by John Varley
Cirocco estimated it would be thirty-nine degrees on the sands.
No matter; she knew what to do.
She stripped once more, stuffed her clothing in her pack, and began digging at the base of one of the bushes that seemed dead. But the parched branches were only the top of the plant, and the least interesting part. They radiated away waste moisture.
When she reached the swollen roots a spurt of water washed over her bare feet. She knelt, cupped her hands, and drank. It was alkaline, but bracing.
With her knife she severed a nodule on one of the roots, then cut it open. A slippery yellow sap oozed out, which she squeezed into her hands and began rubbing over her body. Her skin was the color travel brochures referred to as "bronzed." It was a nice color, but several shades too dark for the sands of Tethys. She kept rubbing until she was the proper yellow-brown. The sap smelled like juniper. It was also a cure for acne, a property wasted on Cirocco.
There were a dozen scarves in her pack. She selected two of the proper hue, closed up the pack, then wrapped one scarf around her dark hair and the other around the pack itself. When she was done she was almost invisible.
Barefoot, she scrambled down the last rocky outcrop of Phoebe and down to the rolling dunes. She began to run.
Two hundred kilometers later, more than halfway across Tethys, she saw someone.
She did what seemed prudent: dived into the sand, wriggled until she was almost totally covered, like a stingray on the ocean floor, and waited.
She was pretty sure who it must be. She felt goosebumps, as she always did, then the feeling faded. It was possible she was going insane. Gaby had died here, a hundred kilometers to the south, twenty years before.
Cirocco didn't care. She stood up. She was coated in sand. The sweat which had been cooling her so efficiently as she ran now drenched her, began running down her body, leaving clean streaks as it went.
Gaby shimmered in the merciless heat haze, coming down the near side of a dune four hundred meters away. She was nude, as she always was when she came to Cirocco. And why not? Why should a ghost take clothing to the spirit world? She was milk-pale. At first that had made Cirocco uneasy, as if Gaby had been drained of blood. Then she remembered that Gaby had always been pale, before Gaea. She and Cirocco had been the only tanned people in a world of weak sunshine. And then Gaby had been dead. In death, she must have been quite black, though Cirocco had not seen it and never asked those who had.
"You're safe!" Gaby shouted, still coming toward her.
"Thank you! For how long?"
"All through Tethys."
Cirocco waited while Gaby vanished behind the last dune, then marched up the far side. Gaby paused for a moment at the top, then started down. Her feet left deep prints in the sand. She was terribly beautiful. Cirocco heard herself sob. She went to her knees, then sat back on her ankles. Her shoulders slumped wearily.
Gaby stopped fifty meters away. Cirocco could not speak, her throat was too thick, and she could not draw a proper breath.
"Are they all right?" she finally managed to say.
"Yes," Gaby said. "Conal found them. Saved their lives."
"I knew that boy would turn out useful. Where is he taking them?"
"Where you're going. You'll get there ahead of them."
"Good." She ransacked her brain. There were forbidden topics. "Uh... is it ... are they..."
"Yes, they're still part of the key. Not all of it."
"The key to what?"
"I can't tell you that now. Do you still trust me?"
"Yes." Unhesitatingly. There had been bad moments, but ...
"Yes. I trust you."
"Good. I wanted to-"
"I love you, Gaby."
The image started to waver. Cirocco cried out, then jammed the heel of her hand into her mouth. She could see the dune through Gaby's body.
"I love you, too, Rocky. Or is it Captain, now?"
"It's whatever you want."
"I can't stay. Gaea's in Hyperion. She's moving west."
"But she won't go into Oceanus."
"No."
Gaby was the little woman who wasn't there. Just an outline, a wish, an hallucination ... and she was gone.
Cirocco sat there for almost a rev, pulling herself together, staring at the footprints on the dune where Gaby had been. In the end, as before, she did not go over to touch them. She was terrified to discover they really weren't there at all.
