Titan

by John Varley

  "Do what you can for my friend," she sang. "I commend him into your hands."

  The healer nodded, and got to work. She first bathed the wound with the brown liquid. She packed it with a yellow jelly and put a large leaf next to the skin, "to lure out the small eaters of his flesh." Cirocco's hopes rose and fell as she watched. She didn't care for the leaf, nor for the reference to luring. It looked too primitive. But when the healer dressed the wound, she used bandages taken from sealed packets that she said had been "cleansed of parasites."

  As she worked, she examined Bill's body with great interest, sometimes humming a little ditty of astonishment.

  "Now who would have thought of that... ? ... a muscle here? Attached so? Like walking on broken feet ... no, I don't believe it." She described Gaea variously as wise, endlessly inventive, needlessly elaborate, and a silly fool. She also observed that Gaea enjoyed the occasional joke as well as the next deity- this while staring in astonishment at Bill's buttocks.

  Cirocco was covered in sweat when the healer was through. At least she had not produced rattles or voodoo dolls, nor drawn magical marks in the sand. When she had tied the last knot in the bandages, she began to sing a song of healing. Cirocco couldn't see that it would hurt anything.

  The healer bent over Bill and put her arms around and under him, lifted him gently from the waist and held him close to her body. She placed his head on her shoulder and bent her own head down until her lips were close to his ear. She rocked back and forth, crooning a lullaby without words.

  Bill gradually stopped shivering. Color began to return to his face, which became more peaceful than it had been since the injury.

  In a few minutes, Cirocco would have sworn he was smiling.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Cirocco found she had some Preconceptions that had to be discarded.

  The first was the most obvious. When B Flat arrived and looked much like C Sharp except for his sexual organs, she- had assumed Titanides were going to be hard to tell apart.

  The group that showed up in response to C Sharp's call looked like escapees from a merry-go-round.

  The healer had emerald green head and tail hair. The rest of her body was covered in thick, snow-white fur. There was another hairy one.. a strawberry blonde with a dappling of violet. There was a brown and white pinto, and one without any hair at all except on his tail. His skin was pale blue.

  The last of the group looked naked but was not; she had the pelt of a horse not only on the part of her where it would have looked reasonable, but on her human upper-half, too. She was zebra-striped in bright yellow and searing orange, and had lavender head and tail hair. Looking away from her did no good; the image burned itself into the retina.

  Not satisfied with the carnival atmosphere, the Titanides painted their bare skins and stained patches of their hair. They wore necklaces and bracelets, stuck baubles in holes pierced

  through noses and cars, tied chains of brass links and colored stones or ropes of flowers around their legs. Each had a musical instrument slung over the shoulder or protruding from the pouch, made of wood or animal horn or seashell or brass.

  The second preconception-which was actually the first, since Calvin had told them about it-was that Titanides were all female. A tactful question to the healer brought a straightforward answer and an awesome demonstration. The Titanides each had three sex organs.

  She knew about the frontal, human-sized male or female genitalia. These determined the pronoun gender for reasons that must have made sense to a Titanide.

  in addition, each had a large vaginal opening under the tail,

  just like a female horse. It was the one in the middle that shocked Gaby and Cirocco. in the soft belly between the healer's hind legs was a thick, fleshy sheath, and out of it came a penis that was human in every detail but for the fact that it was as long and thick as Cirocco's arm.

  Cirocco had thought herself sophisticated. She had seen many naked men, and it had been years since any of them had any- thing new to show her. She liked men and she liked intercourse, but that thing made her think about becoming a nun. Her strong

  reaction disturbed her; She knew it was the same feeling Gaby had expressed, that of being more upset by close parallels than by something utterly alien.

  The third thing Cirocco had to rethink was triggered by the realization that, though she knew the language and could now use the nouns for each of the Titanide sex organs, she had not known of the rear ones until told about them. she still did not know why there were three, and could not find the knowledge in her mind.

