Titan

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

The world was an endless series of trees to climb. Each was a variation on the same problem, as different as snowflakes, yet with a numbing sameness. What communication was needed to get through them could be accomplished by hand motions and grunts. They became a perfect tree-climbing machine, one body moving forever upward. They climbed for twelve hours at a stretch. When they camped, they slept like the dead.

Below them, the floor opened and a sea of water fell over Rhea. It remained open for a few weeks, then closed when the roof opened and the frigid winds blew once more, forcing them to take shelter. Five days of darkness and they were out again, and climbing.

They were six days past their third winter when they saw their first angel. They stopped climbing, and watched him watching them.

He was near the top of the tree, indistinct through the branches. They had beard angels walling before, sometimes followed by the sound of giant wings flapping. Still, so far, Cirocco's knowledge of angels was limited to one frozen moment when she had seen one impaled on a Titanide spear.

He was smaller than Gaby, with a huge chest and spindly

arms and legs. He had claws instead of feet. MS wings emerged just above his hips so that in flight he would be prone with the same amount of weight on each side of the wings. Folded, they reached over his head with the tips trailing below the branch he perched on. The flight surfaces on his legs, arms, and tall were neatly folded.

Having noted all those differences, Cirocco had to admit that the most startling thing about him was his humanness. He looked like a child dying of malnutrition, but it was a human child.

Gaby glanced at Cirocco, who shrugged, then motioned for her to be ready for anything. She took a step forward.

The angel shrieked and danced backward. His wings unfolded to their full nine-meter span and he poised, beating them lazily to remain on branches too thin to hold his weight.

"We'd just like to talk to you." She held out her hands. The angel shrieked again, and was gone. They could bear the roaring of his wings as he gained altitutde.

Gaby looked at Cirocco. She raised one eyebrow and made a motion with one hand, questioningly.

"Right. Up"

"Captain."

Ciracco froze instantly. Ahead, Gaby was jerked to a stop as the rope between them grew taut.

"What?" Gaby asked.

"Quiet. Listen."

They waited, and in a few minutes the call came again. This time, Gaby heard it, too.

"It couldn't be Gene," Gaby whispered.

"Calvin?" As soon as she said it, she recognized the voice. It was oddly changed, but she knew it.

"April. "

"Right," came the reply, though Cirocco had not said it very loud. "Talk?"

"Of course I want to talk. Where the hell are you?"

"Below. I see you. Don't come back."

"Why not? Dammit, April, we've been hoping you'd turn up for months. August has been going crazy." Cirocco was frowning. Something was wrong, and she wanted to know what it was.

"I come to you, or not at all. You come to me, I fly away."

She perched in the small branches, twenty meters from the two women. Even at that distance Cirocco could make out her face, exactly like August's. She was an angel, and Cirocco was sick.

She seemed to have trouble speaking. There were long pauses between sentences.

"Please do not come closer. Do not move in my direction. We can talk this way for only a short time."

"Surely you don't think we'll hurt you?"

"And why not? I..." She stopped, edging away.

"No, I suppose not. But I could no more let you approach than I could hold my hand in a fire. You smell wrong."

"Does it have to do with the Titanides? "

"With what?"

"The centaurs. The people you make war with."

She hissed and backed away. "Do not speak of them."

"I don't think I can avoid it."

"Then I must leave. I will try to return." With a loud cry, she plunged through the leaves. They heard her wings for a short time, then it was as if she had never been with them.

Cirocco looked at Gaby, who sat with her feet dangling. Her face was somber.

"It's awful," sirocco whispered. "What happened to us? "

"I was hoping she could give us some answers. Whatever it was, it hit her the worst. Worse than Gene."

She returned a few hours later but could not answer the questions that mattered most. it appeared she had not even been thinking about them.

"How should I know?" she said. "I was in the darkness, I woke up, and I was as you see me. It didn't matter, and it doesn't matter now."

"Can you explain that?"

