Wizard

by John Varley

  Gaby inhaled with a racking sob.

  "I don't want to die," she moaned. Once again she tried to sit up. She fought them, gaining strength with hysteria. "I'm not ready yet. Please don't let me die, I don't want to die, I ... I don't want ... don't let me die!" She suddenly stopped resisting them and collapsed. She wept bitterly for a long time, so long that when she tried to speak again, her words were broken almost beyond understanding. Robin bent to put her ear close to Gaby's mouth.

  "I don't want... to die," Gaby said. And a long time later, when Robin had hoped she was asleep, she said, "I didn't know it could hurt so much."

  Finally she slept.

  It might have been eight hours before she spoke again. It might have been sixteen; Robin could not know. None of them had expected her to awake at all.

  Over the next several hours she told them the rest of the story. Her strength had failed alarmingly; she was barely able to lift her head to take the sips of water that she needed with increasing frequency if she was to speak at all. She had inhaled flames. Her lungs were filling up, and her breath bubbled. She drifted in and out of dreams, talking to her mother and other people who must have been long dead, calling often for Cirocco. But always she returned to the story of her private heresy, her quixotic and ultimately fatal mission to topple the arbitrary power that held sway over her life and those of everyone dear to her.

  She told of grievances great and small, and often it was the little things, the injustices on a personal level, that meant more than the great wrongs. She spoke of the institution of the quests and how she grew more disgusted with each passing year as unfortunate people were compelled to fight and die to provide amusement for a God who was weary of the smaller passions. She detailed the cruel joke of the Wizard and the Titanides, ran down the roster of Gaea's macabre toys: a long and infamous list that had its culmination in the buzz bombs.

  At one point she had dared to wonder if it must be this way. Having thought it, she was led inexorably to wonder what the alternative might be. At first she could tell no one, not even Cirocco. Later, when Cirocco had suddenly found cause to resent Gaea's machinations, she had approached the subject cautiously, been rebuffed, and let it lie for five years. But gradually Cirocco became interested. At first it was only a theoretical problem: could someone or something take Gaea's place? If so, what? They discussed and rejected Earth computers; none was large or complex enough. Various other solutions were also found wanting. At last they had narrowed the possible candidates for a heavenly succession to eleven-the living regional brains of Gaea.

  For a long time Cirocco was content to leave it at that. It seemed possible that one of them, or a team, might conceivably take over Gaea's functions if she were to die. There were myriad problems with any of the possibilities, but they were at least thinkable. And that was as far as Cirocco cared to go. Gaby did not think it was cowardice, though this was during the worst of Cirocco's alcoholism. It was merely that the second part of the problem looked insignificant compared to the first. All their discussion presupposed the absence of Gaea. But who will bell the cat? Gaby could dismiss that, knowing from experience that the world is full of stupid heroes and knowing herself to be one of them. Cirocco was, too, if suitably goaded to it. She and Cirocco would dispose of Gaea.

  But then they reached the question that had so far been unanswerable.

  How does one dispose of Gaea?

  "That one had me completely beat," Gaby confessed. "The whole thing was left at that point for a good seven or eight years. Rocky was pleased to forget it, but I never could. All that time my conscience was working on me, telling me I ought to be doing something. There was only one thing I could think of ... let me admit this, this seems like the right time for confessions. I never thought that by myself, I'd come up with the final answer. I knew Rocky could if she set her mind to it. So my job was to find a way to get her interested in doing something. I had to make it seem possible. I began to badger her about making a survey. I worried at her for several years, until she would hardly speak to me because I was getting to be such a pest. But I worked at her conscience-because she didn't like the things I've told you any more than I did; it's just a little harder to get her moving than it is me. She finally gave in.

