Wizard

9 The Free-Lance

Gaby Plauget stood on the rocky shelf and waited for the noise of the massive diastole to abate. A normal Aglaian intake cycle produced a sound like Niagara Falls. Today the sound was more like air bubbles rising from the neck of a bottle held underwater. The intake valve with the Titan tree jammed in it was almost completely submerged.

The place was called the Three Graces. It had been named by Gaby herself, many years before. In those days the few Terrans living in Gaea were still naming things in human speech, usually adhering to the early convention of using Greek mythology as a source. Knowing full well the other meaning of the word, Gaby had read that the Graces assisted Aphrodite at her toilet. She thought of Ophion, the circular river, as the toilet of Gaea and of herself as the plumber. Everything eventually ran into the river. When it clogged, she was the one who flushed it.

"Give me a plumber's friend the size of the Pittsburgh Dome and a place to stand," she had once told an interested observer, "and I will drain the world." Not having such a tool, she found it necessary to come up with methods less direct but equally huge.

Her vantage point was halfway up the northern cliff of the West Rhea Canyon. Formerly, the canyon had possessed a distinctly odd feature: the river Ophion did not flow out of it into the flatlands to the west, but in the other direction. It was Aglaia which had made that possible. Now, with the mighty river pump's intake valve impaired, common sense had caught up with Gaeagraphical whim. The water, with no place to go, had turned Ophion into a clear blue lake that filled the canyon and backed up onto the plains of Hyperion. For many kilometers, far up the curving horizon of Gaea, a placid sheet of water covered everything but the tallest trees.

Aglaia sat like a purple grape three kilometers long, lodged in the narrowing canyon neck, her lower end in the lake, her far end extending to the plateau 700 meters above. She and her sisters, Thalia and Euphrosyne, were one-celled organisms with brains the size of a child's fist. For three million years they had mindlessly straddled Ophion, lifting its waters over the West Rhea Summit. They took nourishment from the flotsam that continually floated into their vast maws, and were large enough to ingest anything in Gaea except the Titan trees, which, being part of the living flesh of Gaea, were not supposed to become detached.

But these were the twilight ages. Anything could happen, and usually did. And that, Gaby reflected, was why a being the size of Gaea had need of a troubleshooter the size of Gaby.

The intake phase was completed now. Aglaia was swollen to maximum size. There would be a few minutes before the valve began to shut, as if Aglaia held her breath in anticipation of her hourly eruption. Silence settled through the golden twilight, and many eyes turned to Gaby, waiting.

She went down on one knee and looked over the edge. There did not seem to be anything left undone. Deciding when to make the move had been a hard choice. On the one hand, the contracting valve would hold the tree wedged more firmly than ever during the systolic phase. On the other, the water which Aglaia had swallowed would now come rushing out, exerting great force to dislodge the obstruction. The operation did not depend on a delicate touch; Gaby planned to give the tree the biggest jolt she could manage and hope for the best.

Her crew was awaiting the signal. She stood, held a red flag over her head, and brought it down sharply.

Titanide horns sounded from the north and south canyon walls. Gaby turned and scrambled nimbly up the ten-meter rock face behind her. She bounded onto the back of Psaltery, her Titanide crew chief. Psaltery thrust his brass horn into his pouch and began galloping down the winding trail toward the radio station. Gaby rode him standing up, her bare feet on his withers, her hands holding his shoulders. She was protected by the Titanide trait of running with the human torso leaning forward and the arms swept back like a child imitating a fighter plane. She could grab the arms if she slipped, but it had been many years since she had needed to.

They arrived at the station as the systolic backwash was beginning to be felt. The water was ten meters below them and the blocked intake valve half a kilometer up the canyon; nevertheless, as the torrent began to make a boiling bulge in the new lake and the water level began to rise, the Titanides stirred nervously.

The noise was building again, this time overdubbed with something new. At the top of the Aglaian plateau, at the Lower Mists, where the outflow valve would normally be spraying a stream of water hundreds of meters into the air, nothing was coming out but gas. The dry valve produced a sound Gaby thought of as contrabass flatulence.

"Gaea," she muttered. "The God that farts."

What did you say?" Psaltery sang.

"Nothing. Are you in contact with the bomb, Mondoro?" The Titanide in charge of etheric persuasion looked up and nodded.

"Shall I tell her to snuff it, my leader?" Mondoro sang.

"Not yet. And stop calling me that. Boss is sufficient." Gaby looked out over the water, where three cables emerged. She followed them with her eyes, searching for the raveling that would precede a break, and then regarded her impromptu fleet hovering overhead. After so many years the sight could still awe her.

They were the three largest blimps she could round up on a few days' notice. Their names were Dreadnaught, Bombasto, and Pathfinder. All were over a thousand meters long, each of them an old friend of Gaby's. It was friendship that had brought them here to help her. The larger blimps seldom flew together, preferring to be accompanied on their dirigible journeys by a squadron of seven or eight comparatively tiny zeps.

