Wizard

by John Varley

  Ophion flowed due east through the middle of eastern Phoebe, apparently gouging out a hundred-kilometer watercourse known as Confusion Canyon. But as the name suggested, few geological concepts applied inside Gaea. The canyon was there because Gaea wanted it; her three million years was not nearly enough time for water to have cut so deeply. Nevertheless, it was a passable imitation, though bearing a closer kinship to the subsidence formations of the Martian Tithonius Lacus than to the hydrologically formed Grand Canyon of Arizona. Why Gaea chose to imitate such planetary geology no one could say.

  After flowing down the river for some time, Robin was able to stand at the top of the canyon and look down at where she had been. As in Rhea, river pumps were responsible. They had made two difficult portages, during which Robin had bettered her mountaineering skills. The buzz bombs had made the highway too dangerous since the road was through the tableland to the north, too open to attack. They were thankful for the sheer protecting cliffs even as they struggled up them.

  In all, it took three hectorevs to get out of the canyon. It was their slowest progress to date. The fresh fruits that had formed the more appetizing portion of their meals were no longer to be found. They subsisted on dried provisions from their packs. There was still game to be taken. At one point, when they found a plateau rich in small scaly ten-legged creatures, the Titanides killed more than a hundred of them and spent three days preserving them with smoke and curatives obtained from leaves and roots.

  Robin had never felt stronger. She had found to her surprise that the rugged life agreed with her. She woke up quickly, ate a lot, and slept well at the end of the day. Had it not been for Psaltery's death, she thought she might actually have been happy. She had not been able to say that for a long time.

  It was oddly disorienting to see Ophion stop at the edge of day, but that is just what it did. At its eastern end it emptied into a small brown lake known as Triana, and it did not come out the other side. The river had been the constant factor in their journey so far; they had left it only to skirt the pumps. Even Nox and Twilight were just wide places in the river. It felt like a bad omen to Robin.

  That omen was as nothing to the sight that confronted them as they paddled their reduced fleet to the Trianan shore. It was a boneyard. The skeletal remains of a billion creatures littered the white sand beach, made great still waves and dunes, heaped into rickety golgothas. When they gained the shore, they stood in the shadow of a single bone plate eight meters high, while beneath their feet they crunched the ribs of creatures smaller than mice.

  It looked like the end of all things. Robin, who did not think of herself as superstitious, could not shake a feeling of foreboding. She seldom noticed the pale texture of Gaean daylight. Everyone spoke of the "perpetual afternoon" that prevailed in the wheel; Robin had as often been able to imagine it as morning. But not here. The shores of Triana were frozen at an instant just before the end of Time. The heaped bones were the necropolitan skyline of death, set in the vast brown desert of Tethys.

  She recalled something Gaby had said, likening Ophion to a toilet. It certainly looked that way from Triana. All the death of the great wheel had come to rest on the shores of the lake. She almost said something to Gaby, stopped herself just in time. Psaltery would probably end up here.

  "Feeling bad, Robin?"

  She looked up and saw the Wizard facing her. She shook herself to get rid of the sense of melancholy that had stolen over her. It did not help much. Cirocco put a hand on her shoulder and led her down the beach. A few weeks ago Robin would have rejected the gesture, but now she welcomed it. The sand was as fine as powdered sugar, pleasantly hot between her toes.

  "Don't let it get you down," Cirocco said. "This isn't what it looks like."

  "I'm not sure what it looks like."

  "It's not Gaea's waste bin. It is a graveyard. But it's not the end of Ophion. The river flows underground and comes up on the other side of Tethys. The bones are brought here by scavengers. They're about half a meter long, and one form lives in the sand and another in the lake. It's a complex story, but it boils down to, neither type can get along without the other. They meet here at the shore to exchange gifts, mate, and spawn. It's a common pattern in Gaea."

  "It's just depressing," Robin said.

  "The Titanides love it. Not many of them get here, but those that do take lots of pictures to show the folks back home. It is kind of pretty, if you can get used to it."

