by John Varley
Robin counted fifty more steps.
“Maybe I haven’t, either,” she finally said.
“Naturally, I’m implying that I have,” Cirocco said, with a chuckle. “Let me tell you what I think, and you can make of it what you will.”
Ten more steps.
“Sin is a violation of the laws of the tribe,” Cirocco said. “On Earth, in most societies, what you practice in the Coven was a sin. There’s another word, too. Perversion. Historically, most humans have seen homosexuality as a perversion. Now, I’ve heard about a hundred theories as to why people are homosexual. Doctors say it happened in childhood. Biochemists say it’s all chemicals in the brain. Militant gays say being gay is good for you, and so forth. In the Coven, you say men are evil beings, and only an evil woman could mate with one.
“I don’t have a theory. I don’t care. It just isn’t important to me if somebody’s heterosexual or homosexual.
“But it’s important to you. In your mind, you have sinned by having carnal knowledge with a man. You’re a pervert.”
Another fifty steps went by as Robin thought this over. It wasn’t a new thought to her.
“I don’t know if this helps me,” she said, at last.
“I didn’t promise to help. I think your only hope is to look at it objectively. I’ve tried to. What I’ve concluded is that, for reasons I don’t understand, some people are one way and some people are the other. On Earth, with overwhelming societal reasons to be heterosexual, there have always been those who are not. In the Coven, it’s like a mirror image. I suspect there might have been a fair number of unhappy women in the Coven. They probably didn’t even know what was making them unhappy. Maybe they dreamed about it. Sinful dreams. But their problem was that—for whatever reason, biological, behavioral, hormonal—they were…well, for want of a better word, they were gay. They’d have been happier with male sex partners. I don’t know if you’re born gay or are made gay—on Earth, or in the Coven. But I think you’re a pervert.”
Robin felt the blood rushing to her face, but did not break stride on the long descent. It was best to have it out.
“You think I have to have a man.”
“It’s not that simple. But something in your personality meshes with something in Conal’s. If he’d been a woman, you’d be the happiest person in Gaea right now. Since he’s a man, you’re one of the most miserable. It’s because you’ve bought the Coven’s big lie, even though you think you’re too adult for all that. There were millions of Earth men and women who bought the Earth cultures’ big lies, and they died just as unhappy as you are now. And I suggest to you that it’s a foolish thing.”
“Yeah, but…damn it, Cirocco, I can see that. I’ve had those thoughts—”
“But you haven’t fought them hard enough.”
“But what about Nova?”
“What about her? If she can’t accept you the way you are, then she isn’t the person you hoped she would be.”
Robin thought about it for many hundred steps.
“She’s grown up,” Cirocco said. “She can make her own decisions.”
“I know that. But—”
“She represents the unforgiving weight of Coven morality.”
“But…can’t I make her get over it?”
“No. I’m not even sure you can help her. But…maybe I shouldn’t say this, but I think time is going to cure your problem. Time, and a Titanide.”
Robin questioned her about that, but Cirocco would say no more.
“So you think I should let Conal move back in?”
“Do you love him?”
“Sometimes I think I do.”
“I don’t know a lot of things for sure, but one thing I’m pretty sure about is that love is the only thing that’s worth much.”
“He makes me happy,” Robin admitted.
“All the better.”
“We’re…very good in bed.”
“Then you’re a fool to be anywhere else. It was good enough for your great-great-great grandmaw. You are descended from a long line of lesbians, but there’s a touch of perversion in your blood.”
Another hundred steps went by, then still another.
“Okay. I’ll think about it,” Robin said. “You told me what sin is. What’s evil?”
“Robin…I know it when I see it.”
That was all there was time for, as, to Robin’s surprise, she found herself at the bottom of the Dione stairs.
It was nothing like the other regional brains. Robin had seen three of them: Crius, still loyal to Gaea; Tethys, an enemy; and Thea, one of Gaea’s strongest allies. The twelve regional brains had chosen sides long ago, during the Oceanic Rebellion, when the land itself had become disloyal to Gaea.
