Wizard

18 Wide Awake

Gaby had hoped to get all the way to Aglaia before camping but now saw that was unrealistic. Cirocco was in no shape to continue.

Actually they had not done badly. The Titanides' steady rowing had brought them to the last northward bend before Ophion resumed its generally eastward trend. A driftwood-strewn shelf elbowed into the river's flow and provided a gentle beach for the landing of the canoes. Atop a low bluff was a stand of trees, and it was there the Titanides made camp, with Chris and Robin trying to help but mostly getting in the way.

Gaby judged the rain would continue for several dekarevs. She could have called Gaea and found out for sure-even requested an end to it for good reason. But weather was fairly standardized in Gaea. She had seen a thirty-hour rain follow a two-hectorev heat wave many times, and this looked like one of those. The clouds were low and continuous. To the northwest she could just make out the Place of Winds, the Hyperion terminus of the slanted support cable known as Cirocco's Stairs. The cable vanished into the cloud layer, a vague, deeper darkness, before rising above it somewhere to Gaby's north. She thought she could detect brightness behind the clouds where it hung over them and reflected light into its own massive shadow.

Cirocco's Stairs. She smiled wryly, but without any bitterness. Almost everyone seemed to have forgotten that two people had made that first climb. It did not bother her. She knew that, aside from the highway, she had not left nearly as many marks on this crazy world as Cirocco had.

She walked to the top of the bluff and watched with amusement as Chris and Robin tried to make themselves useful. The Titanides were too polite to refuse most of their offers of help, so things that might have been done in five minutes were taking fifteen. And of course, it was the right thing to do. Chris had not spoken of his background, but he was a city kid aside from a few excursions into Earth's tamed wildernesses. Robin came from a hypercity, no matter that the Coven floor was picturesque crops and cattle. She might never have seen a wild, unplanned thing in her life.

When it came time to cook, however, the Titanides put all four feet down and shooed the young humans away. Titanides cooked almost as well as they sang. For this first day of travel they were digging into the packs and getting items most likely to spoil, the choice morsels brought along to be eaten quickly. They fed the fire and rimmed it with smooth stones, broke out the copper cookware, and did the magical things Titanides could do to turn fresh meat and fish into wonders of improvisation.

Before long the fruits of their labors could be smelled. Gaby sat back and savored the wait, feeling happier than she had in a long time. It took her back to a much simpler meal shared many years ago, when somehow, torn and bruised and with no assurance they would live another day, she and Cirocco had been as close as they would ever be. Now those memories were bittersweet, but she had lived long enough to know one must hold onto the good things to survive. She might have brooded about all the things that had gone wrong between that day and this or worried about Cirocco, who was even now throwing up in her tent and plotting to get her liquor back from Psaltery's saddlebags. Instead, she chose to smell the good food and listen to the soothing sounds of rain mix with the songs of the Titanides and to feel the long-awaited cooling breeze begin to blow from the east.

She was one hundred and three years old, setting off on a trip that, like all her other trips, she might never finish. There were no life-insurance policies in Gaea, not even for the Wizard. Certainly not for the free-lance pest that Gaea tolerated only because she was more reliable than Cirocco.

The thought did not disturb her. She would survive and prosper. There had been a time when her present age would have been impossible to contemplate, but now she knew that centenarians are always young under the skin; she just happened to be fortunate enough to look and feel young as well. In her own case, she was sixteen, in the San Bernardino Mountains, with her telescope and the fire-both built with her own hands-waiting for the sky to darken and the stars to come out. What more could one ask of life?

She knew she was not growing anymore. She no longer expected to. Increasing age, she had found, brings increased experience, knowledge, perspective; it brings many things that one could apparently accumulate forever, but a plateau of wisdom is reached. If she completed her second century, she did not expect to be significantly changed. That had caused her some concern around the time of her eightieth birthday, but she no longer worried about it. The worries of the day were sufficient.

This day held only one worry for her as it drew to a close.

She watched Robin moving around the fire and sighed deeply.

The meal was up to the Titanides' usual high standards but for one literally sour note. Titanide cookery occasionally employed a powerful spice obtained from the crushed and prepared seeds of a watermelon-sized blue fruit. It had an elegant name in Titanide song, but humans generally called it hyperlemon. It was white and granular. A few grains were enough for any recipe.

When the meal was almost ready for dishing out, Psaltery suddenly turned and spit a mouthful of vegetables onto the ground. For a moment his lips were too puckered for speech as the other Titanides looked at him questioningly. He held out a spoon, and Valiha put her tongue to it. She made a face.