  "I don't think I could." Robin wiped her forehead, then removed her shirt and went to the water's edge. She soaked it, wrung it out, and put it back on. "Why is it so hot here? The sun isn't enough to heat your skin, but the sand's blazing."

  "It comes from below. All the regions are heated and cooled by fluids running underground. It's pumped out to the big fins in space to be heated on the sunside or cooled on the darkside."

  Robin looked at Cirocco's browned face, at the tanned skin on her bare arms and legs. She recalled that the body under the red blanket that was apparently the only article of clothing she owned was just as brown. But damn it, it looked like a tan, and it had been bothering her for weeks now. Her own skin was as milky white as the day she arrived.

  "Are you and Gaby naturally dark-skinned? You don't look it, but I can't believe you got that tan in here."

  "I'm a little darker than Gaby, but she's as light as you are. And you're right, the sun didn't do this. Maybe I'll tell you about that someday." She stopped walking and looked to the east. There was a break in the high bone cairns, and it was possible to see a range of low hills several kilometers away. She turned and called to the group, which Robin was surprised to discover was more than 200 meters down the beach.

  "When you get the boats broken down," Cirocco shouted, "join us over here."

  In a few minutes they were gathered around Cirocco, who squatted on the sand and used her finger to draw a long map.

  "Phoebe, Tethys, Thea," she said. "Triana." She stabbed a small circle, then drew a series of peaks just east of it. "The Euphonic Range. To the north of them, here, the Northwind Range. Out here by itself, La Oreja de Oro." She glanced up at Chris. "That means 'Ear of Gold' and there's the possibility of a quest there, if you're interested. Otherwise, we won't be going near it."

  "Not interested," Chris said with an amused smile.

  "Okay. To the east-"

  "Don't we get to hear the story?" Robin asked against her better judgment.

  "No need for it," Cirocco said. "The Ear of Gold can't possibly concern us unless we go there. It's not a mobile threat, like Kong." While Robin wondered if she was being toyed with, Cirocco was drawing a long line of peaks, from the north to the south, cutting across the width of Tethys.

  "The Royal Blue Line. Somebody was in a poetic frame of mind, I guess. They do take on a blue tint when the air is right, but they're pretty dull mountains for the most part. Some rocky cliffs, but if you go up the southern slopes down here, you can walk from one peak to the next without much trouble.

  "The road goes northeast from the lake, through the big space between the Northwinds and the Euphonies, which is called Tethys Gap." She looked up, deadpan. "Or, as it's sometimes called, Orthodontist Pass."

  "Except we agreed not to use that joke anymore," Gaby said.

  Cirocco grinned. "My apologies. Anyhow, through the gap the road goes due east over a lot of very gradual up-and-downs, passes the central cable, through the Royal Blue Line, and so on to this lake with the slanted cable in the middle, known as Valencia. As, yes, it is sort of orange-colored."

  "With a very long stem," Gaby put in.

  "Right. Well, that wasn't one of my names." She straightened, slapping sand from her hands.

  "Frankly," she said, "I don't know what's the best thing to do from here. We originally planned to follow the road and not worry too much about the sand wraiths, but now that we've-"

  "Sand wraiths?" Chris asked.

  "More about them later. As I was saying, I'm more worried about the b
uzz bombs right now. We've never heard of a concerted attack like what happened at Phoebe. Before this, they've always traveled alone. It could be that we disturbed a nesting place, but there's also the possibility they're exhibiting new behavior. That can happen in Gaea."

  Gaby had her arms folded in front of her. She was looking straight at Cirocco, who would not meet her eyes.

  "It's also possible the attack was deliberate," Gaby said.

  Robin looked from one to the other. "What do you mean by that?"

  "Never mind," Cirocco said quickly. "I don't think so, and if it was, they weren't after either of you."

  Robin assumed that meant Gaby and Cirocco were wondering if it had something to do with Cirocco's visit to Phoebe. Possibly Phoebe had some influence with the buzz bombs, had persuaded them to try to kill the Wizard. Once again she was struck with the odd lives these two women led.