  What she had were word lists and grammatical rules of corn- position. it worked well for nouns; she had only to ~ of an object to know the word. It began to fail with some of the verbs. Running and jumping and swimming and breathing were clear enough. Verbs for things Titanides did and humans didn't were not so neat.

  Where the system fell apart was in describing familial relationships, codes of behavior, mores, and a host of other things where Titanides and humans shared little common ground. These concepts became null notes in the Titanide songs. She sometimes translated them to herself or to Gaby with complex hyphenates such as she-who-is-my-hindmother's-frontal-ortho-sibling, or the-sense-of-righteous-loathing-for-angels. These phrases were each one word in Titanide song.

  It came down to the fact that an alien thought in her head was still an alien thought. She could not deal with it until it was explained to her; she had no referrents.

  The last complication caused by the arrival of the healer's group was in the matter of names: There were too many names in the same key signatures, so her original system fell apart. Gaby couldn't sing them, so Cirocco had to find English words to use.

  She had started off in a musical vein, and decided to continue it. The first one they met she now dubbed C-Sharp Hornpipe because the name sounded like a sailor's hornpipe. B Flat became B Flat Banjo. The healer was B Lullaby, the strawberry blonde was G-minor Valse, the pinto B Clarino, and the blue Titanide now bore the name of G Foxtrot. She called the yellow and orange zebra D-minor Hurdy-gurdy.

  Gaby promptly dropped the key signatures, as someone who was always being called Rocky should have known she would.

  The ambulance was a long wooden wagon with four rubber- tired wheels, pulled by two Titanides in loose harness. It had a pneumatic suspension and friction brakes operated by the team of pullers. The wood was bright yellow, like new pine, milled wondrously smooth and fitted together with no nails.

  Cirocco and Gaby put Bill on a huge bed in the center of the wagon and climbed in after him, along with Lullaby, the Titanide healer. She took her station at his bedside, legs folded beneath her, singing to him and wiping his brow with a wet cloth. The other Titanides walked alongside, except for Hompipe and Banjo, who remained behind with their flocks. They had around 200 animals the size of cows, each with four legs and a thin, supple neck three meters long. The necks had digging claws and

  puckered mouths at the end. They fed by forcing their mouths into the ground and sucking milk from the backs of sludge- worms. They had one eye at the base of the neck. With their heads in the ground they could still see what was happening above.

  Gaby looked at one with a faintly scandalized expression on her face, reluctant to admit that such a thing could exist.

  "'Gaea has her good days and her bad days,"' she concluded, quoting a Titanide aphorism Cirocco had translated. "She must have come off a nine-day hinge when she thought that one up. What about those radios, Rocky? Can we get a look at them?"

  "I'll see." She sang to Clarino, the pinto, asking if they might look at his speakerplant, then stopped as soon as she had the word out.

  "They don't build them," she said. "They grow them." "Why didn't you say so before?"

  "Because I just now realized it. Bear with me, Gaby. The word for them means 'the seed of the plant that carries song.' Take a look."

  The item strapped to the end of Clarino's staff was an oblong yellow seed, smoo
th and featureless but for a soft brown spot.

  "It listens here," Clarino sang, indicating the spot. "Do not touch it, as it will go deaf. It sings your song to its mother, and if she is pleased she sings it to the world."

  "I fear I do not entirely understand."

  Clarino pointed over Gaby's shoulder. "There is one who still has her children."

  He trotted to a clump of bushes growing in a hollow. A bell- shaped growth emerged from the ground beside each bush. Grasping the bell, he wrenched a plant free and carried it, roots and all, back to the wagon.

  "One sings to the seeds," he explained. He took his brass horn from his shoulder and played several bars of a dance in five-four time. "Bend your ears now..." He stopped, embarrassed. "That is, do what your kind does to enhance your hearing."

  After half a minute, they heard the horn notes, reedy as an old Edison cylinder, but quite distinct. Clarino sang a harmonic, which was quickly repeated. There was a pause, then the two themes were played simultaneously.

