Wizard

16 The Circumnavigators' Club

Even with Hornpipe's strong arm supporting her Cirocco fell down twice while the Titanides were being loaded. She kept declaring she would make it on her own steam.

The gear Chris had bought was waiting, as promised, in a shed behind La Gata, along with the possessions of the others. The Titanides had saddlebags which strapped around their backs and cinched underneath. Valiha twisted around and fastened hers, ending with a capacious leather and canvas bag on each side of her equine lower half. The arrangement left room for Chris to ride. He jumped aboard and opened the bags, which already contained the things Valiha was bringing. She handed him his baggage, item by item, telling him to balance the contents. When he was done, each bag was less than half full. She said this was as it should be because when they left the river and took to the road, the extra space would be filled with provisions that were already on the boats.

While he was packing, Chris watched Gaby and Hornpipe trying to get Cirocco calmed down and aboard the Titanide. It was rather pathetic and more than a little worrisome. He noticed that Robin, kneeling atop Hautbois a few meters away, was also watching the spectacle. It was nearly pitch-black, the only light coming from the oil lamps the Titanides held, but he could see her frown.

"Having second thoughts about the trip?" he asked her.

She looked up in surprise. They had not spoken before-or at least not when he remembered it-and he wondered what she thought of him. He found her decidedly odd. He had learned that what he thought were paintings were in fact tattoos. Snakes with multicolored scales had wrapped their tails around her right big toe and her left little finger, and their bodies coiled up her leg and arm to slither beneath her clothes. He wondered what the heads looked like and if she sported any other art.

She turned back to her packing. "When I sign on, I stay on," she said. Her hair was falling into her eyes; with a toss of her head, she revealed her other physical oddity. Most of the left side of her head was shaved to reveal a complicated pentagonal design centering on her left ear. It made her look as if her wig were slipping.

She glanced again at Cirocco, then looked at Chris with what might have been a friendly smile. The tattoos made it hard to tell.

"I know what you mean, though," she conceded. "They can call her a Wizard if they want to, but I know a drunk when I see one."

Chris and Valiha were the last of the eight to emerge from the darkness beneath the Titantown tree. He blinked in the light for a moment, then smiled. It felt good to be moving. It hardly mattered what he was moving toward.

The other three teams made a pretty picture as they crested the first hill and started down the sun-baked dirt road between fields of tall yellow grain. Gaby was in the lead, wearing her Robin Hood greens and grays, mounted on the chocolate brown Psaltery with his orange flame of hair. Behind them was Hornpipe, with Cirocco prone on his back. Only her legs were visible, protruding from the dull red serape. Hornpipe's hair seemed black when seen in dim light; now it sparkled like a nest of fine prisms, flying out behind him. Even Hautbois's brown and olive swirls looked grand in the sunlight, and her dandelion of white head hair was glorious. Robin rode with her back straight and her feet on the saddlebags, dressed in loose pants and a light knitted shirt.

He made himself comfortable on Valiha's broad back. Taking a deep breath, he thought he could taste that elusive quality of the air that often precedes a summer rainstorm. To the west he could see weather rolling in from Oceanus. There were clouds: fat, wet rolls of cotton. They were elongated toward the north and south. Sometimes they came in strings, like sausages, and the higher, thinner ones often appeared to be unrolling, laying a thin sheet of white as they moved. It had something to do with the Coriolis effect, whatever that was. It was a great day to be going somewhere. Chris had not believed he could sleep on the back of a Titanide, but it turned out that he could. He was awakened by Valiha.

Psaltery was walking on a long dock reaching into Ophion. Valiha followed, and soon her hooves clomped on wooden planks. Moored to the dock were four large canoes. They were wooden frameworks with a silvery material stretched over the ribs. It made them look like the aluminum craft which had been a standard on Terran lakes and streams for almost two centuries. Their bottoms were reinforced with planks. In the center of each was a mound of supplies covered with red canvas and secured with ropes.

They rode high in the water, but when Psaltery stepped into the stern of one, it sank noticeably. Chris watched in fascination as the Titanide nimbly moved about on the narrow deck, removing his saddlebags and stowing them in the bow. He had never thought of Titanides as a seafaring race, but Psaltery looked as if he knew his way around a boat

"You'll have to get down now," Valiha said. Her head was turned around, something that always gave Chris a psychosomatic pain in the neck when he saw it. He tried to give her a hand with the straps but soon saw he was in her way. The heavy bags might have been pillowcases stuffed with feathers from the way she threw them around.

