Wizard

by John Varley

  "Hi! So good of you to drop in."

  "We should get together more often!" Gaby beamed back at him. "There were a few things I wanted to say, and then I'll have to run." She still seemed to feel awkward because having proclaimed that, she said nothing more for several minutes. She studied her hands, her feet, the interior of the boat. She looked at everything but Chris.

  "I wanted to apologize for what happened on the dock," she said at last.

  "Apologize? To me? I don't think I'm the one who needs it."

  "You're not the one who needs it the most, obviously. But I can't talk to her until she's cooled off. Then I'll crawl to her on my belly or do whatever she wants me to do to wipe it out. Because she's right, you know. She did nothing to deserve that."

  "That was my estimation, too."

  Gaby grimaced, but managed to look him in the eye.

  "Right. And in a larger sense, none of you deserved it. We're all in this together, and you all have a right to expect better behavior of me. I want you to know that you can in the future."

  "I'll accept that. Consider it forgotten." He reached out and shook her hand. When she made no move to leave, he thought it might be time to go a little deeper into the problem. But it wasn't an easy thing to bring up.

  "I was wondering... ." She raised her eyebrows and seemed relieved. "Well, to be blunt, what can we expect of Cirocco? Robin isn't the only one who isn't impressed so far."

  She nodded and ran both hands through her short hair.

  "That's what I wanted to talk about, really. I want you to realize that you've seen only one side of her. There's more. Quite a lot more, actually."

  He said nothing.

  "Right. What can you expect? Frankly, not a lot for the next few days. Robin was telling the truth when she said Rocky's luggage is mostly alcohol. I dropped most of it in the drink a few minutes ago. It took me three days to get her presentable for Carnival, and as soon as it was over, she spun off the wheel again. She'll want to drink more when she wakes up, and I'll let her, a little, because tapering her off is easier than cold turkey. After that I'll keep just a little bit, for emergencies, in Psaltery's saddlebag."

  She leaned forward and looked at him earnestly. "I know this is going to be hard to believe, but in a few days, when she gets over the withdrawal and away from the memories of Carnival, she'll be okay. You're seeing her at her worst. At her best, she's got more guts than all of us put together. And more decency, and compassion, and ... there's no use my telling you that. You'll either see it for yourself or always think she's a sot."

  "I'm willing to keep an open mind about it," Chris offered.

  She studied his face in that intense way of hers. He felt every gram of her considerable energy boring in, as if her whole being were intent on knowing what was inside him, and he didn't like it. It felt as if she could see things even he was not aware of.

  "I think you will," she said at last.

  Another silence descended. Chris felt sure she had more to say, so he prompted her again.

  "I don't understand about Carnival," he said. "You said, get away from the memories of Carnival. Why is that necessary?"

  She put her elbows on her knees and laced her fingers together.

  "What did you see at Carnival?" She didn't wait for an answer. "A lot of singing and dancing and feasting, lots of pretty colors, flowers, good food. The tourists would love Carnival, but the Titanides don't let them go see it. The reason is it's a very serious business."

  "I know that. I understand what it's for."

  "You think you do. You understand the primary purpose, I'll grant you. It's an effective method of population control, which is something nobody's ever liked, human or Titanide, when it's aimed at them. It's fine for those other trashy folks." She raised her eyebrows, and he nodded.

  "What did you think of the Wizard's part in the Carnival?" she asked.

  He considered it. "She seemed to take it seriously. I don't know what standards she was using, but she seemed to be making a thorough study of all the proposals."

  Gaby nodded. "She does. She knows more about Titanide breeding than Titanides do. She's older than any of them. She's been going to Carnivals for seventy-five years now.

  "At first she liked them." Gaby shrugged. "Who wouldn't? She's a very big cheese here in Gaea, which you and Robin don't really seem to grasp yet. At Carnival, she gets her ego built up. Everybody needs that. Maybe she's been a little too eager to get it, but that's not for me to judge." She looked away from him again, and he thought, correctly as it turned out, that she did have a few judgments to make on that subject. He realized Gaby was one of those people who cannot look someone in the face while lying to them. He liked her for it; he was the same way.

