Titan

by John Varley

  They woke with sore legs. Cirocco was so stiff she could not bend her knees without wincing. They stumbled around fixing breakfast and breaking camp, moving like octogenarians, then forced themselves through a series of kneebends and isometrics.

  "I know this pack is a few grams lighter," Gaby moaned, as she slung it on her back. "I ate two meals out of it."

  "Mine's gained twenty kilos," Gene said.

  "Bitch, bitch, bitch. C'mon, you apes. You wonna live forever?"

  "Live? This is living?"

  The second night came only five hours after the first because

  Cirocco decided it had to.

  "Thank you, O Great Mistress of Time," Gaby sighed, as she stretched out on her sleeping bag. "If we try, maybe we can set a new record. A two-hour day!"

  Gene let himself down beside her.

  "When you get the fire going, Rocky, I'll take about five of those steakplant fillets. In the meantime, walk softly, will you? When your knees crack you wake me up."

  Cirocco put her hands on her hips and glared at them.

  "So that's how it's going to be, hub? I've got news for you two. I outrank you."

  "Did she say something, Gene?"

  "Didn't hear a word."

  Cirocco limped around until she had gathered enough wood for a fire. Kneeling to start it turned out to be a very complex problem, one she was not sure she could solve. It involved wrenching abused joints through angles they just did not want to take.

  But after a time the steakplants were snapping, in the grease, and Gene and Gaby followed their noses to the source of the heavenly aroma.

  Cirocco had just enough strength to kick dirt over the coals and unroll her sleeping bag. She was asleep m her way down to it.

  The third day was not as bad as the second, in the same way the Chicago Fire was not as bad as the San Francisco Earthquake.

  They made ten kilometers over gradually steepening ground in just under eight hours. Gaby remarked at the end of it that she no longer felt eighty years old. She now felt seventy-eight.

  It became necessary to use a new climbing tactic. The increasing slope of the ground made walking, even on all fours, more difficult. Their feet would slip and they would go down on their stomachs with arms and legs spread to prevent a backward slide.

  Gene suggested they alternately take one end of the rope and crawl up as far as it would reach, then tie the end to a tree. The other two, waiting at the bottom, then had an easy hand-over- hand pull and walk. The one who went ahead worked hard for ten minutes while the other two rested, then could rest for two turns before going again. They made 300 meters at a time.

  Cirocco looked at the stream near their third campsite and thought about taking a bath, then decided against it. Food was what she wanted. Gene, with some grumbling, took his turn at the frying pan.

  She actually felt good enough to look through her pack and check the level of stored provisions before collapsing.

  The fourth day they made twenty kilometers in ten hours, and at the end of the day Gene grabbed Cirocco.

  They had pitched camp where the stream they were following was wide enough for a bath, and sirocco had taken off her clothes and lowered herself in without even thinking about it. Soap would have been nice, but there was fine sand on the bottom and she could scour herself with that. Soon Gaby and Gene joined her. Later, Gaby went off on Cirocco's instructions to find fresh fruit. There were no towels, so she was squatting naked by the fire when Gene put his arms around her.

  She jumped, scattering burning twigs, and pushed his hands away from her breasts.

  "Hey, stop that." She struggled, and broke away. He was not at all abashed.

  "Come on, Rocky, it's not like we've never touched each other before."

  "Yeah? Well, I don't like people sneaking up on me. Keep your hands to yourself."

  He looked exasperated. "Is it going to be like that? What am I supposed to do with two naked women running around?"

  Cirocco reached for her clothes.

  "I didn't know the sight of naked women made you lose control of yourself. I'll bear it in mind."

  "Now you're angry."

  "No, I'm not angry. We're going to have to live close for some time, and it wouldn't do to get angry." She pressed the fasteners of her shirt and eyed him warily for a moment, then repaired the fire, careful to sit facing him.

  "You're angry anyway. I didn't mean anything by it. "

  "Just don't grab me, is all."

  "I'd send you roses and candy, but it's a little impractical."

