by John Varley
"Rules?"
"What? Oh, I guess there should be, shouldn't there? But I really don't know how much you know about fighting."
"I know how to kill someone with my hands," Gaby said.
"Let's just say we do nothing that would permanently injure the other. The loser should be able to walk tomorrow. Other than that, anything goes."
"Right. But before we start, I was curious about that tattoo on your stomach. What is that for?" She pointed to Robin's midsection.
It might have been better-Robin could have looked at herself rather than at Gaby's pointing hand-but she was still caught off guard when Gaby kicked with the foot she had been carefully working down into the mud. Robin ducked the kick, but a glob of mud hit her on the side of the face, blinding one eye.
Gaby expected the leap backward and was prepared to exploit it, but Robin's reflexes were a little quicker, and Gaby took a kick in the side. It slowed her just enough for Robin to execute her own surprise move.
She turned and ran.
Gaby ran after her, but it was not a tactic she was used to. She kept expecting a trick and so did not run as fast as she might have. As a result, Robin soon had a comfortable lead. She stopped when the distance between them had lengthened to ten meters, and when she turned, her eye was open again. Gaby thought she would not be seeing as well as before, but the rain had removed most of her disadvantage. Gaby was impressed. When she began to move in on the younger woman, she did so with extreme caution.
It was like a restart. Gaby felt handicapped because she had seldom fought this way before. Her own training had been very long ago, and while she was not rusty, it was hard to remember what one did in those practice sessions. For the last eighty years any fight she found herself in was completely serious, meaning that death could always result. That kind of fight was not at all like practicing. Robin, on the other hand, must do this sort of thing all the time. Her personality would practically guarantee it.
There was no real reason why the fight should last more than a few minutes, even pulling punches. Somehow Gaby didn't think it would turn out that way. When she moved in, she gambled by not throwing any punches or kicks, leaving Robin an opening Gaby felt she could handle if the younger woman chose to exploit it. But she did not, and the two of them grappled for wrestling holds. An agreement had been made without words. Gaby would honor it. By formalizing the contest even further than the rules they had agreed on, Robin was saying she had no desire for either of them to be hurt. That meant Gaby was an honorable opponent who did not deserve to be hurt.
It took quite a while. Gaby realized she had surrendered what advantages she might have had by fighting this way. She didn't mind. She expected to lose, but that didn't prevent her from giving it all she had. Robin would know she had been in a fight.
"Peacel" Gaby yelled. "Uncle, aunt, and a lot of little cousins!"
Robin released her arm, and the knife of pain slowly withdrew from Gaby's shoulder. She lifted her face from the mud and cautiously rolled over. She began to think she might one day regain the use of the arm.
She lifted her head and saw Robin sitting with her head between her knees, panting like a steam engine.
"Two out of three?" Gaby suggested.
Robin began to laugh. She did it loudly and with no self-consciousness.
"If I thought for one minute you meant that," she finally managed to say, "I'd tie you up and keep you in a cage. But you'd probably gnaw through the chains."
"Almost had you a couple of times there, didn't I?"
"You'll never know how close."
Gaby wondered how she could feel so good, considering the fact that she hurt all over. She supposed it must be marathon euphoria, that boneless relaxation which can come when one completes an all-out effort. And after all, she was not injured. There would be bruises, and the shoulder would be weak for a while, but she was suffering mostly from the effects of exertion, not pummeling.
Robin got slowly to her feet. She held out a hand.
"Let's get down to the river. You need to wash up."
Gaby took her hand and managed to rise. Robin was walking with a limp, and Gaby didn't feel too steady herself, so they supported each other through the first painful hundred meters.
"I really did want to ask you about that tattoo," Gaby said as they approached the river.
Robin wiped her hands over her abdomen, but it was no use. "Can't see it now. Too much mud. What did you think of it?"
Gaby was about to say something polite and noncommittal but thought better of it.
"I think it's one of the most hideous things I ever saw."
"Precisely. It is a source of much labra."
