by John Varley
“Like what?”
“You couldn’t bring yourself to ask if we’d … been intimate.” She made the pause as dramatic as she could, lowering her eyes shyly, and he laughed. “You were like that before we got to know each other. Shy. I think this is going to be like the first time all over again, and the first time is always special, don’t you agree?” She blinked at him and waited what she felt was a reasonable time, but he made no move, so she went to him and pressed close. It had not surprised her; she had needed to make her feelings quite clear the other first time, too.
When they broke the kiss he looked up at her and smiled.
“I wanted to tell you that I love you. You didn’t give me any time.”
“You never said that before. Maybe you shouldn’t commit yourself until you get your memory back.”
“I think I might not have known I loved you before. Then … all I was left with was your face and a feeling. I’ll trust that. And I meant what I said.”
“Mmm. You’re nice. Do you remember what to do with that?”
“I’m sure it’ll come back to me with practice.”
“Then I think it’s time for you to start serving under me again.”
It was as joyous as a first time, but without the awkwardness that usually goes along with it. Cirocco forgot everything else. There was just enough light to see his face, just enough gravity to make the heaps of straw softer than the finest silk.
The timeless quality of that long afternoon had little to do with the unchanging light of Themis. She didn’t have any place she needed to be; there was no need to go anywhere, ever, for anything.
“Now’s the time for a cigarette,” he said. “I wish I had one.”
“And drop your ashes down on me,” she teased. “Filthy habit. I wish I had some cocaine. It all went down with the ship.”
“You can go straight.”
He had not withdrawn from her. She remembered how much she had liked that in Ringmaster, waiting to see if things would get going again. With Bill, they usually did.
This time was a little different.
“Bill, I’m afraid I’m getting a little irritated like this.”
He eased his weight onto his hands. “The straw hurting your back? I can take a turn underneath if you want.”
“It’s not the straw, honey, and it ain’t my back. It’s a little more personal than that. I’m afraid you feel like sandpaper.”
“So do you, but I was much too polite to say it.” He rolled off and put his arm under her shoulders. “Funny I didn’t notice it a few minutes ago.”
She laughed. “If you’d grown spikes, I wouldn’t have noticed it a few minutes ago. But I wish we had our hair back. I feel pretty silly like this, and it’s uncomfortable as hell.”
“You think you got it bad? I’m growing it back all over. It’s like fleas square-dancing on my skin. Pardon me while I scratch.” He did so, lustily, and Cirocco helped him get the impossible places on his back. “Aaaah. Did I say I loved you? I was crazy, I didn’t know what love meant. Now I know.”
Gaby chose that moment to walk in the door.
“Pardon me, Rocky, but I was wondering if we should do something about the parachutes. One of them already floated down the river.”
Cirocco sat up quickly. “Do what with them?”
“Save them. They might be useful.”
“You … sure, Gaby. You might be right.”
“I just thought it would be a good idea.” She looked at the floor and shuffled her feet, glanced at Bill for the first time. “Uh … okay. I thought maybe I … could make something nice for you.” She hurried from the hut.
Bill sat up and put his elbows on his knees.
“Was I reading too much into that?”
Cirocco sighed. “I’m afraid not. Gaby’s going to be a big problem. She thinks she’s in love with me, too.”
Chapter Nine
“What do you mean, good-bye? Where are you going?”
“I’ve been thinking it over,” Calvin said, quietly. He removed his wristwatch and handed it to Cirocco. “You people can use this better than I can.”
Cirocco was about to burst with frustration.
“And that’s all the explanation we get? ‘I’ve been thinking it over.’ Calvin, we’ve got to stick together. We’re still an exploration party, and I’m still your Captain. We’ve got to work together toward getting rescued.”
He smiled faintly. “And just how are we going to do that?”
She wished he hadn’t asked that question.
“I haven’t had time to work out a plan on that,” she said, vaguely. “There’s bound to be something we can do.”
“You let me know when you think of something.”
“I’m ordering you to stay with the rest of us.”
“How are you going to stop me from leaving if I want to go? Knock me out and tie me up? How much energy is it going to take to guard me all the time? Keeping me here makes me a liability. If I go, I can be an asset.”
“What do you mean, an asset?”
“Just that. The blimps can talk around the whole curve of Themis. They’re great with news; everybody here listens to them. If you ever need me for anything, I’d come back. All I’d have to do is teach you a few simple calls. Can you whistle?”
“Never mind that,” Cirocco said, with an annoyed wave of her hand. She rubbed her forehead, and allowed her body to relax. If she was to make him stay, she had to talk him out of it, not restrain him.
“I still don’t see why you want to go. Don’t you like it here with us?”
“I … no, not all that much. I was happier when I was alone. There’s too much tension. Too much bad feeling.”
“We’ve all been through a lot. It ought to get better when we get some things straightened out.”
He shrugged. “Then you can call me, and I’ll try it again. But I don’t care for the company of my own kind anymore. The blimps are freer, and wiser. I’ve never been happier than during that ride.”
