Titan (GAIA)

by John Varley

  She actually felt good enough to look through her pack and check the level of stored provisions before collapsing.

  The fourth day they made twenty kilometers in ten hours, and at the end of the day Gene grabbed Cirocco.

  They had pitched camp where the stream they were following was wide enough for a bath, and Cirocco had taken off her clothes and lowered herself in without even thinking about it. Soap would have been nice, but there was fine sand on the bottom and she could scour herself with that. Soon Gaby and Gene joined her. Later, Gaby went off on Cirocco’s instructions to find fresh fruit. There were no towels, so she was squatting naked by the fire when Gene put his arms around her.

  She jumped, scattering burning twigs, and pushed his hands away from her breasts.

  “Hey, stop that.” She struggled, and broke away.

  He was not at all abashed.

  “Come on, Rocky, it’s not like we’ve never touched each other before.”

  “Yeah? Well, I don’t like people sneaking up on me. Keep your hands to yourself.”

  He looked exasperated. “Is it going to be like that? What am I supposed to do with two naked women running around?”

  Cirocco reached for her clothes.

  “I didn’t know the sight of naked women made you lose control of yourself. I’ll bear it in mind.”

  “Now you’re angry.”

  “No, I’m not angry. We’re going to have to live close for some time, and it wouldn’t do to get angry.” She pressed the fasteners of her shirt and eyed him warily for a moment, then repaired the fire, careful to sit facing him.

  “You’re angry anyway. I didn’t mean anything by it.”

  “Just don’t grab me, is all.”

  “I’d send you roses and candy, but it’s a little impractical.”

  She smiled, and relaxed a little. It sounded more like the old Gene, which was an improvement over what she had seen in his eyes a moment ago.

  “Listen, Gene. We didn’t make the greatest pair back on the ship, and you know it. I’m tired, I’m hungry, and I still feel dirty. All I can say is, if I feel ready for anything, I’ll let you know.”

  “Fair enough.”

  Neither of them said anything as Cirocco built the fire bigger, carefully keeping it on the little shelf they had dug into the dirt.

  “Are you … do you and Gaby have something going?”

  She flushed, hoping it wasn’t visible in the firelight.

  “That’s none of your business.”

  “I always thought she was gay underneath,” he said, nodding. “I didn’t think you were.”

  She took a deep breath and looked at him narrowly. The darting shadows revealed nothing on his blond-bearded face.

  “Are you deliberately needling me? I said it was none of your business.”

  “If you weren’t queer for her, you’d have just said no.”

  What was the matter with her? she wondered. Why was he making her skin crawl? Gene had always operated by his own bonehead logic when it came to people. His bigotry was carefully suppressed and socially acceptable, or he would never have been chosen for the trip to Saturn. He blundered cheerfully through his relationships, genuinely surprised when people took offense at his tactlessness. It was a common-enough personality, so well controlled, according to his psychological profile, as to barely qualify as an eccentricity.

  So why did she feel so uncomfortable when he looked at her?

  “I’d better set you straight so you don’t hurt Gaby. She’s fallen in love with me. It has something to do with the isolation; I was the first person she saw afterward, and she developed this fixation. I think she’ll grow out of it because she’s never been significantly homosexual before. Nor heterosexual, for that matter.”

  “She covered it up,” he suggested.

  “What year is this? Nineteen-fifty? You astonish me, Gene. You don’t hide anything from those NASA tests. She had a homosexual affair, sure. I had one, and so did you. I read your dossier. You want me to tell you how old you were when it happened?”

  “I was just a kid. The point is, I could tell about her when we made love. No reaction, you know? I’ll bet it’s not like that when you two make it.”

  “We don’t—” She stopped herself, wondering how she had been drawn in as far as she was.

  “This conversation is over. I don’t want to talk about it, and besides, Gaby’s coming back.”

  Gaby approached the fire and dropped a net full of fruit at Cirocco’s side. She squatted, looked thoughtfully back and forth between the two of them, then stood up and put on her clothes.