The northern Thea ice-shield began in twilight and curved south and east. Cirocco ran along its edge, in blessed coolness.
There was no question of crossing Thea to the north. The mountains were not impassable-nothing really was, in Cirocco's experience; she had crossed them once in two kilorevs-but she did not have time for it. The fast way through Thea was over the frozen Ophion, which flowed right down the middle of the region of eternal night.
When she stopped, she was knee-deep in snow, and still naked. It was the work of a few moments to open her pack, reverse her clothes and boots so the white side was visible, and camouflage her pack and hair with white scarves.
She ran, but eventually got tired again. To be sleepy so soon was a sign she was overtaxing herself. She noted it, and looked for a safe haven.
Her requirements were spartan. She dug a hole in a snowbank, crawled in, and packed snow in behind her. As she fell asleep, she remembered that no more than fifty kilometers ahead was the spot where a certain Robin of the Coven had buried herself in snow-tired, frightened, and ignorant of the danger-to wake up with a case of pneumonia. Robin had almost died in Thea.
Cirocco simply slept. Three hours later she woke up, brushed off the snow, and started to run again.
It was six hundred kilometers and most of the way across Metis before she again felt the need to sleep.
There were those in Gaea who would not have believed it, but Cirocco Jones-rumored to be capable of regenerating a severed leg, of shape-changing into a serpent, a vulture, a cheetah, and a shark, of wrestling a dozen Titanides and of being able to pass unnoticed through a brightly lighted room-this same Jones had her limitations. The stories were exaggerations. It was true, she did have a hex power, and she could charm people into believing she was not there, and when she had lost her left foot seventy years ago she had grown it back, but she doubted she could manage a leg. And she could not remain awake forever, like a Titanide.
It was an appalling need, when one thought about it. To become defenseless, to simply lie there while something crept up bent on murder...
She was in the south of Metis, in the region below the great Poseidon sea, beyond the swamp named Steropes that was Metis' most prominent feature. Here the land was savannah: level, grassy, dotted with windswept trees. In Africa, big cats would be sitting in the trees-or at least Cirocco had always envisioned it that way, though she knew little about Africa. But in Gaea the trees were bright red and leafless. They looked like diagrams of the circulatory system, with the big trunk branching to finer and finer capillaries.
Cirocco planned to sleep like a cat in one of those trees.
She stripped again, wrapped her pack in a red scarf. With her knife, she made deep gouges in the tree trunk. Red sap began to flow. She rubbed it over her skin, gradually becoming a scarlet woman. When she was completely painted she climbed the tree and made her way out on a horizontal branch thirty meters above the ground. She hooked her feet over the branch, letting her knees fall on either side, made a pillow out of her folded hands, and put her head down. In a moment, she was asleep.
In Dione, she finally slowed down.
Dione was safety-from Gaea, if not from humans.
She passed to the south of the long lake known as Iris, through mountainous countryside and into the forest surrounding Eris lake, until she reached the river Briareus, one of the longest rivers in Gaea.
At a bend in the river, over a hundred kilometers south of Moros, Peppermint Bay, and Bellinzona, she came upon a treehouse that would have made the S
wiss Family Robinson envious.
It was built in a tree of the same species as the one that sheltered Titantown in Hyperion. Though only one hundredth the size, the tree dominated that part of the forest like a cathedral dominates a small European town. The main structure of the house was three stories high. Parts of it were built of red brick, or faced with stone. The windows had sliding glass panes and multi-colored curtains. Other structures were scattered at different levels in the branches, all of different design. There were straw beehives roofed with pitch, an ornate gazebo, something that looked like part of the onion-domed Kremlin. All of this was connected by broad, railed paths that rested on branches, or by rope suspension bridges. The tree grew from bare rock surrounded on three sides by rushing water and on the fourth by a deep pool. Fifty meters upstream was a ten-meter waterfall.
Cirocco walked over the main bridge. It swayed only a little under her weight. She had seen it bobbing crazily with a dozen Titanides on it.