  She smiled, and relaxed a little. It sounded more like the old Gene, which was an improvement over what she had seen in his eyes a moment ago.

  "Listen, Gene. We didn't make the greatest pair back on the ship, and you know it. I'm tired, I'm hungry, and I still feel dirty. All I can say is, if I feel ready for anything, I'll let you know."

  "Fair enough."

  Neither of them said anything as Cirocco built the fire bigger, carefully keeping it on the little shelf they had dug into the dirt.

  "Are you... do you and Gaby have something going?" She flushed, hoping it wasn't visible in the firelight. "That's none of your business."

  "I always thought she was gay underneath," he said, nodding. "I didn't think you were."

  She took a deep breath and looked at him narrowly. The darting shadows revealed nothing on his blond-bearded face.

  "Are you deliberately needling me? I said it was none of your business."

  "If you weren't queer for her, you'd have just said no." What was the matter with her? she wondered. Why was he making her skin crawl? Gene had always operated by his own bonehead logic when it came to people. His bigotry was carefully suppressed and socially acceptable, or he would never have been chosen for the trip to Saturn. He blundered cheerfully through his relationships, genuinely surprised when people took offence at his tactlessness. It was a common-enough personality, so well controlled, according to his psychological profile, as to barely qualify as an eccentricity.

  So why did she feel so uncomfortable when he looked at her? "I'd better set you straight so you don't hurt Gaby. She's fallen in love with me. It has something to do with the isolation; I was the first person she saw afterward, and she developed this fixation. I think she'll grow out of it because she's never been significantly homosexual before. Nor heterosexual, for that matter."

  "She covered it up," he suggested. "what year is this? Nineteen-fifty? You astonish me, Gene. You don't hide anything from those NASA tests. She had a homosexual affair, sure. I had one, and so did you. I read your dossier. You want me to tell you how old you were when it happened?"

  "I was just a kid. The point is, I could tell about her when we made love. No reaction, you know? I'll bet it's not like that when you two make it."

  "We don't-" She stopped herself, wondering how she had been drawn in as far as she was.

  "This conversation is over. I don't want to talk about it, and besides, Gaby's coming back."

  Gaby approached the fire and dropped a net full of fruit at Cirocco's side. She squatted, looked thoughtfully back and forth between the two of them, then stood up and put on her clothes.

  "Are my ears burning, or is it my imagination?" Neither Gene nor Cirocco spoke, and Gaby sighed.

  "Here we go again. I think I'm starting to agree with the folks who say manned space missions cost more than they're worth."

  The fifth day took them irrevocably into night. There was now only the ghostly light reflected by the day areas curving up on each side. It was not much, but it was enough.

  The ground was noticeably steeper, with a thinner layer of dirt. often they walked on the warm, bare strands, which provided surer traction. They began tying themselves together, and were careful to see that two were always hanging on while the other climbed.

  Even here the plant life of Gaea had not given up. Massive trees splayed roots flat to the cable, sending out runners that scrambled into the surface and hung on t
enaciously. The effort of wresting a living from such uninviting terrain had robbed them of beauty. They were gaunt and lonely, their trunks trans- lucent with a pale inner light, their leaves the, merest wisps of nothing. In places, the roots could be used as ladders.

  At the end of the day they had come seventy kilometers in a straight line, and were fifty kilometers nearer the hub. The trees had thinned enough for them to see they had climbed above the level of the roof, well on their way into the narrowing wedge of space between the cable and the bell-shaped mouth of the Rhea spoke. They could look back and see Hyperion spread out below, as though they rode on a kite tied to a monster string tethered in the rocky knot called the place of winds.

  They saw the glitter of the glass castle early on the sixth day. Cirocco and Gaby crouched in a tangle of tree roots and scanned it as Gene carried the rope to the foot of the structure.

  "Maybe that's the place," Cirocco said.

  "You mean your elevator lobby?" Gaby snorted. "If that's it, I'd as soon ride a roller coaster with paper rails."

