robin confessed she did not get it. She had heard of the concept of sex for money but was having difficulty integrating it with her still-hazy concepts of economics. There was supposed to be a slave-master in the picture somewhere, selling the bodies of the women he owned to men less rich than he.
"I think we have a semantic problem. You say "whore" and "prostitute" like they're the same thing. They used to be, I guess. You can work through an agency or out of a house, and that's being a whore. Or you can be on your own, and that's a courtesan. On Earth, of course. Here, there's no laws, so it's every woman for herself."
Robin tried to make sense of it but had no luck. It did not fit with what she knew of peckish society that Trini should keep the money she made. That would imply her body was her own property, and of course, it wasn't, in men's eyes. She was sure there was a logical contradiction in what Trini had said but was too tired to worry about it just then. One thing seemed clear, though.
"How much do I owe you, then?"
Trini's eyes widened. "You think ... oh, no, Robin. This I do for myself. Making love to men is my job, what I do for a living. I make love to women because I like them. I'm a lesbian." Trini looked slightly defensive for the first time. "I think I know what you're thinking. Why would a woman who doesn't like men make a living having sex with them? It gets a little-"
"No, I wasn't thinking that at all. That first thing you said is about the only thing you've said that makes sense. I understand that perfectly and see that you're ashamed of your peckish enslavement. But whats a lesbian?"
7 Harmony Heaven
Chris hired a Titanide to take him to something called the Place of Winds, where he was told he could get an elevator ride to the hub. The Titanide was a blue-and-white long-haired pinto female named Castanet (Sharped Lydian Duet) Blues, but it was Chris who had the blues. The Titanide spoke some English and attempted to engage him in conversation, to which Chris replied in grunts, so she passed the trip playing her brass horn while at a full gallop.
He began to take more interest in the trip as they left Titantown behind. The ride was as smooth as a Hovercraft. They passed through brown hills and rode for a time beside a swift-flowing tributary of the river Ophion. Then the land began to rise toward the imposing presence of the Place of Winds.
Gaea was a circular suspension bridge. Her hub served as the anchor against centripetal f
orce. Radiating down her spokes were ninety-six cables that tied the hub to the subterranean bone plates of the rim. Each cable was five kilometers in diameter, composed of hundreds of wound strands. They contained conduits for heating and cooling fluxes, and arteries for the transport of nutrients. Some of the cables met the ground at right angles, but the majority emerged from the vast spoke mouths overhead to slant through a twilight zone for a time before fastening in a daylight area.
The Place of Winds was the Hyperion terminus of a slanting cable. It looked like a long arm reaching out of darkness, its fingers gripping the land in a fist of rubble. Somewhere in the maze of ridges and tumbled boulders high winds sang as air was pumped upward to spill in the hub and fall through the spokes. It was Gaea's millennial air conditioner, the means by which she prevented the formation of a pressure gradient and maintained a breathable oxygen pressure in a column of air 600 kilometers high. It was also the angels' stairway to heaven. But Castanet and Chris were not headed there; the elevator was on the other side.
It took Castanet nearly an hour-or one rev, Chris reminded himself-to go around the cable. The far side was daunting. Incalculable tonnes of cable rested on the air above them, as if a skyscraper had been erected parallel to the ground.
The land beneath the cable was uncharacteristically barren. It could not have been merely lack of sunlight; Gaea was known for her prolificacy, supporting life forms adapted to any environmental extreme, including perpetual darkness. But only in the vicinity of the elevator terminus itself was there any plant life.
It was a dark, soft capsule, four meters long and three high, with a dilated opening in one end. The other was pressed against a sphincter of a kind common in Gaea. These openings led to the circulatory system, which, if one dared, could be used as transport. The capsules were corpuscles that included-in the dual-function organization that was a Gaean trademark-a life-support system. An oxygen-breathing animal placed inside could survive until it died of starvation.