by John Varley
“You probably should ask Chris about that. I think of it as a memorial. He liked you. He didn’t expect he’d ever see you again. He built this.”
“But it…it’s weird.”
“As I said, so is Chris.”
“What’s happening to him?” Robin said.
“You mean physically? He’s getting what Gaea promised him so long ago.”
“It’s disgusting.”
Cirocco laughed. Robin flushed again, then knew Cirocco was not laughing at her, but at some private thought.
“No, it’s not,” she said. “It’s only startling. You’re seeing it all at once. I saw it day by day, and it looked entirely natural and right. And as for startling…you shocked him more than he shocked you.”
Robin had to turn away. She knew what she looked like.
“It’s called age,” she said, bitterly. The terrible fact was that she looked a lot older than Cirocco.
“No. You’ve aged, but that’s not the shocking part. In your own way you’ve changed as radically as Chris has. Some terrible fear has marked your soul.”
“I don’t believe that. Failure and disgrace, yes. Not fear.”
“Fear,” Cirocco went on, inexorably. “The Great Mother has deserted you. Your center is gone. You no longer burn; you float, your feet unable to reach the womb of the earth. You have no place to stand, no Umbilicus.”
“How do you know these things?” Robin screamed.
“I know what I see.”
“Yes, but the words, the…the secret words…” Some of them were from Coven ritual, from ceremonies and exorcisms Robin knew she had never mentioned to the Wizard. Others were from the darkest corners of her own soul.
“I’ve had some guidance. Right now, I want to know your purpose here. Why did you come? What do you hope to do?”
Robin wiped away tears and pulled a chair closer to Cirocco. She sat down, and eventually was able to look at the older woman.
She told her story.
***
Robin had come to Gaea, like so many others, to be cured.
Gaea was a god who never gave anything away. Robin had been told she must prove herself, do something heroic, before a cure was possible. She had not been inclined to do so. Her condition had not been impossible to live with. She had dealt with it before: when her hand began to tremble with the onset of a seizure, she had simply amputated her little finger.
But through the persuasion of Gaby Plauget, Robin had embarked on a trip around the interior of the wheel, accompanied by Gaby, Cirocco, the Titanides Psaltery, Hautbois, Hornpipe, and Valiha, and Chris Major, who was also seeking a cure.
Gaby and Cirocco had an ulterior motive. They were seeking an ally among the eleven regional brains of Gaea. Gaby was seeking a lot harder than Cirocco was; the Wizard had been a hopeless alcoholic who had to be dragged into the enterprise. Some of those regional brains were allies of Gaea. Some were enemies. The lines had been drawn during the Oceanic Rebellion while humans were still living in caves.
Gaby’s plan had been nothing less than the overthrow and replacement of Gaea herself. She had been out to recruit a new God. The mission had cost her life, and possibly much more. It had cost Cirocco her status as Wizard. It remained to be seen whether it had cost the Titanides their survival as a race.
The only ones who seemed to have benefitted from the abortive quest were Robin, Chris, and the Iron Masters. Robin and Chris had been cured. The Iron Masters had, for reasons unknown, been allowed to expand from their tiny island in Phoebe until they now challenged the Titanides for dominance of the great wheel.
And at the end, Robin had headed for home, intending to live happily ever after.
“It was great for a while,” she said, and smiled at the memory. “Chris was right. There was a great deal of labra in growing back a finger. I recommend it as a way to amaze your friends.”
She knew Gaby and Cirocco had dismissed labra as the female version of macho. They had been wrong, but it didn’t really matter. The fact that it was Gaea who had replaced Robin’s severed pinky had continued to gnaw at her, and in the end hollowed out both Robin and her victory.
It was as meaningless as the third Eye, which was supposed to confer infallibility. In practice, the wearers of the Eye were bullies who could do no wrong, sanctimonious as any Pope.
“I left the Coven already at semi-mythical figure,” Robin went on. “I came back…I don’t know a word for it. The Coven had never seen anything like me.”
