Titan (GAIA)

by John Varley

  She saw Gaby’s back as she stood facing the creature. The tail came slashing around at the level of Gaby’s neck, deadly as a scythe, but she ducked and held up her sword. It broke close to the hilt, but the sharp edge cut a big flap in the fin. The fish didn’t seem to like it. Gaby leaped again, straight for the hideous jaws, and landed on the creature’s back. She stabbed her sword hilt into the eye, slashing down instead of thrusting as Bill had done. The fish threw her off, but now the tail had no direction. It beat the ground furiously as Gaby looked for a chance to cut again.

  “Gaby!” Cirocco shouted. “Let it go. Don’t get yourself killed.”

  Gaby glanced back, then hurried to Cirocco.

  “Let’s get out of here. Can you walk?”

  “Sure, I …” The ground whirled. She clutched Gaby’s sleeve to steady herself.

  “Hang on. That thing’s getting closer.”

  Cirocco didn’t have a chance to see what she meant, because Gaby lifted her before she knew what was happening. She was too weak and confused to fight it as Gaby brought her out of the bog, slung over her shoulder in a fireman’s carry.

  She was put down gently on a patch of grass, and then she saw Gaby’s face hovering over her. Tears were running down her cheeks as she gently probed Cirocco’s head, then moved down to her chest.

  “Ow!” Cirocco winced and curled around the pain. “I think you broke a rib.”

  “Oh, my God. When I picked you up? I’m sorry, Rocky, I—”

  Cirocco touched her cheek. “No, dummy, when you hit me like the front line of the Giants. And I’m glad you did.”

  “I want to check your eyes. I thought you—”

  “No time. Help me up. Got to see about Bill.”

  “You first. Just lie back. You shouldn’t—”

  Cirocco slapped her hand away and rose as far as her knees before doubling over and vomiting.

  “See what I mean? You’ve got to stay here.”

  “All right,” she choked. “Go find him, Gaby. Take care of him. Bring him back here, alive.”

  “Just let me check your—”

  “Go!”

  Gaby bit her lip, glanced at the fish still thrashing in the distance, and looked tortured. Then she leaped to her feet and ran in what Cirocco hoped was the right direction.

  She sat there holding her belly and cursing softly until Gaby returned.

  “He’s alive,” she said. “Out cold, and I think he’s hurt.”

  “How bad?”

  “There’s blood on his leg and his hands and all over his front. Some of it’s fish blood.”

  “I told you to bring him here,” Cirocco growled, trying to hold back another fit of nausea.

  “Sssh,” Gaby soothed, rubbing her hand lightly over Cirocco’s forehead. “I can’t move him until I can make a litter. First, I’m going to get you back to the boat and bedded down. Hush! If I have to fight you, I will. You wouldn’t want a punch in the jaw, would you?”

  Cirocco felt like throwing a punch herself, but the nausea overcame the urge. She settled to the ground and Gaby scooped her up.

  She remembered thinking how ridiculous they must look: Gaby was 150 centimeters tall while Cirocco was 185. In the low gravity Gaby had to move cautiously, but the weight was no problem.

  Things didn’t spin so badly when she closed her eyes. She put her head on Gaby’s shoulder.

  “Thanks for saving my life,” she said, and passed out.

  She woke to the sound of a man screaming. It was not a sound she ever cared to hear again.

  Bill was semi-conscious. Cirocco sat up and cautiously touched the side of her head. It hurt, but the dizziness was gone.

  “Come here and give me a hand,” Gaby said. “We’ve got to hold him down or he’ll hurt himself.”

  She hurried to Gaby’s side. “How bad is he?”

  “Real bad. His leg’s broken. Probably some ribs, too, but he hasn’t coughed up any blood.”

  “Where’s the break?”

  “Tibia or fibula. I don’t which is which. I thought it was a laceration until I put him on the litter. He started fighting and the bone stuck out.”

  “Jesus.”

  “At least he’s not losing much blood.”

  Cirocco felt another quiver in her stomach as she examined the ragged gash in Bill’s leg. Gaby was washing it with boiled chutecloth rags. Every time she touched it, he screamed hoarsely.