But now they were in harness, a troika the likes of which had seldom been seen in Gaea. Their translucent, gossamer tail surfaces-each large enough for the playing of a soccer match-beat the air with elephantine grandeur. Their ellipsoid bodies of blue nacre jostled and slithered and squeaked against each other like a cluster of carnival balloons.

Mondoro held up a thumb.

"Blow it," Gaby said.

Mondoro leaned over a seedpod the size of a cantaloupe which nestled in a tangle of vines and branches arranged between her front knees. She spoke to it in a low voice, and Gaby turned toward Aglaia, expectantly.

After a few moments Mondoro coughed apologetically, and Gaby frowned at her.

"She is angry at us for leaving her so long in the dark," Mondoro sang.

Gaby whistled tunelessly and tapped her foot, while wishing for a standard transmitter.

"Sing to her then of light," Gaby sang. "You're the persuader; you're supposed to know how to handle these creatures."

"Perhaps a hymn to fire ..." the Titanide mused.

"I don't care what you sing," Gaby shouted, in English. "Just get the damn stupid thing to blow." She turned away, fuming.

The bomb was lashed to the trunk of the Titan tree. It had been placed there, at considerable risk, by angels who flew into the pump during the diastolic cycle, when there was air above the inrushing waters. Gaby wished she had an army surplus satchel charge to give the angels. What she had sent instead was a contraption made of Gaean fruits and vegetables. The explosive was a bundle of touchy nitroroots. The detonator was a plant that produced sparks, and another with a magnesium core, wedded to a brain obtained by laboriously scraping plant matter from an IC leaf to expose the silicon chip with its microscopic circuitry. The chip was programmed to listen to a radio seed, the most fickle plant in Gaea. They were radio transceivers that sent messages only if they were phrased beautifully, that functioned only if the things they heard were worth repeating.

Titanides were masters of song. Their whole language was song; music was as important to them as food. They saw nothing odd about the system. Gaby, who sang poorly and had never interested a seed in anything she sang, hated the things. She wished for a match and a couple kilometers of waterproof, high-velocity prima-cord. Above her, the blimps kept the lines taut, but they would not last much longer. They did not have stamina. Kilo for kilo, they were among the weakest creatures in Gaea.

Four Titanides had gathered around the transmitter, singing complicated counterpoint. Every few bars they slipped in the five note sequence the detonator brain was listening for. At some point the seed was mollified and began to sing. There was a muffled explosion that made Aglaia shiver, then a gout of black smoke from the top of her intake valve. The straining lines slackened.

Gaby stood on her toes, afraid to discover that the blast had merely broken the cables. Splinters that were themselves as large as pine trees began to spew from the opening. Then there was a cheer from the Titanides behind her as the bole of the Titan tree appeared, wallowing like a harpooned whale.

"Make sure it's five or ten kilometers from the intake when you stake it down," Gaby sang to Clavier, the Titanide delegated to handle the mop-up. "It will take awhile for all that water to be pumped out, but if you take the trunk to the waterline now, it will be high and dry in a few revs."

"Sure thing, Chief," Clavier sang.

Gaby stood watching her crew take care of the equipment borrowed from Titantown while Psaltery went to get Gaby's personal luggage. She had worked with most of these Titanides before, on other jobs. They knew what they were doing. It was possible they did not need her at all, but she doubted any of them would have tackled it except under divine orders. For one thing, they did not have Gaby's contacts with the blimps.

But Gaby had not been ordered to do anything. All her work was performed under contract and paid in advance. In a world where every being had a prescribed place she defined her own.

She turned at the sound of hoofbeats. Psaltery was returning with her belongings. There was not much; the things Gaby needed or valued enough to carry at all times could be stuffed into a small hiker's backpack. The things she most valued were her freedom and her friends. Psaltery (Sharped Lydian Trio) Fanfare was one of the best of the latter. He and Gaby had traveled together for ten years.

"Chief, your phone was ringing."

The ears of the other Titanides perked up, and even Psaltery, who was used to it, seemed subdued. He handed Gaby a radio seed identical to all the others. The difference was that this one connected to Gaea.

Gaby took the seed and withdrew from the group. Standing alone in a small grove of trees, she spoke softly for a time. The Titanides were not eager to hear what Gaea had to say-news of the doings of Gods is seldom good news-but they could not help noticing that Gaby stood quietly for a time when the conversation was obviously over.

"Are you up to a trip to the Melody Shop?" she asked Psaltery.

"Sure. We in a hurry?"

"Not really. Nobody's seen Rocky for almost a kilorev. Her Nibs wants us to check in and let her know it's almost Carnival time."

Psaltery frowned.

"Did Gaea say what the problem might be?"

Gaby sighed. "Yeah. We're supposed to try to sober her up."