“Superstar,” Cirocco supplied.
“What’s that?”
“Archaic word. It’s somebody whose reputation exceeds all reasonable bounds. Pretty soon, they start to believe the reputation.” Robin considered it.
“There was some of that. Yes. I moved up as quickly as I wanted to. I could have gone faster, but…I wasn’t sure I should.”
“You heard a voice,” Cirocco suggested.
“Yes. It was my own voice. I think I could have been proclaimed the Great Mother herself. But I knew I wasn’t. I knew I wasn’t even very good.”
“Don’t be too hard on yourself. You were damn good, as I recall.”
“Damn fast. Damn strong. Damn mean and a cast-iron bitch. But where it counted, to me”—and she thumped her chest—“right in here, I knew what I was. I decided to get out of public life. There are places we can retreat…something like nuns. Isn’t that what nuns do?”
“So I’ve heard.”
“I was going to meditate for about a year. Then I was going to have a child and devote myself to raising her. But I didn’t have time. The next thing I knew, I was pregnant.”
She was silent for a moment, looking back on it. She chewed her lower lip, and at last looked back at Cirocco.
“This was a year—more than a year—after I got back from Gaea, you see. On Earth it could have just slid by. But in the Coven, we have to artificially—”
“I remember. I know what you’re talking about.”
“Yeah, but see, the women at the birth centers know who came in to have it done. When I started to swell up…” She sighed, and shook her head. “The awful thing is, if it had happened to someone else, she might have been burned. We haven’t burned anyone for Christianity for…oh, fifty years. But it looked like there were just two possibilities. Either I’d had carnal relations with a Christian demon, or…it was the Gynorum Sanctum, the union of a mortal woman with the Holy Mother, perfect and blameless.”
Cirocco studied her as she lowered her head into her hands.
“Did they really buy that?” she asked.
“Oh, they did and they didn’t. There’s a conservative faction that holds all the teachings to be literally true. Anyway, it sealed my fate. I’m not saying I didn’t help it along. For a while there I think I did believe the Great Mother had come to me. But every time I looked at Nova’s face, something told me it was someone else.”
Cirocco shook her head wearily. So much could have been avoided if she had not been busy while Robin was getting ready to leave.
Stop it, she told herself. You were busy for a while, sure, but then you were drunk for almost a kilorev.
“Did you ever suspect where the baby came from?”
“Not for a long time. Like I said, it was a lot easier to take it as it came. It wasn’t till later I consciously questioned it.”
“I could have told you Gaea would leave you with a parting practical joke. She did the same thing to me, and Gaby and August, right after we first got here. We were all pregnant. We had abortions.” She paused, and looked at Robin again. “Do you…did you have any feeling about…who the child’s father might be?”
Robin laughed.
“Go look at her. Isn’t it obvious?”
“Nova’s got your mouth.”
“Right. And she’s got Chris’s eyes.”
***
Chris was in the basement, looking for a film projector.
It was perhaps a semantic fallacy to have a “basement�
�� in a treehouse, where all levels were above the ground, but Chris had managed it. A trapdoor in the floor of the main building led to a hollowed-out area in the trunk of the great tree. This room eventually received everything Chris had never managed to find a use for. There was a lot of it.
Conal, standing on the ladder and holding the lamp high as Chris threw objects from one pile to another, surveyed the miscellany with dismay.
“Aside from being a compulsive architect,” he observed, “you’ve also got a bad case of pack-rat-itis.”
“I think it’s terminal,” Chris agreed. “Still, you could say the same thing about the Smithsonian.”
“What’s that?”
“It’s nothing, now that you mention it. Blown up many years ago. But it was a museum. And there aren’t any museums in Gaea.” He straightened, wiped a mixture of dust and sweat from his face. “It’s a dirty job, but somebody ought to do it.”
“The Titanides have a museum.”