"You want to explain that? Do all witches disfigure themselves like that?"
"I'm the only one. Therein lies the labra."
They walked carefully out into the river and sat down. The rain had relented, becoming a fine mist, while to the north there was a break in the clouds that let some light through. Gaby could no longer see the tattoo but could not stop thinking about it. It was grotesque, almost frightening. Rendered like an anatomical drawing, it depicted incised layers of tissue laid back with surgical precision to bare the organs beneath. The ovaries were like rotten fruit, crawling with maggots. The fallopian tubes were knotted many times. But the womb itself was the worst. It was swollen, bulging out of the "incision," and dripping blood from a ragged wound. It was clear the injury had been caused from the inside, as though something were tearing its way out. Nothing could be seen of the creature the womb sheltered but a pair of red, feral eyes.
As they went to retrieve their clothes, it began to rain hard again. Gaby was not alarmed when Robin stumbled and fell; the footing was terrible, and she was still favoring a turned ankle. By the time of Robin's fourth fall it was obvious something was wrong. She staggered, trembling, her jaw muscles knotted with determination.
"Let me help you," Gaby said when she could no longer bear it.
"No, thank you. I can make it on my own."
A minute later she fell down and did not get up. Her limbs shook in a slow rhythm, not violently. Her eyes did not track. Gaby knelt and put one arm under Robin's knees, the other under her back.
"Nnnn ... uunnnnuh. Nnnnuh."
"What? Be reasonable, friend. I can't leave you out here in the rain."
"Yyyuuu ... ssss. Yu ... yessss. Llluuh ... eeeeve. Leeeeeve muh-muh-muh-meee."
It was a hell of a problem. Gaby put her down and stood over her, scratching her head. She looked toward the campfire, not far away, and back again to Robin. They were atop a low hill; rising water would be no problem. Nor would she drown from the rainfall. This part of Hyperion held no predators that would give her trouble, though some small animals might try a nibble.
This would have to be straightened out later. Some sort of accommodation had to be reached, for Gaby would not do this again. But for now she turned away and headed back toward camp.
Hautbois stood up, alarmed, when Gaby returned alone. Gaby knew the Titanide had seen them leave together; it was likely she even knew what they intended to do, out there in the rain. Gaby reassured her before she could jump to conclusions.
"She's all right. At least, I guess she is. She's having a seizure and doesn't want my help. We can get her when it's time to go. Where are you going?"
"To bring her back to the tent, of course."
"I don't think she'll appreciate it."
Hautbois looked as angry as Gaby had ever seen a Titanide be.
"You humans and your silly games," she snorted. "I don't have to play by her rules or yours either."
Robin saw Hautbois looming through the wall of rain. Damn it, Gaby had sent back the cavalry; that much was obvious.
"I came on my own," the Titanide said as she picked Robin out of the mud. "Whatever human concept you are trying to defend by this insane act can remain unviolated because no human agency is taking you from here."
Put me down, you overgrown hobb
yhorse, Robin tried to say, and heard the despised croaks and gurgles drool over her slack jaw.
"I'll take care of you," Hautbois said tenderly.
Robin was calm as Hautbois put her atop the sleeping bag. Stop fighting, submit to it, wait it out, and win eventually. You're helpless now, but you can get back at them.
Hautbois returned with a bucket of warm water. She bathed Robin, dried her, held her up like a defective robot rag doll, and put her into the embroidered finery of her nightgown. Robin might have weighed no more than a sheet of paper as Hautbois lifted her with one hand and slid her into the sleeping bag. She tucked it up around her neck.
She began to sing.
Robin felt heat in the back of her throat. It horrified her. To be tucked in, bathed, dressed... it was a terrible affront to her dignity. She should be able to summon more anger than she was feeling. She should be composing the blistering verbal assault she would deliver to this creature as soon as she regained her body. Instead, she felt only the choking lump of an emotion she had long forgotten.