He was showing more enthusiasm than Cirocco had seen since the meeting on the cliff.
“The blimps are old, Captain. Both as individuals and as a race. Whistlestop is maybe 3000 years old.”
“How do you know that? How does he know?”
“There are times of cold, and times of warmth. I figure they must be because Themis always stays pointed the same direction. The axis points close to the sun right now, but every fifteen years the rim blocks the sunlight until Saturn moves and brings the other pole back toward the sun. There’s years in here, but each of them is fifteen years long. Whistlestop has seen 200 of them.”
“Okay, okay,” Cirocco said. “That’s what we need you for, Calvin. Somehow you’re able to talk to these things. You’ve been learning from them. Some of it might be important to us. Like these six-legged things, what did you call them … ?”
“Titanides. That’s all I know about them.”
“Well, you might learn more.”
“Captain, there’s too much to know. But you’ve landed in the most hospitable part of Themis. Stay put, and you’ll be all right. Don’t go into Oceanus, or even Rhea. Those places are dangerous.”
“See? How could we have known that? We need you.”
“You don’t understand. I can’t learn about this place without going to see it. Whistlestop’s language is mostly out of my range.”
Cirocco could feel the bitterness of defeat welling up inside her. Damn it, John Wayne would have keelhauled the bastard. Charles Laughton would have clapped him in irons.
She knew it would make her feel a lot better just to take a swing at the obstinate son of a bitch, but that would wear off quickly. She had never commanded like that. She had won and kept the respect of her crew through showing responsibility and using the best wisdom she could bring to bear on any situation. She could face facts, and knew Calvin was going to leave them, but it just didn’t feel right.
And why not? she wondered. Because
it lessened her authority?
That had to be part of it, and part of it was her responsibility for his welfare. But it came back to the problem she had faced from the beginning of her command: the lack of enough role models for a female ship’s Captain. She had determined to examine all assumptions and use only those that felt right to her. Just because it was right for Admiral Nelson in the British Navy did not mean it was right for her.
There had to be discipline, surely, and there had to be authority. Naval Captains had been demanding one and enforcing the other for thousands of years, and she did not intend to throw away all that accumulated experience. Where a Captain’s authority was questioned, disaster usually followed.
But space was not the same, generations of science-fiction writers to the contrary. The people who explored it were highly intelligent, individualistic geniuses, the very best the Earth had to offer. There had to be flexibility, and the NASA legal code for deep-space voyages acknowledged it.
Then there was the other factor she could never forget. She no longer had a ship. The worst thing that could ever happen to a Captain had happened to her. She had lost her command. It would be a bitter taste in her mouth for the rest of her life.
“All right,” she said, quietly. “You’re right. I can’t spare the time and energy to guard you, and I don’t feel like killing you, except in a figurative sense.” She made herself stop when she realized she was gritting her teeth, and deliberately relaxed her jaw. “I’m telling you now that if we get back, I’m bringing you up on charges of insubordination. If you go, it will be against my wishes, and against the interests of the mission.”
“I accept that,” he said, without emotion. “You’ll come to see that the last part is not true. I’ll be more use where I’m going that I would be here. But we’re not going back to Earth.”
“We’ll see. Now, why don’t you teach somebody how to call blimps? I find I’d rather not be around you.”
In the end, Cirocco had to learn the whistle code, because she had the most musical ability. Her sense of pitch was near-perfect, and it was critical to the blimp speech.
There were only three phrases to learn, the longest being seven notes and a trill. The first translated as “good lifting,” and was nothing but a polite greeting. The second was “I want Calvin,” and the third was “Help!”
“Remember, don’t call a blimp if you’ve got a fire going.”
“How optimistic you are.”
“You’ll make a fire soon enough. Uh, I was wondering … do you want me to take August off your hands? She might feel better if she was with me. We can cover more ground looking for April.”
“We can take care of our own casualties,” Cirocco said, coldly.
“Whatever you think is best.”
“She’s barely aware that you’re leaving, anyway. Just get out of my sight, will you?”
August proved to be not as comatose as Cirocco had thought. When she heard Calvin was leaving, she insisted on joining him. After a brief battle, Cirocco gave in, though with even more misgivings than before.
Whistlestop came in low and began spinning a cable. They watched it whip and twist in the air.
“Why is he willing to do this?” Bill asked. “What does he get out of it?”
“He likes me,” Calvin said, simply. “Also, he’s used to carrying passengers. The sentient species pay for their rides by moving food from his first stomach into the second. He doesn’t have the muscles for it. He has to save on weight.”
“Does everything here get along so well?” Gaby asked. “We haven’t seen anything like a carnivorous animal so far.”
“There are carnivores, but not many. Symbiosis is the basic fact of life. That, and worship. Whistlestop says all the higher life forms owe allegiance to a godhead, and the seat of divinity is in the hub. I’ve been thinking of a goddess that rules the whole circle of the land. I call her Gaea, for the Greek mother.”
Cirocco was interested, in spite of herself. “What is Gaea, Calvin? Some sort of primitive legend, or maybe the control room of this thing?”
