Titan

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Hornpipe had assumed the role of guide and source of information for the human party. She said her hindmother approved, and felt it would he a good learning experience. The humans were the most exciting things to happen in Titantown for many a myriarev.

When Cirocco expressed a desire to see the place of winds outside town, Hornpipe packed a picnic lunch and two full wineskins,. Calvin and Gaby volunteered to go, but August just sat looking out the window, something she did often. Gene could not be found. Cirocco reminded Calvin he had pledged to stay with Bill.

Bill told her to wait until he was healed. She was forced to remind him that she was still in charge. He had been forgetting that as confinement made him peevish and petty. Cirocco understood, but liked him least when he turned protective.

"Nice day for a picnic," Hornpipe sang as Cirocco and Gaby joined her on the edge of town. "The ground is dry. We should make it there and back in four or five revs. "

Cirocco knelt and tied the shoelaces of the soft leather moccasins that Titanides had made for her, then stood and looked out over the brown land to where the west central Rhea cable--the place of winds--loomed in the clear air.

"I hate to disappoint you," she sang, "but it will take me and my friend a decarev to get there, and the same coming back. We plan to camp at the base and take the false death."

Hornpipe shivered. "I wish you would not do that. It frightens me. How do the worms know not to eat you?"

Cirocco laughed. The Titanides did not sleep, ever. They found it even more disturbing than the odd knack of balancing forever on two legs.

"There's an alternative. I hesitate to suggest it for fear of offending you. On Earth we have animals-not people-that are built something like you. We ride upon their backs."

"On their backs?" She looked puzzled, then her face lit up as she made the connection. "You mean with one of your legs on each ... of course, I see! Do you think it would work?"

"I'm willing to try it if you are. Hold out your hand. No, turn it ... that's it. I'm going to put my foot on it ... " She did so, grabbed Hornpipe's shoulder, and swung herself up and over. She sat on the broad back with a cinch strap under her and a saddlebag behind each leg. "Is that comfortable?"

"I hardly know you're there. But how will you stay on?

"That's what we'll have to see. I thought I'd-" She broke off with a high-pitched yelp. Hornpipe had turned her head all the way around.

"What's, wrong?"

"Nothing. We're not so limber as that. I can hardly believe you're doing it. Never mind. Turn around and watch where you're going, and start out slow."

"What gait would you prefer?"

"Huh? Oh. I don't know anything about it."

"All right. I'll trot first, and work up to a slow gallop."

"Do you mind if I put my arms around you?"

"Not at all."

Hornpipe made a wide circle, gradually increasing her speed. They raced by Gaby, who cheered and shouted. When Hornpipe trotted to a stop she was scarcely breathing hard.

"Will it work, do you think?" Cirocco asked.

"I should think so. Let's try it with both of you."

"I'd like something to cover this strap," Cirocco said. "As for Gaby, why don't we find someone else for her?"

Within ten minutes Hornpipe had two cushions and another volunteer. This one was male, and covered in lavender fur, with white head and tail hair.

"Hey, Rocky. I've got a fancier mount than you."

"Depends on how you look at it. Gaby, I'd like you to meet-" she sang the name, reversed the introduction, then whispered an aside to Gaby. "Call him Panpipe."

'What's wrong with Leo or George?" she groused, but shook hands with him and easily leaped astride.

They set out, the Titanides singing a travelling song that the women joined as best they could. When that one ended they learned another. Then Cirocco eased into "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz," following it up with "The Caissons Go Rolling Along," said "Off We Go, into the Wild Blue Yonder." The Titanides were delighted; they had not known the humans had songs.

Cirocco had been on a raft trip down the Colorado River, and in a nutshell boat on the Ophion. She'd flown over the south pole and hopped across the United States in a biplane. She had travelled by snowmobile and bicycle, cable car and gravity train, and once took a short trip on a camel. None of them were anything like riding a Titanide under the vault of Gaea, in that long afternoon forever on the verge of sunset. Ahead of her a stairway to heaven sprang from the ground and retreated into night.

She threw her head back and sang.

"It's a long way to Tipperary, it's a long way to go . "

The place of winds was hard rock and tortured earth. Ridges like gnarled knuckles began to wrinkle the brown land, and between them deep chasms opened. The ridges splayed out and became fingers that gripped the land and crumpled it like a sheet of paper. The fingers soon joined a weathered hand and then a long shaggy arm reaching out of the night.

The air was never still. Sudden gusts from every direction generated a thousand dust devils to dance erratically in their path.

Soon they heard the howling. It was a hollow sound, not pleas ant, but with none of the terrible sadness of the great wind from Oceanus known as Gaea's Lament.