"I'm happy. No one wanted me or my sisters. No one loved us. Well, now I don't need it. I am of the Eagle clan, proud and alone."

Cautious questioning brought out what it meant to be of the Eagle clan. It was not a tribe or association, as April had seemed to imply; rather, it was a species within the genus angel.

Eagles were loners, solitary from birth to death. They did not come together even to mate, could suffer each other's company for only minutes at a time, and then only while cruising at a comfortable distance. April had heard of the humans' presence in the spoke through such a passing conversation.

"There are two things I don't understand," Cirocco said, carefully. "May I ask?"

"I don't promise to answer."

"All right. How is it there are more angels, if you don't come together?"

"There is a non-sentient creature born at the bottom of the world. It spends its life climbing to the top. Once a year I find one and implant an egg on its back. Male angels deposit sperm on it or not, as chance has it. A fertilized egg goes to the top with the creature. The infant is brn as the host dies. We are born into the air and must learn to fly on the way down. Some don't. It is at the will of Gaea. This is our-"

"Just a minute. You said Gaea. Why did you choose that name?"

There was a pause.

"I don't understand the question."

"I can't make it plainer. Calvin named this place Caea. He thought it fit well. Are you into Greek mythology, too?,,

"I never beard the name before. Gaea is what the people call this creature. She's sort of a God, though not exactly. You're making my head hurt. I'm happy as I am, and I must go now."

"Wait, wait just a minute."

April was edging toward the top of the tree.

"You said 'creature.' Are you talking about this thing in the spoke?"

April looked surprised. "Why, no. This is only a part of her. The whole world is Gaea. I thought you knew that."

"No, I-wait, please don't go." It was too late. They heard the beating of her wings. "Will you come back later?" Cirocco shouted.

"Once more," came the distant reply.

"One being, you say. All one creature. How do you know this?"

April had returned in only an hour this time. Cirocco hoped she was getting used to company again, but she still would approach no closer than twenty meters.

"Believe it. Some of my people have talked with her." "She's intelligent, then?"

"Why not? Listen ... Captain." She held her temples for a moment. Cirocco could imagine the conflicts. April had been one of the finest physicists in the system. Now she lived as a fierce wild animal, according to a code barely comprehensible to Cirocco. She thought the old April might he struggling to get through the creature she had become.

"Cirocco, you say you speak to... to those on the rim." It was as close as she could come to the concept of Titanides with- out fleeing. "They understand you. Calvin can speak to the floaters. The changes Gaea worked on me are more complete. I am one of my people. I awoke knowing how to behave among them. I have the same feelings and drives as any other angel. This is one thing I know. Gaea is one. Gaea is alive. We live inside her."

Gaby was looking a bit green. "Just look around you," April went on. "What have you seen that looks like a machine? Anything at all? We were seized by a living beast; you postulate a creature under the rim. The spoke is filled with a huge living thing; you decide it is a coating over the framework beneath."

"What you say is intriguing."

"More than that. It's true.'/

"If I accept that, I won't find a control room in the hub."

"But you'll be where she lives. She sits like a spider and pulls strings like a puppet master. She watches over all her creatures, and she owns the two of you as surely as she owns me. She has tampered with us for her own purposes."

"And what are they?"

April shrugged, a human gesture that hurt Cirocco to watch. "She would not tell me. I went to the hub, but she refused to see me. My people say that one must be on a great mission to gain Gaea's ear. Apparently mine was not great enough."

"And what would you have asked her?"

April was quiet for a very long time. Cirocco realized she was crying. She looked up at them again.

"You hurt me. I think I won't talk to you any more."

"Please, April. Please, for the friendship we had."

"Did we? Did we really? I can't remember it. I remember only me and August, and long ago, my other sisters. We have always been alone with each other. Now I am alone, alone."

"Do you miss them?"

"I did," she said, emptily. "That was long ago. I fly, fly to be alone. Solitude is the world of the Eagle clan. I know that is right, but before . -before, when I still yearned for my sisters..."

