by John Varley
They discovered a nipple set into the back of the cave. When squeezed, it exuded the same milky substance they had seen earlier. They tasted it, but decided to stick to their supplies until there was nothing left. This was the milk of Gaea Meistersinger had told Cirocco about. Undoubtedly it fed the angels.
The hours slowly turned into days, the chess games into tournaments. Gaby won most of them. They invented new games with words and numbers, and Gaby won most of those, too. What with all they had been through together, the things that drew them close and the things that pulled them apart, Cirocco’s reservations and Gaby’s pride, it was not until the third day that they made love.
It happened during one of the times they were both just staring at the faintly luminescent ceiling, listening to the wind howling outside. They were bored, too energetic, and slightly stir-crazy. Cirocco was spinning an endless stream of rationalizations through her head: Reasons Why I Should Not Get Physically Intimate With Gaby. (A) …
She couldn’t remember (A).
It had made sense not to until a few days ago. Why didn’t it now?
There was the situation; surely that had colored her judgement. She had never been so intimate with another human being. For three days they had been in constant physical contact. She would wake up in Gaby’s arms, wet and excited. What was worse, Gaby could not help knowing it. They could smell changes in each other’s mood.
But Gaby had said she didn’t want her unless Cirocco could return her love.
Hadn’t she?
No. She thought back over it and realized all Gaby had said she required was a sincere enthusiasm on Cirocco’s part; she would not accept lovemaking as therapy to ease her own pain.
All right. Cirocco had the enthusiasm. She had never felt it so strongly. She was holding back essentially because she was not homosexual, she was bisexual with a strong preference for the male sex, and felt she should not get involved with a woman who loved her unless she felt she could carry through beyond the first act of love.
Which had to qualify as the silliest thing she had ever heard. Words, words, just stupid words. Listen to your body, and listen to your heart.
Her body had no reservations left, and her heart had only one. She turned over and straddled Gaby. They kissed, and Cirocco began to stroke her.
“I can’t say I love you and be honest about it, because I’m not sure I’d know what it felt like with a woman. I’d die defending you, and your welfare is more important to me than any other human being. I’ve never had a friend as good as you. If that isn’t enough, I’ll stop.”
“Don’t stop.”
“When I loved a man, once, I wanted to have his children. What I feel for you is very close to what I felt then, but it doesn’t have that. I desire you … oh, so bad I can’t even express it. But I can’t say for sure that I love you.”
Gaby smiled.
“Life is full of disappointments.” She put her arms around Cirocco and pulled her down.
For five days the wind howled outside. On the sixth, the thaw began, and lasted until the seventh day.
It was dangerous to go out during the thaw. Chunks of ice came crashing down from above, making a terrible racket. When it stopped, they emerged, blinking, into a world that was cool, and shining with water, and whispering to them.
They worked their way out to the top of the nearest tree, heard the whispering grow louder. As the smaller branches began to bend beneath their weight, they entered a gentle rain: big drops falling in slow motion from leaf to leaf.
The air in the center of the column was clear, but all around them, as far as they could see, the walls were wreathed in rainbows as the melted ice worked its way down through the foliage to the new lake on the spoke floor.
“What now?” Gaby asked.
“In. In, and up. We’ve lost a lot of time.”
Gaby nodded. “I don’t mind, you know that, as long as it’s where you’re going. But would you tell me once more—why?”
Cirocco was about to say it was a stupid question, but realized it was not. She had admitted to Gaby during their long incarceration that she no longer believed she would find anyone in control at the hub. She did not know herself when she had stopped believing it.
“I made a promise to Meistersinger,” she said. “And now I have no further secrets from you. Not one.”
Gaby frowned. “A promise to do what?”
“To see if there is anything I can do to stop the war between the Titanides and the angels. I didn’t tell anyone about it. I’m not sure why.”
“I see. Do you think there’s anything you can do?”
“No.” Gaby said nothing, but continued to search her eyes. “I have to give it a try. Why are you looking at me like that?”
Gaby shrugged. “No reason. I’ll just be curious to know your reasons for going on after we find the angels. We will be going on, won’t we?”
“I suppose so. Somehow it seems like the right thing to do.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
The world was an endless series of trees to climb. Each was a variation on the same problem; as different as snowflakes, yet with a numbing sameness. What communication was needed to get through them could be accomplished by hand motions and grunts. They became a perfect tree-climbing machine, one body moving forever upward. They climbed for twelve hours at a stretch. When they camped, they slept like the dead.
Below them, the floor opened and a sea of water fell over Rhea. It remained open for a few weeks, then closed when the roof opened and the frigid winds blew once more, forcing them to take shelter. Five days of darkness and they were out again, and climbing.
They were six days past their third winter when they saw their first angel. They stopped climbing, and watched him watching them.
He was near the top of the tree, indistinct through the branches. They had heard angels wailing before, sometimes followed by the sound of giant wings flapping. Still, so far, Cirocco’s knowledge of angels was limited to one frozen moment when she had seen one impaled on a Titanide spear.