Hornpipe had given them some idea of what to expect. The ridges they were climbing were cable strands emerging at a thirty-degree angle to the ground, and covered with soil. The wind had eroded the land into gullies that all ran toward the source of the sound.

They began to pass suction holes in the ground, some no bigger than half a meter across, others large enough to swallow a Titanide. Each had its own distinctive whistling note. It was a non- harmonic, non-quantized music, like some of the more opaque experiments from the turn of the century. Behind it all was a continuous organ note.

The Titanides picked their way up the last, long ridge. It was hard, rocky ground, long since scoured of loose dirt, but the spine of the ridge was narrow and the chasms were wide and deep. Cirocco hoped they would know when it was best to stop. Already the wind whipped tears from her eyes.

"This is the place of winds," Hornpipe sang. "We dare not approach any closer, as the winds become strong enough to carry you away. But you can see the Great Howler if you go down the slope. Would you like me to carry you there?"

"Thanks, I'll walk," Cirocco said, and swung to the ground.

"I'll show the way." Hornpipe started down the slope, taking short, mincing steps and looking unstable, but apparently having no trouble.

The Titanides came to a vertical drop and followed it to the cast. When Gaby and Cirocco reached it they felt an increase in both the wind and the noise.

"If it gets much worse than this," Cirocco shouted, "I think we'd better give it up!"

"I'm with you."

But when they reached the place the Titanides had stopped, they saw it was as far as they would need to go.

There were seven visible suction holes, all of them at the ends of long, steep ravines. Six were from fifty to 200 meters across. The Great Howler could have swallowed them all.

Cirocco guessed it was a kilometer from the base of the opening to its top, and half that across its widest point. The oval shape was enforced by its position between two cable strands that made a sharp vee as they emerged from the brown land. Where they met, the great mouth of hare stone gaped open.

The sides of the opening were so smooth they flashed in the sunlight, like contorted mirrors. They had been polished by a thousand years of wind and the abrasive sand it carried. Veins of lighter ore in the dark stone gave it a mother-of-pearl sheen.

Hornpipe leaned over and sang close to Cirocco's car. "I can see why," Cirocco bellowed back.

"What did she say?" Gaby wanted to know.

"She said they call this place the fore-crotch of Gaea."

"I can see why. We're on one of her legs."

"That's the idea. "

Cirocco touched Hornpipe's rump and gestured back to the top of the ridge. She wondered what they thought of this place. Awe? Not likely. It was just outside of town. Were the Swiss awed by mountains?

It was good to get back to relative quiet. She stood beside Hornpipe and surveyed her surroundings.

If the cable base was a giant hand, as she had seen it earlier, they had made it to the second knuckle of one of the fingers. The Howler was down in the webbing between two fingers.

"Is there another way up?" Cirocco sang. "A way to reach the broad plain up there, without being sucked up to Gaea? "

Panpipe, who was a little older than Hornpipe, nodded.

"Yes, many. This great mother of holes is the largest. Any of the other ridges will allow you to reach the plateau."

"Then why didn't you take me up there?"

Hornpipe looked surprised. "You said you wished to see the place of winds, not climb up to meet Gaea."

"My fault," she acknowledged. "But what is the best way to the top?"

"The very top?" Hornpipe sang, wide-eyed. "I was merely joking. Surely you will not go there?"

"I'm going to try. "

Hornpipe pointed to the next ridge to the south. Cirocco studied the land across the chasm. It looked no more difficult than the ridge they had climbed. That had taken the Titanides an hour and a half, so she should be able to walk it in six to eight hours. There was another six hours of uphill terrain until the plateau was reached, and beyond that ...

From this vantage point the slanted cable was a preposterous mountain. It sloped away from her for approximately fifty kilometers, to the darkness above the Rhea border. For three of those kilometers nothing grew; it was chocolate-brown dirt and gray rock. For a similar distance there were only twisted, leafless trees. Beyond that, the persistent life of Gaea had found a foothold. She could not tell if it was grass or woodlands, but the five- kilometer diameter barrel of the cable was crested in green-the corroded anchor chain of a sea-going vessel.

The green extended to the Rhea twilight zone. The zone was not a sharp-edged thing; it began gradually as the color was washed away, by darkness. Green faded to bronze, deepened to dark gold, to silver over blood red, and finally to the color of clouds with the moon behind them. By then the cable was all but invisible. The eye followed the impossible curve as it dwindled to a rope, a string, a thread, before joining the looming dark- ness of the roof and vanishing into the spoke opening. The spoke could be seen to constrict gradually, but it was too dark to see much beyond that.

