Titan

CHAPTER TWENTY

The stairway emerged from a great heap of sand at the upper- most border of the glass castle and went straight as an arrow until it could no longer be seen. Each step was a meter and a half wide and forty centimeters high, and appeared to have been carved into the face of the cable.

After Cirocco and Gaby had followed it for a time, they began to think it might actually do them little good. It was curving to the south, toward the drop-off. Before long it would surely he impassable.

But the steps remained perfectly level. Soon they were walking on a terraced shelf with a huge wall rising m one side and a sheer drop on the other. There was no handrail, no protection at all. They pressed close to the wall, and trembled with every gust of wind.

Then the shelf began to turn into a tunnel. It was a gradual thing. There was still open space on the right, but the wall had begun to curl over their heads. The path was curving under the cable.

Cirocco tried to visualize it: always rising, but corkscrewing around the outside of the cable.

After another 2000 steps, they were in pitch blackness.

"Stairs," Gaby muttered. "They build a thing like this, and they put in stairs." They had stopped to get out their lamps. Gaby filled hers and trimmed the wick. They would burn one at a time and hope there was enough oil to get them out the other side.

"Maybe they were health nuts," Cirocco suggested. She struck a match and held it to the wick. "More likely this was an emergency measure, for a loss of power."

"Well, I'm glad they're here," Gaby admitted.

"They were probably here all the way but down lower they're covered with dirt. It means this place has been unattended for a long time. The trees up here must be new mutations."

"Whatever you say." Gaby held the lamp high and looked ahead, then back where she could still see a wedge of light. Her eyes narrowed.

"Look, it's like we're at an angle in the road. It curves along the outside, then it cuts to the left and goes straight in."

Cirocco studied it, and thought Gaby was right.

"It looks like we might he cutting right through the center."

"Oh, yeah? Remember the place of winds? All that air is going through here, someplace."

"If this tunnel led to it, we'd know it already. It would have blown us right off the side."

Gaby looked at the ascending staircase in the flickering lamp- light. She sniffed the air.

"It's pretty warm in here. I wonder if it gets hotter?"

"No way to know but by going in."

"Uh-huh." Gaby swayed and the lamp threatened to fall from her fingers. Cirocco put a hand on her shoulder.

"You all right?"

"Yeah, I'm ... no, dammit, I'm not." She leaned against the warm corridor wall. "I'm dizzy, and my knees are weak." She held out her free hand and looked at it; it trembled slightly.

"Maybe a day of rest wasn't enough." Cirocco studied her watch, gazed up the corridor, and frowned. "I'd hoped to he out on the other side and back on the top of the cable again before we rested."

"I can make it."

"No," Cirocco decided. "I don't feel so hot myself. The question is do we camp here in the corridor where it's so hot, or go outside?"

Gaby looked back at the drop-off many steps behind them, "I don't mind a little sweat."

There was something about having a fire, even when the weather was unbearably hot. They did not discuss it; Cirocco took small twigs and moss from Gene's pack and started to build one. Soon she had a small blaze crackling. She fed it like a miser as they went about the mechanical business of setting a meager camp. Sleeping bags were unrolled, pans and knives brought out, provisions searched for the night's food.

We're a good team, sirocco thought, hunkered down while she watched Gaby dice vegetables into the bubbling remains of last night's stew. Her hands were small and deft, with brown dirt ground into the palms. They could no longer spare water for washing.

Gaby wiped her brow with the back of her hand and glanced up at Cirocco. She smiled- a flickering, tentative thing that broadened when Cirocco smiled back. One eye was nearly covered by a bandage. She dipped the spoon into the stew and slurped noisily.

"Those radish dinguses are best left crunchy," she said. "Give me your plate."

She ladled a generous helping and the two of them sat back, side by side but at arm's length, and ate.

It was delicious. Listening to the small sounds, the pop of the fire and the scraping of spoons on wooden plates, Cirocco was grateful to relax and think of nothing.

"Do you have any more salt?,, Cirocco dug in her pack and found the sack, and also two for- gotten sweets, wrapped in yellow leaves. She pressed one into Gaby's hand and laughed when her eyes lit up. She put her own plate down and unwrapped the chewy, bite-sized confection, held it under her nose and sniffed. It smelled too good to eat all at once. She bit it in half, and the flavor of sugared apricots and sweet cream burst through her mouth.

Gaby was just short of hysterical at Cirocco's expression of de-

She ate the other half, then began casting covetous glances

"If you're keeping that for breakfast, you're going to have to stay awake all night."

"Oh, don't worry. I just have enough manners to know dessert is for after dinner."