It had been Dione’s misfortune to be located between Metis and Iapetus, two of Oceanus’ strongest and most effective supporters. When war came, she was squeezed between the two and mortally wounded. It had taken her a long time to die, but she had been dead now for at least five hundred years.
It was dark at the bottom of the staircase. Their footsteps echoed. The moat surrounding the huge conical tower that had once been Dione was dry. Where Tethys had glowed with a red inner light and had seemed alert and aware even in his utter immobility, Dione was obviously a corpse. Parts of the tower had collapsed. Robin could glimpse a lattice-like internal structure through the gaping holes. When Cirocco’s flashlight fell on it, it threw back a million shattered reflections.
When the flashlight turned the other way, the reflections were only two. The twin gleams were about two meters apart, and came from inside a big, arched tunnel entrance. It looked like a train was sitting just inside.
“Come on out, Nasu,” Cirocco whispered.
Robin’s heart turned over. She fell back through the years, twenty and more…
…to the day when, as a young girl, she had been given the tiny snake, a South American anaconda, Eunectes murinus, and selected it as her demon. No cats or crows for Robin; she would have a serpent. She named it Nasu, which someone told her meant “little pig” in some Earth language, after watching it devour six terrified mice in one meal.
…to arriving in Gaea, Nasu in her handbag, terrified and confused by Customs, and by the low gravity. Nasu had bitten her three times that day.
…to losing the snake somewhere in the depths of Gaea between Tethys and Thea. She and Chris had looked for a long time, had set out bait, called endlessly, to no avail. Chris had tried to convince her the snake would find prey down there in the darkness, that she could survive. Robin had tried to believe it was so, and had failed.
She had meant to keep the snake all her life. She had intended to grow old with this reptile. She knew they could grow to ten meters in length and outweigh a mere python, inch for inch, by a factor of two. A truly remarkable snake, the anaconda….
Nasu made a hissing sound that raised the hairs on the back of Robin’s neck. There must have been sounds like that, though not so deep or so loud, in the swamps of the Cretaceous Period. A remarkable snake, but they didn’t grow that big.
“Sh-sh-sh…Cirocco…let’s get—”
Nasu moved. Surely there could never have been a slither like that since the dawn of time. It was a slither to make tyrannosaurs run squealing into the brush, to loosen the bowels of a wolverine, to give lions and tigers cardiac arrest.
To stop Robin’s heart.
The anaconda’s head came out of the tunnel and it stopped. Her tongue was twice the girth of a full-grown anaconda, and it slid out and flicked this way and that. Her head was completely white. It was about the size of the locomotive Robin had first visualized in the darkness. The eyes were golden, with narrow black slits.
“Talk to her, Robin,” Cirocco whispered.
“Cirocco!” Robin hissed, urgently. “I don’t think you understand! An anaconda isn’t a puppy dog or a kitty cat.”
“I know that.”
“You don’t! You can care for them, but you never own them.
They tolerate you because you’re too big to eat. If she’s hungry…”
“She’s not. I know a little about this, babe. There’s big game down here. You don’t think she grew that big eating chickens and rabbits, do you?”
“I don’t believe she grew that big at all! In twenty years? That’s impossible.”
There was that awful slithering sound again, and twenty more meters of Nasu entered the dark chamber. She paused, and tasted the air again.
“She won’t remember me. She’s not a pet, damn it. I had to handle her carefully, and even then I got bites.”
“I promise you, Robin, she’s not hungry. And even if she was, she wouldn’t bother with anything as small as us.”
“I don’t understand what you want me to do.”
“Just stand your ground and talk to her. Say the things you used to say to her twenty years ago. Get her used to you…and don’t run away.”
So Robin did. They were three or four hundred meters from the snake. Every few minutes there would be more slithering, and another fifty meters would emerge from the tunnel. There was no sign Nasu was about to run out of meters.