  “What are you going to do?” Cirocco asked, vaguely aware that she should be telling her what to do, not asking.

  Gaby looked agonized. “I think you should call Calvin.”

  “What’s the use of that? Oh, yeah, I’ll call the son-of-a-bitch, but you saw how long it took the last time. If Bill’s dead when he gets here, I’ll kill him.”

  “Then we have to set it.”

  “You know how to do it?”

  “I saw it done, once,” said Gaby. “With anesthetic.”

  “What we’ve got is a lot of rags that I hope are clean. I’ll hold his arms. Wait a minute.” She moved to Bill’s side and looked down at him. He stared at nothing, and his forehead was hot when she touched it.

  “Bill? Listen to me. You’re hurt, Bill.”

  “Rocky?”

  “It’s me. It’s going to be all right, but your leg is broken. Do you understand?”

  “I understand,” he whispered, and closed his eyes.

  “Bill, wake up. I’ll need your help. You can’t fight us. Can you hear me?”

  He lifted his head and looked down at his leg. “Yeah,” he said, wiping his face with a dirty hand. “I’ll be good. Get it over with, will you?”

  Cirocco nodded to Gaby, who grimaced and pulled.

  It took three tries, and left both women shaken. On the second pull the bone end protruded with a wet sound that made Cirocco throw up again. Bill bore it well, his breath whistling and his neck muscles standing out like cords, but he no longer screamed.

  “I wish I knew how good a job that is,” Gaby said. Then she began to cry. Cirocco let her alone and worked on binding the splint to Bill’s leg. He was unconscious by the time she was through. She stood and held her bloody hands up in front of her.

  “We’ll have to move on,” she said. “It’s no good here. We have to find a place where it’s dry and set up a camp and wait for him to get better.”

  “He probably shouldn’t be moved.”

  “No,” she sighed. “But he has to be. Another day ought to bring us to that high country we saw earlier. Let’s go.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  It took two days instead of one, and they were terrible days.

  They stopped frequently to sterilize Bill’s bandages. The bowl they used to heat the water was nothing so fine as a ceramic pot; it flaked and wanted to melt, and left the water clouded. The water took the better part of an hour to boil because the pressure in Gaea was higher than one atmosphere.

  Gaby and Cirocco snatched a few hours sleep, one at a time, when the river was quiet and wide. But when they came to a hazardous stretch it took both of them to keep the boat from going aground. It continued to rain regularly.

  Bill slept, and woke after the first twenty-four hours looking five years older. His face was gray. When Gaby changed the bandage his wound did not look good. The lower leg and most of his foot was nearly twice their normal size.

  By the time they left the swamp he was delirious. He sweated profusely, and ran a high fever.

  Cirocco contacted a passing blimp early on the second day, getting back the high, rising whistle that Calvin had told her meant, “Okay, I’ll tell him,” but she was already starting to fear it was too late. She watched the blimp sail serenely toward the frozen sea, and asked herself why she had insisted they leave the forest. And if they must, why not go on Whistlestop, sailing over it all, far from terrible things like mudfish that refused to die?

  Her reasons were as valid now as they had been then, but it didn’t stop her from blaming herself. Gaby could not
ride in the blimps, and they had to find a way out. But she thought there must be easier, more satisfying things than taking the responsibility for other lives, and she was sick of her own life. She wanted out, she wanted someone else to take the burden. How had she ever thought she could be a Captain? What had she done right since taking command of Ringmaster?

  What she really wanted was simple, but so hard to find. She wanted love, just like everyone else. Bill had said he loved her; why couldn’t she say it back to him? She had thought she might be able to say it, someday, but now it looked like he was going to die, and he was her responsibility.