  It looked something like an Italian hill town, but made of spun sugar, a million years old, and half melted. Domes and bal- conies, arches, flying buttresses, battlements, and terraced roofs perched on a jutting shelf and dripped over the edge like syrup

  poured over a waffle and quick-frozen. Tall towers jutted at all angles: pencils in a cup. They were tall and spindly. In the corners, drifts of snow or pastel confectioner's sugar sparkled.

  "It's a hulk, Rocky."

  "I can see that. Let me have my fantasy, will you?"

  The castle fought a silent battle with wispy white vines. It looked like a stand-off; the castle had taken mortal damage, but when they joined Gene, Cirocco and Gaby heard the vines giving off the dry rustic of death.

  "Like Spanish moss," Gaby observed, tugging a handful free the entangling mass.

  "But bigger."

  Gaby shrugged. "If Gaea can't build it in the large economy size, she doesn't bother."

  "There's a door up here," Gene called back. "You want to go in? "

  "You bet."

  There was five meters of level space between the edge of the shelf and the castle wall. Not far from them was a rounded arch, not much taller than the top of Cirocco's head.

  "Whew!" Gaby breathed, leaning against the wall. "Walking on level ground is almost enough to make you dizzy. I'd forgotten how."

  Cirocco lit a lamp and followed Gene through the arch and into a hall of glass.

  "We'd better stick together," she said.

  There seemed good reason for the caution. While none of the surfaces were completely reflective, the place had a lot in common with, the mirror houses at carnivals. They could see through the walls to rooms on all sides of them, which also had glass walls leading to more rooms.

  "How do we get out, once we're in?" Gaby asked. Cirocco pointed down. "Follow our footprints."

  "Ah. How silly of me." Gaby bent and looked at the fine powder coating the floor. There were larger, flat sheets scattered through it.

  "Ground glass," she said. "Don't fall down."

  Gene shook his head. "I thought so at first, too, but it's not glass. It's thin as a soap bubble, and it won't hold an edge." He picked a wall and pressed it gently with the palm of this hand. It shattered with a soft tinkling sound. He caught one of the pieces that drifted down around him and crushed it in his hand.

  "How many of those walls could you break before the second floor falls on us?" Gaby asked, pointing at the room above them.

  "A lot, I think. Look, this place is a maze, but it wasn't originally. We walk through some of the walls because something broke them already. But this was a stack of cubes, with no way in or out of any of them."

  Gaby and Cirocco looked at each other. "Like the building we looked at under the cable," Cirocco said, for both of them. She described it to Gene.

  "Who makes buildings with rooms you can't get in or out of?" Gaby asked.

  "The chambered nautilus does," Gene said.

  "Say again?"

  "The nautilus. It makes its shell in a spiral. When the shell gets too small, it moves up and seals off part of the shell in back. You cut them in half, they're very pretty. It sounds a lot like the building you saw; little rooms on the bottom, big ones on top."

  Cirocco frowned. "But all these rooms look about the same size."

  Gene shook his head. "The difference isn't great. This room is a little taller than the one over there. There'll be smaller rooms somewhere else. These things built sideways."

  The picture that emerged of the creatures that built the glass castle was of something that worked like sea corals. The colony abandoned houses as they outgrew them, building m the re- mains. Parts of the castle towered ten levels or more. Structural strength came not from the tissue-thin walls but from the interstices that made up the edges. They were like clear lucite bars, thick as Cirocco's wrist, very hard and strong. If all the walls in the castle had been broken 'out, the outline would have remained, like the steel underpinnings of a skyscraper.

  "Whoever built it wasn't the last to use it," Gaby suggested. "Somebody moved in and made a lot of modifications, unless these creatures were considerably more sophisticated than what we decided. But either way, everybody's long gone."

  Cirocco tried not to be disappointed, but it didn't do any good. It was a letdown. They were still far from the top, and it looked like they would have to climb every meter.

  "Don't be angry."

  "What's that?" sirocco came awake slowly. Hard to believe it's been eight hours already, she thought.