  "She hears my song and likes it, you sec?" Clarino sang, with a big smile on his face.

  "Like the request line of a radio station," Gaby said. What if the disc jockey doesn't want to play that song?"

  Cirocco translated Gaby's question as best she could.

  "It takes practice to sing pleasingly," Clatino acknowledged. "But they are of good faith. The mother can speak more swiftly than four feet can fly."

  Cirocco translated but Clarino interrupted her.

  "The seeds are also useful in building the eyes that see in darkness," he sang. "With them we scan the well of wind for the approach of angels."

  "That sounded like radar," Cirocco said.

  Gaby eyed her dubiously. "You going to believe everything these over-educated polo ponies tell you?"

  "You tell me how those seeds work if it isn't electronically. Would you prefer mental telepathy?"

  "Magic might be easier to swallow."

  "Call it magic, then. I think there's crystals and circuits in those seeds. And if you can grow an organic radio, why not radar?"

  "Maybe radio. Only because I've seen it with my own eyes, not because I want to have anything to do with it. But not radar."

  The Titanide radar installation was under a tent in the front of the ambulance. it would have baffled Rube Goldberg. There were nuts and leaves attached to a pot of soil with thick copper- vines leading into it. Lullaby said the soil contained a worm which generated "essence of power." There was a rack of radio seeds connected with snarls of needle-tipped vines, apparently inserted with some precision since each seed had a tight cluster of oozing pinpricks around the spot where contact had finally been made. There were other things, all of a vegetable nature, including a leaf that glowed when struck by a beam of light from yet another plant.

  "It's easy to read," Lullaby sang, cheerfully. "This dot of false fire represents the sky giant you see over there, toward Rhea."

  She indicated a spot on the screen with her finger. "See how it loses life... there! Now it shines brightly, but shifted."

  Cirocco began a translation, but Gaby interrupted her.

  "I know how radar works," she grumbled. "The whole set-up offends me."

  "We have little need of it now," Clarino assured them. "This is not the season for angels. They come when Gaea breathes from the cast, and torment us until she sucks them back to her breast."

  Cirocco wondered if she heard that right; did she sing "sucks them at her breast"? She didn't pursue it because Bill groaned and opened his eyes.

  "Hello," Lullaby sang. "So glad you could come back."

  Bill yelped, then screamed when he put pressure on his leg. Cirocco put herself between Bill and Lullaby. He saw her, and sighed in relief

  "Very bad dream, Rocky," he said.

  She rubbed his forehead. "It wasn't all a dream, probably." "Huh? Oh, you mean the centaurs. No, I remember when the

  white one was rocking me and singing." "Well, how are you feeling, then?"

  'Weak. My leg doesn't hurt so bad. Is that a good sign, or is it dead?"

  "I think you're getting better."

  "What about ... uh, you know. Gangrene." He looked away from her.

  "I don't think so. It looked a lot better after the healer treated you. "

  "Healer? The centaur?"

  "It was all there was left to do," Cirocco said, doubts overwhelming her again. "Calvin hasn't arrived. I watched her, and she seemed to know what she was doing."

  She thought he had gone back to sleep. After a long time his eyes opened and he smiled faintly.

  "It's not a decision I'd have wanted to make."

  "It was terrible, Bill. She said you were dying, and I believed her. it was either do nothing until Calvin got here-and I don't know what he could do without any medicine-and she said she could kill the germs, which made sense because-"

  He touched her knee. His hand was cold, but steady.

  "You did the right thing," he said. "Watch me. I'm going to be walking in another week." -

  It was late afternoon-always, monotonously, late after- noon-and someone was shaking her shoulder. She blinked rapidly.

  "Your friends have arrived," Foxtrot sang.

  "It was the sky giant we saw earlier," Lullaby added. "They were aboard all the time."

  "Friends?"

  "Yes, your healer, and two others."

  "Two..." She got to her feet. "Those others. Do you have news of them? One is known to me. Is the second like her, or male, like my friend Bill?"

