by John Varley
“You got a flower for me, too, dogfood?”
Rocky turned and saw a short, powerfully built human buck, or “buck canuck” as he liked to style himself. The Titanide had known Conal for three years, and thought him beautifully insane.
“I didn’t think you went in for human—”
“Don’t say ‘tail,’ Conal, or I’ll remove some teeth.”
“What’d I say? What’s the big deal?”
“You couldn’t possibly understand, being tone-deaf to beauty. Suffice it to say that your arrival was like a turd falling into a Ming vase.”
“Well, I try.” He shrugged his fleece-lined coat up around his shoulders, looked around, and took a final puff on the stub of his cigar, then tossed it into the murky water. Conal always wore the coat. Rocky thought it made him smell interesting.
“You seen anything?” Conal finally asked. He was looking at the seven sisters guarding the Quarter. They were looking right back at him, weapons held loose but ready.
“No. I don’t know the town, but it seems quiet to me.”
“Me, too. I was hoping your nose’d smell something I ain’t been able to see. But I don’t think anybody’s been here for quite a while.”
“If they had, I’d know it.” Rocky confirmed.
“Then I guess they can go ahead.” He scowled, then looked up at Rocky. “Unless you want to talk her out of it.”
“I couldn’t, and I wouldn’t,” Rocky said. “There is something badly wrong. Something has to be done.”
“Yeah, but—”
“It’s not that dangerous, Conal. I won’t hurt her.”
“You sure as hell better not.”
***
They had bargained for a while, Cirocco and Conal, on that first day. It had been years ago, but Conal remembered it well. Conal had held out for lifetime servitude. Cirocco said that was too long: cruel and unusual punishment. She offered two myriarevs. Conal gradually came down to twenty. The Wizard offered three.
They settled on five. What Cirocco didn’t know was that Conal intended then, and intended now, to fulfill his original promise. He would serve her until he died.
He loved her with his entire soul.
Which is not to say there had never been wavering, never a bad moment. It was possible to sit alone in the dark, unguarded, and begin to feel some resentment, to taste the idea that she had treated him badly, that she had done things to him that he didn’t deserve. He had sweated many a “night” away, unsleeping in the eternal Gaean afternoon, feeling rebellion growing inside and knowing absolute terror. Because sometimes he thought that, far down in a place he could never see, he hated her, and that would be an awful thing, because she was the most wonderful person he had ever seen. She had given him life itself. He knew now, as he had not known then, that it was not something he would have done. He would have shot the stupid meddling fool, the idiot with his comic books. He’d shoot him today, if he ever encountered such a fool. One round, right through the head, wham! as was only right and proper.
The first few kilorevs had been tough. He was still amazed he had survived them. Mostly, Cirocco did not have time to worry about him, so he had been left behind in the escape-proof cave. He had a lot of time to think. As he healed, he took a look at himself for the first time in his life. Not in a mirror; there were no mirrors in the cave, and that drove him crazy for a while because he was so used to admiring the flow of muscles in his mirror, and because he wanted to see how disfigured he was. Eventually, he began looking in different directions. He started to use the mirror of past experience, and he was not pleased at what he saw.
What did he have? Adding it up, he came up with a strong body (now broken) and…his word. That was it.
Brains? Forget it. Charm? Sorry, Conal. Eloquence, virtue, integrity, restraint, honesty, gratitude, sympathy? Well….
“You’re strong,” he told himself, “but not now, and, let’s face it, she can beat you any time she needs to. You had a certain beauty, or so the girls said, but can you take credit for that? No, you were born that way. You had health, but not right now, you can hardly stand up.”
What was left? It came down to honor.
He had to laugh. “An affair of honor,” Cirocco had said, just before the Titanide clobbered him from behind. So what the hell was honor, anyway?
Conal had never heard of the Marquis of Queensbury, but he had picked up the rules of gentlemanly behavior. You don’t shoot a man in the back. Torture is contrary to the Geneva Conventions. Always fire a warning shot in the air. Tell your opponent what you’re going to do. Give the other fellow a fighting chance.