  “Are my ears burning, or is it my imagination?”

  Neither Gene nor Cirocco spoke, and Gaby sighed.

  “Here we go again. I think I’m starting to agree with the folks who say manned space missions cost more than they’re worth.”

  The fifth day took them irrevocably into night. There was now only the ghostly light reflected by the day areas curving up on each side. It was not much, but it was enough.

  The ground was noticeably steeper, with a thinner layer of dirt. Often they walked on the warm, bare strands, which provided surer traction. They began tying themselves together, and were careful to see that two were always hanging on while the other climbed.

  Even here the plant life of Gaea had not given up. Massive trees splayed roots flat to the cable, sending out runners that scrambled into the surface and hung on tenaciously. The effort of wresting a living from such uninviting terrain had robbed them of beauty. They were gaunt and lonely, their trunks translucent with a pale inner light, their leaves the merest wisps of nothing. In places, the roots could be used as ladders.

  At the end of the day they had come seventy kilometers in a straight line, and were fifty kilometers nearer the hub. The trees had thinned enough for them to see they had climbed above the level of the roof, well on their way into the narrowing wedge of space between the cable and the bell-shaped mouth of the Rhea spoke. They could look back and see Hyperion spread out below, as though they rode on a kite tied to a monster string tethered in the rocky knot called the place of winds.

  They saw the glitter of the glass castle early on the sixth day. Cirocco and Gaby crouched in a tangle of tree roots and scanned it as Gene carried the rope to the foot of the structure.

  “Maybe that’s the place,” Cirocco said.

  “You mean your elevator lobby?” Gaby snorted. “If that’s it, I’d as soon ride a roller coaster with paper rails.”

  It looked something like an Italian hill town, but made of spun sugar, a million years old, and half melted. Domes and balconies, arches, flying buttresses, battlements, and terraced roofs perched on a jutting shelf and dripped over the edge like syrup poured over a waffle and quick-frozen. Tall towers jutted at all angles: pencils in a cup. They were tall and spindly. In the corners, drifts of snow or pastel confectioner’s sugar sparkled.

  “It’s a hulk, Rocky.”

  “I can see that. Let me have my fantasy, will you?”

  The castle fought a silent battle with wispy white vines. It looked like a stand-off; the castle had taken mortal damage, but when they joined Gene, Cirocco and Gaby heard the vines giving off the dry rustle of death.

  “Like Spanish moss,” Gaby observed, tugging a handful free of the entangling mass.

  “But bigger.”

  Gaby shrugged. “If Gaea can’t build it in the large economy size, she doesn’t bother.”

  “There’s a door up here,” Gene called back. “You want to go in?”

  “You bet.”

  There was five meters of level space between the edge of the shelf and the castle wall. Not far from them was a rounded arch, not much taller than the top of Cirocco’s head.

  “Whew!” Gaby breathed, leaning against the wall. “Walking on level ground is almost enough to make you dizzy. I’d forgotten how.”

  Cirocco lit a lamp and followed Gene through the arch and into a hall of glass.

  “
We’d better stick together,” she said.

  There seemed good reason for the caution. While none of the surfaces were completely reflective, the place had a lot in common with the mirror houses at carnivals. They could see through the walls to rooms on all sides of them, which also had glass walls leading to more rooms.

  “How do we get out, once we’re in?” Gaby asked.

  Cirocco pointed down. “Follow our footprints.”

  “Ah. How silly of me.” Gaby bent and looked at the fine powder coating the floor. There were larger, flat sheets scattered through it.

  “Ground glass,” she said. “Don’t fall down.”

  Gene shook his head. “I thought so at first, too, but it’s not glass. It’s thin as a soap bubble, and it won’t hold an edge.” He picked a wall and pressed it gently with the palm of his hand. It shattered with a soft tinkling sound. He caught one of the pieces that drifted down around him and crushed it in his hand.