On a wide, covered porch with a view of the pool, she paused to remove her boots and stand them outside the front door, as was her custom. The door was not locked. She entered, already sure-though she could not have told how-that no one was home.
It was cool and dim in the parlor. The sound of falling water came through the windows. It was soothing. Cirocco relaxed. She pulled off her shirt, having to peel it away from her skin in some places. When she removed her pants and set them on the floor they looked as if she were still in them. She couldn't smell herself anymore but thought her odor must be frightful if her pants were so stiff.
Ought to take a bath, she thought. Thinking that, she plopped on a low couch and was instantly asleep.
She sat up and knuckled her eyes. She yawned till her jaw cracked, then sniffed the air. She smelled bacon.
At her feet were her clothes, washed and folded neatly. Beside them was a steaming cup of black coffee and a monstrous yellow orchid. The orchid was sniffing the coffee. It looked up...
The creature was a hermit squirrel, a two-legged mammalian with a long thick tail that borrowed the empty shells of Gaean snails and made them into mobile homes. The orchid was part of the shell.
It zipped back inside and slammed the door as Cirocco reached for the coffee.
She got up and went through the music room, where a hundred instruments hung on the walls or sat on special stands, through the vox-breeding room, lined with cages, sipping her coffee as she went. The next room was the kitchen. Standing in front of the stove poking at the sizzling bacon was a man well over two meters tall. He wore no clothes, but he was perhaps the one human in Gaea who truly did not need them. He could never seem naked.
Cirocco put her empty cup on the table and embraced him from behind. She could no longer reach his neck, so she kissed his broad back instead.
"Hello, Chris," she said.
"Morning, Captain. Breakfast 'll be ready in a minute. You awake yet?"
"Jus' about."
"You wanna shower first, or eat?"
"Eat, then shower."
He nodded, then walked to the window.
"Come here. I want to show you something."
She went to him, trying to feel alert. She leaned out the window.
"What is it? All I see is water."
"Right." He picked her up and tossed her out the window. She squalled all the way down, and hit with a huge splash. He watched for her head. When she came up, sputtering, he called out, "See you in five minutes."
He went back to the stove, still chuckling, and broke ten greenish eggs into the bacon grease.
FIRST FEATURE
What we want is a story that starts with an earthquake and works its way up to a climax.
-Sam Goldwyn
ONE
Soon after Cirocco's arrival at the treehouse, a party of seven-three Titanides and four humans-crested the last hill to look down at the bend of the river Briareus. They saw the great rock, the great tree, and Chris's treehouse sprawled in it.
In the time it had taken the party to travel the two hundred kilometers from Bellinzona to Briareus, Cirocco had run almost halfway around Gaea's rim.
They could have moved faster. One of their number refused to ride a Titanide, so the whole group had slowed rather than leave her behind. Several of the other six had noted how little the seventh seemed to appreciate this fact.
After a short pause during which the Titanides sang praises of the magnificent view and composed a few songs of arrival, the group moved down the faint trail to the river.
Conal was in love again.
Not that he was unfaithful to Cirocco. He still loved her, and always would. But this was a different kind of love.
And not that this one was going to be his lover, since she hated him totally. Still, love was love, and it didn't cost anything to hope. And she hated everybody. He couldn't believe anyone could hate everybody forever. Maybe when she got over it she'd notice what a fine fellow Conal Ray was.
Conal was not exactly thinking these things as they began the final leg of their journey to Briareus, though they were going through his mind. He was in a pleasant state between sleep and waking, stretched out on the broad back of Rocky the Titanide. He had spent most of the trip asleep. Working for the Captain, who might go a full hectorev without sleep and who never seemed to tire, he had learned the value of getting all the sleep he could get. His was an infantryman's philosophy: plenty of sacktime in a dry bed, a full belly, and he was content with life.
He only woke up when the women had one of their high-voltage, shrieking arguments. At first he had feared they would come to blows, in which case one of them would surely die. But they always stopped short. He finally decided they always would, and was able to enjoy the shouting matches for the great theater they were. The curses those women knew! It broadened his vocabulary, and deepened his love.