  "We used you people. I said I was confessing, didn't I? I will say we didn't think we were putting you in any more danger than you would have had anyway if you stayed here. But we were wrong. You would have been safer if you'd gone on your own. Because Gaea got wind of something, or she just decided she'd had enough of my being my own boss. Maybe she couldn't stand the thought of someone she didn't have anything on. Her only hold on me was the need for renewals of my youth-and you can believe this or not, as you wish-I countered that by being ready to reject it if the terms were too dear. I think I could have grown old and died gracefully. I'll never know, but I wasn't afraid of it like I'm afraid of this.

  "So what Rocky's been doing is speaking to the regional brains, not even coming close to talking revolution. If you think Rocky planned to go up and offer any of them the Godhead on a silver platter, you're out of your mind. She was feeling them out, trying to find hidden resentments. We'd pretty much eliminated half of them before we started but thought it best to see them all. That way we could tell Gaea we were making another kind of survey, sort of scouting the mood of the land." She tried to laugh but succeeded only in coughing. "Gaea's the only place where that can be done literally."

  "What the next stage would have been I don't know. We hadn't had any luck so far. Rhea's a spook, and Crius is a toady-he did make a few unexpected remarks... ah, what's the use? The project is over, and we struck out. Why the hell didn't I let her skip Tethys?"

  She licked her lips but rejected water when it was offered.

  "You people are going to need that. Do you see why it's vital you tell Rocky all this? That Gene was behind it and that he was under Gaea's orders? If she knows what we were doing, Rocky is in bad trouble. She needs to know, so she can figure out what to do. Will you promise to tell her?"

  "We promise, Gaby," Valiha said.

  Gaby nodded wearily and closed her eyes. She opened them again and looked troubled. Her voice was nearly inaudible.

  "You know," she said, "the only thing I really regret is that Rocky couldn't be here with me. Chris, would ... no." She looked away from him and found Robin's eyes. Robin took her hand. "Robin, when you see her, give her a kiss for me."

  "I will."

  Gaby nodded again and quickly went to sleep. After a short time her breathing became ragged and then stopped. When Valiha listened for a heartbeat, she could find none.

  34 Revelation

  It was strange.

  Gaby had read of the commonality of near-death experiences. Those who had gone to the edge of death so often saw the same things that she had some idea of what to expect. People spoke of serenity, an absence of pain, of achieving a peace so sweet and alluring they could calmly take stock and decide whether to live or die. Whether real or hallucinatory, many had also reported standing outside themselves and looking at their bodies.

  She knew what they were talking about now, and words could not describe it. It was wonderful, and it was strange.

  They thought she was dead, but she knew she wasn't, not yet. She soon would be because she had stopped breathing. Her heart stopped, and she waited for the final experience with what might have been amused curiosity: I know what it's like to be; what will it be like to not be? Does one come apart, gradually shut down, or just fade away? Will there be trumpets and harps, fire and brimstone, rebirth, or the steady-state hum of cold intergalactic hydrogen? Will it be nothing? If so, what is nothing?

  Her body no longer held her. It was good to be free, to drift in space and time, to look back on the scene frozen behind her. It made a striking tableau.

  And there was Cirocco, sitting patiently on the pile of stone. Her arm was in a sling. It was good to have had a friend. For the early part of her life Gaby had been
in dire danger of dying without one, and that would have been worse than any hell. Thank you, Rocky, for being my friend ...

  It was taking more time than she expected. Now there was open sky and the vast desert below, and she continued to drift upward. Higher and higher she went, up through the roof and into space, up and up... .

  To where?

  For the first time she began to have doubts.

  Wouldn't that be the cosmic joke to end them all? What a surprise to theologians if it turned out the Answer really was... .

  What if she were not City Hall?

  Presently it could no longer be ignored. Whatever Gaby had become, her destination was clear. She was going to the hub.

  She wished she knew how to scream.

  35 Runaway

  Chris and Robin talked it out, explored it from all angles, and it added up to a hopeless situation. But the human animal is seldom hopeless, really hopeless in the real world. Had they been sealed off above and below, they could have waited to die. It might almost have been easier to do so. But while the stairs still beckoned, they both knew they had to descend them.