It did not take long to discover that a leather bag marked salt actually contained hyperlemon concentrate. The bag had been bought by Hautbois. The conclusion reached after much scandalized discussion among all four Titanides was that the vendor-a reformed tequilaholic named Kithara-had for some reason decided to play a joke on the Wizard's party.

None of the Titanides was amused. Gaby thought it was no big thing, even though a pot of vegetables had to be thrown out. They still had plenty of good salt. A check of other provisions revealed no substitutions. But to a Titanide, ruining good food was a sin. None of them could understand why Kithara had done it.

"I'll be sure to ask him upon our return," Psaltery vowed darkly.

"I would like to be there with you," Valiha said.

"Why make such a fuss?" Gaby wanted to know. "It was a harmless joke. Sometimes you folks get to looking a little somber to me. I'm glad you can make jokes."

"It's not the joke we object to," Hautbois said. "I like them as well as anyone else. But this one was in ... bad taste."

Though the aging process had passed her by, there was one thing about Gaby that had changed as she grew older. She required less sleep than she used to. Two hours out of twenty were generally enough. Often she stayed awake for sixty or even seventy revs with no ill effects.

The Titanides said she was getting more like them every day and soon would entirely lose the disgusting habit.

Whatever the reason for it, she had decided she could get by without sleeping at this camp. She went off by herself, walked by the river for a time, and when she returned, the camp was quiet but for the low, humming songs of the Titanides in rest phase. They sprawled around the fire, four improbably limber comic nightmares, their hands occupied with unimportant tasks, their minds wandering. Valiha was on her side, propped up on one elbow. Hautbois was on her back, her human torso now in line with the rest of her body, her legs curled in the air like a puppy waiting for her belly to be scratched. Of all the things Titanides could do, Gaby thought that was the funniest.

There were four tents pitched among the trees a good distance from the fire. She passed by her own unoccupied shelter. In the second, Cirocco slept uneasily. She had two stiff drinks in her, and an ocean of coffee. Gaby knew it wasn't the coffee that made her toss and turn.

She paused outside Chris's tent and knew it would just be snooping to look inside it. She had no business with Chris. So it was on to the next one in line. She waited outside for several minutes until she heard someone stirring.

"Can I talk to you for a minute?"

"Who is that? Gaby?"

"Yeah."

"I guess so. Come on in."

Robin was sitting up on her sleeping bag, which rested on a deep pad of moss put there by Hautbois. Gaby lit the lamp hanging from the ridgepole and saw Robin's eyes glittering alertly but with no particular malice. She was dressed in the clothes she had worn all day.

"Did I disturb you?"

Robin shook her head. "Can't sleep," she admitted. "This is the first time in my life that I've not had a bed to sleep in."

"Hautbois would be happy to get more moss."

"That's not it. I'll get used to it, I suppose."

"It might help if you wore something looser."

Robin held up the elaborately patterned nightgown Hautbois had laid out for her. "It's not my style," she said. "How could anyone sleep in something like that? It ought to be in a display case."

Gaby chuckled, then squatted with one knee on the ground and picked at a cuticle. Robin was looking at her when she glanced up. Might as well get on with it, she thought. She knows you didn't come in to see if she needed fresh towels.

"I guess the first thing is to apologize," she said. "So here it is. I regret what I did, it was not justified, and I'm sorry."

"I accept your apology," Robin said. "But the warning still stands."

"That's fine. I understand that." Gaby was picking her words as carefully as she knew how. Something more than an apology was called for, but she had to be sure she did not appear patronizing.

"What I did was wrong in my culture as well as yours," she said. "The apology was for the violation of my own moral code. But you were telling me about something you witches have, some system of obligations, and the word has slipped my mind."

"Labra," Robin said.

"That's it. I don't pretend to understand it all. I think I can be sure I violated it, though, even if I'm not sure just how. What I'm asking for now is your help. Is there a way to set things right between us? Is there anything I can do to make it like it never happened?"

Robin was frowning. "I don't think you want to get into-"

"But I do. I'm willing to do quite a bit. Is there anything?"

"Y-e-e-s. But-"

"What?"

Robin threw up her hands. "Much like any primitive culture, I suppose. A duel. Just the two of us."

"How serious a duel?" Gaby asked. "To the death?"

"We're not that primitive. The purpose is reconciliation, not murder. If I thought you needed killing, I'd just do it and hope my sisters would back me up when the tribunal came around. We would fight bare-handed."

Gaby considered it. "What if I won?"

Robin gave an exasperated sigh.

"You don't understand. The winner isn't important, not in that sense. We wouldn't be trying to prove which is the better woman. The fight would only prove who is the stronger and quicker, and that has nothing to do with honor. But by agreeing to fight with a provision not to kill each other, we each acknowledge the other as a worthy, and thus honorable opponent." She paused and for a moment looked quite wicked. "Don't worry about it," she said. "You wouldn't win."