"It can be done," she said to Gaby. "To the roof, at least. I was hoping there would be some sort of mechanical lift here at the bottom. There might still be, I guess, but if we searched for it... " She waved her hand at the corrugated land. "It could take months."

Gaby studied the slope of the cable, sighed, and shook her head slowly.

"I go where you go, but you're crazy, you know? We'll never get past the roof. Take a look, will you? From there on in, we'd he climbing on the bottom of a forty-five-degree slope."

"Mountaineers do it all the time. You did it, in training."

"Sure. For ten meters. We'll have to do it for fifty or sixty kilometers. And then-here's the good news-then we only have to go straight up. For 400 kilometers."

"It won't be easy. We've got to try."

"Madre de Ms." Gaby hit her forehead with the heel of her hand, and rolled her eyes.

Hornpipe had watched Cirocco's gestures as she outlined the problem. Now she sang, largo.

"You will climb the great stairs?"

Hornpipe nodded, then bent and kissed Cirocco's forehead.

"I wish you folks would stop doing that," Cirocco said, in English.

"What was it for?" Gaby asked.

"Never mind. Let's get back to town."

They stopped after leaving the zone of wind. Hornpipe put out a groundcloth and they sat down to a picnic. The food was hot, stored in nutshell thermos bottles. Cirocco and Gaby ate per- haps a tenth of it between them, and the Titanides wolfed down the rest.

They were still five kilometers from Titantown when Horn- pipe looked over her shoulder, the expression on her face a mixture of mournfulness and anticipation. She gazed at the dark roof.

"Gaea breathes," she sang, sadly.

"What? Are you sure? I thought it would be noisy, and we'd have plenty of time to-does that mean there'll be angels?"

"Noisy from the west," Hornpipe corrected her. "The breath of Gaea is silent from the east. I fancy I can hear them already." She missed a step, nearly throwing Cirocco.

."Well, hurry, damn it! If you're trapped out here alone you won't have a chance."

"It's too late," Hornpipe sang, and now her eyes yearned, her lips drew back to bare bright teeth.

"Move!" Cirocco had practised that tone of command for years, and somehow managed to put it in a Titanide song. Hornpipe leaped to a gallop, and Panpipe followed close behind.

Soon even Cirocco could bear the wail of angels. Hornpipe's gait wavered; she wanted very badly to turn back and do battle.

They were approaching a lone tree, and Cirocco made a snap decision.

"Pull up. Hurry, we don't have much time."

They halted under the spreading branches and Cirocco jumped down. Hornpipe tried to bolt but Cirocco slapped the Titanide's face, which seemed to calm her temporarily.

"Gaby, cut off those saddlebags. Panpipe! Stop that! Come back here at once."

Panpipe looked undecided, but came back to them. Gaby and Cirocco worked frantically, tearing their clothes into strips, each making three strong ropes.

"My friends," Cirocco sang, when she had the tethers. "I don't have time to explain. I ask you to trust me and do as I say." She put every ounce of determination she possessed into the song, scoring it in the mode used from the old and wise to the young and foolish. It worked, but just barely. Both Titanides kept looking to the east.

She had them lie on their sides. "That hurts," Hornpipe complained when Cirocco tied her hind legs together."

"I'm sorry. It's for your own good." She quickly bound her forelegs and arms, then tossed a wineskin to Gaby. "Get as much of this down him as you can. I want him too stinking drunk to move."

"'Got off me"

"My child, I want you to drink this," she sang. "You too, over there. Drink lots of it." She held the nipple to Hornpipe's lips. The sound of the angels was louder now. Hornpipe's ears twitched up and down rapidly.

"Cotton, cotton," she muttered. She tore strips from her al- ready frayed tunic and rolled them into tight balls. "It worked for Odysseus, maybe it'll work for me. Gaby, the ears. Plug his ears."

"That hurts" Hornpipe howled. "Let me up, Earth monster. I don't like this game." She began to moan, the notes only occasionally resolving into words of hate.

"Have some more wine," Cirocco crooned. The Titanide choked as she poured it down her throat. The cries of the angels were very loud now. Hornpipe began to screech in reply. Cirocco grabbed the Titanide's ears and squeezed them, then cradled the big head in her lap. She put her lips to one car and sang a Titanide lullaby.

"Rocky, help!" Gaby yelled. "I don't know any of those songs.

Sing louder!" Panpipe was struggling, shrieking as Gaby tried to hold him by the cars. He lashed out with his bound hands and threw her away from him.

"Grab him! Don't let him get away."

"I'm trying." She ran behind him and tried to pin his arms to his sides, but he was much too strong for her. She tumbled away again, got up with a cut over her right eye.

Panpipe was gnawing at the bonds that held his wrists together. The cloth tore and he was clawing at his cars.

