by John Varley
In her extended configuration, Equinox was a moderately efficient solar sail. By controlling the angle she presented to the incoming sunlight she could slowly alter velocity. All Parameter had to do was push off above or below the Rings in a shallow arc. Equinox could bring them back into the Rings in a few days, using solar pressure. But the storm was a danger they had always to keep in mind.
It was the solar wind that Equinox felt, a cloud of particles thrust out from the sun by storms beneath the surface. Her radiation sensors had detected the first speed-of-light gusts of it, and the dangerous stuff would not be far behind.
Radiation was the chief danger of life in the Rings. The outer surface of a Symb was proof against much of the radiation the symbiotic pair would encounter in space. What got through was not enough to worry about, certainly never enough to cause sickness. But stray high-energy particles could cause mutations of the egg and sperm cells of the humans.
The intensity of the wind was increasing as they furled their sails and applied the gas thrusters.
"Did we get moving in time?" Parameter asked.
"There's a good margin. But we can't avoid getting a little hard stuff. Don't worry about it."
"What about children? If I want to have some later, couldn't that be a problem?"
"Naturally. But you'll never give birth to a mutation. I'll be able to see any deviations in the first few weeks and abort it and not even have to tell you."
"But you would tell me, wouldn't you?"
"If you want me to. But it isn't important. No more than the daily control I exert over any of your other bodily processes."
"If you say so."
"I say so. Don't worry; I said. You just handle the motor control and leave the busy work to me. Things don't seem quite real to me unless they're on the molecular level."
Parameter trusted Equinox utterly. So much so that when the really hard wind began buffeting them, she didn't worry for a second. She spread her arms to it, embraced it. It was strange that the "wind" didn't blow her around like a leaf. She would have liked that. All she really missed was her hair streaming around her shoulders. She no longer had any hair at all. It got in the way of the seal between the two of them.
As soon as she thought it, long black hair whipped out behind her, curling into her face and tickling her eyes. She could see it and feel it against her skin, but she couldn't touch it. That didn't surprise her, because it wasn't there.
"Thank you," she laughed. And then she laughed even harder as she looked down at herself. She was covered with hair; long, flowing hair that grew as she watched it.
They reentered the Ring, preceded by a twisting, imaginary train of hair a kilometer long.
Three days later she was still staring at the floating ball.
On the fifth day her hand twitched toward it.
"No. No. Equinox. Where are you?"
The Symb was in its dormant state. Only an infant Symb could exist without a human to feed and water it; once it had become attached to a human, it would die very quickly without one. But in dormancy, they could live for weeks at a low energy level. It only needed the touch of her hand to be triggered into action.
The hunger was eating its way through her body; she ignored it completely. It had become a fact of life, something she clutched to her to forget about the real hunger that was in her brain. She would never be forced to accept the Symb from hunger. It didn't even enter the question.
On the ninth day her hand began moving. She watched it, crying for Equinox to stop the movement, to give her strength.
She touched it.
"I think it's time we tried out the new uterus."
"I think you're right."
"If that thing out there is a male, we'll do it." Equinox had in her complex of capabilities the knack of producing a nodule within her body that could take a cloned cell and nurture it until it grew into a complete organ; any organ she wished. She had done that with one of Parameter's cells. She removed it, cloned it, and let it grow into a new uterus. Parameter's old one had run out of eggs long ago and was useless for procreation, but the new one was brimming with life.
She had operated on her mate, taking out the old one and putting in the new. It had been painless and quick; Parameter had not even felt it.
Now they were ready to have a seed planted in it. "Male," came the voice of the other figure. Before, Parameter would have answered by saying, "Solitude," and he would have gone on his way.
Now she said, "Female."
"Wilderness," he introduced himself.
"Parameter."
The mating ritual over, they fell silent as they drifted closer. She had computed it well, if a little fast. They hit and clung together with all their limbs. Slowly the Symbs melted into each other.
A sensation of pleasure came over Parameter. "What is it?"
"What do you think? It's heaven. Did you think that because we're sexless, we wouldn't get any pleasure out of conjugation?"
"I guess I hadn't thought about it. It's... different. Not bad at all. But nothing like an orgasm."
"Stick around. We're just getting started." There was a moment of insecurity as Equinox withdrew her connections, leaving only the one into her brain. She shuddered as an unfamiliar feeling passed over her, then realized she was holding her breath. She had to start respirating again. Her chest crackled as she brought long-unused muscles into play, but once the reflex was started she was able to forget about it and let her hindbrain handle the chore.
The inner surface started to phosphoresce, and she made out a shadowy figure floating in front of her. The light got brighter until it reached the level of bright moonlight. She could see him now.
"Hello," she said. He seemed surprised she wanted to talk, but grinned at her.
"Hello. You must be new."
"How did you know?"
"It shows. You want to talk. You probably expect me to go through an elaborate ritual." And with that he reached for her and pulled her toward him.
"Hold on there," she said. "I'd like to know you a little better first."
He sighed, but let her go. "I'm sorry. You don't know yet. All right, what would you like to know about me?"