She made the unwrapping last five minutes, then examined it critically for another five, sputtering helplessly at Cirocco's antics. Cirocco did a passable imitation of a cocker spaniel at the dinner table and a homeless waif looking in the, window of the bakery, and gasped when Gaby finally put it in her mouth.

She was having so much fun that it hurt when she wondered- while sniffing eagerly with her face close to Gaby's-if the silliness was wise. Gaby was obviously in heaven with all the attention, her face was flushed with laughter and excitement, her eyes sparkled.

Why couldn't she just relax and enjoy it?

She must have let some of her worry show, because Gaby was immediately serious. She touched Cirocco's hand and looked at her urgently, then slowly shook her head. Neither of them dared speak, but Gaby had told her more plainly than any words she might have said, "You have nothing to fear from me."

Cirocco smiled, and so did Gaby. They spooned up the last of the stew, holding the plates close to their mouths; and not worrying about table manners.

But it was not quite the same. Gaby was silent. Soon her hands began to tremble, and the plate clattered to the steps. She sat up, gasping and sobbing, and Cirocco's hand on her shoulder brought her groping blindly. She drew her knees up and clenched her fists under her chin, buried her face under Cirocco's neck and wept.

"Oh, I hurt, I hurt so much."

"Then let it out. Cry." She put her cheek on the short, black hair, very fine and beginning to look tousled, then lifted Gaby's chin and looked for a place to kiss that wasn't covered by bandage. She was going for the cheek but at the last moment, not sure why she did it, she kissed her lips. They were moist, and very warm.

Gaby looked at her for a long moment, sniffed loudly, and put her face back on Cirocco's shoulder. She burrowed into the hollow of her neck, then was still. No shakes, no sobs.

"How are you so strong?" she asked, her voice muffled but very close.

"How are you so brave? You keep saving my life."

Gaby shook her head. "No, I mean it. If I didn't have you to lean on right now, I'd go crazy. And you don't even cry."

"I don't cry easily."

"Rape is easy?" She searched Cirocco's eyes again. "God, I hurt so had. I hurt from Gene, and I hurt for you. I don't know which is worse."

"Gaby, I'd be willing to make love to you if that would help stop the pain, but I hurt, too. Physically."

Gaby shook her head.

"That's not what I want from you, even if you were feeling great. If you're 'willing,' that's no good. I'm not Gene, and I'd rather keep the hurt than have you like that. It's enough to love you. "

What to say, what to say? Stick to the truth, she told herself.

"I don't know if I'll ever love you back. Not that way. But so help me," she hugged Gaby and wiped quickly at her nose, "so help me, you're the best friend I ever had."

Gaby let out her breath with a soft sigh.

"That will have to do, for now." Cirocco thought Gaby was going to cry again, but she didn't. She hugged Cirocco once, briefly, and kissed her neck.

"Life is very hard, isn't it?" she asked in a small voice. "It is that. Let's get to bed."

They started out on three steps; Gaby stretched on the highest, Cirocco tossing and turning on the next, and the embers of the fire on the step below her.

But Cirocco cried out in the night and woke in utter darkness. Sweat was pouring from her body as she waited for Gene's knife to slash. Gaby pulled her down and held her until the nightmare had passed.

"How long have you been here?" Cirocco asked.

"Since I started to cry again. Thanks for letting me join you." Liar. But she smiled when she thought it.

It grew hotter for a thousand steps, so hot that the walls could not be touched and the soles of their boots were burning. Cirocco tasted defeat, knowing there had to be at least several thou- sand more steps before they were in the middle, from which point they might expect it to cool again.

"One thousand more steps," she said. "If we can make it that far. If it's not cooler, we go back and try it on the outside." But she knew the cable was too steep now. The trees had become in- conveniently far apart even before they entered the tunnel. The tilt of the cable would reach eighty degrees before they arrived at the spoke. She would he faced with her hypothetical glass mountain, the worst possibility she had imagined when preparing for the trip.

"Whatever you say. Just a minute, I want to take off this shirt. I'm smothering."

Cirocco stripped down, too, and they continued to hike through the furnace.

Five hundred steps later, they put their clothes back on. Three hundred steps beyond that, they opened their packs and got out their coats.

ice began to form on the walls, and snow crunched underfoot. They donned gloves and pulled up the hoods on their parkas, then stood in lamplight which had become amazingly bright with the white walls to reflect it, watching ice crystals condense from their breaths and looking forward at a corridor that was unquestionably narrowing.

"A thousand more steps?" Gaby suggested. "You must have read my mind."

The ice soon forced Cirocco to bend her head, then get on her hands and knees. It quickly grew dark again as Gaby led with the lamp in front of her. Cirocco paused and blew on her stiff hands, then got m her belly and crawled.