There came a time when the head was no more than two meters away. Robin knew what came next, and braced herself for it.
The great tongue came out. It touched her lightly on her forearms, flirted briefly with the textures of her clothing, flicked over her hair.
And it was all right.
The tongue was moist and cool, but not unpleasant. And in that moment of touching, Robin somehow knew the snake remembered her. The touch of the tongue seemed to pass some sign of recognition from Nasu to Robin. I know you.
Nasu moved again, the great head lifted slightly off the floor, and Robin found herself in a semi-circle of white snake higher than her head. One fearful yellow eye regarded her with reptilian speculation, yet she was not afraid. The head tilted a little….
Robin remembered something Nasu had liked. She had sometimes rubbed Nasu on the top of the head, with her forefinger. The snake would rise to it, coil around her arm, and present herself for more.
She reached up and, with both fists, rubbed the smooth skin on top of Nasu’s head. The snake made a relatively small hissing sound—no worse than an ocean liner coming into port—and retreated. The tongue touched her again, and Nasu moved around her from the other side and tilted her head the other way for more rubbing.
Cirocco moved slowly up to join them. Nasu watched placidly.
“Okay,” Robin said, quietly. “I’ve talked to her. Now what?”
“Obviously, this is more than an anaconda,” Cirocco began.
“Obviously.”
“I don’t know what changed her. Diet? Low gravity? Something, anyway. She’s adapted to living underground. I’ve spotted her two or three times, bigger each time, and she’s stayed out of my way. I have reason to believe she’s a lot more intelligent than she was.”
“Why?”
“A friend told me she might be. The next time I saw Nasu, I told her to meet me here in Dione if she wanted to be with her old friend again. And here she is.”
Robin was impressed, but beginning to be suspicious.
“So what’s the purpose?”
Cirocco sighed.
“You asked me what evil is. Maybe this is. I’ve thought about it a long time, but I’m afraid I can’t get much of a handle on what might seem an evil thing to a snake. I don’t think she loves Gaea. And anyway, all I can do is suggest. The rest is up to you, and her.”
“Suggest what?”
“That you ask her to follow us to Hyperion, to slay Gaea.”
Twenty-seven
Nova looked up at Virginal and tried to conceal her disappointment.
“Are you tired? Is that it?”
“No,” Virginal said. “I…just don’t feel like running today.”
“Not feeling good?” Nova couldn’t remember any Titanide complaining of so much as a headache. They were disgustingly healthy. Short of broken bones or major internal injuries, not much could keep a Titanide down.
It was her right, of course. Nova had no illusions of owning Virginal, or even of having a claim on the Titanide’s time. But it had been a thing they did regularly since coming to Bellinzona. Nova would pack a huge picnic lunch and they would gallop off to some remote, scary, mountainous place, Nova clinging for her life yet knowing she was in little danger. They would eat, talk of this and that, Nova would nap while Virginal had her dream-time.
At first, they had done it faithfully, once every hectorev. As Nova’s responsibilities grew she had found less and less time for the outings. But it was her only real recreation, her only escape from the eternal, dreary numbers. Football bored her. She didn’t drink.
“Well, maybe tomorrow then,” she said, using the common Bellinzona term for “after my next sleep period.”
To her surprise, Virginal hesitated, then looked away from her.
“I don’t think so,” she said, reluctantly.
Nova dropped the heavy pack on the wooden causeway and put her hands on her hips.
“Okay. There’s something on your mind. I think I have a right to hear about it.”
“I’m not sure you do,” Virginal said. She looked pained. “Perhaps Tambura would like to go riding with you. I can ask her.”
“Tambura? Why her? Because she’s a baby?”
“She can bear you with no trouble.”
“That’s not the point, Virginal!” She pulled herself back from the edge of anger and tried again.
“Are you saying…you don’t want to ride with me today, tomorrow…forever?”