Weeping was unthinkable. Once it was surrendered to, one might never be free of the self-pity. It was her biggest fear, so terrifying that she seldom could so much as name it. There had been times, all alone, when she had wept. She could never do it while with someone. And yet in a sense she was alone. Hautbois had said it herself. Human rules, Coven concepts, need not apply here. It went beyond that; the Coven did not demand that she never cry. It was her own self-enforced discipline.
She heard moaning and knew it was coming from her mouth. Tears were leaking from the corners of her eyes. The lump in her throat could not be swallowed, so it would have to come out.
Robin surrendered and cried herself to sleep in Hautbois's arms.
Chris reclined on his sleeping bag in the damned half-light and trembled. For hours it had felt as if an attack might be imminent, but it refused to start. Or had it? As he had told Gaby, he was not the one to judge if he was in an episode. But that was not strictly true. If he were having an attack, he would not know it, it would seem perfectly reasonable for his mind to be operating like a machine with worn pulleys and bent gears, but he would not be here sweating.
He told himself it was the light and the rain beating on the tent roof. The light was all wrong. As it came through the tent walls, it had to be either early morning and time to get up, or late evening and much too early to sleep. It would not turn into decent night.
What with the rain, it was amazing the things he had been able to hear. There were the quiet songs of the Titanides and the crackle and pop of the fire. Someone had approached his tent, stood outside it, casting her shadow on the walls, and walked away. Later he had heard voices in conversation and people walking away. Much later someone had returned.
And now someone else was approaching. Not even the Wizard would cast a shadow as large as that.
"Knock, knock."
"Come in, Valiha."
She had a towel with her, and while she stuck her head and torso in to hold the tent flaps open, she used it to wipe the mud from her front hooves before stepping onto the canvas floor. She did the same with her back legs, twisting and leaning back while lifting each leg, managing to suggest a dog scratching behind an ear without looking at all awkward. She was wearing a violet rain slicker which was almost a tent in itself. By the time she had removed it and hung it on a peg near the door Chris had worked up considerable curiosity as to the purpose of her visit.
"Do you mind if I light the lantern?"
"Go right ahead."
The tent was Titanide-sized, meaning she could stand erect in the center and had just enough room to turn around. The lamp cast fantastic shadows of her until she hung it from the ridgepole and sat down with her legs folded.
"I can't stay long," she said. "In fact, it might have been a mistake to come here at all. However, here I am."
If she had intended to mystify him, she couldn't have done a better job. Her hands were nervously fiddling with the edge of her pouch, something that was hard for Chris to watch. Her thumbs hooked in the edge of it, and she stretched it out like the elastic band on a pair of bathing trunks.
"I've been upset since I realized that you ... you really don't remember the hundred revs we spent together after I found you wandering beneath Cirocco's Stairs, after your Big Drop."
"How long is a hundred revs?"
"A little over four days, in your reckoning. One rev is sixty-one minutes."
"That's quite a while. Did we have a good time?"
She glanced up at him, then resumed her fumbling.
"I did. You said you did, too. What has bothered me is that you might have the impression that I was using you solely for a good-luck charm, as I said when you first returned to your senses."
Chris shrugged. "It wouldn't bother me if you had. And if I brought you good luck, I'm glad I did."
"That isn't it." She bit her lower lip, and Chris was surprised to see a tear, quickly wiped away. "Gaea curse me," she moaned, "I can't say it right. I don't even know what I'm trying to say, except thank you. Even though you don't remember." She dug into her pouch and came out with something which she pressed into his hand. "This is for you," she said, and stood and was gone practically before he knew what had happened. He opened his hand and looked at the Titanide egg. Its dominant color was yellow, like Valiha herself, but there were swirls of black. There was an inscription on its hard surface, in tiny, spidery English characters:
Valiha (Aeolian Solo) Madrigal: Long-Odds Major
26th Gigarev; 97,628,6851 Rev (Anno Domini 2100)
"Gaea Says Not Why She Spins."
