by John Varley
It was built in a tree of the same species as the one that sheltered Titan town 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 th
an 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 Chris.
“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.
There was something else humans had to learn which this infant had not even started on yet. Titanides never learned it; on the other hand, Titanides never had to be carried around, so it wasn’t a problem. Valiha twisted and handed the child back to its mother.
“Its diaper is full again.”
“He, Valiha. Please. His diaper is full.” Robin took him.
“I’m sorry. His sex just, seems so irrelevant at this point.”
Robin laughed bitterly.
“I wish you were right. But it’s practically all that’s important about him in this lousy world.”
Valiha didn’t want to get into that. She turned and thought of Chris again. It would be nice to see him. It had been almost a myriarev.
***
Serpent (Double-Flatted Mixolydian Trio) Madrigal had seen Chris many times over the last myriarev. He spent a lot of his time with Chris.
He viewed himself as uniquely lucky. Though Chris had not participated in the trio that gave birth to Serpent, he had acted like a father to the child for his first four years. Serpent had a Titanide father—forefather and hindfather in the same individual—and two mothers: Valiha, his hindmother, and a foremother who was now dead. But none of his parents had been quite like Chris. He knew parenting was different for humans. He had only to look at the cheerful idiot in Robin’s arms to understand why that must be so. But though Titanide childhood was short, it was there, and quite different from adulthood. As Titanides grew they tended to get serious—solemn, in Serpent’s view. Too solemn. They lost much of their sense of play.
Humans did that, too, but they didn’t go overboard about it. No Titanide father would have taught him to play baseball. Titanides liked to race, but beyond that sports were foreign to them. It hadn’t been easy to organize the leagues Chris and Serpent had set up in sports ranging from baseball and football (Chris had called it Polo at first, then threw away the mallets and just let the kids kick the ball) to tennis, hockey, and cricket, but they had done it. They had found that a Titanide raised with team sports will continue playing well into adulthood. Serpent was the best bowler in the Key of E Thunderers, the champion cricketeers of the Hyperion League.
There were a lot of reasons Serpent wanted to talk to Chris. One was his recent realization regarding the World Cup. It had been held on Earth four years earlier, in spite of the war. The matches had been spread around the globe to avoid making a tempting target. Even so, three games had ended early when stadium, players, and spectators were incinerated. Eastern Siberia had eventually claimed the Cup.
But there was simply no possibility of any games this year, a World Cup year. There were no arenas left. By default, the World Cup should be decided in Gaea. Serpent planned to organize it.
The thought so excited him that he increased his pace, only to remember for the hundredth time the tail-end charlie. He slowed, and looked over his shoulder at her, trudging along when she could just as well be riding.
He had offered her a ride, hadn’t he?
He snorted. It was her own fault if her feet were sore.
***
Nova had more than sore feet. Like her mother, she had never been known for having a long fuse. By now she was ready to explode.
Only a year ago she had known the shape of life, all the turnings of the world. The Coven floated at LaGrange Two, solid and steady and real. Then the Council had decided to move it. Too many O’Neils had been blown up. No one could tell what the maniacs on Earth would do next. So preparations had been made and the mighty engines started. The witches of the Coven proposed to fly to Alpha Centauri.
At the start of the year, Robin had been Black Madonna. Now, Robin was nothing. She had narrowly avoided execution. Her manner of leaving allowed no possibility of return. It was a staggering fall, and it had brought Nova down, too. She was a stateless person. Her entire culture was on its way to the stars.
And, of course, there was him.
What a way to sum it up, she thought. A being so terrible that a whole new set of pronouns were needed. He. Him. His. The words hurt her ears like grotesque laughter.
All that wasn’t enough. Now there was this awful place.
Upon entering it she and Robin had fought for their lives. They had killed almost a hundred people. The magnitude of the carnage had overwhelmed her. She had never killed anyone before. She knew how, but found theory and practice were completely different things. She had been sick for days. Not an hour passed that she didn’t see the heaped bodies leaking blood, or the wolf packs of children tearing the clothes off the corpses.
Robin expected Nova to treat these monstrous animals as if they were people. To be friends with them, Great Mother save us.
They all expected her to talk with this Conal abomination, this twisted, reeking, hairy, graceless, pinheaded lump of muscle whose finest hour would have been an early abortion. They were on their way to see yet another male. Apparently there hadn’t been enough of them in Bellinzona; her mother felt they had to tramp through the jungle to find this one.
Everything about Gaea was awful. The temperature was wrong. She sweated buckets every day. Climbing was all wrong. She was always too light, and kept stumbling as learned reflexes played her false.”
It was too damn dark.
The air smelled of decay, and smoke, and wild things.
It was too big. The Coven, on the rim of Gaea, would have rolled around like a BB in a truck tire.
And it never changed. Nobody ever closed the windows and let night come, or opened them for a decent day. The concept of time was not the same in here. She missed the nice little h
alf-hours and the comfortable cycles of days and weeks. Without them, she was adrift.
She wanted to go to sleep and wake up to find it had all been a dream. She would go to the Council and she and Robin would have a good laugh over it. Remember that place you went when you were a kid, mother? Well, I dreamed we went there, and you had a baby. A boy, would you believe it?
It wasn’t going to happen.
She sat down on the trail. The yellow Titanide named Serpent, which looked exactly like its mother but which she was supposed to believe was a male, stopped and called something to her. She ignored it. It waited for a moment, then went on. That was fine with Nova. She could see the treehouse now. She would go to it when she felt ready. Or maybe she’d just sit here and die.
***
The last member of the party was the happiest of the lot.
He had been near death three times in his short life, but he did not know that. His mother had been his first potential murderer. Robin had thought long and hard on it, when she saw what she had miraculously brought forth from her troubled womb into a troubled world.
Most recently he had almost been killed by a babylegger. His memories of that were vague. It had all been over so quickly. He remembered the man who had smiled down at him. He liked the man.
There were a lot of new people. He liked that. He liked the new place, too. It was easier to walk here. He didn’t fall down so much. Some of the new people were very big, and they had a lot of legs. They were many exciting colors, so bright and vivid that he laughed in delight every time he saw them. He had learned a new word: Tye-Nye.
A bright yellow Tye-Nye was carrying him now. He was satisfied with the ride. Only two things marred an other wise perfect afternoon. His ass felt wet, and he was wondering if it was about time for dinner
He was just about to mention these points when the Tye-Nye handed him to mother. Mother put him on the Tye-Nye’s back, and he watched the Tye-Nye’s long, fluffy pink hair bouncing above him as his mother changed his diaper. The Tye-Nye turned her head around, and he found that hilarious. And mother was laughing! She hadn’t been doing that much lately. Adam was ecstatic.