That was all very well, for games. Games were played by rules.
“Sometimes you have to pick your own rules,” Cirocco told him, much later. But by then he had already figured that out.
Did that mean there were no rules at all? No. It just meant you had to decide which ones you could live with, which ones you could survive with, because Cirocco was talking about survival and she was better at it than anyone in the history of humanity.
“First you decide how important survival is,” she said. “Then you know what you’ll do to survive.”
With enemies, there were no rules. Honor didn’t enter into it. The best way to kill an enemy was from a great distance, without warning, in the back. If the need arose to torture your enemy, you ripped his guts out. If you had to lie, you lied. It didn’t matter. This is the enemy.
Honor only arose among friends.
It was a hard concept for Conal. He had never had a friend. Cirocco seemed an unlikely place to start—seemed, in fact, a damn good candidate for the worst enemy he ever had. No one had ever hurt him a thousandth as much as she had.
But he kept coming back to his list. His word. He had given his word. Naked, defenseless, seconds from death, it had been all he had left to give, but he had given it honestly. Or so he thought. The trouble was, he kept thinking about killing her.
For a while he didn’t think survival was worth it. He stood for long hours on the edge of the precipice, ready to jump, cursing himself for the groveling he had done.
***
The first time she came back, after an absence of over a hectorev, he told her what he had been thinking. She didn’t laugh.
“I agree that one’s word is worth something,” she said. “Mine is worth something to me, so I don’t give it lightly.”
“But you’d lie to an enemy, wouldn’t you?”
“Just as much as I had to.”
He thought that over.
“I’ve already mentioned this,” she said, “but it bears repeating. An oath made under duress is not binding. I wouldn’t consider it so. An oath I haven’t given freely is no oath at all.”
“Then you don’t expect me to live up to mine, do you?”
“Frankly, no. I see no reason why you should.”
“Then why did you accept it?”
“Two reasons. I believe I can anticipate your move, if it comes, and kill you. And Hornpipe believes you’ll keep your word.”
“He will,” Hornpipe said.
***
Conal didn’t know why the Titanide was so confident. They left him again, quite soon, and he had more time to think, but he found himself going back over the same old paths. An oath given under duress…and yet, his Word.
In the end, there was nothing else. He had to jump, or he had to keep his word. Starting with that scrap dignity, perhaps he could build a man the Wizard might honor.
***
Conal and Rocky entered the Free Female quarter.
Each of the seven guards had to scrutinize Conal’s pass, and even then there was an obvious reluctance to let him through. Since the establishment of the quarter two years earlier, not one human male had gone more than fifty meters beyond the gate and lived to tell about it. But the Free Females, by their very nature, were the one human group that acknowledged the Wizard’s authority. Cirocco Jones was a goddess to them, a supernatural being, a figure of
legend come alive. Her effect on the Free Females was much the same as a certifiable, living, breathing Holmes would have had on a group of fanatic Sherlockians: whatever she asked for, she got. If she wanted this man to pass into the zone, so be it.
Beyond the guard post was a hundred-meter walkway known as the Zone of Death. There were drawbridges, metal-clad bunkers with arrow slits, and cauldrons of flammable oils, all designed to slow an assault long enough for a force of amazons to be assembled.
A woman was waiting for them. She carried her forty-five years with a serenity many hope for but few achieve. Her hair was long and white. In the manner of Free Females at home, she wore nothing above the waist. Where her right breast had been there was now a smooth, blue scar that curved from her sternum to her seventh rib.
“Was there any trouble?” the woman asked.
“Hello, Trini,” said Conal.
“No trouble,” the Titanide assured her. “Where is she?”
“This way.” Trini stepped off the dock onto the deck of a barge. They followed her to another boat, not quite as imposing. A rickety plank bridge took them to yet a third boat.