Cirocco held very still, afraid of frightening her away.

"We band together only at one time," she said, with a quiet sigh. "When Gaea takes her breath, after the winter, then blows us over the lands ...

"I flew with the wind that day. It was a fine day. We killed many because my people listened to me and rode the great floater. The four-legs were surprised because the breath was over; we few had remained m the floater, tired and hungry, but with the lust still in our blood, still able to work together.

"It was a day for the singing of great songs. My people followed me-me!--did what I told them, and I knew in my heart that the four-legs would soon be wiped out in Gaea. This was but the first skirmish in the new war.

"Then I saw August and my mind left me. I wanted to kill her, I wanted to fly from her, I wanted to embrace her and weep with her.

"I flew. "Now I dread the breath of Gaea, for someday it will take me down to slaughter my sister, and then I will die. I am Ariel the Swift, but enough of April Polo remains in me that I could not live with such a ~."

Cirocco was moved, but could not help being excited. April sounded as if she was important in the angel community. Surely they would listen to her.

"It happens that I am up here to make peace," she said. "Don't go! Please don't go."

April trembled, but stood her ground. "Peace is impossible."

"I can't believe that. Many of the Titanides are sick in their hearts, as you are."

April shook her head. "Does a lamb negotiate with a lion? A bat with an insect, a bird with a worm?"

"You're talking about predators and prey."

"Natural enemies. It's printed in our genes, killing the four- legs. I can ... as April, I can see what you're thinking. Peace should he possible. We have to fly impossible distances just to do battle. Many of us do not make it back. The climb is too hard, and we fall into the sea."

Cirocco shook her head. ',I just think if I could get some representatives together..."

"I tell you, it's impossible. We are Eagles. You cannot even get us to act as a group, much less meet with the four-legs. There are other clans, some of them sociable, but they don't live in this spoke. Perhaps you would have luck there, but I doubt it."

The three of them were silent for a time. Cirocco felt heavy with defeat, and Gaby put her hand on her shoulder.

"What do you think? Is she telling the truth?"

"I suspect she is. It sounds just like what Meistersinger told me. They have no control over it." She looked up, and spoke to April.

"You were saying that you tried to see Gaea. Why?"

"For peace. I wanted to ask her why the war had to be. I'm quite happy, but for that. She did not hear my call."

Or she doesn't exist, Cirocco thought.

"Will you still go seek her?" April asked.

"I don't know. What's the point? Why would this super- human being stop a way just because I ask her to?"

"There are worse things to do in We than to have a quest to fulfill. If you turned back now, what would you do?"

"I don't know that, either."

"You've come a long way. You must have overcome great

difficulties. My people say Gaea likes a good story, and she likes great heroes. Are you a hero?"

She thought of Gene spinning down into the blackness, of Panpipe n~ to his doom, of the mudfish bearing down on her. Surely a hero would have done better than that.

"She is," Gaby said, suddenly. "Of all of us, only Rocky has held to her purpose. We'd still be sitting in mud shacks if she hadn't pushed us. She kept us moving toward a goal. We may not reach it, but when that rescue ship comes, I'll bet they find us still trying."

Cirocco was embarrassed, but strangely moved. She had been fighting a sense of failure since the capture; it didn't hurt to know someone thought she was doing well. But a hero? No, not hardly. She had only done what had to be done.

"I think Gaea will be impressed," April said. "Go to her. Stand in her hub and shout. Do not grovel or beg. Tell her you have a right to some answers, for all of us. She will listen."

"Come with us, April."

The angel-woman edged away.

"My name is Ariel the Swift. I go with no one, and no one goes with me. I will never see you again." She dived once more, and Cirocco knew she would keep her word.

She looked at Gaby, who rolled her eyes upward with a slight twist of her mouth.

"Up?"

"Why the hell not? There are a few things I'd like to ask."