Wizard

1 The Ambassador

The Titanide galloped from the fog like a fugitive from a demented carousel. Take a traditional centaur-half horse, half human-and paint it in Mondrian white lines and squares of red, blue, and yellow: that was the Titanide. She was a nightmare quilt from hooves to eyebrows, and she was running for her life.

She thundered down the seawall road, arms held out behind her like the silver lady on a Rolls-Royce, steam snorting from her wide nostrils. Close behind her was the mob, riding tiny citipeds and brandishing fists and clubs. Above them a police Maria slid into position, bellowing orders that could not be heard over the hoot of its klaxons.

Chris'fer Minor backed farther into the arched tunnel where he had hidden when he heard the sound of the riot horns. He pulled his jacket tight around his neck, wishing he had chosen another refuge. The Titanide was sure to head for the fort as the only cover in sight. There was nowhere else to go except the bridge, protected behind a high fence, and the Bay.

But the Bay was where she headed. She flew over the cracked asphalt of the parking lot and leaped the suspended chain barrier at the edge of the seawall. The jump was of Olympic caliber. She was beautiful in the air, sailing far enough to clear the rocks and most of the shallow, foamy water. The splash was awesome. Her head and shoulders emerged, then more of her until she looked like a human standing in waist-deep water.

The people were not satisfied. They began to tear out chunks of asphalt and shy them toward the alien. Chris'fer wondered what the Titanide had done. This mob had none of the feral festivity of pure alien-baiters. They were angry about something specific.

The rioteer in the hovering Maria turned on the sunburn gun, a device normally reserved for use against armed disturbances. Clothes began to smolder, hair to crackle and curl. In no time the parking lot was empty, and the former mob sizzled and cursed in the cold Bay waters.

Chris'fer heard the drone of approaching paddycopters. It was hardly the first riot he had witnessed. While he was curious about the cause, he knew that hanging around was a sure way to spend the week in jail. He turned and passed through the short corridor into the oddly shaped brick building.

Inside was a trapezoidal concrete courtyard. It was surrounded by a three-tiered gallery. The outer wall was pierced regularly by half-meter square holes. There was not much else to say about the building; it was an abandoned hulk, but a well-swept one. Here and there wooden easels supported signs with old-fashioned gold lettering on them, pointing the way to various parts of the building, giving history and details in small print.

Near the center of the courtyard was a brass flagpole. At the top a flag whipped in the stiff breeze coming through the Golden Gate: centered in a field of black, a six-spoked golden wheel. It was impossible to look up at that flag without having one's eye drawn farther, to the imposing sight of the bridge span hanging unsupported in space.

This was Fort Point, constructed in the nineteenth century to protect the entrance to the Bay. All its cannons were gone now. It would have been a redoubtable defense against an enemy from the sea, but none had ever come. Fort Point had never fired a shot in anger.

He wondered if the builders had thought their creation would last two hundred and fifty years, structurally unchanged from the day the last brick was laid. He suspected they had, but would have been dumbfounded to stand where he now stood, to look up at the orange metal of the bridge arching so insolently over the brick behemoth.

Actually, the bridge had not fared nearly so well. After it had been brought down in the quake of '45, it had been fifteen years before a new roadway was slung between the undamaged towers.

Chris'fer took a deep breath and shoved his hands into his pockets. He had been trying to put off what he had come here for, terrified of being turned down. But it had to be done. There was a sign indicating his direction. It said:

THIS WAY TO THE GAEAN EMBASSY

THE AMBASSADOR IS [IN]

The word "in" was on a dirty piece of cardboard hanging from a nail.

He followed the pointing hand through a door and into a hallway. Interior doors opened right and left into bare brick rooms. The Gaean Embassy held nothing but a metal desk and some hay bales stacked against a wall. Chris'fer entered, then saw there was a Titanide sprawled behind the desk.

