by John Varley
"You did it for Cirocco and for Gaby," he said quietly, not looking at her. "If you're waiting for me to beg, I'm not going to."
"Not at all," Gaea said. "I knew you wouldn't-I have some idea what this is costing you after all the high-flown prose-and I'd have been appalled if you did. I've never been that far wrong about even a human. I'm merely waiting for you to spell it out. Be specific. What do you want?"
"The ability to sing."
Gaea's laugh rang in the empty darkness of the hub. It went on and on. Soon all the regulars at her heavenly film festival were laughing, too, on the well-known principle that what's funny to the boss is funny. Robin watched Chris, thinking he would surely attack the obscene little potato-faced pustule, but he somehow managed to hold it in. Gradually the laughter died away, Gaea's first, then everyone else's.
She cocked her head and appeared to be thinking about it.
"No. No to both requests. I will not uncure you, and I will not teach you to sing. You should have read the fine print and known your own desires before you came here. I am enforcing the letter of the contract. This may seem harsh, but you will find that things are not so bad as you think. When I cured you, there was some blending of your various personalities. You'll find yourself a little more in touch with the violent tendencies that so turned on your Titanide bitch. That, combined with a little more skilled use of your penis, ought to keep the animal quite tame and loyal for at least-"
Chris was on her by then. Robin moved in to help but had to deal with the swarms of Gaea's guests, who-while not the strongest collection of backbones Robin had ever seen-were unanimously eager to shine in Gaea's eyes if all it cost them was a broken nose. Robin handed out several. Not many of them would be getting up soon, but before long they overwhelmed her and pinned her to the ground. She saw that Chris was down, too, and Gaea was being shown back to her chair.
"Let them up," she said, sitting. There was blood dripping from her mouth, and she grinned in spite of it. Perhaps because of it; Robin could not know. Robin got up and stood beside Chris. She had cut her hand and raised it to her mouth to suck on it.
"See what I mean?" Gaea said, as if nothing had happened. "The man who came here so long ago would not have done that. And I like it, though you really went too far, you know. But I will make a deal with you. I don't think you will stay with me very long. I know more of these matters than you do, I know something of Titanide love and how it differs from the human variety. Your friend will soon begin to open her fine legs for others-please, there's no need to go through that again." She waited until he seemed calmer. "Your reaction tends to prove my point. I won't deny she loves you, but she will love others. You will not handle it well. You will leave in great bitterness."
"Will you bet on that?"
"That's the deal. Come back in ... oh, say, five myriarevs. No, I'll be generous. Make it four. That's about four and a half years. If you still want to be uncured and if you still want to sing, I'll do both things for you. Do we have a deal?"
"We do. I'll be back."
Robin was never sure if he said more. It had finally penetrated to her conscious mind what part of her hand she was sucking on. She looked at it, stared in growing horror, screamed, and leaped. Once again Gaea went tumbling from her chair, and Robin's memory of what happened next blurred until she found herself sitting on the floor with pain in her little finger, the one that should not have been there. She was biting it, and Chris was trying to pull it from her mouth. He needn't have bothered. She released it and looked dumbly at the toothmarks.
"I can't do it," she said.
"You never could," Gaea reminded her. "You cut it off with a knife, remember? The story about biting was public relations. You were good at that back then; to enhance your image, you could have disemboweled yourself. I'm afraid you were a pain in the ass that only a mother could love." She was wheezing slightly. "As you are now. Really, children, this must stop. Twice in one day? Must I endure assault and battery? What God would put up with it, I ask you?"
Robin no longer cared what Gaea said. The sad fact, the one she must now face as she had faced so many others, was that Gaea was at least partly right. She was no longer Robin the Nine-fingered.
"Don't bother to say good-bye. Just leave," Gaea said.
Chris helped Robin up, and all the way back to the elevator which she knew might drop her through the Rhea Spoke Robin wondered if the tattoo on her belly was intact, and knew she would not look for as long as possible.
