by John Varley
It was an odd thing about Whistlestop, Gaea thought. She’d had the reports of his activities over Bellinzona. Hearing it and seeing it were two different things. A normally cautious blimp wouldn’t want to be in the same airspace as those dangerous little fire-breathing planes. And a bottle rocket fired in his direction ought to be enough to send him fleeing into Rhea as fast as his massive back fins could take him, much less the huge airbursts Gaea was sending into the sky. But Whistlestop didn’t seem to care.
Before long both the fireworks and the skywriting were over. They had both been symbolic, Gaea presumed. Cirocco was doing well in that direction. She wondered if she would do as well when the fighting started.
That was when the ground began to move under her feet.
***
Only one of her Generals had known what Cirocco was talking about when she mentioned a bullfight. Even he hadn’t seen one.
She thought she was the last living human to have witnessed a real live bullfight. Her mother had taken her to one when she was quite young, shortly before they had been outlawed in Spain, the last country to permit them.
Cirocco’s mother had felt it was wrong to shield a child from all the world’s ugliness and brutality. She had not approved of bullfighting—which was a political issue on the order of the Save the Whales movement a few decades earlier—but thought it would be an educational experience. Cirocco was a child of war, a rape-child, and her mother, a tough, self-reliant woman, had always been a little strange after her time in the Arab prison camp.
It was one of Cirocco’s most vivid childhood memories.
Few spectacles are as colorful. The matador’s costume was not called a suit of lights for nothing.
She had watched in fascination as the men on horseback rode up to the mighty bull and drove their lances into his back. She remembered the bright red blood dripping down the sides of the bull. By the time the matador made his appearance, the bull was a pitiful sight: dazed, confused, and angry enough to charge at anything that moved.
So then the little pissant matador moved in. With stunning machismo he toyed with the animal, faking it out time after time with his magical cape, turning his back on it as it stood in stupefied pain, unable to understand why the world had turned against it in such a grotesque manner. Cirocco had wanted to divorce herself from the crowd. She hated the crowd. She wanted to see the bull rip the matador from his balls to his chin, and she would cheer as his guts steamed in the hot Spanish sun.
But it didn’t turn out that way. The bad guy won. The stinking little prick faced the half-dead bull and plunged his sword into its heart. Then he strutted away to deafening applause, and if Cirocco had possessed a rifle and the know-how to use it, he would have been a dead little prick. Instead, she threw up.
And now, she proposed to be the matador.
There were a couple of things to keep in mind, before she drowned in self-disgust. For one, Gaea was not some dumb toro. She was not helpless, not innocent, and not stupid. For another, Cirocco was not fighting for sport. In any sane appraisal, Gaea had most of the advantages.
To the person who knew nothing about bullfighting, it would seem at first glance that the bull had all the advantages, too. Analyzing it, watching the preparations and comparing the minds of the bull and the matador, one soon realized that only the most idiotic matador was in any danger at all. He had his moment of sport with the tired beast, killed it…and fooled everyone into thinking he had done something glorious instead of craven and cowardly.
But the principle was the same. Cirocco intended to keep her distracted, in pain, always watching the bright red cape, never understanding why her horns failed to do any good…and slipping the sword in when Gaea was mentally and emotionally exhausted.
So. The first part of the show was done. The words in the sky, the loud music. Gaea had helped out with fireworks.
“Remember,” Gaby had said, when last they met. “In many ways, Gaea has regressed mentally to about the age of five. She loves spectacle. It’s what attracted her to movies in the first place. It’s the basic reason she started the war, god help us all. Give her a good one, Rocky, and I’ll take care of the rest. But don’t forget, even for a moment, that it’s only part of her that’s child-like. The rest of her will be alert for a trick. She doesn’t know where it will come from. She doesn’t suspect we know as much as we do. Both times, when you go for her, it should look like you really mean it.”
Bearing all that in mind, Cirocco gestured the camera crew out of her way, stepped forward a little ways, folded her arms across her chest, and summoned Nasu.
***
The ground buckled under Gaea. She fell a few feet, her arms waving, then turned and watched in amazement as the Twenty-four Carat Highway exploded.
It was a rippling explosion, working its way from a point halfway to Tara to a point just under her feet. Solid gold bricks and clods of dirt flew in every direction—and a mammoth loop of something coiled around her ankle.
She was jerked off her feet and stared up as Nasu, pearly white and scaled, reared three hundred meters above her.
Monty Anaconda, she thought, and rolled away.
***
Chris and Adam watched from the balcony of Tara.
“King Kong!” Adam screeched.
Chris glanced nervously at him. He seemed to be enjoying it.
***
The snake quickly looped its massive coils around Gaea. Gaea rolled. She rolled so hard and so fast that she had demolished three soundstages before she was able to struggle to her feet. She killed hundreds of extras during the roll. Those who saw her get up could barely believe their eyes. All that could be seen of Gaea was her feet, and part of one leg.
Then an arm struggled free.
There was the sound of breaking bones. Nobody figured it was the snake that was getting crushed. High above her, the snake looked down impassively on her victim. It had been a long time since she had attacked prey as satisfying as this. Heffalumps were boring. They didn’t even run.