Conal turned on his side and went deeper into sleep. Though the path was steep and rocky, the ride was smooth as a gurney rolling on linoleum. It had been said that Titanides were the most comfortable mode of travel ever discovered.
Titanides did not exactly appreciate being considered a mode of travel, but neither did they resent it. They carried only those they wished to carry. Very few humans had taken a ride on a Titanide.
Phase-Shifter (Double Sharped Lydian Trio) Rock'n'Roll didn't mind carrying Conal. Since the day of his operation on Cirocco Jones, almost five myriarevs ago, he and Conal had been the closest of friends. Sometimes that happened between a Titanide and a human. Rocky knew of Chris and Valiha, who had loved each other for twenty years, and of Cirocco Jones and Hornpipe, who were sometime lovers and also grandmother and grandson-though it was not that simple a relationship, as no Titanide family tree is ever simple. He had heard of the great love Gaby Plauget had had for Psaltery (Sharped Lydian Trio) Fanfare.
Rocky had never made physical love to Conal, did not expect to, knew Conal would be shocked to know Rocky would like to. And it was not quite what humans think of as love. Chris Major had learned that about Valiha and it had hurt him. Nor was it the love one Titanide could feel for another. It was something else. It was something any Titanide could see. All at once, and with no good excuse, everyone knew this or that human was so-and-so's human, though they had the taste not to put it in those words. Rocky knew Conal was his human, for better or worse.
He wondered if Conal thought of him as "his" Titanide.
Behind Conal and Rocky rode Robin and Valiha.
Robin was emotionally exhausted. She was not looking forward to meeting Chris again after all these years.
He had stayed in Gaea, she had returned... but not gone home. She no longer had a home. She had risen as high as one could go in the Coven, had been for a time the Black Madonna, head of the Council.
She had won every honor her society could bestow, at an age younger than any before her.
She had been, and still was, miserably unhappy. It had been a tough twenty years. She wondered what it had been like for Chr
is.
"Valiha, do you know if ... "
The Titanide turned her head around. Robin wished she wouldn't do that. Titanides were frighteningly supple.
"Yes? What is it?"
Robin had forgotten what she wanted to ask. She shook her head, and Valiha returned her attention to the path. She looked exactly as Robin remembered her. What had she been? Five? That would make her twenty-five now. Titanides didn't change much from their third year, when they were mature, to somewhere around their fiftieth, when they began showing signs of age.
She had forgotten so many things. The timelessness of Gaea, for instance. They had been traveling a long time but she had no idea how long. They had camped twice and she had been so tired that she had slept better than she had in years. It had been long enough for her nose to heal, and for the wound in her shoulder to improve.
A long time, as only Gaean time could be.
How had it been for Chris?
Valiha (Aeolian Solo) Madrigal was worried about Robin.
It seemed such a very short time since the young witch had boarded the ship for her return to the Coven. Valiha, Robin, Chris, and Serpent had gone for a picnic. The Wizard was not there, but her presence was felt, just like the other unseen presences: Psaltery, Hautbois, and Gaby.
Then Robin had left them.
Now she was thirty-nine Earth years old, and looked forty-nine. She had this insufferably marvelous mad child who burned all the time. The child was more Robinish than Robin was. And there was this ... embryo.
Valiha knew about human infants, had seen thousands of them. But she never lost her sense that something was wrong.
She peeled back the blanket and looked at it. So small it hardly seemed to fill her palm, the infant looked back with pale blue eyes and grinned. It only had a couple of teeth. It waved a tiny hand at her.
"Mama!" it said, then gurgled happily.
That was about the limits of its powers of speech. It was learning to walk and talk. Within a few years it would master other skills. This was a stage Titanides did not go through. Titanides skipped infancy and the biggest part of what humans would think of as childhood. They walked a few hours after birth, talked shortly after that.