"What now, Rocky?" Gaby screamed, desperately.

"Come help me," she said. "He'll kill you if you get in his way." It was far too late to stop Panpipe. Ms front legs were free and he was contorted like a snake, tearing at the strap that bound the other two.

Without a glance at the women and Hornpipe, he charged toward Titantown. Soon he was gone over the top of a low hill.

Gaby did not seem aware that she was hurt as she knelt beside Cirocco, nor did she do anything about the trickle of blood down the side of her face.

"How can I help?"

"I don't know. Touch her, sooth her, do anything you can think of to keep her mind off angels."

Hornpipe was thrashing now, her teeth clenched, face bloodless. Cirocco held on, getting as close as she dared while Gaby slipped a rope around the Titanide's chest, pinioning her arms at her side.

. "Hush, hush," Cirocco whispered. "There's nothing to be afraid of. I'll watch over you until your hindmother returns to sing you her songs."

Hornpipe gradually quieted, her eyes regained the intelligence Cirocco had seen on the first day they met. It was infinitely better than the fearsome animal she had become.

It was ten more minutes before the last of the angels went by overhead. Hornpipe was drenched in sweat, like someone kicking a heroin or alcohol addiction.

She began to giggle as they waited for the angels to return. Cirocco reclined on her side, facing Hornpipe, holding her head close, and was startled when the Titanide began to move. It was not a testing of the bonds, as her earlier movements had been. It was frankly sexual. She gave Cirocco a wet kiss. Her mouth was so large and warm it was unnerving.

"Would that I were a boy," she crooned, drunkenly. Cirocco glanced down.

"Jesus," Gaby breathed. The Titanide's huge penis was out of its sheath, its tip pulsing on the dust.

"You may be a girl to you," Cirocco sang, "but you're too much of a boy for me."

Hornpipe thought that was hilarious. She roared, and tried to kiss Cirocco again but gave it up amiably enough when Cirocco drew back.

"I would do you great harm," she chortled. "Alas, that is for rear holes, of which you have none. Would that I were a boy, and had a member fit for you."

Cirocco sniffed and let her rave on, but her eyes were not smiling. She looked over Hornpipe's shoulder at Gaby.

"Last resort," she said, quietly, in English. ,if it looks like she's going to get free, take that rock and hit her over the head. If she gets away, she's dead."

"Gotcha. What's she talking about?" "She wants to make love to me."

"With that? Maybe I'd better bean her now."

"Don't be silly. We're in no danger from her. If she gets loose, she won't even see us. Do you hear them coming back?"

"I think so."

It turned out to be not nearly so difficult the second time. They never gave Hornpipe a chance to hear the angels, and while she sweated and shook as if she could somehow feel them. she never struggled very hard.

And then they were gone, back to the eternal darkness of the spoke high above Rhea.

She cried when they released her; the helpless sobs of a child who doesn't understand what has happened to her. That turned into petulance and complaints, chiefly about her sore legs and cars. Gaby and Cirocco rubbed her legs where the ropes had chafed. Her cloven hooves were as clear and red as cherry jello.

She seemed confused as to the whereabouts of Panpipe, but not distressed when she understood he had gone into battle. She gave them sloppy kisses and pressed herself against them amorously, causing Gaby some concern even when Cirocco explained the Titanides rigidly divided frontal and rear intercourse. The frontal organs were for the production of semi-fertilized eggs, which were then manually implanted in a rear vagina and brought to fecundity by a rear penis.

When she got to her feet she was too drunk to carry them. They walked her in circles and finally headed her back toward town. In a few hours they could get on her back again.

Titantown was in sight before they found Panpipe. The blood had already dried in his pretty blue fur. A lance stuck out from his side, pointed at the sky. He had been mutilated.

Hornpipe knelt at his side and wept while Gaby and sirocco hung back. There was bitterness in Cirocco's mouth. Did Hornpipe blame her? Would she have preferred to have died with him, or was that a hopelessly Earthling notion? The Titanides didn't seem to understand the glory of battle; it was something they did because they couldn't help it. Cirocco admired them for the first, pitied them for the second.

Do you rejoice for the one you saved, or weep for the one you lost? She could not do both, so she wept.

Hornpipe struggled to her feet, much heavier than she had been. Three years old, Cirocco thought. It meant nothing. She had some of the innocence of a human of the same age, but she was a Titanide adult.

She picked up the severed head and kissed it once, then set it down by the body. She sang nothing; the Titanides had no song for this moment.

Gaby and Cirocco got on her back again, and Hornpipe set out for town at a slow trot.

"Tomorrow," Cirocco said. "We leave for the hub tomorrow."