by John Varley
"I didn't do anything," the man moaned." I swear, just ask Rocky. I wouldn't do anything, I've been real good. You know me, Gaby."
"I know you too well, Gene. I've had two chances to kill you, and I was a fool to pass up either of them. Get up and face it; at least you can do that. Get up, or I'll slaughter you like the pig you are."
"No, no, you'll hurt me." He doubled over, hands in his crotch, and began to sob. He would have been a pathetic sight even standing erect. His face and arms-in fact, all his visible skin-were crisscrossed with old scar tissue. His feet were bare and filthy, and his clothes were tatters. There was a black, piratical patch over his left eye, and most of one ear was missing.
"Get up!" Gaby ordered. Robin was surprised to hear Cirocco speak, in a voice that sounded almost sober.
"He's right, Gaby," she said quietly. "He didn't do anything. Hell, he tried to run as soon as he saw me. It was just such a surprise, seeing him again."
Gaby stood a little straighter. Her eyes lost some of their fire. "Are you saying you don't want me to kill him?" she asked tonelessly.
"Chri'sake, Gaby," Cirocco mumbled. She seemed calm now, but listless. "You can't just slice him up like a side o' beef."
"Yeah. I know. I've heard that before." She went down on one knee beside him, used the flat of her knife blade to turn his head. "What are you doing here, Gene? What are you up to?"
He simpered and stuttered meaninglessly for a while. "Just getting a drink, is all. A man's throat gets dry, what with the heat wave."
"Your friends aren't here. There must be a reason for you to come to Titantown. You wouldn't take a chance on meeting me, for one thing, unless you had a reason to risk it."
"That's right, that's right, Gaby, I'm scared of you, all right. Yes, sir, old Gene knows better than to get in your way." He thought about that for a moment and didn't appear to like the implications, so he promptly changed course. "I forgot, is all. Hell, Gaby, I didn't know you'd be here, that's all."
Robin could see he was a man so habituated to lying that he himself might not know the truth. It was also obvious that he was truly terrified of Gaby. He must have been twice her size, yet he never thought of fighting.
Gaby stood and gestured with her knife. "Get up. Gene? Don't make me tell you again."
"You won't hurt me?"
"If I ever see you again, I will hurt you bad. Do we understand each other? I'm saying I won't kill you. But if I ever see you again, anywhere, ever, I will hurt you bad. From now on it's your business to be sure our paths never cross."
"I will, I will. I promise."
"When we meet again, Gene," she said, and gestured with her knife, "I'll cut out the other one."
The gesture had not been toward his one good eye, but considerably lower.
16 The Circumnavigators' Club
Even with Hornpipe's strong arm supporting her Cirocco fell down twice while the Titanides were being loaded. She kept declaring she would make it on her own steam.
The gear Chris had bought was waiting, as promised, in a shed behind La Gata, along with the possessions of the others. The Titanides had saddlebags which strapped around their backs and cinched underneath. Valiha twisted around and fastened hers, ending with a capacious leather and canvas bag on each side of her equine lower half. The arrangement left room for Chris to ride. He jumped aboard and opened the bags, which already contained the things Valiha was bringing. She handed him his baggage, item by item, telling him to balance the contents. When he was done, each bag was less than half full. She said this was as it should be because when they left the river and took to the road, the extra space would be filled with provisions that were already on the boats.
While he was packing, Chris watched Gaby and Hornpipe trying to get Cirocco calmed down and aboard the Titanide. It was rather pathetic and more than a little worrisome. He noticed that Robin, kneeling atop Hautbois a few meters away, was also watching the spectacle. It was nearly pitch-black, the only light coming from the oil lamps the Titanides held, but he could see her frown.
"Having second thoughts about the trip?" he asked her.
She looked up in surprise. They had not spoken before-or at least not when he remembered it-and he wondered what she thought of him. He found her decidedly odd. He had learned that what he thought were paintings were in fact tattoos. Snakes with multicolored scales had wrapped their tails around her right big toe and her left little finger, and their bodies coiled up her leg and arm to slither beneath her clothes. He wondered what the heads looked like and if she sported any other art.