Then the other arm was free. The hands groped, found a loop, and started to pull at it.
Snakes don’t have any facial expression. About all they can do is open their mouths, blink, and flick their tongues. Nasu’s tail began to thrash.
Gaea, still blinded, staggered toward the wall. She hit it, seemed to think that was a good idea, and backed off to hit it again. The top three meters of the wall crumpled. She hit it again.
Some of Nasu’s coils loosened. The top of Gaea’s head was now visible. There were more crunching sounds. Gaea’s bones had sounded like redwoods snapping off at ground level. Nasu’s bones were more flexible, and sounded like two-by-fours breaking.
Gaea started groping for the snake’s head. Nasu bobbed and weaved, and squeezed even harder. A forest of redwoods cracked beneath the terrible pressure.
Then Gaea was on top of the wall. And she was peeling the snake away from her, ten meters at a time. Those parts she pulled away didn’t move.
Nasu opened her mouth. It was all she could do.
Gaea fell backwards, and the Universal globe was knocked from its turntable and went rolling down the far side of the wall. She struggled up again…and finally she had the snake’s head. She opened its mouth, kept opening it and opening it.
Nasu’s head cracked. Gaea pounded it against the wall over and over, until it was a limp mass. She stood, winded and confused, holding the head of the dead snake. Then she tossed it and a hundred meters of coils over the side of the wall, down into the moat. Sharks quickly converged on it and began a feeding frenzy.
Gaea was…bent. None of her joints looked right. Her head was a squashed melon, her back took a series of horrible turns, like a Swiss mountain road.
Then she started to squirm. She threw one hand up high, and something snapped into place. She moved her hips, and there was another loud cracking sound. She pressed her palms to her face, setting bones back into place. Step by step, she put herself back tog
ether until she stood, whole, unmarked, and glaring out at Cirocco, who still stood impassively, arms folded.
“That was a stinking trick, you bitch!” she shouted. Then she turned, leaped down on the inside of the wall, and shouted to the gatekeeper.
“Open this door! Lower that bridge. I’m going out to get her.”
One of her military advisors tried to say something. It earned him a kick that dropped his broken body ten miles away, in Warner territory. And the man in charge of the gate was already frantically cranking it open.
Gaea put her foot on the drawbridge as it started to lower. Her weight caused the pulley to turn so fast the rope smoked and caught fire. Then she strode over the bridge and onto the Universal causeway.
She was out of the magic circle.
Twenty
Chris reached into the cooler beside his chair—Gaea had been quite kind in providing all the coolers and all the beer he needed; an ice-cold bottle was never more than a few steps away—pulled out a bottle, and uncapped it. The encounter with the monster snake had been frightening at first. But, as it went on, it became more and more like the hundreds of monster movies he had seen in the last year. It was unreal. It was preordained. One knew the woman was going to kill the snake, and she had done so.
He was beginning to feel a pleasant buzz from the beer. Adam still sat on the floor and stared, spellbound, through the posts of the balcony. He had never seen a movie quite like this one. From time to time he would jump up and run to the telescope for a better view.
Chris had never felt so helpless. But Cirocco had been quite explicit in her orders. He was to stay put until she came to get them out. Well, she was out there, all right—just a black speck at the head of an improbable army. Was he supposed to march out the Universal gate, side-stepping Gaea as she battled the snake? It didn’t make a lot of sense, and he had felt no impulse to do it.
Someone will come for you, Cirocco had said.
He wished that someone would get here.
Gaby tapped him on the shoulder.
He dropped his beer bottle, which shattered on the marble terrace. Adam laughed when he saw the broken glass. It was just like the Three Stooges.
“Chris, are you sober?” she asked, as her eyes narrowed.
“Sober enough.”
“Then here’s what you have to do.”
She told him. It didn’t take long. It was not too complicated, but it was frightening. One year I sat here, he thought. One year with nothing to do but talk baby-talk. Now I have to be a superhero.
He knew he would start to whine in a moment, so he nodded his head.
And Gaby was gone.
He hurried to Adam, picked him up, and smiled as well as he could.
“We’re going to take a walk,” he said.
“Don’t wanna. I wanna watch Gaea fightin’ some more.”
“We’ll do that later. This is going to be even better.”
Adam looked doubtful, but said nothing as Chris hurried down the stairs, past the sleeping forms of Amparo and Sushi and all the other household servants. He went out the back door of Tara, and into the strand-forest behind it.
***
Gaea paused in the middle of the causeway. Something didn’t feel right.
Her mind was a fragmented thing, but she was used to that, knew how to deal with it. A growing percentage of her had come to be concentrated in this body. While fighting the snake, she had been able to think of almost nothing else. It was the same way when she concentrated her energies on healing herself.
But now something else was happening. She’d have it in a minute. The great brow furrowed in thought.
Then there were shouts. At the same time, the other group of Titanides, who were organized into a drum and bugle corps, began an exceptionally loud number, and started marching toward the east. It left Cirocco out there alone, almost a kilometer in front of her army.
Let’s see now. The first group of Titanides must almost be to the Disney gate by now. This new group was headed the other way, toward Goldwyn. Was Cirocco dispersing her forces, getting ready for an attack?