  "The other possibility is to go through the mountains," Cirocco resumed. "They would give us some protection from the buzz bombs, though we'd still have to stay alert. What I'm suggesting is that we go down the Euphonies here." She knelt once more and traced the route as she spoke. "It's a short dash, no more than twenty kilometers, from here to the hills. It's about thirty from the end of the Euphonies to the southern reaches of the Royal Blues. How long would that take, Hornpipe?"

  The Titanide considered it. "With Gaby doubling up, one of us will be slower. We could have her trade mounts twice in the course of the journey. I should say we could make it in one rev, pacing ourselves. More like two or two and a half for the second crossing because we will be tired."

  "Okay. No matter how we look at it, this route would slow us down."

  "Maybe I missed something," Robin said. "Do we have an appointment?"

  Cirocco smiled. "You've got a point. Better safe than swift. I'm not sure, myself. I figure we could make our way to the central cable, dash across to it, and if we haven't seen any buzz bombs to that point, we could make a decision again about whether to stick to the highway. But I'd like to hear what you think." She looked from face to face around the group.

  Robin had not realized until that point that Cirocco had taken over the group. It was an odd way to do it-asking the other six to advise her on a decision-but the fact remained that a week earlier it would have been Gaby doing the asking. She looked at Gaby and could detect no resentment. In fact, she seemed happier than she had been since Psaltery's death. The consensus was to follow the mountain route, since that seemed to be the one Cirocco preferred. They mounted, Gaby sitting behind Cirocco for the first third of the trip, and set off under skies that were growing cloudy in the west.

  29 Across the Sands

  The clouds arrived overhead as the Titanides were resting after their long run across the dunes between Triana and the foothills of the Euphonies. Cirocco glanced at Hornpipe, who consulted his clock.

  "The second decirev of the eighty-seventh," he told her.

  "Right on time."

  Chris didn't understand it for a moment.

  "You mean you... ."

  Cirocco shrugged. "I didn't make the clouds. But I did ask for them. I called while we were still in the canyon. Gaea said she could give me an overcast but wouldn't go so far as to make it rain. You can't have everything."

  "I don't understand what you wanted clouds for." Or how one could just ask for them, he added to himself.

  "That's because I haven't told you about the sand wraiths yet. Hornpipe, are you folks ready to go yet?" When the Titanide nodded, Cirocco stood and wiped the sand from her legs. "Let's mount up, and I'll tell you as we go.

  "Sand wraiths are silicon-based creatures. We call them that because they live beneath the sand and they're translucent. They'd be hell to fight if they lived in a night region, but you can see them well enough in Tethys.

  "The scientific name for them is something like Hydrophobicus gaeani. I may have gotten the endings wrong. It describes them pretty well. They are intelligent and have the sweet disposition of a rabid dog. I've spoken with them twice, under carefully controlled conditions. They are so xenophobic that the word 'bigotry' is pitifully inadequate; racists to the tenth power. To them there is only the race of wraiths and Gaea. Everything else is food or enemies. They will pause in the act of killing you only if they aren't sure which you are, but more likely they'll kill first and decide later."

  "They are very bad people," Valiha confirmed solemnly.

  The Titanides were riding three abreast now so Cirocco could tell Chris and Robin about the wraiths. Chris was not sure this was good strategy, and he kept scanning the sky nervously. The Euphonic Mountains were more rugged than the dunes they had just crossed, but not enough for his tastes. It would have felt better to be in canyons so narrow that they had to proceed single file. The hills ahead did go higher, sometimes reaching up in mesalike formations. Of course, the more rugged the country, the slower they would go, and thus, the longer they would stay in the country of the sand wraiths.

  On balance, he feared buzz bombs more. Perhaps when he saw the wraiths, he would change his mind.

  "They live under the sand," Cirocco was saying. "They can run or swim or something, under the sand, and do it about as fast as I can run on the ground.