She turned back to her packing. "When I sign on, I stay on," she said. Her hair was falling into her eyes; with a toss of her head, she revealed her other physical oddity. Most of the left side of her head was shaved to reveal a complicated pentagonal design centering on her left ear. It made her look as if her wig were slipping.
She glanced again at Cirocco, then looked at Chris with what might have been a friendly smile. The tattoos made it hard to tell.
"I know what you mean, though," she conceded. "They can call her a Wizard if they want to, but I know a drunk when I see one."
Chris and Valiha were the last of the eight to emerge from the darkness beneath the Titantown tree. He blinked in the light for a moment, then smiled. It felt good to be moving. It hardly mattered what he was moving toward.
The other three teams made a pretty picture as they crested the first hill and started down the sun-baked dirt road between fields of tall yellow grain. Gaby was in the lead, wearing her Robin Hood greens and grays, mounted on the chocolate brown Psaltery with his orange flame of hair. Behind them was Hornpipe, with Cirocco prone on his back. Only her legs were visible, protruding from the dull red serape. Hornpipe's hair seemed black when seen in dim light; now it sparkled like a nest of fine prisms, flying out behind him. Even Hautbois's brown and olive swirls looked grand in the sunlight, and her dandelion of white head hair was glorious. Robin rode with her back straight and her feet on the saddlebags, dressed in loose pants and a light knitted shirt.
He made himself comfortable on Valiha's broad back. Taking a deep breath, he thought he could taste that elusive quality of the air that often precedes a summer rainstorm. To the west he could see weather rolling in from Oceanus. There were clouds: fat, wet rolls of cotton. They were elongated toward the north and south. Sometimes they came in strings, like sausages, and the higher, thinner ones often appeared to be unrolling, laying a thin sheet of white as they moved. It had something to do with the Coriolis effect, whatever that was. It was a great day to be going somewhere. Chris had not believed he could sleep on the back of a Titanide, but it turned out that he could. He was awakened by Valiha.
Psaltery was walking on a long dock reaching into Ophion. Valiha followed, and soon her hooves clomped on wooden planks. Moored to the dock were four large canoes. They were wooden frameworks with a silvery material stretched over the ribs. It made them look like the aluminum craft which had been a standard on Terran lakes and streams for almost two centuries. Their bottoms were reinforced with planks. In the center of each was a mound of supplies covered with red canvas and secured with ropes.
They rode high in the water, but when Psaltery stepped into the stern of one, it sank noticeably. Chris watched in fascination as the Titanide nimbly moved about on the narrow deck, removing his saddlebags and stowing them in the bow. He had never thought of Titanides as a seafaring race, but Psaltery looked as if he knew his way around a boat
"You'll have to get down now," Valiha said. Her head was turned around, something that always gave Chris a psychosomatic pain in the neck when he saw it. He tried to give her a hand with the straps but soon saw he was in her way. The heavy bags might have been pillowcases stuffed with feathers from the way she threw them around.
"The boats will hold two Titanides and some baggage, or all four humans," Gaby was saying. "Or we can keep the human-Titanide teams together, one per boat. Which way would you like to work it?"
"I don't know," Chris said. "I guess I'd prefer... ." He noticed Valiha watching him. She turned away quickly. "I'll stick with Valiha, I guess."
"Makes no difference to me," Gaby said, "so long as at least one person in every boat knows something about canoeing. Do you?"
"I've done some. I'm no expert."
"Doesn't matter. Valiha can show you the ropes. Robin?"
"I know nothing about it. I'd like to bring up-"
"You go with Hautbois then. We can switch around later, get to know each other better. Chris, will you give me a hand with Rocky?"