“Point taken. But the oldest thing in it is not much older than Cirocco. They haven’t been around that long. We don’t have any human museums in Gaea. If there are any left on Earth, they won’t be around much longer. So why not start here?”
Conal took another dubious look at the piles of junk.
“Confess, Chris. You just can’t throw anything away.”
“Guilty.” He reached deep into a stack of oddments, and came up with an ancient Kodak Brownie. “But you never know when you’ll need something.”
“Yeah, but where do you get it all?”
Chris shooed Conal up the ladder, followed him out, and shut the trapdoor behind him. Conal followed him through the maze of doors and rooms until they reached the space Chris had set aside as his workshop. It was actually several rooms, and in them Chris was able to do everything from glassblowing to repairing computers.
He set the projector on a workbench and began taking it apart.
“I just pick things up here and there,” he said. “That’s how it started. Nowadays, all the Titanides who come calling bring a gift. They do a lot of trading. No telling what they’ll pick up. Not much stuff gets here from Earth anymore, but in the old days just about anything might come in. Settlers brought most of their possessions. This was back before the War.”
He got the side panel off and peered in, blowing away clumps of dust. He poked a finger into the mechanism, made a wheel turn. He pulled a long glass bulb out of the projector and flipped it toward Conal, who snagged it. “Test that out, would you? I doubt it’s any good. I’ll probably have to blow another one.”
Conal turned toward the electrical bench. He clamped the bulb and took two insulated wires with bare ends, touched one to the brass casing and the other to the dull metal tip. He flipped a switch, and the filament glowed brightly.
Chris brought the projector over and set it near the bulb.
“So it does work, huh? That’ll save some time.” He took it and screwed it back in place, then connected several devices together on the workbench and finally touched two wires to contacts on the projector’s motor. It hummed and there was the faint smell of ozone, but nothing else happened. Chris muttered and tried a new arrangement of transformers. Still nothing. He looked up, to see Cirocco and Robin enter the room. Trailing a little behind them was Nova.
“Cirocco,” Chris said, “I can go find a new motor for this thing and rig up a way to make it run the film drive. Or…” He gestured to her, then to the projector. “Do you think you can heal it?”
She gave him an odd look, then shrugged and walked to the workbench. She looked at the projector, put her hands on it, and frowned. Sparks crackled; Robin gasped, but Cirocco merely blinked. Something clattered briefly and then stopped. Cirocco leaned closer, oblivious to the blue Jacob’s ladders that arced in the gaps between her fingers. Just for a second Conal saw a dreamy blurring of her eyes, then she straightened and put the tip of her thumb in her mouth.
“Bastard burned me,” she muttered, sucking on it.
Chris raised an eyebrow, then punched the projector’s power button. It stuttered, then ran as smoothly as such an old machine ever would.
No one said anything. Conal fetched chairs as Chris threaded Cirocco’s film through the projector. He had no take-up reel, but it hardly mattered, as he assumed no one would want to see this more than once.
Cirocco and Robin tacked a sheet over the far wall.
“Shouldn’t we invite the Titanides?” Robin asked.
“Motion pictures upset them,” Cirocco said.
“We’re not sure what it is,” Chris added, answering the question in Robin’s eyes. “Their brains don’t seem equipped to handle it. They get nauseous, like they were seasick.”
He started the projector.
In a moment there was a retching sound from the doorway. Conal turned and saw Nova fleeing the images on the screen. He thought about going after her, but knew it was a silly notion. He turned back to the film.
Gaea bit the head off a second man. This one was dressed in an orange robe. The first had been in a traditional priest’s collar and black vestments.
It was a warm-up for the match with Kong. The giant ape could be seen hovering in the background of some of the shots. The bolex who shot them had been more concerned with the eating of the holy men. Each shot was rock-steady and carefully framed.
The fight began. Gaea and Kong grappled. Kong went sailing over Gaea’s head to land on his back. He seemed stunned as Gaea lumbered over and pinned him. Gaea was thrown off the great beast. He came after her. There was a gap, and Kong was down again. Gaea hovered over him, then pounced.