"Hey! I'm stuck!" She was pleased to hear no panic in her voice. It was frightening, but she knew she could get free if she backed up.

The scrabbling sounds in front of her stopped. "okay. I can't turn around here, but it's getting wider. I," go ahead and see what it's like. Twenty meters. Okay? "

"Right." She listened to the sounds getting farther away. The darkness closed in and she had just enough time to work up a very cold sweat before the light dazzled her. In a moment Gaby was back. There were ice crystals on her eyebrows.

"This is the worst spots right here." "Then I'll get through. I didn't come this far to end up like a cork in a bottle. "

"It's what you get for eating all those sweets, fatty." Gaby could not pull her through, so she backed up and man- aged to get the brass pick from her pack. They chipped, at the ice and tried it again.

"Breathe out," Gaby suggested. and tugged on her hands. She came through.

Behind them, a flat chunk of ice about a meter long fell from the roof and skidded noisily toward daylight.

"That must be why this passage is open," Gaby said. "The cable is flexible. It bends and the ice cracks."

"That and the warm air from behind us. Let's stop plugging it up, okay? Get moving."

Soon they could stand, and shortly afterward the ice was just a memory. They took off their coats and wondered what was next.

The rumbling began 400 steps farther on. It grew louder until it was easy to imagine huge machines thrumming just beyond the walls of the tunnel. One of the walls was hot, but not any- thing like what they had already traveled through.

They felt sure it was the sound of the air being sucked from the place of winds toward some unknown destination high above. Two thousand more steps brought them beyond it and into another hot region. They hurried through it, not bothering to strip as they knew they were close to the far end of the tunnel. As expected, the beat diminished after reaching a steam-bath peak that Cirocco estimated at seventy-five degrees.

Gaby was still in the lead, and saw the light first. it was no brighter than it had been on the other side, just a pale silver strip that began on their left and gradually widened until they were standing on a ledge beside the cable. They slapped each other on the back, then started climbing again.

They crossed over the top of the cable, always rising, always trending to the south, over the broad hump and down again on the far side. The cable was completely bare now; no trees, no earth clinging anywhere. It was the first time Gaea had really looked like the machine Cirocco knew it to be: the incredible, massive construct made by beings who might still be alive in the hub. The bare cable was smooth and straight, rising at an angle of sixty degrees now, getting closer to the flaring bottom edge of the spoke. The wedge of space between the cable and the spoke had narrowed to less than two kilometers.

On the south side the stairs entered another tunnel. They thought they were ready for it, but it almost fooled them. They hurried through the first zone of heat and congratulated them- selves when they felt the temperature begin to drop again. It reached about fifty degrees, and began to rise once more.

"Damn! It's a different set-up. Let's go!"

"Which way?"

"Back would be just as bad as forward. Move!"

They would have been in danger only if one of them bad fallen and hurt herself, but it frightened Cirocco, and reminded her never to take Gaea for granted. She had forgotten the cable was made up of wound strands, and that the path of whatever hot and cold fluids ran through it could be quite complex.

They made it past the zone of vibration which was still in the center, and through the cold zone, which was not as choked with ice as the first had been, and emerged once again on the north side of the cable.

Across the top, and down into the third tunnel. Through it, and across the top again.

They did that seven more times in two days. It would have been faster but for a delay in the fourth tunnel, which was so choked with ice even Gaby had to chip before she could squeeze through. it took them a frigid eight hours to break a path.

But the next time they reached the south side of the cable,

there was no tunnel. The angle of rise was now between eighty and ninety degrees, and the staircase began to wind along the outside of it like the red stripe on a peppermint stick.

Neither wanted to camp on a ledge a meter and a half wide that hung over a drop of 250 kilometers. Cirocco knew she tossed in her sleep and one toss could carry entirely too far. So, though both of them were weary, they kept trudging around and around the outside of the cable, always pressing their left shoulders to the reassuring solidity.

Cirocco did not like what was happening overhead. The nearer they got, the more impossible it looked.

They knew from their observations outside that each spoke was oval in cross-section, fifty kilometers thick one way and slightly less than a hundred the other, before it flared out to join the rim roof. They had just passed thuough that flaring section, and the spoke walls they could dimly see were nearly vertical. What they had not counted on was the lip that ran all the way around the monstrous bore of the spoke tube. It was easily five kilometers wide.

The cable seemed to enter the lip seamlessly, probably continuing above and traveling on to whatever tied it to the hub. During one of their rest stops they studied the lip, seemingly just above their heads, yet still two kilometers away. It was a massive ceiling to their labors, stretching endlessly until the opening became visible, narrowed by perspective. The opening was forty by eighty kilometers, but to reach it they would have to traverse five kilometers hanging from the underside of the lip.