  She also wanted adventure. It had driven her all through her life, from the first comic book she opened, the first space documentary she had watched as a wide-eyed child, the first old black and white flat-screen swashbucklers and full-color westerns she saw. The thirst to do something outrageous and heroic had never left her. It had pushed her away from the singing career her mother wanted, and the housewife role everyone else thrust at her. She wanted to swoop down on the base of the space pirates, lasers blazing, to slink through the jungle with a band of fierce revolutionaries for a night raid on the enemy stronghold, to search for the Holy Grail or destroy the Death Star. She had found other reasons, as an adult, to slog her way through college and train herself to be the best there was so that when the chance came, they could choose no other for the Saturn mission. Beneath it all, nevertheless, it was the itch to travel and see strange places and do things no one else had done that landed her on the decks of Ringmaster.

  Now she had her adventure. She was floating down a river in a cockleshell boat inside the most titanic structure ever seen by a human eye, and a man who loved her was dying.

  East Hyperion was a land of gently rolling hills and long stretches of plains, dotted with wind-blown trees like an African savanna. Ophion grew narrower and began to rush along, at the same time becoming mysteriously cooler.

  They drifted for five or six kilometers at the mercy of the river, past low cliffs that dropped abruptly at the water’s edge. Titanic was unsteerable when she moved fast. Cirocco watched for a widening in the river and a place to land.

  She saw it, and they spent two hours fighting the current with poles and paddles to bring the boat to the rocky shore. Both of them were on their last reserves of strength. More ominously, there was no food in the boat and East Hyperion did not look fertile.

  They dragged Titanic up the shore, feet sliding over rocks tumbled smooth by the water, until they were sure it was out of danger. Bill was not aware of the movement. He had not spoken in a long time.

  Cirocco sat up with Bill while Gaby fell into a death-like sleep. She kept herself awake by exploring the area within a hundred meters of the campsite.

  There was a low bank twenty meters from the river’s edge. She scrambled to the top.

  East Hyperion looked like a great place for a farmer. Wide stretches of the land looked like a yellow Kansas wheat field. That illusion was spoiled by other areas that were rust red, and still others of a pale blue mixed with orange. It all rippled in the wind like tall grass. Dark shadows drifted by, some of the clouds so low they formed fogbands in the creek beds, even in sunlight.

  To the east, hills marched to the twilight zone of west Rhea, gradually gaining a green coloring that must have been forest, then losing it in the darkness to become stark rocky mountains. In the west the land flattened out, with the shallow lakes and bogs of the mudfish marsh glittering as they caught the sunlight. Beyond that was the darker green of the tropical forest, and higher up the curve were more plains that vanished into the twilight of Oceanus, with its frozen sea.

  Scanning the distant hills, she saw a group of animals: black dots against the yellow background. Perhaps two or three of the dots were larger than the others.

  She was about to return to the tent when she heard the music. It was so faint and distant that she realized she had been hearing it for some time without recognizing it for what it was. There would be a rapid cluster of tones, then a sustained note, wrenchingly sweet and clear. It spoke of quiet places and an ease she thought she might never see again, and was as familiar as a song heard in the cradle.

  She found herself crying quietly, being as still as she could, willing the wind to be still with her. But the song was gone.

  The Titanide found them while they were taking down the tent prior to moving Bill. It stood on the top of the bluff where Cirocco had been the day before. Cirocco waited for it to make the first move, but it seemed to have the same idea.

  The most obvious word for the thing was centaur. It had a lower part shaped like a horse, and an upper half so human it was frightening. Cirocco was not quite sure she believed in it.

  It was not as Disney had envisioned centaurs, nor did it have much to do with the classical Greek model. It had a lot of hair, yet its dominant feature was pale naked skin. There were great multi-colored cascades of hair on the head and tail, on the lower parts of all four legs, and on the creature’s forearms. Oddest of all, there was hair between the two front legs, in the place where a decent horse—which Cirocco’s mind kept trying to see—had nothing but smooth hide. It carried a shepherd’s crook, and but for a few small ornaments, wore no clothing.

  Cirocco was sure this was one of the Titanides Calvin had mentioned, though he had made a mistake in translation. It—she, Calvin had said they were all female—she was not six-legged, but six-limbed.

  Cirocco took a step forward, and the Titanide put a hand to her mouth, then held it out in a quick gesture.