42 Battle of the Winds
Cirocco sat on a flat rocky outcropping above the Place of Winds, the last western march of the mesalike formation that made the cable known as Cirocco's Stairs look so much like a hand gripping the soil of East Hyperion. Below her the strand fingers splayed over the ground, knotted knuckles blasted smooth by millions of years of ceaseless wind. Between the strands, where the webs between fingers would be, elliptical chasms yawned to gulp air, feeding it to interstitial ducts in the cable, lifting it to spill in the distant hub and fall through the spokes in the grand cycle of replenishment that was the essence of Gaea's life. The ground was barren, yet the larger life that lay beneath it and around it and in some ways penetrated it to the uttermost molecule vibrated Cirocco's bones.
Gaea was so God-awful big, and it was so easy to despair.
It was possible that in all of Gaea's history, there had been only one who had dared defy her. Cirocco, the great Wizard, had pretended to, had put on airs as though she really could speak to Gaea as an equal, but only she herself knew just how empty that had been. Only she could count the loathsome list of her own crimes. At first it had been necessary for Gaea to stamp the ground quite close to the Wizard to bring her properly to heel. As time went by, she did not even have to lift her foot; Cirocco would wriggle under like a worm and feel any pressure as only right and good. That her course had been wise was now obvious. The one who had dared to stand defiant was now dead, her corpse consumed by the angry ground which was the body of Gaea. It was a powerful object lesson. There could be no doubt that Gaby had been a fool. Her rebellion, pitifully small and tentative as it had been, was gone with her life. No sooner had she taken the first steps than all of Gaea's might had come down on her. Gaea had killed Gaby with about as much concern as a sleeping elephant rolling over on a flea.
Cirocco had not moved for many hours, but at the shout from behind her she turned her head, then stood. The angel was a winged speck but quickly grew larger. His multicolored wings twisted skillfully in the tricky winds, brought him to ground two meters from Cirocco. Not far behind him were five more angels.
"They're back in Titantown," the angel said. Cirocco's shoulders relaxed slightly. They had insisted on going. Apparently they were too small for Gaea's wrath. The angel was regarding Cirocco with narrowed eyes.
"Are you sure you want to do this?" he said.
"I'm never sure of anything. Let's get going."
She walked with them to the lip of the precipice. Below her was the intake called the Great Howler, also known as the Forecrotch of Gaea for the way the mammoth vertical slit set between two rocky thighs resembled a vagina. It sang constantly in a mournful bass.
The angels moved up behind her. One on each side took her arms in their wiry hands. The other four were to provide relief for the dangerous flight in total darkness.
Cirocco stepped off the edge, and the wind caught her like a leaf. She entered the cable and sped toward the hub.
43 The Thin Red Line
Cirocco called it the Mad Tea Party and knew it was not appropriate; it was just that for some time she had felt a little like Alice. The retinue of despair that surrounded Gaea might have fitted better on Beckett's existentialist stage than in Carroll's Wonderland. Yet she would not have been surprised had someone offered her half a cup of tea.
The crowd was exquisitely sensitive to Gaea's mood. Cirocco had never seen them more restive than as she approached the party, or as suddenly wary as when Gaea finally spott
ed her.
"Well, well," Gaea boomed. "If it isn't Captain Jones. To what do we owe the honor of this spontaneous and unannounced visit? You there, whatever your name is, bring a large glass of something cold for the Wizard. Never mind what it is so long as it contains no water. Take the chair over there, Cirocco. Is there anything else can get you? No? Well." Gaea seemed at a momentary loss for something to say. She sat in her wide chair and mumbled until Cirocco's drink arrived.
Cirocco looked at it as if she had never seen anything quite like it before.
"Perhaps you'd prefer the bottle," Gaea suggested. Cirocco's eyes came up to meet Gaea's. She looked back at the drink, turned it over, and moved the glass in a slow circle until a sphere of liquid was formed, sinking slowly toward the floor. She tossed the glass into the air, and it was still rising when it left the circle of light. The sphere flattened and began soaking into the rug.