  "After a while, though, it began to wear on her. There's a lot of despair at Carnival. You don't see it because Titanides grieve in private. And I'm not saying they go out and kill themselves if they don't get picked. I've never heard of a Titanide suicide. Still, she was the cause of a lot of sorrow. She kept at it for a long time after the fun had gone out of it, you understand, out of a sense of duty, but about twenty years ago she decided she had done all that could be expected of anybody. It was time to hand the job over to someone else. She went to Gaea and asked to be relieved of the job. And Gaea refused."

  She looked at him intently, waiting for him to understand. He did not yet, not completely. Gaby leaned back in the bow of the boat, her hands laced behind her head. She stared at the clouds.

  "Rocky took her job with some reservations," Gaby said. "I was with her, so I know. She went into it with what she thought were open eyes. She did not trust Gaea to be completely true to her word; she was ready for some jokers in the deck. The funny thing, though, was that Gaea did live up to her end of the bargain. There were some good years. Some close calls, some really bad troubles, but all in all they were the best years of her life. Mine, too. You'd never hear either of us complaining, even when things got dangerous, because we knew what we were getting into when we decided not to go back to Earth. Gaea did not promise an easy ride. She said that we could live to a very ripe old age, so long as we kept on our toes. That's all been precisely as promised.

  "We didn't think much about getting older because we didn't." She laughed, with a hint of self-deprecation. "We were sort of like the heroes of a serial or a comic strip. 'Join us again next week ...' and there we'd be, unchanged, off on a new adventure. I built a road around Gaea. Cirocco got carried off by King Kong and had to get loose. We ... hell, shut me up, please. You walk into an old folks' home, you get stories."

  "It's all right," Chris said, amused. He had already thought of the comic-strip analogy. The lives of these two women had been so divorced from the reality he knew as to make them seem less than real. Yet here she was, a century old and real as a kick in the pants.

  "So Rocky finally came up against it. The joker, and it was a hell of a trick. We should have expected it, though. Gaea does not conceal the fact that she never gives something for nothing. We had thought we were satisfying our end of that deal, but she wanted more. Here's how the swindle worked.

  "You saw her put the Titanide egg in her mouth at Carnival?" Chris nodded, and she went on. "It changed color. It turned clear as glass. The thing is, no Titanide egg can be completely fertilized until that change occurs."

  "You mean until it's put in someone's mouth?"

  "You've almost got it. A Titanide mouth won't do the job. It has to be a human mouth. In fact, it has to be a particular human."

  Chris started to say something, stopped, and sat back.

  "Just her?"

  "The one and only wonderful Wizard of Gaea."

  He didn't want her to go on talking. He saw it now, but she insisted on being sure he saw all the implications.

  "Until and unless Gaea ever changes her mind," she went on relentlessly, "Rocky is solely and completely responsible for the survival of the race of Titanides. When she realized that, she skipped a Carnival
. She could not face another one, she said. It was too much to put on any one person. What if she were to die? Gaea wouldn't give her an answer. Gaea is perfectly capable of letting the race vanish if Rocky leaves here, if she stops going to Carnival, or even if she dies.

  "So she started going to Carnivals again. What else could she do?"

  Chris thought of the Titanide ambassador back in San Francisco. Dulcimer, her name had been. He had felt sick when she explained her position to him. He felt worse now.

  "I don't understand how... ."

  "It was very slickly done. When Rocky took the job, she had just convinced Gaea to stop a war between the Titanides and the angels. The animosity between the two races was built into their brains, into their genes, I guess. She had to recall all of them physically and make changes. At the same time Rocky and I submitted to the direct transfer of a great deal of knowledge from Gaea's mind. When it was done, we could both sing the Titanide language and a lot of others, and we knew a hell of a lot about the inside of Gaea. And Rocky's salivary glands had been changed to secrete a chemical which the Titanides had been changed to need for reproduction.