She wore a comic-opera uniform on her human torso, festooned with brass and braid. Her horse body was palomino, and so were the hands and forearms that protruded from her jacket sleeves. She was apparently asleep, snoring like a chain saw. She embraced a gold military shako with a long white plume, her head thrown back to expose a tawny palomino throat. There was an empty liquor bottle sitting tilted in the hat, and another beside her left hind leg.

"Is somebody out there?" The voice came from behind an interior door marked Her Excellency, Dulcimer (Hypomixolydian Trio) Cantata. "Tirarsi, show them in, will you?" There was a tremendous sneeze, followed by a snort.

Chris'fer went to the door, opened it hesitantly, and stuck his head in. He saw another Titanide sitting behind a desk.

"Your... ah ... she appears to be passed out."

The Titanide snorted again. "She's a he," Ambassador Cantata said. "And it ain't unusual. She's spun so far off the wheel she doesn't even remember how it turned."

"Spinning off the wheel" was rapidly replacing "falling off the wagon" and other euphemisms for a drinking problem. Titanides brought to Earth were notorious drunks. It was not just the alcohol-which they had known before they left Gaea-but the maguey plant. Its fermented, distilled nectar was so adored by Titanides that Mexico was one of the few Earth nations with a Gaean export trade.

"Come in, then," the ambassador said. "Take a seat over there. I'll be with you in a minute, but first I have to see where Tzigane got to." She started to rise.

"If you mean a sort of quilted Titanide, she jumped into the Bay."

The ambassador froze with her hindquarters nearly up and her hands flat on the desk. Slowly her rump settled again.

"There's only one quilted Titanide in West America, and he's a male, and his name is Tzigane." She narrowed her eyes at Chris'fer. "Was this a recreational plunge, or did he have a more pressing reason?"

"I'd say he discovered a sudden need to be in Marin County. There were about fifty people chasing him."

She grimaced. "Hanging around bars again. He got one taste of human ass, and now he can't seem to get enough. Well, sit down, I'll have to try to square this with the police." She picked up an old-fashioned blind phone and told it to connect her with City Hall. Chris'fer pulled the only chair in the room closer to the desk and sat on it. While she talked, he looked around her office.

It was large, as it had to be to accommodate a Titanide. It contained many nineteenth- and twentieth-century antiques and art objects, but very little furniture. A long-handled water pump was bolted to the floor in one corner, and the bare bulb that hung from the center of the room was hooded by a leaded Tiffany shade. A freestanding wood stove was near the room's only window. There were paintings and posters on the walls: a Picasso, a Warhol, a J.G. Minton, and a little black sign with orange letters reading "Some Day I'm Going to Have to Get ORGANIZED!" Behind the desk were two photos and a portrait. They depicted Johann Sebastian Bach, John Philip Sousa, and Gaea as seen from space. On the desk was a silver bucket of limes.

Half the floor was covered in a thin layer of hay. There were bales of it stacked in a corner. Ambassador Cantata hung up the phone and reached for an open bottle of tequila and the bucket, popped a lime into her mouth, crunched it, and drank half the bottle. She made a face at him.

"You wouldn't have any salt, would you?"

He shook his head.

"Too bad. Want a drink? How about a lime? I think I have a knife... ." She started to rummage through drawers, stopped when he politely refused.

"He looked like a female to me," Chris'fer said.

"Huh? Oh, you mean Tzigane. No, I'm familiar with the mistake-it was the breasts that fooled you; we all have them-but he's a male. It's the frontal organs that determine it. Between the front legs. Tzigane's are kind of hard to see from a distance, with that pattern of squares. I, for your information, am female, you may call me Dulcimer, and what is your name and what can I do for you?"

He sat up a little straighter. "My name is Chris'fer Minor, and I want a visa. I'd like to see Gaea."

She had written his name on a form from a stack on her desk. Now she looked up and moved the form away.

"We sell visas in all the major airports," she said. "No need to see me. Just come up with the cash and put it in the vending machine."

"No," he said, voice a little unsteady. "I want to see Gaea herself. I have to see her. She's my last chance."