"Is this your way of telling me you're on the wagon?" Gaea asked. "How about a Shirley Temple? I just received the cutest mixer from an admirer on Earth. It's ceramic, shaped just like America's Sweetheart, and I daresay worth a lot of money. You can make martinis in it by mixing gin to the chin and vermouth to the-"
"Shut up."
Gaea cocked her head slightly, considering it, and did as she was told. She folded her hands on her stomach and waited.
"I'm here to give you my resignation."
"I have not asked for it."
"Nevertheless, you have it. I no longer wish to be Wizard."
"You no longer wish." Gaea clucked sorrowfully. "You know it's not that simple. However, it is coincidental. For the last few years I have been contemplating whether I should terminate your employment. The fringe benefits would have to go, too, of course, which would make it tantamount to a death sentence, so I didn't move hastily. But the fact is, if you recall the qualities I mentioned when I first took you on, you have not been living up to the job for some time now."
"I won't even resent that. The fact is that I'm through with the job, effective immediately after the next Hyperion Carnival. Between now and then I will visit all the other Titanide lands to-"
"'Effective immediately after... .'" Gaea burst in with feigned surprise. "Will you listen to her? Who would believe a day could be so full of impudence?" She laughed and was quickly accompanied by some of her disciples. Cirocco looked at one of the people and did not take her eyes off him until he had thought it well to slink back out of her sight. By then it was quiet again, and Gaea motioned for her to go on.
"There's little to add. I promised a Carnival to remember, and I will deliver it. But after that I am demanding that you establish another way for the Titanides to reproduce, subject to my approval, and with a ten-year waiting period, during which I will observe the new method and weed out any tricks."
"You are demanding," Gaea said. She pursed her lips. "I'll tell you, Cirocco, you have me going back and forth on this thing. I frankly never thought you'd have the gumption to show up here, knowing what I just learned. That you have speaks well for you. It demonstrates those qualities I first observed in you that caused me to make you Wizard in the first place. If you recall, among them were courage, determination, a sense of adventure, and the capacity for heroism: qualities you have sadly lacked. I was not going to speak of my recent wavering. But then you follow it with these foolish demands, and I wonder if you have lost your sanity."
"I have regained it."
Gaea frowned. "Let's get it out in the open, shall we? We both know what we're talking about here, and I'll concede I acted hastily. I admit I overreacted. But she was foolish, too. It was not wise for her to have used those children as the medium for her message; no doubt in her condition she couldn't think of everything. But the fact remains that Ga-"
"Don't speak her name." Cirocco had raised her voice only slightly, but Gaea was stopped short, and the first rows of her audience unconsciously edged back. "Never speak her name to me again."
Gaea, to all appearances, was genuinely surprised.
"Her name? What does her name have to do with it? Unless you have been taken in by the tales of your own magic, I don't see the sense. A name is just a sound; it has no power over anything."
"I will not hear her name coming from your lips."
For the first time Gaea looked angry.
"I put up with much," she said. "I allow insults from you and from others that no God would ever endure because I see no point in slaughtering day in and day out. But you try my patience. I will go only so far, and you should take that as a warning."
"You put up with it because you love it," Cirocco said evenly. "Life is a game to you, and you control the pieces. The better show they give you, the more you like it. You have all these people to kiss your ass any time you tell them to. And I will insult you as I please."
"They would, too," Gaea said, smiling again. "And of course, you're right. Once again you prove that when you try, you can give me a better show than anyone." She waited, apparently thinking Cirocco would go on. Cirocco said nothing. She leaned her head against the back of her chair and looked up at the distant, geometrically straight, razor-sharp line of red light overhead. It was the first thing she had seen on her first trip to the hub, so very long ago. She had stood side by side with Gaby, and they had wondered what it was, but it was so high above them there seemed little point in speculating. They could never have reached it.