It was a fascinating journey for Rocky, who had always wondered what human nests looked like. Dirty, for the most part, he decided. Very little privacy, either. Some of the boats were quite small. There were tiny cockles with canvas awnings, and others open to the elements. All were stuffed with human females of all ages. He saw women asleep in bunks placed as far from the makeshift highway as space would allow. More women tended cooking fires, and babies.
At last they came to a larger boat with a solid deck. It was near the outside of the quarter, quite close to the open waters of Peppermint Bay. There was a big tent on the deck. Trini held a flap open and Conal and Rocky entered.
There were six Titanides in a space that might have held five comfortably. Rocky’s arrival made it seven. Besides Conal, the only other human was Cirocco Jones, who was at the far end of the tent, wrapped in blankets, reclining in something that might have been a very low barber’s chair. It put her head no more than a foot off the deck, where it was cradled between the yellow folded forelegs of Valiha (Aeolian Solo) Madrigal. The Titanide was drawing a straight razor slowly across Cirocco’s scalp, putting the finishing touches on a shave that left the Wizard’s head bare from the crown forward.
She raised her head, causing Valiha to coo a warning. Rocky noted that her head wobbled, that her eyes were not focusing well, and that, when she spoke, her speech was slurred, but that was to be expected.
“Well,” Cirocco said. “Now we can begin. Cut when ready, doc.”
***
Conal knew all but two of the Titanides. There was Rocky and Valiha, and of course Hornpipe, and Valiha’s son Serpent. Valiha and Serpent looked like identical twins except for their frontal sex organs, even though Valiha was twenty and Serpent only fifteen. For a long time Conal had been unable to tell them apart. He nodded to Viola (Hypolydian Duet) Toccata, whom he knew only slightly, and was introduced to Celesta and Clarino, both of the Psalm chord, who nodded gravely to him.
He watched Rocky move in and kneel at the Captain’s side. Serpent handed him a black bag, which he opened, producing a stethoscope. As he was fitting it to his ears, Cirocco grabbed the other end and put it to her bare head. She tapped her head with her fist.
“Dong…dong…dong…” Cirocco intoned, hollowly, then started laughing.
“Very funny, Captain,” Rocky said. He was handing gleaming steel scalpels and drills to Serpent, who was in charge of sterilization. Conal moved closer and sat beside Rocky. Cirocco reached out and took his hand, grasped it strongly.
“So glad you could come, Conal,” she said, and seemed to find it funny, because she started laughing again. Conal realized she was drugged. One of the Psalm sisters had pulled the blankets away from Cirocco’s feet and was sticking pins in them, twirling them between thumb and forefinger.
“Ouch,” Cirocco said, with no real feeling. “Ouch. Ow.”
“Does that hurt?”
“Nope. Can’t feel a thing.” And she started to giggle.
Conal was sweating. He watched Rocky bend over, pull the blanket from Cirocco’s chest, and put his ear to her heart. He listened in various places, then listened to her head. He repeated the process with the stethoscope, not seeming to have much faith in the device.
“Isn’t it awfully hot in here?” Conal asked.
“Take off your coat,” Rocky said, without looking at him.
Conal did, and realized that, if anything, it was cold in the tent. At least the sweat on his body felt clammy.
“Tell me, doc,” Cirocco said. “When you get through, will I be able to play the piano?”
“Of course,” Rocky said.
“That’s great, ’cause I—”
“—never could play it before,” Rocky finished. “That one’s terribly old, Captain.”
Conal couldn’t help it; he had never heard that one. He laughed.
“What the hell are you doing?” Cirocco roared, trying to rise. “Here I am about to die, and you think it’s funny, do you? I’ll—” Conal never heard what she’d do, as Rocky was calming her. The rage was gone as quickly as it appeared and Cirocco laughed again. “Hey, doc, will I be able to play the piano?”
Rocky was smearing a purple solution over Cirocco’s forehead. Three of the Titanides began to sing quietly. Conal knew it was a song of calming, but it didn’t do anything for him. Cirocco, on the other hand, relaxed considerably. It probably helped if you understood the words.