Gaby looked at Cirocco and raised one eyebrow. "Don't borrow trouble. Gaea's been good to us so far. Climb, my friend."

And Gaea was good to them again. When they got to the top of the cable there was another tunnel, this one piercing the vast gray roof.

They lit the lamp, noting that there was not much fuel left, and began to climb. The tunnel curved to the left as if the cable was still there, though they could no longer be sure of it. They counted 2000 steps, then 20M more.

"It occurs to me," Gaby said, "that this could go all the way to the hub. And if you think that's good news, you'd better think against

"I know, I know. Keep climbing." Cirocco was thinking of lamp fuel, the state of their provisions, and the half-filled water- skins. It was still 300 kilometers to the hub. At three steps to the meter, that made it almost an even million steps yet to go. She looked at her watch and timed their pacing.

They had a rhythm of about two steps per second; just light touches of the toes to push them high enough to touch the next step. The gravity at that level had fallen to almost one eighth- half the already low gravity when they set out.

Two steps per second was half a million seconds of travel time. Eight three three three point three, etc., minutes, 138 hours, or nearly six days. Double that to include rest periods and sleep, at a conservative estimate ...

"I know what you're thinking," Gaby said, from behind her. "But can we do it in the dark?"

She had hit on the important point. The food could last two weeks. The water might be enough with rationing, but not for coming down.

But the crucial consumable at this stage was lamp fuel. They had no more than a five-hour supply, and no way to get more.

She was still working on it, trying to construct a mathematics that would get them to the top, when they emerged on the floor of the spoke.

Nothing had ever made Cirocco feel smaller. Not O'Neil One, not the stars in space, not the floor of Gaea herself. She could see everything, and her sense of perspective failed utterly.

It was impossible to detect the curvature of the walls. Like an upended horizon, they stretched away from her until suddenly they began to wrap around, making the space look more semi- circular than round.

Everything was bathed in a pale green luminescence. The source of the light was four vertical rows of windows which sent beams slanting down to cross each other in the empty center.

Not quite empty. Running straight as a ruler through the central space Were three vertical cables wound together like a braid, and drifting in and out of the light beams were odd, cylindrical clouds that twisted slowly as they watched.

Cirocco recalled thinking of the dark, narrow spaces beneath the cable they had explored as a cathedral. Gaea had exhausted her store of superlatives, but she knew that had only been an abandoned chapel. This was the cathedral.

"I thought I'd seen it all by now," Gaby said, quietly, pointing up at the wall behind them. "But a vertical jungle?"

There was no other way to describe it. Clinging to the walls, reaching outward or branching up, the inside of the spoke was crusted with more of the ubiquitous trees. They dwindled, becoming at some indeterminate distance just a smooth carpet of green. Beyond that was a gray roof.

"Would you say that's 300 kilometers up?"

Gaby squinted, then made a grid with her fingers and calculated with some system of her own.

"It covers the right number of degrees."

"Sit. Let's think on this."

She needed to sit more than she needed to think. Until this moment she had actually thought she could make it. She now saw that delusion had been fostered by an inability to visualize the problem. She could look at it now and she quailed inside. Three hundred kilometers, straight up.

Straight. Up.

She must have been insane.

"First. Does it look like there's any way through that roof?" Gaby looked, and shrugged.

"Means nothing. There was a way through this, wasn't there? Weld never see it from here."

"Right. But we hoped there would be a ladder to the top. Do you see one?"

"No."

"Right again. I thought those stairs meant a way had been pro- vided to walk to the top, if necessary. Now I think it's likely that a walk to right here, this spot, was all the builders had in mind." "Maybe.' Gabys eyes had narrowed. "But they must have left

way to get to the hub. Probably these trees weren't meant to be ere. They've overgrown everything, like they did on the cable." "In which case..." What?

"We have a hell of a climb ahead," Gaby finished for her.

"Right for the third time. I'm just trying to reason it out, you see. It had entered my mind that if-say four or five years from now-if we get to the top and find there isn't a stairway... we've got another long climb. Down."

Gaby laughed this time.

"If you're saying let's turn back, I wish you'd come out with it. I won't freeze you with contempt."

"Let's turn back?" She hadn't meant the question mark, but there it was.

"Ah. I see." She did not mind. They had long forgotten the relationship of Captain and crew. She laughed, and shook her head. "All right. What's your plan?"

"First look around. Later-four or five years from now-we'd look pretty foolish if me of the builders asked why we didn't use the elevator."