She looked him over. He was small, slightly smaller than her. He was completely hairless, as was she. There didn't seem to be any way to guess his age; all the proper clues were missing. Growing out of the top of his head was a snaky umbilicus.
She discovered there was really little to ask him, but having made a point of it, she threw in a token question.
"How old are you?"
"Old enough. Fourteen."
"All right, let's do it your way." She touched him and shifted in space to accommodate his entry.
To her pleasant surprise, it lasted longer than the thirty seconds she had expected. He was an accomplished lover; he seemed to know all the right moves. She was warming deliciously when she heard him in her head.
"Now you know," he said, and her head was filled with his laughter.
Everything before that, good as it was, had been just a warm-up.
Parameter and the baby Symb howled with pain.
"I didn't want you," she cried, hurling waves of rejection at the child and at herself. "All I want is Equinox."
That went on for an endless time. The stars burnt out around them. The galaxy turned like a whirligig. The universe contracted; exploded; contracted again. Exploded. Contracted and gave it up as a waste of time. Time ended as all events came to an end. The two of them floated, howling at each other.
Wilderness drifted away against the swirling background of stars. He didn't look back, and neither did Parameter. They knew each other too well to need good-byes. They might never meet again, but that didn't matter either, because each carried all they needed of the other.
"In a life full of cheap thrills, I never had anything like that."
Equinox seemed absorbed. She quietly acknowledged that it had, indeed, been superduper, but there was something el
se. There was a new knowledge.
"I'd like to try something," she said.
"Shoot."
Parameter's body was suddenly caressed by a thousand tiny, wet tongues. They searched out every cranny, all at the same time. They were hot, at least a thousand billion degrees, but they didn't burn; they soothed.
"Where were you keeping that?" Parameter quavered when it stopped. "And why did you stop?"
"I just learned it. I was watching while I was experiencing. I picked up a few tricks."
"You've got more?"
"Sure. I didn't want to start out with the intense ones until I saw how you liked that one. I thought it was very nice. You shuddered beautifully; the delta waves were fascinating."
Parameter broke up with laughter. "Don't give me that clinical stuff. You liked it so much you scared yourself."
"That comes as close as you can come to describing my reaction. But I was serious about having things I think we'll like even better. I can combine sensations in a novel way. Did you appreciate the subtle way the 'heat' blended into the sensation of feathers with an electric current through them?"
"It sounds hideous when you say it in words. But that was what it was, all right. Electric feathers. But pain had nothing to do with it."
Equinox considered it. "I'm not sure about that. I was deep into the pain-sensation center of you. But I was tickling it in a new way, the same way Wilderness tickled you. There is something I'm discovering. It has to do with the reality of pain. All you experience is more a function of your brain than of your nerve endings. Pain is no exception. What I do is connect the two centers—pain and pleasure—and route them through other sensorium pathways, resulting in..."
"Equinox."
?????
"Make love to me."
She was in the center of the sun, every atom of her body fusing in heat so hot it was icy. She swam to the surface, taking her time through the plastic waves of ionized gas, where she grew until she could hold the whole sputtering ball in her hand and rub it around her body. It flicked and fumed and smoked, gigantic prominences responding to her will, wreathing her in fire and smoke that bit and tickled. Flares snaked into her, reaming nerves with needle-sharp pins of gas that were soft as a kiss. She was swallowed whole by something pink that had no name, and slid down the slippery innards to splash in a pool of sweet-smelling sulfur.
It melted her; she melted it. Equinox was there; she picked her up and hurled her and herself in a wave of water, a gigantic wave that was gigatons of pent-up energy, rearing itself into a towering breaker a thousand kilometers high. She crashed on a beach of rubbery skin, which became a forest of snakes that squeezed her until the top of her head blew off and tiny flowers showered around her, all of them Equinox.
She was drawn back together from the far corners of the solar system and put into a form that called itself "Parameter" but would answer to anything at all. Then she was rising on a rocket that thrust deep into her vagina, into recesses that weren't even there but felt like mirrors that showed her own face. She was a fusion warhead of sensation; primed to blow. Sparks whipped around her, and each was a kiss of electric feathers. She was reaching orbital velocity; solar escape velocity; the speed of light. She turned herself inside out and contained the universe. The speed of light was a crawl slower than any snail; she transcended it.
There was an explosion; an implosion. She drew away from herself and fell into herself, and the fragments of her body drifted down to the beach, where she and Equinox gathered them and put them in a pile of quivering parts, each smaller than an atom.
It was a long job. They took their time.
"Next time," Parameter suggested, "try to work in some elephants."
Someone had invented a clock. It ticked.
Parameter woke up.
"Did you do that?"
No answer.
"Shut the damn thing off."
The ticking stopped. She rolled over and went back to sleep. Around her, a trillion years passed.
It was no good; she couldn't sleep. "Are you there?" Yes.
"What do you think we ought to do?" Despair. We've lost Equinox. "You never knew her."
Part of her will always be with you. Enough to hurt you. We will always hurt.
"I want to live again."