  The healer frowned. "Your pronouns confuse me. I frankly do not know which of you is male and which female, since you hide behind strips of cloth."

  "Bill's male, me and Gaby are female. I'll explain it to you later, but which one is on the sky giant? "

  Lullaby shrugged. "The giant did not say. He is as bemused as I. "

  Whistlestop hovered over the column of Titanides and the wagon, which had halted to wait for the drop. A chute blossomed with a tiny black figure on the end of it. Calvin, no doubt about it.

  While he drifted down another chute appeared, and Cirocco strained to see who it might be. The figure looked too big, somehow. Then a third chute opened, and a fourth.

  There were a dozen parachutes in the air before she spotted Gene. The rest, incredibly, were Titanides.

  "Hey, it's Gene!" Gaby yelled. She was standing a short distance away with Foxtrot and Clarino. Cirocco had stayed with the wagon. "I wonder if April is-"

  "Angels! Angels attacking! Form up!"

  The voice was a screech.. a Titanide voice that had lost all its music, choked with hate. Cirocco was dumbfounded to see Lullaby hunched over the radar set, shouting orders. Her face was contorted, all thought of Bill forgotten.

  'What's going on?" she began, then ducked as Lullaby vaulted over her.

  "Get down, two-legs! Stay out of this."

  sirocco looked up, and the sky was filled with wings.

  They were dropping around the sides of the blimp, wings tucked to gain speed, attacking the falling Titanides who hung helplessly from their shrouds. There were dozens of them.

  She was thrown to the floor of the wagon when it jerked for- ward to the sound of snapping harness leather. She just missed falling out the open tailgate, struggled to her hands and knees in time to see Gaby leap and catch the sides of the wagon with her hands. Cirocco helped her in.

  "What the hell's going m?" Gaby held a bronze sword Cirocco had not seen before.

  "Watch out! ", Bill was tossed from his bed. Cirocco crawled to him and tried to get him back in, but the wagon kept crashing over rocks and crevices.

  "Stop this thing, goddarnn it!" Cirocco yelled, then sang it in Titanide. It made no difference. The two hitched in front were heading for the battle and nothing would stop them. One held a sword which she brandished above her, shrieking like a demon.

  Cirocco slapped one of them on the rump and almost lost her scalp as the sword flashed at her. Keeping her head low, she loo
ked down at the knots hitching the Titanides to the wagon.

  "Gaby, give me that thing, quick." The sword came through the air hilt-first and landed at her feet. She backed at the leather harnesses. One came free, then the other.

  The Titanides did not notice the loss. They quickly outdistanced the wagon, which then slammed to a halt against a boulder.

  "What was that all-"

  "I don't know. All anyone told me is to stay low. Give me a hand with Bill, will you?"

  He was awake, and did not seem to be hurt. He watched the sky as they put him back on the pallet.

  "Holy Christ!" he said, just loud enough to be, heard over the

  screech of the Titanides. "They're getting murdered up there." Cirocco looked up in time to see one of the flying creatures

  slash three parachute shrouds above one of the descending Titanides. The chute folded. With sickening speed the Titanide vanished behind a low hill to the west.

  "Those are angels?" Bill wondered. To Titanides, they were angels of death. Human in shape, with feathered wings that measured seven meters from tip to tip, the angels turned the peaceful air over Hyperion into a slaughterhouse. All the parachutes were soon cleared from the sky.

  The battle went on behind the hill, out of their sight. Titanides screeched like %emails on a blackboard, and high above was an eerie wall that had to he the angels.

  "Behind you," Gaby warned. Cirocco turned quickly.

  An angel approached silently from the east. It skimmed the ground, great wings motionless, growing larger with impossible speed. She saw the sword in its left hand, the human face twisted with bloodlust, tears streaking from the corners of the eyes, the muscles knotting in the arm as it brought the sword back...

  It passed over them, beating its wings to rise over the low hill. The tips touched the ground and stirred gouts of dust.