"The boats will hold two Titanides and some baggage, or all four humans," Gaby was saying. "Or we can keep the human-Titanide teams together, one per boat. Which way would you like to work it?"

Robin was standing on the edge of the dock and frowning down at the boats. She turned at the waist, still frowning, and shrugged. Then she jammed her hands into her pockets and scowled down at the water, mightily displeased about something.

"I don't know," Chris said. "I guess I'd prefer... ." He noticed Valiha watching him. She turned away quickly. "I'll stick with Valiha, I guess."

"Makes no difference to me," Gaby said, "so long as at least one person in every boat knows something about canoeing. Do you?"

"I've done some. I'm no expert."

"Doesn't matter. Valiha can show you the ropes. Robin?"

"I know nothing about it. I'd like to bring up-"

"You go with Hautbois then. We can switch around later, get to know each other better. Chris, will you give me a hand with Rocky?"

"I'd like to make a suggestion," Robin said. "She's out cold. Why don't we leave her here? Half her baggage is liquor, I saw it myself. She's a drunk, and she's going to be a-"

She got no further because Gaby had pinned her to the dock before Chris quite knew what was going on. Gaby's hands were at Robin's neck, forcing her head back. Slowly, trembling slightly, Gaby released the pressure and sat back. Robin coughed once but did not move.

"You must never speak of her that way," Gaby whispered. "You don't know what you are saying."

No one had moved. Chris shifted his feet and heard a decking plank creak loudly.

Gaby got to her feet. As she turned away her shoulders were slumped, and she looked old and tired. Robin stood, dusted herself off with icy dignity, and cleared her throat. She rested one hand on the butt of her automatic.

"Stop," she said. "Stop right there." Gaby did stop. She turned around, not looking as if the situation held any interest for her.

"I will not kill you," Robin said quietly. "What you did demands an accounting, but you are peckish and probably know no better. But hear me and know that you are warned. Your ignorance will not save you. If you touch me again, one of us will die."

Gaby glanced at the weapon on Robin's hip, nodded glumly, and turned away again.

Chris helped her load Cirocco into the front of one of the canoes. He was mystified by the whole situation but knew when to keep his mouth shut. He watched Gaby step into the boat and pull a blanket over the Wizard's limp body. She arranged the Wizard's head on a pillow, managing to make her sleep look almost peaceful until she stirred and snorted and kicked the blanket away. Gaby climbed out of the boat.

"You'd better get in the front," Valiha said as he joined her at the canoe which was to be theirs. He stepped in and sat down, found a paddle, and dipped it in the water experimentally. It suited him well. Like all things Titanides made, it was beautifully crafted, with the images of small animals etched into the polished wood. He felt the boat lurch as Valiha boarded.

"How do you people find the time to make everything so beautiful?" he asked her, gesturing with the paddle.

"If it's not worth making beautiful," Valiha said, "it's not worth making. We don't make so many things as humans do either. We make nothing to throw away. We make things one at a time and don't begin a second until we are through with the first. Titanides never invented the assembly line."

He turned around. "Is that really all there is to it? A different outlook?"

She grinned. "Not the whole story. Not sleeping has something to do with it. You humans waste a third of your lives unconscious. We don't sleep."

"That must be very strange." He had known they didn't sleep but had not really thought of what it implied.

"Not to me. But I do suspect that we experience time in a different way from you. Our time is not broken up. We measure it, of course, but as a continuous flow rather than a succession of days."

"Yeah ... but what does that have to do with craftmanship?"

"We have more time. We don't sleep, but about a quarter of our time is spent resting. We sit and sing and work with our hands. It adds up."

Travelers on Ophion often remarked on the feeling of timelessness the river gave them. Ophion was both the source and the end of all things in Gaea, the circle of waters that tied all things together. As such, it felt like an old river because Gaea herself felt old.

Ophion was old, but it was a relative thing. As ancient as Gaea herself, Ophion was an infant beside the great rivers of Earth. It was also to be remembered that most humans saw the river only in Hyperion, where it spread out and took things easy. Elsewhere on its 4,000-kilometer circumference, Ophion was as frisky as the Colorado.

Chris had been set for a fast trip. It was just what one did in a canoe: put it on a fast stream and ride the white water.

"You might as well relax," came the voice from behind him. "You'll tire yourself out too soon and then go to sleep. Humans are extremely boring when they sleep. I know this part of the river well. There is nothing to watch out for between here and Aglaia. Here Ophion is forgiving."