“You can wait outside, Conal,” Rocky said, without looking up.
“What are you talking about? I’m staying right here. Somebody’s got to be sure you do it right.”
“I really think you ought to leave,” Rocky said, looking at him.
“Nuts. I can take it.”
“Very well.”
Rocky took a scalpel, and quickly, neatly, cut a large backward “C” from the crown of Cirocco’s head to just over her eyebrows. With his purple-tinted fingers, he drew the flap of skin to the right, exposing the bloody skull below.
***
“Take him outside,” Rocky said. “He’ll be all right in a few minutes.”
He heard Celesta trotting outside with Conal’s limp body, just as he had earlier heard Conal hitting the floor, but Rocky never took his eyes from his work. He had known Conal would faint. The man had been practically screaming the fact for ten minutes. Any Titanide healer would have heard the symptoms, though they were inaudible to the human ear.
If there was one area of unqualified Titanide superiority, it was the ear.
It had been a Titanide ear that had first heard the odd sounds coming from Cirocco’s head. They were not sounds that would register on a tape recorder—may not have been sounds at all, in the human sense of the word. But successive Titanide healers had heard it: a whisper of evil, the muttering of betrayal. Something was in there that shouldn’t be. No one had any idea what it was.
Rocky had studied human anatomy. There had been talk of finding a human doctor to do the operation, but in the end Cirocco had rejected it, preferring to be in the hands of a friend.
So now here he was, preparing to open the skull of the being who stood in his world much as Jesus Christ stood to the human sect known as Christians.
He hoped no one realized how terrified he was.
“How’s it look so far?” Cirocco asked. She sounded better to Rocky: much more relaxed. He took it as a good sign.
“I can’t figure it out. There’s this big black numeral eight in a white circle…”
Cirocco chuckled. “I thought it’d be inscribed ‘Abandon hope, all ye who enter here.’” She closed her eyes for a moment, breathed deeply. “I thought I could feel that for a minute,” she said, her voice shaking.
“Impossible,” Rocky said.
“If you say so. Can I have a drink?”
Valiha held a straw to her lips, and she took a s
wallow of water.
“It’s as I thought,” Rocky said, after listening carefully. “The trouble lies deeper.”
“Not much deeper, I hope.”
Rocky shrugged as he reached for the drill. “If it is, it is beyond my powers.” He connected the drill to a batteryplant, tested it, hearing the high-pitched whine. Cirocco grimaced.
“Tell me about rock and roll,” she said.
Rocky put the point of the drill to Cirocco’s skull and turned it on.
“Rock and roll was the fusion of several musical elements present in human culture in the early 1950s,” Rocky began. “Rhythm and blues, jazz, gospel music, some country influence…it all began to come together under various names and in various styles around 1954. Most of our chord agree it achieved its first synthesis in Chuck Berry, with a song called ‘Maybellene.’”
“‘Why cancha be true?’” Cirocco sang.
Rocky moved the drill point to a new site, and looked at Cirocco suspiciously.
“You’ve been doing some research,” he accused.
“I was just curious about your chord name.”
“It was a grace note in musical history,” Rocky admitted. “For a while it possessed an attractive energy, but its potential was soon mined out. This was not rare in those days, of course; a new musical form seldom lasted two years, much less a decade.”
“Rock and roll lasted five decades, didn’t it?”
“Depends on who you talk to.” He finished the second hole and began on the third. “A species of music known as ‘rock’ persisted for a long time, but it had abandoned the zeitgeist.”
“Don’t use them big words on me. I’m just a dumb human.”
“Sorry. The creative energy was expended in increasingly byzantine production, overwhelmed by technological possibilities it did not have the balls to exploit or the wit to understand. It became a hollow thing with a glitter exterior, more concerned with process than thesis. Craftsmanship was never its strong point, and soon was forgotten entirely. An artist’s worth came to be measured in decibels and megabucks. For lack of a replacement it stumbled along, dead but not buried, until somewhere in the mid-90s, then was ignored as serious music.”