  “Look out!” she called. “Please be cautious.”

  For a split second Cirocco wondered what the Titanide was talking about, but that was quickly buried in astonishment. The Titanide had not spoken English, Russian, or French, which until that moment had been the only languages Cirocco knew.

  “What’s the …” She stopped, clearing her throat. Some of the words were pitched quite high. “What’s the matter? Are we in danger?” Questions were hard, requiring a complex appoggiatura.

  “I perceived you to be,” the Titanide sang. “I felt you must surely fall. But you must know what is right for your own kind.”

  Gaby was looking at Cirocco strangely.

  “What the hell’s going on?” she asked.

  “I can understand her,” Cirocco said, not wanting to get into it any deeper. “She told us to be careful.”

  “Careful of … how?”

  “How did Calvin understand the blimp? Something’s been messing with our minds, honey. It’s coming in handy right now, so shut up.” She hurried on before other questions could be voiced, because she knew none of the answers.

  “Are you the people of the marshes?” the Titanide asked. “Or do you come from the frozen sea?”

  “Neither,” Cirocco trilled. “We have traveled through the marsh on our way to the … to the sea of evil, but one of us is hurt. We mean you no harm.”

  “You will do me little harm if you go to the sea of evil, for you will be dead. You are too large to be angels who have lost their wings, and too fair for creatures of the sea. I confess I have not seen your like before.”

  “We … could you join us on the beach? My song is weak; the wind does not lift it.”

  “I’ll be there in two shakes of your tail.”

  “Rocky!” Gaby hissed. “Look out, she’s going to come down!” She moved in front of Cirocco and stood with her glass sword held ready.

  “I know she is,” Cirocco said, grappling with Gaby’s sword arm. “I asked her to. Put that away before she gets the wrong idea, and stay back. I’ll yell if there’s trouble.”

  The Titanide came down the cliff forelegs-first, her arms out for balance. She danced nimbly, riding the small avalanche she had created, then she was trotting toward them. Her feet made a familiar clopping sound on the rocks.

  She was thirty centimeters taller than Cirocco, who found herself taking a step backward as the Titanide drew closer. Seldom in her l
ife had she met a taller woman, but this female creature would have towered over anyone but a professional basketball player. Seen close, she was more alien than ever, precisely because parts of her were so human.

  A series of red, orange, and blue stripes that Cirocco had thought were natural markings turned out to be paint. They were arranged in patterns, confined mostly to her face and chest. Four chevron stripes adorned her belly, just above where her navel would have been if she had possessed one.

  Her face was wide enough to make the broad nose and mouth look appropriate. Her eyes were huge, with a lot of space between them. The irises were brilliant yellow, with radial streaks of green surrounding wide pupils.

  The eyes were so astonishing that Cirocco almost failed to notice the most non-human feature of her face. She had thought they were an odd kind of flower tucked behind each ear, but they turned out to be the ears themselves. The pointed tips reached over the crown of her head.

  “I am called C Sharp …” she sang. It was a series of musical notes in the key of C Sharp.

  “What did she say?” Gaby whispered.

  “She said her name was …” She sang the name, and the Titanide’s ears perked up.

  “I can’t call her that,” Gaby protested.

  “Call her C Sharp. Will you shut up and let me do the talking?” She turned back to the Titanide.

  “My name is Cirocco, or Captain Jones,” she sang. “This is my friend, Gaby.”

  The ears drooped to her shoulders, and Cirocco nearly laughed. Her expression had not changed, but the ears had spoken volumes.

  “Just ‘sheer-ah-ko-or-cap-ten-jonz’?” she changed in an imitation of Cirocco’s monotone. When she sighed her nostrils flared with the force of it, but her chest did not move. “It is a long name, but not a windy one, begging your pardon. Do you folk feel no joy, to name yourselves so dourly?”

  “Our names are chosen for us,” Cirocco sang, feeling unaccountably embarrassed. It was a dull moniker to give the Titanide after she had handed Cirocco such a sprightly air. “Our speech is not as yours, nor our pipes so deep.”