  "She didn't start drinking at once. She used to sniff cocaine when she was younger but hadn't for years. She went back to that for a while. Liquor worked better, and that's what she ended up doing. When Carnival time approaches, she tries her best to get away. But she can't."

  Gaby stood up and signaled to Psaltery, whose boat was paralleling Chris's ten meters away. He angled toward them.

  "All that's beside the point, of course," she said briskly. The important thing about a drunk on a trip like this is not why she drinks, but whether she'll be any use to anybody, herself included, if things get tough. I tell you she will, or I wouldn't have suggested you come with us."

  "I'm glad you told me," Chris said. "And I'm sorry."

  She smiled lopsidedly. "Don't be sorry. You've got problems; we've got problems. We got what we asked for, me and Rocky, It's our own fault if we didn't realize what we were asking."

  17 Recognition

  The rain Gaby had been expecting finally arrived when they had been on the river for five hours. She broke out the oilskins and handed one to Psaltery. The others were doing the same, except for Cirocco, who still slept in the front of Hornpipe's canoe. Gaby started to tell Psaltery to bring the boat over so she could get the Wizard out of the rain, then changed her mind. Her impulse was always to pamper Rocky when she was like this. She had to remember what she had told Chris. Cirocco must take care of herself.

  Presently the Wizard raised her head and peered at the rain, as though she had never seen anything as inexplicable as water falling from the sky. She started to sit up, then leaned over the side of the canoe and vomited into the brown water. It was a lot of effort for not much return.

  When she was through, she crawled to the middle of the canoe, threw back the red tarpaulin, and began rooting around in the supplies. Her search grew more and more frantic. In the back, Hornpipe said nothing but kept paddling steadily. At last the Wizard sat back on her heels and rubbed her forehead with the heel of her hand.

  Suddenly, she looked up.

  "GaaaaBEEEE!" she yelled. She spotted Gaby, twenty meters away, then stepped onto the edge of the boat and out onto the water.

  For a moment it looked as if she could actually pull it off. It turned out to be just the low gravity, however, for with her second step she went in over her knees, and before she could take a third, the water closed over her slightly puzzled face.

  "She may be a Wizard," Chris chuckled, "but she's not Jesus."

  "Who's Jesus?"

  Robin listened to the explanation for a moment, long enough to know it wasn't something that interested her. Jesus was a Christian myth figure, apparently the one who founded the whole sect. He had been dead more than two thousand years, which struck Robin as the best thing about him. She remained cautious until she was able to ask Chris if he believed any of that, and when he said no, she considered the subject closed.

  The two of them were sitting on a log a good distance from the rest of the group, all of whom circled the figure of Cirocco, shivering in a blanket next to a roaring fire. A big pot of coffee hung from a metal trivet, slowly blackening in the flames.

  Robin was feeling sour. She was wondering what in the name of the Great Mother she was doing on this fool's errand led by a Wizard she wouldn't trust to tie her own shoelaces competently. And Gaby. The less said about her, the better. Four Titanides ... actually, she rather liked them. Hautbois had shown herself to be quite a teller of tales. Robin had spent the first part of the trip listening to her, from time to time throwing in a yarn of her own, feeling her out to see how gullible she might be. Hautbois would get along well in the Coven; she was not easily taken in. Then there was Chris.

  She had put off getting to know him, feeling uneasy about actually having to meet socially with a male. Yet she already knew a lot of what she had been taught about men was untrue. She could see the tales of men had grown in the telling. She could not imagine ever learning to be comfortable with him, but if they were to make this trip together, she should try to understand him better.

  That was turning out to be hard to do, and she berated herself for it. It was not his fault. He seemed open enough. She just could not bring herself to talk to him. It was a lot easier talking to the Titanides. They did not seem as alien as he.