He put his paddle on the floor of the canoe and turned around. Valiha sat placidly just aft of the tarp-covered pallet of supplies. The paddle in her hands was twice as large as his own. Valiha looked completely relaxed with all four legs folded under her, and Chris thought that odd because he had not expected a being so like a horse to enjoy sitting like that.

"You people amaze me," he said. "I thought I was hallucinating the first time I saw a Titanide climbing a tree. Now you turn out to be sailors, too."

"You people amaze me," Valiha countered. "How you balance is a mystery. When you run, you begin by falling forward, and then your legs try to catch up with the rest of you. You live constantly on the edge of disaster."

Chris laughed. "You're right, you know. I do, at least." He watched her paddling, and for a time there was no sound but the quiet gurgle made by her oar.

"I feel I ought to be helping you. Should we take turns rowing?"

"Sure. I'll row three-quarters of a rev, and you can row the other quarter."

"That's hardly equitable."

"I know what I'm doing. This isn't work."

"You're moving us pretty fast."

Valiha winked at him, then began to paddle in earnest. The canoe almost became airborne, skipping like a tossed stone. She kept it up for a few dozen strokes, then fell back into her relaxed rhythm.

"I could do that for a whole rev," she said. "You might as well face the fact that I'm a lot stronger than you, even at your best. And right now you aren't in condition. Get used to it gradually, okay?"

"I guess so. I still feel I ought to be doing something."

"I agree. Lean back, and let me do the donkeywork."

He did, but wished she had used another euphemism. It hit at the heart of something that had been bothering him.

"I've been feeling uncomfortable," he said. "That it boils down to is, we are-that is, we humans are using you Titanides like... well, like draft animals."

"We can carry a lot more than you can."

"All right, I know that. But I don't even have a pack. And ... well, it somehow makes me feel I'm using you badly when-"

"Nervous about riding me, is that it?" She grinned at him and rolled her eyes. "Next you'll be suggesting that you walk sometimes, to give me a rest, right?"

"Something like that."

"Chris, there's nothing more boring than taking a walk with a human."

"Not even watching one sleep?"

"You got me. That's more boring."

"You seem to find us tedious."

"Not at all, you are endlessly fascinating. One never knows what a human will do next, or from what motive. If we had universites, the best-attended classes would be in the Department of Human Studies. But I'm young and impatient, as the Wizard pointed out. If you wish, you may walk, and I will endeavor to slow down. I don't know how the others will like it."

"Forget it," Chris said. "I just don't want to be a burden. Literally."

"You aren't," she assured him. "When you ride me, my heart lifts and my feet fly like the wind." She was looking into his eyes with an odd expression on her face. He could not read it, but it made him want to change the subject.

"Why are you here, Valiha? Why are you in this boat, making this trip?"

"You mean just me or the other Titanides?" She went on without waiting for an answer. "Psaltery is here because he goes where Gaby goes. The same for Hornpipe. As for Hautbois, I presume it is because the Wizard often grants a child to those who circumnavigate the great river."

"Really?" He laughed. "I wonder if she'll grant me a child when I get back?" He expected her to laugh, but there was that look again. "But you didn't say why you were coming. You're ... well, you're pregnant, aren't you?"

"Yes. Chris, I'm really sorry about running off and leaving you. I could-"

"Never mind that. You already apologized, and it makes me nervous to watch it anyway. But shouldn't you be taking it easy?"

"That's far in the future. It doesn't inconvenience us much anyway. And I'm here because it's a great honor to go with the Wizard. And because you are my friend."

Once again there was that look.

"Can I join you?"

Chris looked up, startled. He had not been asleep, but neither had he been precisely awake. His knees were stiff from maintaining the same position for hours.

"Sure. Come aboard." Gaby's canoe had pulled alongside Chris and Valiha. Gaby stepped from one to the other and sat in front of Chris. She cocked her head to one side and looked dubious.

"Are you all right?"

"If you mean, am I crazy right now, you'd be the best judge of that."

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to-"

"No, I'm serious." And a little hurt, he admitted to himself. One had to stop feeling apologetic about it sometime or lose all self-respect. "I never know when I'm having what the doctors call an episode. It always seems perfectly reasonable behavior to me at the time."

She looked sympathetic. "It must be terrible. I mean, to..... She looked at the sky and whistled thinly for a moment. "Gaby, shut your big mouth," she said. She looked back at him. "I didn't come to embarrass you, no matter what it might look like. Can we start over?"

"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."