But Cirocco had felt even then that it was important. It was just a feeling, but she trusted her feelings. Some vital part of Gaea lived up there in the most inaccessible spot of a world filled with daunting vistas. It was at least twenty kilometers from where she sat.
"I would think you would be curious as to the answers to your requests," Gaea finally said. Cirocco brought her head forward and looked at Gaea again. There was no emotion on her face, as there had not been from the time she arrived.
"I couldn't be less interested. I told you what I was going to do, and then I told you what you were going to do. There is nothing further to say."
"I doubt that." Gaea looked at her narrowly. "Because this is absolutely impossible. You must know that, and you must have some threat to make, though I can't imagine what it might be."
Cirocco merely looked at her.
"You could not imagine that I would meekly grant your ... very well, accede to your demands, if you prefer it that way. Demand or request, it matters little if the answer is no. Then you must tell me what you will do."
"The answer is no?"
"It is."
"Then I must kill you."
There was now no sound to be heard in the vastness of the hub. Several hundred humans stood grouped loosely behind Gaea's chair, hanging on to every word. They all were fearful people or they would not have been there, and certainly most of them were wondering only how Gaea would dispose of this woman. But a few, looking at Cirocco, began to wonder if they had put their allegiance in the right place.
"You really have taken leave of your senses. You have no plutonium or uranium and no way to get any. I doubt if you could fashion a weapon if you did. If you could conjure a nuclear device with the magic you seem to believe you possess, you would not use it because to do so would destroy the Titanides you have such affection for." She sighed again and turned one hand over carelessly. "I never pretended immortality. I know how much time I have left. I am not indestructible. Atomic bombs-in large quantities and placed with calculation-could fragment my body or at least render me uninhabitable. Short of that, I know of nothing that can do me serious harm. So how do you propose to kill me?"
"With my bare hands, if necessary."
"Or die in the attempt."
"If it comes to that."
"Exactly." Gaea closed her eyes, and her lips moved soundlessly. At last she looked at Cirocco again.
"I should have expected it. You would find it less painful to throw away your life than to live with what has happened. It is my fault, I admit it, but I don't want to see you wasted.
You are worth this entire group, and more."
"I am worth nothing unless I do what I must do."
"Cirocco, I apologize for what I did. Wait, wait, hear me out. Give me this chance. I thought I could conceal what I was doing, and I was wrong. You won't deny that she was plotting my overthrow and that you were helping her-"
"I regret nothing but the fact I hesitated too long."
"Surely. That's understandable. I know the depth of your bitterness and of your hatred. It's all so unnecessary because what I did was done more from pride than fear; you can't think I was seriously worried that her puny efforts would-"
"Watch what you say about her. I won't warn you again."
"I'm sorry. The fact remains that nothing she or you could do would cause me any discomfort. I destroyed her for the insolence of thinking it would be done and, by doing so, have cost myself your loyalty. I find that a heavy price to pay. I want you back, fear I cannot, and yet want you to stay if for no other reason than to give the place some class."
"It needs some, but I can't do it, even if I had any."
"You underrate yourself. What you have demanded is impossible. You are not the first Wizard I have nominated in my three million years. There is only one way to leave the job, and that is feet first. No one has survived it, and no one will. But there is something I can do. I can bring her back."
Cirocco put her head in her hands and said nothing for a very long time. At last she moved, putting both arms under her shapeless blanket, hugging herself, and rocking slowly back and forth. "This is the only thing I was afraid of," she said, to no one.
"I can re-create her exactly as she was," Gaea went on. "You are aware that I carry tissue samples of you both. When you were examined initially, and when you report for the immortality treatments, I tap your memories. Hers are quite up to date. I can grow her body and fill it with her essence. She will be herself, I swear it; it will be impossible to tell any difference. It is what I will do with you if despite everything, it becomes necessary to kill you. I can give her back to you, with only one change, and that is to remove her compulsion to destroy me. Only that and nothing more."