There were twelve explosions. Gaea looked up, saw the tiny planes passing by again, moving west to east. Another factor to consider. The planes passed Whistlestop…who seemed shorter, somehow. And the blimp seemed to be smoking or steaming….
She figured it out. Whistlestop looked shorter because he was coming at her. As she watched he straightened his course even more, until he was almost nose-down. Tons of ballast water spilled from his rear end, and it rose and rose, until he was a huge circle in the air, getting bigger.
The “steam” was cherubs flying away from his upper vent holes, and a million creatures, some no larger than a mouse, leaping out the sides at the ends of tiny parachutes. An evacuation was under way. It was an awesome sight, accompanied by an awesome sound: a high, mournful wail that loosened her teeth.
It was a blimp’s death-cry.
***
Luther stood alone, atop the wall near his chapel beside the Goldwyn Gate. It looked as if he would be left out of the action.
He knew he didn’t have long to live. He had endured wounds at the hands of Pope Joan’s Kollege of Kardinals, he had been ignored by Gaea for too long following Kali’s triumph. He was out of the inner circle, and it pained him, as all he wished to do was serve Gaea.
He watched the battle with the snake. Gaea won, and he felt neither pleasure nor pain.
He saw the blimp moving into position…
And that tiny part of his mind still attuned to Gaea’s thoughts picked up her moment of doubt before she looked up into the sky.
He fell to his knees. He tore at his flesh, and he prayed.
Luther’s mind was like a truck with square wheels. It was possible to move it, but only with great effort. He strained, lifting his mind up onto the edge, and then it thumped solidly down on a new thought. Then once again he strained.
Where is the Child? he thought.
Strain, lift…thump.
The devil’s army is all here, in the north. Thump.
What if this is all a distraction? Thump. What if the real attack is coming from somewhere else?
A voice whispered very close to his ear. It sounded like his wife…but he didn’t have a wife. It was Gaea…of course, it was Gaea.
“The Fox Gate is due south,” the voice said.
“Fox Gate, Fox Gate,” Luther muttered. Well, not actually. His mouth was such a ruin now that all he could say was “Aah gay, aah gay.”
There was a train waiting in the Goldwyn station. Luther climbed aboard, out onto the narrow monorail track that ran around the top of the wall.
For once there was a good head of steam in the thing. He got into the engineer’s cab and pulled the big iron lever all the way back. The train started to move, and quickly gathered speed.
***
Chris ran through the strand-forest. Adam seemed to love it.
“Faster, Daddy, faster!” he shouted.
It would have been pitch dark, but for a mysterious blue light that floated on ahead of them. He had to hope it was leading the way, because without it, and even with a flashlight, he would soon have been hopelessly lost.
“Catch it, Daddy!”
I hope not, he thought. If I caught it, I wouldn’t know what to do with it. I hope it just keeps floating on out there, fifty meters ahead, and I hope I don’t stumble over anything in here.
Far away, he heard a deep, sustained, rumbling explosion.
He wondered what it was.
***
Calvin sat in the bombardier’s seat, just under the very tip of Whistlestop’s great airframe. He was swathed in rich fabrics, but he shivered. He didn’t feel so good. He couldn’t get rid of the chill. Everything he ate seemed to come right back up. And his head hurt most of the time.
He didn’t know what he had. It could probably be diagnosed, but he doubted it could be cured. What he did know was that there came a time for a man t
o pack it in.
For Calvin, one hundred and twenty-six years was plenty. Old and sick, he had seen the great wheel turn just over a million times in his life, and it was enough.
“Why don’t you just drop me off here?” Calvin said, to Whistlestop. “I can walk it. You’re good for another twenty, thirty centuries, I guess.”
He heard the gentle whistling. It did not come to him as words. It told of a relationship he knew he could never explain to a human. He and Whistlestop had grown together, shared something neither of them could tell another blimp or another human, and were ready to die together.
“Well, I figured I had to offer,” he chuckled. He leaned back, and took out the cigar and lighter Gaby had left with him, and he chuckled again. This time it turned to a laugh.
“She remembered,” he said. Calvin had smoked cigars so long ago he had almost forgotten it himself.
This one was fresh and aromatic. He sniffed it, bit off the end, and snapped the lighter. He got it going, took a drag. It tasted good.
Then he snapped the lighter once more, and held it to the cloth at his right side. Behind him, he heard the deep whoosh as valves opened, as air mixed with hydrogen and came rushing at him.
He did not hear the explosion.
Twenty-one
All blimps die in fire. It is their destiny. Nothing else can kill them.
Cirocco watched as Whistlestop descended toward Gaea, who stood transfixed on the broad wooden bridge.
It was voluntary, she told herself. They chose to do this.
Somehow, it didn’t help.
“Everyone down!” she shouted over her shoulder. “Protect yourselves behind your shields.” She turned back, and Whistlestop’s nose was a hundred meters above Gaea and still descending.
She had wondered if Gaea would run. She did not. She stood her ground, and as the mammoth gasbag bore down on her, she drew her fist back and would have punched it, but she was enveloped in fire.