  “How many of those walls could you break before the second floor falls on us?” Gaby asked, pointing at the room above them.

  “A lot, I think. Look, this place is a maze, but it wasn’t originally. We walk through some of the walls because something broke them already. But this was a stack of cubes, with no way in or out of any of them.”

  Gaby and Cirocco looked at each other.

  “Like the building we looked at under the cable,” Cirocco said, for both of them. She described it to Gene.

  “Who makes buildings with rooms you can’t get in or out of?” Gaby asked.

  “The chambered nautilus does,” Gene said.

  “Say again?”

  “The nautilus. It makes its shell in a spiral. When the shell gets too small, it moves up and seals off part of the shell in back. You cut them in half, they’re very pretty. It sounds a lot like the building you saw; little rooms on the bottom, big ones on top.”

  Cirocco frowned. “But all these rooms look about the same size.”

  Gene shook his head. “The difference isn’t great. This room is a little taller than the one over there. There’ll be smaller rooms somewhere else. These things built sideways.”

  The picture that emerged of the creatures that built the glass castle was of something that worked like sea corals. The colony abandoned houses as they outgrew them, building on the remains. Parts of the castle towered ten levels or more. Structural strength came not from the tissue-thin walls but from the interstices that made up the edges. They were like clear lucite bars, thick as Cirocco’s wrist, very hard and strong. If all the walls in the castle had been broken out, the outline would have remained, like the steel underpinnings of a skyscraper.

  “Whoever built it wasn’t the last to use it,” Gaby suggested. “Somebody moved in and made a lot of modifications, unless these creatures were considerably more sophisticated than what we decided. But either way, everybody’s long gone.”

  Cirocco tried not to be disappointed, but it didn’t do any good. It was a letdown. They were still far from the top, and it looked like they would have to climb every meter.

  “Don’t be angry.”

  “What’s that?” Cirocco came awake slowly. Hard to believe it’s been eight hours already, she thought.

  But how did he know? She had the watch.

  “Don’t look at it.” It was said in the same even tone, but Cirocco froze with her arm half raised. She saw Gene’s face, orange in the dying firelight. He was kneeling over her.

  “Why … what is it, Gene? Is something wrong?”

  “Just don’t be angry. I didn’t mean to hurt her, but I couldn’t very well let her watch, could I?”

  “Gaby?” She started to rise, and he let her see the knife. In the heightened awareness of the moment, she saw several things: Gene was naked; Gaby was lying face down, nude, and did not seem to be breathing; Gene had an erection. There was blood on his hands. Her senses sharpened to a keen edge. She could hear his even breathing, smell blood and violence.

  “Don’t be angry,” he said, reasonably. “I didn’t want to do it this way, but you forced me.”

  “All I said was—”

  “You’re angry, I can tell.” He sighed at the unfairness of it all and produced a second knife—Gaby’s—in his left hand. “If you think about it, you have yourself to blame. What do you think I’m made of? You women. Do your mothers tell you to be selfish? Is that it?”

  Cirocco tried to think of a safe answer, but he apparently didn’t want one. He moved over her and put the tip of a knife under her chin. She flinched; the tip bit into the soft flesh. It was colder than his eyes.

  “I don’t understand why you’re doing this.”

  He hesitated. The second knife had been moving in the direction of her belly; now he stopped with it just out of her sight. She licked her lips and wished she could see it again.

  “That’s a fair question. I’ve always thought about it—what man doesn’t?” He searched her eyes for understanding, looked forlorn when he did not find it.

  “Ah, what’s the use? You’re a girl.”

  “Try.” The knife was moving again. She felt it press flat against the inside of her thigh. Sweat broke out on her forehead. “You don’t have to do it this way. Put the knife down, and I’ll give you anything you want.”

  “Ah-ah.” There was the knife again, waggling back and forth like a mother’s admonishing finger. “I’m not a stupid man. I know how you women work.”

  “I swear. It doesn’t have to be this way.”