  "Their existence is fairly precarious since water is poisonous to them. I mean, if it touches their bodies, it kills them, and it doesn't take much to do it. They'd die on a sunny day if the humidity were much over forty percent. The sands of Tethys are bone dry in most places because the heat from below blasts the water right out of the ground. The exception is where Ophion goes under the sand. It flows in a deep bedrock channel, but it still pollutes the sand for ten kilometers in every direction as far as the wraiths are concerned. So all of Tethys is divided into two totally separate tribes of wraiths. If they could ever meet each other, they'd probably fight to the death because they're always fighting even in the smaller divisions that are marked off wherever water flows in times of flash flood."

  "Then it does rain here?" Robin asked.

  "Not a lot. Say once a year, and just a trickle. It would have killed the wraiths long ago, but they can grow a shell and hibernate for a few days when they smell it coming. That's how I talked to one; I came in here during a storm and dug one up and put him in a cage."

  "Always the peacemaker," Gaby said with teasing affection.

  "Well, it was worth a try. The thing about this route is that the mountains are pretty dry right now. The highway, as it happens, closely parallels the path of Ophion under the desert."

  "That was no accident, believe me," Gaby said. "I thought it made as much sense as keeping to the high ground when going through a swamp."

  "Yes, that's true. The point is, we might meet some wraiths up here. I'm hoping the cloud cover will keep them down, but I don't know how long it will last. The good news is that they seldom band together in groups larger than about a dozen, and I think we have enough hands to fight off an attack."

  "I should have traded my gun in on a water pistol," Robin said.

  "Were you making a joke?" Hautbois asked, digging into her left saddlebag. She came up with two items: a large slingshot and a short tube with a handle and trigger and a pinhole in one end. Robin took it, squeezed the trigger, and a fine stream of water squirted from the end and sailed ten meters before hitting the sand. She seemed delighted.

  "Think of it as a flamethrower," Cirocco suggested. "You don't have to be accurate. Shoot in the general vicinity and fan it around. Even a miss will hurt them, and enough shots will put water vapor in the air and drive them back underground. And don't shoot it anymore now," she said, hastily, as Robin squeezed off another shot. "The bad news is that there are no springs in Tethys, and what water we use in battle will be water we won't have to drink later."

  "Sorry. What's the slingshot for?" Robin was looking at it eagerly, and Chris could see she wanted to hold it and give it a try.

  "Long-range stuff. Water balloons. You put one of these into the cup,
pull back, and let fly." Cirocco was holding something the size of a Titanide egg. She tossed it to Chris. When he squeezed it gently, a trickle of water ran into his hand.

  Valiha was looking through her saddlebags, too. She removed a slingshot and a short club, which she stowed in her pouch, and another water pistol, which she handed to Chris. He looked at it curiously, trying to get the feel of it, wishing he could shoot a few practice shots.

  "The sling takes skill, which I have," Valiha explained. "Do as the Wizard says, do not be too selective in your targets. Just shoot."

  He looked up and saw Cirocco grinning at him.

  "Feeling like a hero?" she said.

  "Like a little boy playing at being one."

  "You'll change your mind if you ever see a wraith."

  30 Rolling Thunder

  "I never said it worked all the time." Cirocco put her hands on her hips and scanned the sky again, with no better result. Gaby watched her, feeling for the first time in years that irrational desire for the Wizard to make something happen. It did no good to know that Cirocco's powers did not work that way. She wanted her to make it rain.

  "She said she'd provide cloud cover," Gaby pointed out.

  "She said she'd try," Cirocco corrected. "You know Gaea can't control every detail of the weather. It's too complex."

  "So she keeps saying." Seeing the look on Cirocco's face, Gaby kept the rest of her remarks to herself.

  "We haven't seen any wraiths yet," Robin said. "Maybe the clouds were enough to scare them off before they broke up."

  "They're probably down deep in the sand," Hautbois agreed. Gaby said nothing. Instead, she reached into Hornpipe's saddlebag and took out a bladderfruit the size of a baseball.

  The group was at the end of the foothills leading to the eastern slopes of the Royal Blue Line. Not far to the east was the central Tethys cable, and barely visible beyond it was the fine line of the Circum-Gaea Highway. A last outpost of naked rock formed a wide bowl filled with sand just in front of them, its rim submerged in several places.