  But how did he know? She had the watch.

  "Don't look at it." It was said in the same even tone, but Cirocco froze with her arm half raised. She saw Gene's face, orange in the dying firelight. He was kneeling over her.

  "Why... what is it, Gene? Is something wrong?"

  "Just don't be angry. I didn't mean to hurt her, but I couldn't very well let her watch, could I? "

  "Gaby?" She started to rise, and he let her see the knife. In the heightened awareness of the moment, she saw several things: Gene was naked; Gaby was lying face down, nude, and did not seem to be breathing Gene had an erection. There was blood on his hands. Her senses sharpened to a keen edge. She could hear his even breathing, smell blood and violence.

  "Don't be angry," he said, reasonably. "I didn't want to do it this way, but you forced me.

  "All I said was--"

  "You're angry, I can tell." He sighed at the unfairness of it all and produced a second knife-Gaby's-in his left hand. "If you think about it, you have yourself to blame. What do you think I'm made of? You women. Do your mothers tell you to be selfish? Is that it?'#

  Cirocco tried to think of a safe answer, but he apparently didn't want one. He moved over her and put the tip of a knife under her chin. She flinched; the tip bit into the soft flesh. It was colder than his eyes.

  "I don't understand why you're doing this."

  He hesitated. The second knife had been moving in the direction of her belly; now he stopped with it just out of her sight. She licked her lips and wished she could see it again.

  "That's a fair question. I've always thought about it-what man doesn't?" He searched her eyes for understanding, looked forlorn when he did not find it.

  "Ah, what's the use? You're a girls "

  "Try." The knife was moving again. She felt it press flat against the inside of her thigh. Sweat broke out on her forehead. "You don't have to do it this way. Put the knife down, and I'll give you anything you want."

  "Ah-ah." There was the knife again, waggling back and forth like a mother's admonishing finger. "I'm not a stupid man. I know how you women work."

  "I swear. It doesn't have to be this way."

  "It does. I've killed Gaby, and you won't forgive that. It never was fair, you know. You tantalize us all the time. We're always horny, and you're always saying no." He was sneering, but the expression quickly vanished to be replaced once again
by calm- ness. She had liked the sneer better.

  "I'm just evening things out. Back when you people left me alone in the dark I decided I'd do what I please. I made friends in Rhea. You're not going to like them much. I'm the Captain from now on, like I should have been in the first place. You'll do what I say. Now don't do anything stupid."

  She gasped as the sharp point of the knife tore her pants. She thought she knew what he was about to use the knife for, and wondered if she'd rather be stupid and dead than alive and mutilated. But once the pants were gone he cut no further. Her attention returned to the knife under her chin.

  He entered her. She turned her face away and the knife point followed. It hurt like hell, but that was not important. What mattered was the twitch in Gaby's cheek, the trail her hand had made through the dust while moving closer to the hatchet, her half-open eye and the gleam in it.

  Cirocco looked up at Gene and had no trouble putting fear into her voice.

  "Don't! Oh, please, don't, I'm not ready. You'll kill me!"

  "You're ready when I say you are." He lowered his head and Cirocco risked a glance at Gaby, who seemed to understand. Her eye closed.

  It all happened far away. She had no body, that was someone else who was hurting so badly. Only the knife point at her chin had meaning, until he began to tire.

  What would the price of his failure be? she wondered. Right.

  Then he can't fall. A moment would come when his attention would waver, but she had to insure that moment arrived. She began to move under him. It was the most disgusting thing she had ever done.

  "Now we see the truth," he said, with a dreamy smile.

  "Don't talk, Gene."

  "You got it. See how much better it is when you don't fight?" Was it her imagination, or was her skin not quite so taut under the knife? Had it pulled back? She tasted the thought, careful not to fool herself, and decided it was true. She had acquired an exquisite sensitivity. The slight easing of pressure was like the lifting of a great weight. ,

  He would have to close his eyes. Didn't they always close their eyes?