19 Eternal Youth
"If you're worried about a paternity suit," Cirocco said, "you can forget it. Titanides don't work that way."
"I didn't mean ... maybe I'm expressing myself badly."
Chris was in Cirocco's canoe. He sat toward the middle while the Wizard lolled in the bow. Her head was on a pillow. There were puffy blue bags under her eyes, and her complexion was unhealthy. Even so, it was a great improvement on a few hours ago. Chris had elected to travel with Cirocco with the intent of quizzing her about Human-Titanide sex but had put it off when he saw her face.
He was not the only one to switch boats. Gaby was now riding with Hautbois and Robin, while Valiha and Psaltery led the flotilla in canoes that rode high in front.
They had passed beneath Cirocco's Stairs, an experience Chris could have done without. The massive cable hanging above him had taken him back to the Golden Gate on that windy day when Dulcimer set his feet on the path which led to Gaea. Cirocco's Stairs looked like a bridge cable. In place of the tower, however, there was just the gaping conical mouth of the Rhea Spoke, dwindling into infinity and taking the unseen cable with it. The cable was an exponential curve, a geometric abstraction made real. A dozen Golden Gates set end to end could not have spanned its terrible immensity.
Now they were a few minutes from the confluence of Ophion with the river Melpomene. Already the waters moved a little faster, eager to challenge the Asteria Mountains, darkly visible in the east
Chris looked away from the river and tried again.
"For one thing, I know she's already pregnant. I'm presuming a child is not at issue. Am I right in that?"
"You're still thinking in terms of mommies and daddies," Cirocco said. "What you are here is a potential forefather, and Valiha a potential foremother. The egg could be implanted in ... oh, say Hornpipe, for instance, and he'd be the hindmother, then any of the other three could fertilize it, including Valiha."
"Not until I knew you a lot better," Hornpipe said from the rear of the boat.
"This isn't funny to me," Chris said.
"I'm sorry. A child is definitely not at issue. One, I wouldn't approve it. Two, no Titanide would even start a proposal for a child without much more thought. And three, you've got the egg."
"Then what is at issue here? Is there a great significance to the gift? What is she telling me?"
Cirocco did not look as though she really wanted to answer questions, but she sighed and relented.
"It does not necessarily mean anything. Oh, it means she likes you, that's certain. For one thing, she wouldn't have made love to you unless she did, but she wouldn't have given you the egg unless she still did. Titanides are sentimental, see? Walk into any Titanide home, and you'll find a rack of these on the wall. Not one in a thousand ever gets used or is even intended for use. They're common as ... as condoms on lover's lane."
Hornpipe made a loud raspberry.
"It was a rather low image, wasn't it?" Cirocco managed to grin.
"What's a condom?"
"Before your time, huh? A one-time prophylactic. Anyway, the analogy is apt. Every time a female has frontal intercourse one of these pops out two hectorevs later. That's two hundred revs, in case they aren't still teaching the metric system where you come from. You know, it's a hell of a note when a Titanide knows what a condom is-he's never seen one!-and a human doesn't. What do they teach you? That history started in 2096?"
"Actually, I think they include 2095 now."
Cirocco massaged her forehead and smiled weakly.
"Sorry. I digress. Your education or lack of it is none of my business. Back to Titanides ... most of the eggs get thrown away. If not immediately, then during the next spring cleaning. Some are kept for the sentimental value, long after they've expired. They last about five years, by the way.
"What you have to bear in mind is the dual nature of Titanide sex. Hind sex is for two purposes, one much more common than the other. One is sheer recreation: hedonism. They do it publicly. The other purpose is procreation, when they're allowed to, which is not nearly as often as they'd like. Frontal sex is different. Very seldom is it done just to make an egg. Almost always it's an expression of close friendship or love. Not precisely the love you and I know because Titanides don't pair-bond. But they do love. That's one of the things I know for sure, and my list of those things is short. A Titanide will hind-sex with someone he or she would not dream of front-sexing with. Frontal sex is sacred.