“I don’t know. Themis is a lot older than Whistlestop, and a lot of it is unknown to him, too.”
“But who runs it? You said there were many races in here. Which one? Or do they cooperate?”
“Again, I don’t know. You’ve read the stories of generation ships where something went wrong and everybody slipped back to savagery? I think something like that might be going on here. I know something’s working somewhere. Maybe machines, or a race that stays in the hub. That may be the source of the worship. But Whistlestop is sure there’s a hand on the wheel.”
Cirocco scowled. How could she let him go, with all that information in his head? It was spotty and they had no way of knowing how much of it was true, but it was all they had.
But it was too late for second thoughts. His foot was in the stirrup at the end of the long line. August joined him and the blimp reeled them in.
“Captain!” he shouted, just before they disappeared. “Gaby shouldn’t have called this place Themis. Call it Gaea.”
Cirocco brooded about their departure, plunging into a black depression during which she sat on the side of the river and thought about what she should have done. No course seemed right.
“What about his Hippocratic oath?” she asked Bill at one point. “He was sent along on this trip for one damn thing, to take care of us if we needed it.”
“It changed us all, Rocky.”
All but me, she thought, but did not say. At least, as far as she could tell, she had suffered no lasting effects from her experience. In a way, that was stranger than what it had done to the others. It should have driven them all catatonic. Instead, there was an amnesiac, an obsessive personality, a woman with an adolescent crush, and a man in love with living airships. Cirocco’s was the only level head.
“Don’t kid yourself,” she muttered. “You probably look as crazy to them as they do to you.” But she discarded that notion, too. Bill, Gaby, and Calvin all knew they had been changed by their experience, though Gaby would not admit that her love for Cirocco was a side-effect. August was too distracted by her loss to think about anything at all.
She wondered again about April and Gene. Were they still alive, and if so, how were they taking it? Were they alone, or had they managed to link up?
They had a regular routine of listening and broadcasting, trying to contact the two, but nothing came of it. No one heard a man crying again, and no one heard anything from April.
Time drifted by, all but unmarked. Cirocco had Calvin’s watch to tell them when to sleep, but it was hard to adjust to the unfailing light. She would never have suspected it of a group of people who had lived in the artificial environment of Ringmaster, where the day was set on the ship’s computer and could be varied at will.
Life was easy. All the fruit they tried was edible, and seemed to be nourishing them. If there were vitamin deficiencies they had yet to make themselves known. Some fruits were salty, and others had a tang they hoped was vitamin C. Game was plentiful, and easy to kill.
They were all used to the strict time-lines of an astronaut, where every chore is assigned by ground control and the chief pastime is bitching about how it was impossible and yet doing it anyway. They had been prepared to struggle for survival in a hostile environment, but Hyperion was about as hostile as the San Diego Zoo. They had expected Robinson Crusoe, or at least the Swiss Family Robinson, but Hyperion was a creampuff. They had not yet adjusted enough to think in terms of a mission.
Two days after Calvin and August left, Gaby presented Cirocco with clothes she had made from the discarded chutes. It touched Cirocco deeply to see the expression on Gaby’s face when she tried it on.
The outfit was half toga and half loose pants. The material was thin, but surprisingly tough. It had taken Gaby a lot of hard work to cut it into usable sizes and sew it together with thorn needles.
“If you can work out something for moccasins,�
�� she told Gaby, “I’ll promote you three grades when we get home.”
“I’m working on it.” Gaby glowed for a day after that, and was frisky as a puppy, brushing against Cirocco and her fine clothing at the slightest excuse. She was pathetically eager to please.
Cirocco was sitting by the side of the river, alone for once, and glad of it. Being the bone of contention between two lovers was not to her taste. Bill was starting to get annoyed by Gaby’s behavior, and seemed to feel he should do something.
She reclined easily with a long limber pole in one hand and watched a small wooden float bob at the end of her line. She let her thoughts drift over the problem of aiding any rescue party that might come for them. What might be done to make rescue easier?
It was a certainty that they couldn’t get out of Gaea on their own. The best she could do would be to try contact with the rescue party. She had no doubt one would arrive, and few illusions that its primary purpose would be rescue. The messages she had managed to send during the break-up of Ringmaster described a hostile act, and the implications of that were enormous. Ringmaster’s crew would certainly be presumed dead, but Themis-Gaea would not be forgotten. A ship would arrive soon, and it would be loaded for bear.
“All right,” she said. “Gaea should have some communications facilities somewhere.”
Probably in the hub. Even if the engines were there too, its central location seemed the logical place for controls. There might be people up there running things, and there might not. There was no way to make the trip look easy, or the destination safe. It could be carefully guarded against entry and sabotage.
But if there was a radio up there, she should see what she could do about getting to it.
She yawned, scratched her ribs, and idly moved her foot up and down. The float bobbed in and out of the water. It seemed a good time for a snooze.
The float jerked, and vanished beneath the muddy waters. Cirocco looked at it for a moment, then realized with mild surprise that something had taken the bait. She stood and began pulling in the line.