  "It's in the best tradition of heroes," Chris pointed out "To die trying."

  "Will you stop that hero business? We're talking about survival. We don't have a chance here, so if there's even a million-to-one shot at the bottom of the stairs, we have to take it."

  But it was not easy to get Valiha moving.

  The Titanide was a bundle of nerves. Logical argument had little effect on her. She could agree that they must look for a way out and that the only possible route was downward, but at that point her mind stopped, and something else took over. It was wrong for a Titanide to be in this place. To go deeper was almost unthinkable. Chris was beginning to feel desperate. For one thing, there was Gaby. It was not pleasant to remain near her body. Before long... but that did not bear thinking about. To be unable to bury her was terrible enough.

  They never found out how long it took to descend the stairs. The clocks had been in Hornpipe's pack, and there was just no other way to measure the passage of time. It became an endless nightmare, relieved only by meager meals taken when hunger became intolerable and by the dream-ridden sleep of exhaustion. They might make twenty or thirty steps down before Valiha would sit and begin to shake. It was impossible to budge her until she had screwed up her own courage. She was too big to move, and no words they could say did any good.

  Robin's temper-none too even at the best of times-became volcanic. At first Chris tried to restrain her language. Later he began to add comments of his own. He thought it unwise when Robin began to pummel the Titanide, to get behind her and push in her desperate urge to get moving, but he said nothing. And he could not just leave her. Robin agreed.

  "I'd love to strangle her," she said, "But I couldn't abandon her."

  "It wouldn't have to be abandonment," Chris said. "We could go ahead and try to get help."

  Robin scowled at him. "Don't kid yourself. What's at the bottom? Probably a pool of acid. Even if there's not, and if Tethys doesn't kill us and we make it to one of those tunnels-if there even are tunnels down here like the other place-it's gonna take weeks to get out and weeks to get back. If we leave her, she's dead."

  Chris had to admit the truth of it, and Robin went back to physically trying to force Valiha to move. He still thought that might be a mistake, and Valiha proved him right. It happened suddenly and began with Robin slapping her.

  "That hurt," Valiha said.

  Robin slapped her again.

  Valiha put her huge hand around Robin's neck, lifted her off the ground, and held her at arm's length. Robin kicked a few times, then held completely still, gurgling.

  "The next time I pick you up," Valiha said, with no particular menace in her voice, "I will squeeze until your head comes off." She set Robin down, held her shoulder while she coughed, did not let go until she was sure Robin could stand on her own. Robin backed away, and Chris thought it was fortunate her gun had been safely stowed in Valiha's pack. But Valiha did not seem to bear her any malice, and the incident was never mentioned again, nor did Robin ever again so much as raise her voice to the Titanide.

  He thought they must be past the halfway point. It was the fifth time they had slept. But this time, when he awoke, Valiha wasn't there.

  They started to climb.

  One thousand two hundred twenty-nine steps later they found her. She was sitting with her legs folded under her, glassy-eyed, rocking back and forth gently. She looked no more intelligent than a cow.

  Robin sat and Chris collapsed next to her. He knew that if the tears started now, he might never stop weeping, so he fought them back.

  "What now?" Robin asked.

  Chris sighed and stood up. He put his hands to Valiha's cheeks and rubbed them gently until her eyes focused on him.

  "It's time to go again, Valiha," he said.

  "It is?"

  "I'm afraid so."

  She stood and let him lead her. They made twenty steps, then thirty, then forty. On the forty-sixth step she sat down again and began to rock. After more coaxing Chris got her to her feet and they made sixty steps. When he got her up the third time, he was optimistic, hoping to make one hundred steps, but what he got was seventeen.

  Two sleeps later he awoke to the sound of Robin crying. He looked up, saw that Valiha was gone again. He put his arm around her, and she made no objection. When she was through, they got up and once more began to climb.