Live with hurt?
"If there's no other way. Come on. Let's start. Try to make a light. Come on, you can do it. I can't tell you how; you have to do that yourself. I love you. Blend with me, wash me clean, wipe out the memory."
Impossible. We cannot alter ourselves. I want Equinox.
"Damn you, you never knew her."
Know her as good as you. Better. In a way, I am Equinox. But in another way, I can never be.
"Don't talk in riddles. Merge with me."
Cannot. You do not love me yet.
"You want to sleep on it another few thousand years?"
Yes. You are much nicer when you are asleep.
"Is that an insult?"
No. You have loved me in your sleep. You have talked to me, you have taught me, given me love and guidance, grown me up to an adult. But you still think I'm Equinox. I'm not. I am me.
"Who is that?"
No name. I will have a name when you start really talking to me.
"Go to sleep. You confuse me."
Love. Affection. Rockabye, rockabye, rockabye.
"You have a name yet?"
"Yes. My name is Solstice."
Parameter cried, loud and long, and washed herself clean in her own tears.
It took them four years to work their way around to Ringmarket. They traded a song, one that had taken three years to produce, a sweet-sad dirge that somehow rang with hope, orchestrated for three lutes and synthesizer; traded it and a promise of four more over the next century to a tinpan alleycat for an elephant gun. Then they went out on a trail that was four years cold to stalk the memory of those long-ago pachyderm days.
In the way that an earlier generation of humans had known the shape of a hill, the placement of trees and flowers on it, the smell and feel of it; and another generation could remember at a glance what a street corner looked like; or still another the details of a stretch of corridor beneath the surface of the moon; in that same way, Parameter knew rocks. She would know the rock she had pushed off from on that final day just before Equinox was taken from her, the rock she now knew to have been an Engineer way-station. She knew where it had been going on that day, and how fast, and for how long. She knew where it would be now, and that was where she and Solstice were headed. The neighborhood would be different, but she could find that rock.
They found it, in only three years of search. She knew it instantly, knew every crevice and pit on the side she had landed on. The door was on the other side. They picked a likely rock a few kilometers away and settled down for a long wait.
Seventy-six times Saturn turned below them while they used the telescopic sight of the gun to survey the traffic at the station. By the end of that time, they knew the routine of the place better than the residents did. When the time came for action they had worked over each detail until it was almost a reflex.
A figure came out of the rock and started off in the proper direction. Parameter squinted down the barrel of the gun and drew a bead. The range was extreme, but she had no doubt of a hit. The reason for her confidence was the long red imaginary line that she saw growing from the end of the barrel. It represented the distance the bullet would travel in one-thousandth of a second. The figure she was shooting at also had a line extending in front of it, not nearly so long. All she had to do was bring the ends of the two lines together and squeeze the trigger.
It went as planned. The gun was firing stunbullets, tiny harmonic generators that would knock out the pair for six hours. The outer hide of a Symb was proof against the kinetic energy contained in most projectiles, natural or artificial. She didn't dare use a beam stunner because the Engineers in the station would detect it.
They se
t out in pursuit of the unconscious pair. There was no hurry; the longer it took to rendezvous, the farther they would be from danger.
It took five hours to reach them. Once in contact, Solstice took over. She had assured Parameter that it would be possible to fuse with an unconscious Symb, and she was right. Soon Parameter was floating in the dark cavity with the Engineer, a female. She put the barrel of the gun under the other's chin and waited.
"I don't know if I can do it, Solstice," she said.
"It won't be something you'll ever be proud of, but you know the reasons as well as I. Just keep thinking of Equinox."
"I wonder if that's a good idea? I'd rather do something for her that I would be proud of."
"Want to back out? We can still get away. But if she wakes up and sees us, it could get awkward if we let her live."
"I know. I have to do it. I just don't like it."
The Engineer was stirring. Parameter tightened her grip on the rifle.
She opened her eyes, looked around, and seemed to be listening. Solstice was keeping the other Symb from calling for help.
"I won't give you any trouble," the woman said. "But is it asking too much to allow me a few minutes for my death ritual?"
"You can have that and more if you're a fast talker. I don't want to kill you, but I confess I think I'll have to. I want to tell you some things, and to do it, I'll need your cooperation. If you don't cooperate, I can take what I need from you anyway. What I'm hoping is that there'll be some way you can show me that will make your death unnecessary. Will you open your mind to me?"
A light came into the woman's eyes, then was veiled. Parameter was instantly suspicious.
"Don't be nervous," the Engineer said, "I'll do as you ask. It was just something of a surprise." She relaxed, and Parameter eased herself into the arms of Solstice, who took over as go-between.
They had a lot staked on the outcome of this mutual revelation.
It came in a rush, the impalpable weight of the religious fervor and dedication. And above it all, the Great Cause, the project that would go on long after everyone now alive was dead. The audacity of it! The vision of Humanity the mover, the controller, the artist; the Engineer. The universe would acknowledge the sway of Humanity when it gazed at the wonder that was being wrought in the Rings of Saturn.