"I'd like to make a suggestion," Robin said. "She's out cold. Why don't we leave her here? Half her baggage is liquor, I saw it myself. She's a drunk, and she's going to be a-"
She got no further because Gaby had pinned her to the dock before Chris quite knew what was going on. Gaby's hands were at Robin's neck, forcing her head back. Slowly, trembling slightly, Gaby released the pressure and sat back. Robin coughed once but did not move.
"You must never speak of her that way," Gaby whispered. "You don't know what you are saying."
No one had moved. Chris shifted his feet and heard a decking plank creak loudly.
Gaby got to her feet. As she turned away her shoulders were slumped, and she looked old and tired. Robin stood, dusted herself off with icy dignity, and cleared her throat. She rested one hand on the butt of her automatic.
"Stop," she said. "Stop right there." Gaby did stop. She turned around, not looking as if the situation held any interest for her.
"I will not kill you," Robin said quietly. "What you did demands an accounting, but you are peckish and probably know no better. But hear me and know that you are warned. Your ignorance will not save you. If you touch me again, one of us will die."
Gaby glanced at the weapon on Robin's hip, nodded glumly, and turned away again.
Chris helped her load Cirocco into the front of one of the canoes. He was mystified by the whole situation but knew when to keep his mouth shut. He watched Gaby step into the boat and pull a blanket over the Wizard's limp body. She arranged the Wizard's head on a pillow, managing to make her sleep look almost peaceful until she stirred and snorted and kicked the blanket away. Gaby climbed out of the boat.
"You'd better get in the front," Valiha said as he joined her at the canoe which was to be theirs. He stepped in and sat down, found a paddle, and dipped it in the water experimentally. It suited him well. Like all things Titanides made, it was beautifully crafted, with the images of small animals etched into the polished wood. He felt the boat lurch as Valiha boarded.
"How do you people find the time to make everything so beautiful?" he asked her, gesturing with the paddle.
"If it's not worth making beautiful," Valiha said, "it's not worth making. We don't make so many things as humans do either. We make nothing to throw away. We make things one at a time and don't begin a second until we are through with the first. Titanides never invented the assembly line."
He turned around. "Is that really all there is to it? A different outlook?"
She grinned. "Not the whole story. Not sleeping has something to do with it. You humans waste a third of your lives unconscious. We don't sleep."
"That must be very strange." He had known they didn't sleep but had not really thought of what it implied.
"Not to me. But I do suspect that we experience time in a different way from you. Our time is not broken up. We measure it, of course, but as a continuous flow rather than a succession of days."
"Yeah ... but what does that have to do with craftmanship?"
"We have more time. We don't sleep, but about a quarter of our time is spent resting. We sit and sing and work with our hands. It adds up."
Travelers on Ophion often remarked on the feeling of timelessness the river gave them. Ophion was both the source and the end of all things in Gaea, the circle of waters that tied all things together. As such, it felt like an old river because Gaea herself felt old.
Ophion was old, but it was a relative thing. As ancient as Gaea herself, Ophion was an infant beside the great rivers of Earth. It was also to be remembered that most humans saw the river only in Hyperion, where it spread out and took things easy. Elsewhere on its 4,000-kilometer circumference, Ophion was as frisky as the Colorado.
Chris had been set for a fast trip. It was just what one did in a canoe: put it on a fast stream and ride the white water.
"You might as well relax," came the voice from behind him. "You'll tire yourself out too soon and then go to sleep. Humans are extremely boring when they sleep. I know this part of the river well. There is nothing to watch out for between here and Aglaia. Here Ophion is forgiving."
He put his paddle on the floor of the canoe and turned around. Valiha sat placidly just aft of the tarp-covered pallet of supplies. The paddle in her hands was twice as large as his own. Valiha looked completely relaxed with all four legs folded under her, and Chris thought that odd because he had not expected a being so like a horse to enjoy sitting like that.
"You people amaze me," he said. "I thought I was hallucinating the first time I saw a Titanide climbing a tree. Now you turn out to be sailors, too."