  So instead of talking, she looked at the water dripping from the edge of the tent fly they had suspended between two trees. There was not a breath of wind. The rain fell straight down, hard and steady, but the rude shelter was enough to keep them dry. The fire was for the coffee and the Wizard; it was quite warm, though not unpleasantly so.

  "Hyperion gets a lot darker on a cloudy day than California does," Chris said.

  "Does it? I hadn't realized."

  He smiled at her, but it was not patronizing. He seemed to want to talk, too.

  "The light here's deceptive," he said. "It seems bright, but that's because your eyes open to accommodate it. Saturn only gets about a hundredth as much light as the Earth does. When something blocks most of that, you notice the difference."

  "I wouldn't know about that. We handle things differently in the Coven. We keep the windows open for weeks at a time to make the crops grow better."

  "No kidding? I'd like to know more about it."

  So she told him about life in the Coven and found one more example of a quality that was the same for men and women: it was easy to talk to anyone if he or she was a good listener. Robin knew she was not and was not ashamed of the fact, but she respected someone who, like Chris, could make her feel as if his whole attention were on her, as if he really were absorbing what she had to say. At first this respect, grudging as it was, made her nervous in itself. This was a male, damn it. She no longer expected him to assault her twice a day, but it was disorienting to realize that without that stubble of beard and breadth of shoulder, he did not look or act like anything but a sister.

  She could tell that he thought many things about the Coven were strange, though he avoided expressing it. That bothered her at first-how could someone from peckish society think her world was weird?-but trying to be fair, she had to admit that all customs must look strange to one who was unused to them.

  "Then those ... tattoos? Everyone has them in the Coven?"

  That's right. Some have more than I; some, less. Everyone has the Pentasm." She tossed her head to show him the design around her ear. "Usually it is centered on the mother's mark, but my womb is defiled and..." He was frowning his incomprehension. The-" what was it Gaby called it?- "the belly button." She laughed, remembering. "What a silly name! We call it the first window of the soul because it marks the holiest bond, that between mother and daughter. The windows of the head are the mind's windows. I have been accused of heterodoxy for putting my Pentasm in guard over my mind rather than my soul, but I successfully defended myself before the tribunal because of my defilement. The
windows of the soul lead to the womb, here and here." She put her hands to her belly and her crotch, then hastily took them away when she recalled the difference between herself and the man.

  "I'm afraid I don't understand the defilement."

  "I can't have children. They would have what I have, or so the doctors say."

  "I'm sorry."

  Robin frowned. "I don't understand this custom of apologizing for things one didn't do. You never worked at the Semenico Sperm Bank in Atlanta, Gah, did you?"

  "That's Georgia," he said, smiling. "Gee Ay stands for Georgia. No, I didn't work there."

  "Someday I might meet the man who did. His death would be unusual."

  "I wasn't really apologizing," he said. "Not that way. We often say, I'm sorry, just to offer sympathy."

  "We don't wish sympathy."

  "Then I withdraw the offer." His grin was infectious. Soon she had to smile with him. "God knows I get too much of it myself. I usually just let it pass, unless I'm feeling nasty." Robin wondered how he could say it so carelessly. Peckish people varied a lot. Some hardly understood what honor meant. Others could be very touchy. She had submitted to indignities upon arrival that she would never have accepted from one of her own people, and the reason was she presumed these folk didn't know any better. At first she assumed they all had no self-respect, but she thought Chris had some-though not a lot-and if he were willing to accept sympathy without protest, he must not see it as always encroaching on his own sense of self-reliance.

  "I have been accused of being too nasty," she admitted. "By my sisters, that is. There are times when we can accept sympathy with no loss of honor, so long as it implies no patronization."

  "Then you have my sympathy," he said. "As one sufferer to another."

  "Accepted."

  "What does 'peckish' mean?"

  "It comes from our word for your ... we'd better not talk about that."