“Yes,” Virginal said, gratefully.
“But…why?”
“It is not a ‘why’ thing,” Virginal said, uncomfortably.
Nova tumbled the sentence around in her mind, trying to make sense of it. Not a “why” thing. But there’s always a why. Titanides were honest folk, but they did not always tell the whole truth.
“Don’t you like me anymore?” Nova asked.
“I still like you.”
“Then…if you can’t tell me why, you can tell me what…what’s different. What’s changed?”
Virginal nodded reluctantly.
“There is a thing,” Virginal finally said. “Growing in your head.”
Nova involuntarily put her hand to her forehead. She immediately thought of Snitch, and felt ice and spiders sliding on her skin.
But she couldn’t have meant that.
“I thought it would quickly die,” Virginal said. “But you are nourishing it now, and it will soon be too big to kill. I weep for this. I wish to say good-by to you now, before the thing consumes the Nova I have loved.”
Once again, Nova tried very hard, and this time she came up with something.
“Does this have to do with my mother?”
Virginal smiled, pleased to have gotten through.
“Yes. Of course. That is the seed of it.”
Nova felt the anger building again. She wondered if she would be able to restrain it this time.
“Listen, damn you, if Robin put you up to this—”
Virginal slapped her. It was quite a light slap for a Titanide. It didn’t quite knock her over.
“It was Cirocco, wasn’t it? She told you what I—”
Virginal slapped her again. She tasted blood. And she was crying.
“I’m very sorry,” Virginal said. “I have my pride, too. No one is playing a trick on you. I would not allow myself to be the instrument of anyone’s schemes for your reunion with your mother.”
“It’s none of your business!”
“That’s exactly right. It’s none of my business at all. You have your own life to lead, and you must do as you think best.” She turned and started off.
Nova chased after her, grabbed her arm.
“Wait. Please wait, Virginal. Listen, I…what can I do?”
Virginal stopped, and sighed.
“I know you don’t intend to b
e impolite, but offering advice in a situation like this is considered rude by my people. I cannot chart a course for you.”
“Make up with my mother, right?” Nova said, bitterly. “Tell her it’s okay for her to…to break every solemn vow…to consort with that…”
“I don’t know if that would help you. I…have said too much. Go to Tambura. She is young, and will not see the thing for a time. You can go for rides in the country with her.”
“For a…you mean other Titanides can—”
The enormity of the idea overwhelmed her. She felt naked. Were all her secret thoughts on display to every Titanide?
What do they see?
Virginal reached into her pouch and came up with a small flat piece of wood, the kind she often used for her carving.
It showed a girl, easily recognizable as Nova, sitting in a box with a stony expression on her face. Outside the box were others—Robin? Conal? Virginal?—not as distinct, but in attitudes of sorrow. Nova realized the box might be a coffin. But the girl inside was not dead. It made her feel sick, and she tried to hand it back.
“Look more closely at the face,” Virginal commanded.
She did. It had seemed expressionless. On closer examination, she saw a smug, cat-like twist of the lips. Self-satisfied? The eyes were empty holes.
She thrust it away. Virginal took it, glanced sadly at it, then scaled it out over the water of Moros.
“Shouldn’t you keep that?” Nova asked, bitterly. “It might be worth something someday. But maybe it’s a bit over-done. A little too overtly symbolic. If you try again, I’m sure you could get it just right.”
“That was the fifth in a series, Nova. I made them during my last five dream-times. I have tried to ignore them. I have thrown them away. But I can no longer ignore what my dreams are telling me. You are rejecting those who love you. This is sad. You are enjoying it. This is something which—as you say—is not my business, but something I cannot be around. Good-by.”
“Wait. Please don’t go yet. I’ll…I’ll go tell her it’s okay. I’ll tell her I’m sorry.”
Virginal hesitated, then slowly shook her head.
“I don’t know if it will be enough.”