"You people amaze me," Valiha countered. "How you balance is a mystery. When you run, you begin by falling forward, and then your legs try to catch up with the rest of you. You live constantly on the edge of disaster."
Chris laughed. "You're right, you know. I do, at least." He watched her paddling, and for a time there was no sound but the quiet gurgle made by her oar.
"I feel I ought to be helping you. Should we take turns rowing?"
"Sure. I'll row three-quarters of a rev, and you can row the other quarter."
"That's hardly equitable."
"I know what I'm doing. This isn't work."
"You're moving us pretty fast."
Valiha winked at him, then began to paddle in earnest. The canoe almost became airborne, skipping like a tossed stone. She kept it up for a few dozen strokes, then fell back into her relaxed rhythm.
"I could do that for a whole rev," she said. "You might as well face the fact that I'm a lot stronger than you, even at your best. And right now you aren't in condition. Get used to it gradually, okay?"
"I guess so. I still feel I ought to be doing something."
"I agree. Lean back, and let me do the donkeywork."
He did, but wished she had used another euphemism. It hit at the heart of something that had been bothering him.
"I've been feeling uncomfortable," he said. "That it boils down to is, we are-that is, we humans are using you Titanides like... well, like draft animals."
"We can carry a lot more than you can."
"All right, I know that. But I don't even have a pack. And ... well, it somehow makes me feel I'm using you badly when-"
"Nervous about riding me, is that it?" She grinned at him and rolled her eyes. "Next you'll be suggesting that you walk sometimes, to give me a rest, right?"
"Something like that."
"Chris, there's nothing more boring than taking a walk with a human."
"Not even watching one sleep?"
"You got me. That's more boring."
"You seem to find us tedious."
"Not at all, you are endlessly fascinating. One never knows what a human will do next, or from what motive. If we had universites, the best-attended classes would be in the Department of Human Studies. But I'm young and impatient, as the Wizard pointed out. If you wish, you may walk, and I will endeavor to slow down. I don't know how the others will like it."
"Forget it," Chris said. "I just don't want to be a burden. Literally."
"You aren't," she assured him. "When you ride me, my heart lifts and my feet fly like the wind." She was looking
into his eyes with an odd expression on her face. He could not read it, but it made him want to change the subject.
"Why are you here, Valiha? Why are you in this boat, making this trip?"
"You mean just me or the other Titanides?" She went on without waiting for an answer. "Psaltery is here because he goes where Gaby goes. The same for Hornpipe. As for Hautbois, I presume it is because the Wizard often grants a child to those who circumnavigate the great river."
"Really?" He laughed. "I wonder if she'll grant me a child when I get back?" He expected her to laugh, but there was that look again. "But you didn't say why you were coming. You're ... well, you're pregnant, aren't you?"
"Yes. Chris, I'm really sorry about running off and leaving you. I could-"
"Never mind that. You already apologized, and it makes me nervous to watch it anyway. But shouldn't you be taking it easy?"
"That's far in the future. It doesn't inconvenience us much anyway. And I'm here because it's a great honor to go with the Wizard. And because you are my friend."
Once again there was that look.
"Can I join you?"
Chris looked up, startled. He had not been asleep, but neither had he been precisely awake. His knees were stiff from maintaining the same position for hours.
"Sure. Come aboard." Gaby's canoe had pulled alongside Chris and Valiha. Gaby stepped from one to the other and sat in front of Chris. She cocked her head to one side and looked dubious.
"Are you all right?"
"If you mean, am I crazy right now, you'd be the best judge of that."
"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to-"
"No, I'm serious." And a little hurt, he admitted to himself. One had to stop feeling apologetic about it sometime or lose all self-respect. "I never know when I'm having what the doctors call an episode. It always seems perfectly reasonable behavior to me at the time."
She looked sympathetic. "It must be terrible. I mean, to..... She looked at the sky and whistled thinly for a moment. "Gaby, shut your big mouth," she said. She looked back at him. "I didn't come to embarrass you, no matter what it might look like. Can we start over?"