She seemed to be doing more than just pinning him this time. Conal couldn’t figure it out. He stared at the screen, his mouth dry, fascinated and ashamed of it. Finally he had to look away. He studied Chris, Cirocco, Robin…anything but the screen.
“I would have sworn he was asexual,” Cirocco said at one point.
“It was well-hidden,” Chris said. “She had to drag it out of him.”
“Great Mother preserve us,” Robin whispered.
Conal looked back. He hadn’t thought it was possible for a female to force sex on a male. Perhaps it wouldn’t have been, but Kong was badly injured. Blood gushed from a hole in his chest as Gaea straddled him. She washed herself in it.
“Turn it off,” Conal pleaded. Cirocco glanced at him, her face stony, and shook her head. He could leave, or he could watch. He dragged his eyes back.
Gaea staggered, seeming drunk. She ran into the stone wall of the cave, and fell onto her side. The screen went black for an instant, then lit again. Gaea was on her side, still nude. The blood was drying on her face and hands. She rolled onto her back. She moaned. Her stomach was heaving up and down.
“She’s giving birth,” Chris said.
“Yeah,” Cirocco growled. “But giving birth to what?”
The end of the film ran through the shutter mechanism and trailed down to the floor. The white screen flickered and lit three pale faces until Chris mercifully shut it off.
***
It was a camel, and it was dead.
The camel had been born alive and Gaea had caused it to be included in the entourage from Kong mountain to the current site of Pandemonium, trying to think of a use for it.
She had not planned on a camel. She didn’t plan much of anything these days. She was enjoying chaos. It was a hell of a lot more fun than running the friggin’ world.
Gaea gave birth to things simply because it seemed the proper function for a god. She was as surprised as anyone else at what came out. Her mind had fragmented into many parts, each independent, some crazier than the others, but all quite mad.
Mental note: Show The Three Faces of Eve one day soon.
The part of her that supervised her equivalent of a uterus didn’t tell the rest of her what it was up to. She was satisfied with the arrangement. After three million years a surprise was worth something. Once a kilorev her body presented her with som
ething new. In the past year she had borne a litter of dragons, a four-meter tiger, and a creature that was half Model-T and half octopus. Most of them did not live long, lacking such items as hearts or noses. The rest were mules. Her subconscious couldn’t be bothered with the fine details.
But the camel was pretty good. It was a full-grown dromedary, mean as the welfare department, and now it was dead because she had decided what to do with it. She was going to put it through the eye of a needle.
It was a large needle, granted. There was a big funnel, and machinery to grind the camel fine.
With a hundred cameras rolling, Gaea mounted the scaffolding above the funnel and poured the first barrel of camel puree into it.
Three revs later, tired and peckish, she called a halt. About half the camel was through and the rest would just be a matter of tedious work. Besides, the footage she had could be edited with shots she’d have taken of the funnel after it was cleaned out.
She settled in her chair to watch the day’s double feature, which was Lawrence of Arabia and…she couldn’t remember. She twisted and squirmed in her seat, impatient.
When was Cirocco going to get started?
Gaea was waiting for the Main Event.
Four
“Robin, wake up.”
Robin was instantly alert. She saw Cirocco looming over her.
“Nothing’s wrong. Don’t be afraid.”
“I’m not.” She rubbed her eyes. “What time…”
Cirocco smiled as she saw Robin remember where she was.
“You’ve been asleep for about seven hours. Is that enough?”
“Sure.” Cirocco was still whispering, so Robin did, too. “But…enough for what?”
“I want you to come with me,” Cirocco said.
***
Nova kept her eyes closed and didn’t move while her mother dressed. After Robin had left the room, shutting the door behind her, Nova sat up and crept to the door. She opened it a fraction of an inch, saw Cirocco and Robin talking quietly in the hallway. They moved out of her sight. She heard them going down the stairs to the first floor.