  It seemed that no one had done any talking in years. There had been arguing and once he and Robin had come to blows. But even that could not be sustained long; neither had the energy for it. He limped for a while after the fight, and Robin sported a black eye. But it was amazing what a little adrenalin could do. "It looks like the floor is dry," Robin whispered. "I can hardly believe it."

  They were concealed behind the gradual curve of the spiraling wall, looking out and down at what had to be, incredibly, the end of the line. All along they had expected to find an acid lake, with Tethys safely submerged in it. Instead, they saw what appeared to be a high-water-or high-acid-mark only ten steps from where they stood, then a section of bare floor. Tethys herself was invisible around the curve.

  "It's got to be a trap," Robin said.

  "Right. Let's turn around and go back."

  Robin's lips drew back, and her eyes blazed for a moment; then she relaxed and even managed a faint smile.

  "Hey, I don't know how to say this... it feels like we've been at each other's throats forever ... but if this comes out badly... what I mean is-"

  "It's been fun?" Chris suggested.

  "I wouldn't put it that way. Hell." She put out her hand. "It's been good knowing you."

  He held her hand in both of his briefly.

  "Me, too. But don't say any more. Every word is going to sound awkward as hell later if we do survive."

  She laughed. "I don't care. I didn't like you when we started out, but don't feel bad. I don't think I liked anybody. I like you now, and I wanted you to know that. It's important to me."

  "I like you, too," he said, and coughed nervously. His eyes left hers, and when he forced them back, she had already looked away. He released her hand, aware of things he would like to say and unable to say them.

  He turned to Valiha and began talking to her quietly. He had become better at that, speaking of nothing in particular, letting the melody of his voice soothe in a language they held in common. Gradually he began working meanings into what he said, repeating them, telling her what she must do without stressing it enough to activate her ever-present fears. He spoke to her of getting out in the sunshine again.

  A strange fatalism had overcome Valiha during the last kilometer. She stopped less frequently but moved more slowly. She seemed drugged. Once Chris would have sworn she was asleep. She had a hard time keeping her eyes open. He supposed it was Titanide fear, or whatever they used in place of fear. Now that he thought of it, he had never seen any of the Titan
ides displaying what he thought of as fear, not in the face of the wraiths and not even down here in the dim stairway. She apparently did not fear Tethys in any way Chris could understand. Instead, there had been first a repulsion, like a physical force acting to keep her away from Tethys. She had been unable to give an explanation of many of her acts; when he and Robin were not impelling her downward, she simply went up, with the inevitability of heated air rising. That force had faded, to be replaced by a physical and mental numbness. Her mind worked sluggishly, her senses were dulled, and her body almost seemed to be shutting down.

  "In a moment we ... Valiha, listen to me." He had to slap her to get her attention. He had the impression she barely felt it. "Valiha, we have to do this part of the trip quickly. It's only a few hundred steps. I don't think we'll have time to sit down and rest like we've been doing."

  "No rest?"

  "I'm afraid not. What we'll do is hurry down the last steps, stay close to the wall-stay close to me, and I'll be near the wall-and into the tunnel. Once we're there, we'll be on our way up and out. Do you see, Valiha? To start going up, we have to go just a little bit down, just a little bit, that's all, and we'll be okay. Do you understand?"

  She nodded, but Chris was far from sure she did. He thought of saying more but realized there was little use. It would work, or it wouldn't. If he were betting, he would have to put his money against them.

  They started the final descent hand in hand. It did not take long to come around the curve of the corridor and into the presence of Tethys, who sat unmoving in her acid bath, just as Crius had done. In fact, there was no way Chris could tell the two apart. He hoped the things he could not yet see were also the same. He would not know until they actually emerged on the floor of the chamber.

  "What took you so long, Wizard?"

  The voice hit Chris like a physical blow. He had to pause and take a deep breath. Until that moment he had not realized how keyed up he had been. His heart was pounding, and his breathing was shaky. Luckily Valiha was still moving. The three of them continued to approach, with only ten steps in front of them.