He was smaller than Gaby, with a huge chest and spindly arms and legs. He had claws instead of feet. His wings emerged just above his hips so that in flight he would be prone with the same amount of weight on each side of the wings. Folded, they reached over his head with the tips trailing below the branch he perched on. The flight surfaces on his legs, arms, and tail were neatly folded.
Having noted all those differences, Cirocco had to admit that the most startling thing about him was his humanness. He looked like a child dying of malnutrition, but it was a human child.
Gaby glanced at Cirocco, who shrugged, then motioned for her to be ready for anything. She took a step forward.
The angel shrieked and danced backward. His wings unfolded to their full nine-meter span and he poised, beating them lazily to remain on branches too thin to hold his weight.
“We’d just like to talk to you.” She held out her hands. The angel shrieked again, and was gone. They could hear the roaring of his wings as he gained altitude.
Gaby looked at Cirocco. She raised one eyebrow and made a motion with one hand, questioningly.
“Right. Up.”
“Captain.”
Cirocco froze instantly. Ahead, Gaby was jerked to a stop as the rope between them grew taut.
“What?” Gaby asked.
“Quiet. Listen.”
They waited, and in a few minutes the call came again. This time, Gaby heard it, too.
“It couldn’t be Gene,” Gaby whispered.
“Calvin?” As soon as she said it, she recognized the voice. It was oddly changed, but she knew it.
“April.”
“Right,” came the reply, though Cirocco had not said it very loud. “Talk?”
“Of course I want to talk. Where the hell are you?”
“Below. I see you. Don’t come back.”
“Why not? Dammit, April, we’ve been hoping you’d turn up for months. August has been going cra
zy.” Cirocco was frowning. Something was wrong, and she wanted to know what it was.
“I come to you, or not at all. You come to me, I fly away.”
She perched in the small branches, twenty meters from the two women. Even at that distance Cirocco could make out her face, exactly like August’s. She was an angel, and Cirocco was sick.
She seemed to have trouble speaking. There were long pauses between sentences.
“Please do not come closer. Do not move in my direction. We can talk this way for only a short time.”
“Surely you don’t think we’ll hurt you?”
“And why not? I …” She stopped, edging away. “No, I suppose not. But I could no more let you approach than I could hold my hand in a fire. You smell wrong.”
“Does it have to do with the Titanides?”
“With what?”
“The centaurs. The people you make war with.”
She hissed and backed away. “Do not speak of them.”
“I don’t think I can avoid it.”
“Then I must leave. I will try to return.” With a loud cry, she plunged through the leaves. They heard her wings for a short time, then it was as if she had never been with them.
Cirocco looked at Gaby, who sat with her feet dangling. Her face was somber.
“It’s awful,” Cirocco whispered. “What happened to us?”
“I was hoping she could give us some answers. Whatever it was, it hit her the worst. Worse than Gene.”
She returned a few hours later but could not answer the questions that mattered most. It appeared she had not even been thinking about them.
“How should I know?” she said. “I was in the darkness, I woke up, and I was as you see me. It didn’t matter, and it doesn’t matter now.”
“Can you explain that?”
“I’m happy. No one wanted me or my sisters. No one loved us. Well, now I don’t need it. I am of the Eagle clan, proud and alone.”
Cautious questioning brought out what it meant to be of the Eagle clan. It was not a tribe or association, as April had seemed to imply; rather, it was a species within the genus angel.
Eagles were loners, solitary from birth to death. They did not come together even to mate, could suffer each other’s company for only minutes at a time, and then only while cruising at a comfortable distance. April had heard of the humans’ presence in the spoke through such a passing conversation.
“There are two things I don’t understand,” Cirocco said, carefully. “May I ask?”
“I don’t promise to answer.”
“All right. How is it there are more angels, if you don’t come together?”
“There is a non-sentient creature born at the bottom of the world. It spends its life climbing to the top. Once a year I find one and implant an egg on its back. Male angels deposit sperm on it or not, as chance has it. A fertilized egg goes to the top with the creature. The infant is born as the host dies. We are born into the air and must learn to fly on the way down. Some don’t. It is at the will of Gaea. This is our—”
“Just a minute. You said Gaea. Why did you choose that name?”
There was a pause.
“I don’t understand the question.”
“I can’t make it plainer. Calvin named this place Gaea. He thought it fit well. Are you into Greek mythology, too?”
“I never heard the name before. Gaea is what the people call this creature. She’s sort of a God, though not exactly. You’re making my head hurt. I’m happy as I am, and I must go now.”
“Wait, wait just a minute.”
April was edging toward the top of the tree.
“You said ‘creature.’ Are you talking about this thing in the spoke?”
April looked surprised. “Why, no. This is only a part of her. The whole world is Gaea. I thought you knew that.”
“No, I—wait, please don’t go.” It was too late. They heard the beating of her wings. “Will you come back later?” Cirocco shouted.