  “It does. I’ve killed Gaby, and you won’t forgive that. It never was fair, you know. You tantalize us all the time. We’re always horny, and you’re always saying no.” He was sneering, but the expression quickly vanished to be replaced once again by calmness. She had liked the sneer better.

  “I’m just evening things out. Back when you people left me alone in the dark I decided I’d do what I please. I made friends in Rhea. You’re not going to like them much. I’m the Captain from now on, like I should have been in the first place. You’ll do what I say. Now don’t do anything stupid.”

  She gasped as the sharp point of the knife tore her pants. She thought she knew what he was about to use the knife for, and wondered if she’d rather be stupid and dead than alive and mutilated. But once the pants were gone he cut no further. Her attention returned to the knife under her chin.

  He entered her. She turned her face away and the knife point followed. It hurt like hell, but that was not important. What mattered was the twitch in Gaby’s cheek, the trail her hand had made through the dust while moving closer to the hatchet, her half-open eye and the gleam in it.

  Cirocco looked up at Gene and had no trouble putting fear into her voice.

  “Don’t! Oh, please, don’t, I’m not ready. You’ll kill me!”

  “You’re ready when I say you are.” He lowered his head and Cirocco risked a glance at Gaby, who seemed to understand. Her eye closed.

  It all happened far away. She had no body, that was someone else who was hurting so badly. Only the knife point at her chin had meaning, until he began to tire.

  What would the price of his failure be? she wondered. Right. Then he can’t fail. A moment would come when his attention would waver, but she had to insure that moment arrived. She began to move under him. It was the most disgusting thing she had ever done.

  “Now we see the truth,” he said, with a dreamy smile.

  “Don’t talk, Gene.”

  “You got it. See how much better it is when you don’t fight?”

  Was it her imagination, or was her skin not quite so taut under the knife? Had it pulled back? She tasted the thought, careful not to fool herself, and decided it was true. She had acquired an exquisite sensitivity. The slight easing of pressure was like the lifting of a great weight.

  He would have to close his eyes. Didn’t they always close their eyes?

  He closed them and she almost moved, but he opened them again, quickly. Testing her, damn it. But he saw no deception. No
rmally she was a lousy actress, but the knife had inspired her.

  His back arched. His eyes closed. The knife pressure was gone.

  Nothing went right.

  She slapped his arm one way, turned her head the other; the knife cut the side of her cheek. She punched at his throat, meaning to crush it, but he moved just enough. She twisted, kicked, felt the knife slash her shoulder blade. Then she was up—

  —but not running. Her feet did not touch the ground for agonizing seconds while she waited for the knife to bite.

  It did not, and she got enough of a toehold to bound into the air again and start away from him. She glanced over her shoulder while in the air and realized her kick had been stronger than she imagined. It had lifted him from the ground and he was only now touching again. Gaby was still in the air. Adrenalin was causing Earth muscles to behave madly in the low gravity.

  The chase took forever to get going, but picked up speed rapidly.

  She didn’t think he knew Gaby was behind him. He would never have pursued Cirocco so single-mindedly if he had seen seen Gaby’s face.

  They had camped in the castle’s central plaza, a level area the builders had never subdivided. The fire was twenty meters from the first gallery of rooms. Cirocco was still accelerating when she hit the first wall. She never broke stride, smashing a dozen of them before reaching up to grab one of the girders. She swung through a ninety-degree turn and rose, tumbling, through three ceilings before stopping in the air. She heard crashes as Gene blundered on, not understanding her maneuver.

  She put her feet on a girder and pushed up again. She rose, a cloud of glass shards ascending with her, twisting and turning in dreamy slow motion. She leaped to the side and went through three walls before stopping. She broke through to her left, went up another floor, then over and down through two more.

  She stopped, crouching on a girder, and listened.

  There was the far-off tinkle of breaking glass. It was dark. She was in the middle of a chambered maze that stretched to infinity in all directions: up, down, and sideways. She didn’t know where she was, but neither did he, and that was the way she wanted it.