“Once more,” came the distant reply.
“One being, you say. All one creature. How do you know this?”
April had returned in only an hour this time. Cirocco hoped she was getting used to company again, but she still would approach no closer than twenty meters.
“Believe it. Some of my people have talked with her.”
“She’s intelligent, then?”
“Why not? Listen … Captain.” She held her temples for a moment. Cirocco could imagine the conflicts. April had been one of the finest physicists in the system. Now she lived as a fierce wild animal, according to a code barely comprehensible to Cirocco. She thought the old April might be struggling to get through the creature she had become.
“Cirocco, you say you speak to … to those on the rim.” It was as close as she could come to the concept of Titanides without fleeing. “They understand you. Calvin can speak to the floaters. The changes Gaea worked on me are more complete. I am one of my people. I awoke knowing how to behave among them. I have the same feelings and drives as any other angel. This is one thing I know. Gaea is one. Gaea is alive. We live inside her.”
Gaby was looking a bit green.
“Just look around you,” April went on. “What have you seen that looks like a machine? Anything at all? We were seized by a living beast; you postulate a creature under the rim. The spoke is filled with a huge living thing; you decide it is a coating over the framework beneath.”
“What you say is intriguing.”
“More than that. It’s true.”
“If I accept that, I won’t find a control room in the hub.”
“But you’ll be where she lives. She sits like a spider and pulls strings like a puppet master. She watches over all her creatures, and she owns the two of you as surely as she owns me. She has tampered with us for her own purposes.”
“And what are they?”
April shrugged, a human gesture that hurt Cirocco to watch.
“She would not tell me. I went to the hub, but she refused to see me. My people say that one must be on a great mission to gain Gaea’s ear. Apparently mine was not great enough.”
“And what would you have asked her?”
April was quiet for a very long time. Cirocco realized she was crying. She looked up at them again.
“You hurt me. I think I won’t talk to you any more.”
“Please, April. Please, for the friendship we had.”
“Did we? Did we really? I can’t remember it. I remember only me and August, and long ago, my other sisters. We have always been alone with each other. Now I am alone, alone.”
“Do you miss them?”
“I did,” she said, emptily. “That was long ago. I fly, fly to be alone. Solitude is the world of the Eagle clan. I know that is right, but before … before, when I still yearned for my sisters …”
Cirocco held very still, afraid of frightening her away.
“We band together only at one time,” she said, with a quiet sigh. “When Gaea takes her breath, after the winter, then blows us over the lands …
“I flew with the wind that day. It was a fine day. We killed many because my people listened to me and rode the great floater. The four-legs were surprised because the breath was over; we few had remained on the floater, tired and hungry, but with the lust still in our blood, still able to work together.
“It was a day for the singing of great songs. My people followed me—me—did what I told them, and I knew in my heart that the four-legs would soon be wiped out in Gaea. This was but the first skirmish in the new war.
“Then I saw August and my mind left me. I wanted to kill her, I wanted to fly from her, I wanted to embrace her and weep with her.
“I flew.
“Now I dread the breath of Gaea, for someday it will take me down to slaughter my sister, and then I will die. I am Ariel the Swift, but enough of April Polo remains in me that I could not live with such a thing.”
Cirocco was moved, but could not help being ex
cited. April sounded as if she was important in the angel community. Surely they would listen to her.
“It happens that I am up here to make peace,” she said. “Don’t go! Please don’t go.”
April trembled, but stood her ground. “Peace is impossible.”
“I can’t believe that. Many of the Titanides are sick in their hearts, as you are.”
April shook her head. “Does a lamb negotiate with a lion? A bat with an insect, a bird with a worm?”
“You’re talking about predators and prey.”
“Natural enemies. It’s printed in our genes, killing the fourlegs. I can … as April, I can see what you’re thinking. Peace should be possible. We have to fly impossible distances just to do battle. Many of us do not make it back. The climb is too hard, and we fall into the sea.”
Cirocco shook her head. “I just think if I could get some representatives together …”
“I tell you, it’s impossible. We are Eagles. You cannot even get us to act as a group, much less meet with the four-legs. There are other clans, some of them sociable, but they don’t live in this spoke. Perhaps you would have luck there, but I doubt it.”
The three of them were silent for a time. Cirocco felt heavy with defeat, and Gaby put her hand on her shoulder.
“What do you think? Is she telling the truth?”
“I suspect she is. It sounds just like what Meistersinger told me. They have no control over it.” She looked up, and spoke to April.
“You were saying that you tried to see Gaea. Why?”
“For peace. I wanted to ask her why the war had to be. I’m quite happy, but for that. She did not hear my call.”
Or she doesn’t exist, Cirocco thought.
“Will you still go seek her?” April asked.
“I don’t know. What’s the point? Why would this superhuman being stop a war just because I ask her to?”
“There are worse things to do in life than to have a quest to fulfill. If you turned back now, what would you do?”