Gaby matched her grin and once again found herself liking this strange child. More than ever she wanted her solidly on her side when trouble started.

"How about it then? Am I worth fighting?"

Robin took a long time answering. Many things had occurred to Gaby since the fight was proposed. She wondered how many of them Robin was considering now. Should she let Robin win? That might be hazardous if Robin suspected she was not fighting wholeheartedly. If Robin did lose, would she really bury the hatchet? Gaby had to take her word for that. She thought she understood the little witch well enough to know her concept of honor would not have allowed her to suggest it if she could not behave as advertised. So the fight would be serious and probably painful.

"If that's the way you want it," Robin said.

Robin was taking off her clothes, so Gaby did the same. They were half a kilometer from the river, far enough to make the campfire just a dim light seen through pouring rain. The field of combat was a shallow depression in the rolling land. There was little grass, but the dirt was firm enough: heat-baked ground only beginning to soak up moisture after six hours of steady rain. Still, the footing would not be good. In places there were puddles and mud.

They faced each other, and Gaby sized up her opponent. They were a close match. Gaby had a few centimeters in height and a few kilos in mass.

"Are there any forms we should observe? Any rituals?"

"Yes, but they're complex, and they wouldn't mean anything to you, so why don't we just dispense with them? Mumbo jumbo and alagazam, you bow to me and I bow to you, and we'll consider the rituals satisfied, okay?"

"Rules?"

"What? Oh, I guess there should be, shouldn't there? But I really don't know how much you know about fighting."

"I know how to kill someone with my hands," Gaby said.

"Let's just say we do nothing that would permanently injure the other. The loser should be able to walk tomorrow. Other than that, anything goes."

"Right. But before we start, I was curious about that tattoo on your stomach. What is that for?" She pointed to Robin's midsection.

It might have been better-Robin could have looked at herself rather than at Gaby's pointing hand-but she was still caught off guard when Gaby kicked with the foot she had been carefully working down into the mud. Robin ducked the kick, but a glob of mud hit her on the side of the face, blinding one eye.

Gaby expected the leap backward and was prepared to exploit it, but Robin's reflexes were a little quicker, and Gaby took a kick in the side. It slowed her just enough for Robin to execute her own surprise move.

She turned and ran.

Gaby ran after her, but it was not a tactic she was used to. She kept expecting a trick and so did not run as fast as she might have. As a result, Robin soon had a comfortable lead. She stopped when the distance between them had lengthened to ten meters, and when she turned, her eye was open again. Gaby thought she would not be seeing as well as before, but the rain had removed most of her disadvantage. Gaby was impressed. When she began to move in on the younger woman, she did so with extreme caution.

It was like a restart. Gaby felt handicapped because she had seldom fought this way before. Her own training had been very long ago, and while she was not rusty, it was hard to remember what one did in those practice sessions. For the last eighty years any fight she found herself in was completely serious, meaning that death could always result. That kind of fight was not at all like practicing. Robin, on the other hand, must do this sort of thing all the time. Her personality would practically guarantee it.

There was no real reason why the fight should last more than a few minutes, even pulling punches. Somehow Gaby didn't think it would turn out that way. When she moved in, she gambled by not throwing any punches or kicks, leaving Robin an opening Gaby felt she could handle if the younger woman chose to exploit it. But she did not, and the two of them grappled for wrestling holds. An agreement had been made without words. Gaby would honor it. By formalizing the contest even further than the rules they had agreed on, Robin was saying she had no desire for either of them to be hurt. That meant Gaby was an honorable opponent who did not deserve to be hurt.

It took quite a while. Gaby realized she had surrendered what advantages she might have had by fighting this way. She didn't mind. She expected to lose, but that didn't prevent her from giving it all she had. Robin would know she had been in a fight.

"Peacel" Gaby yelled. "Uncle, aunt, and a lot of little cousins!"

Robin released her arm, and the knife of pain slowly withdrew from Gaby's shoulder. She lifted her face from the mud and cautiously rolled over. She began to think she might one day regain the use of the arm.

She lifted her head and saw Robin sitting with her head between her knees, panting like a steam engine.

"Two out of three?" Gaby suggested.

Robin began to laugh. She did it loudly and with no self-consciousness.

"If I thought for one minute you meant that," she finally managed to say, "I'd tie you up and keep you in a cage. But you'd probably gnaw through the chains."

"Almost had you a couple of times there, didn't I?"

"You'll never know how close."

Gaby wondered how she could feel so good, considering the fact that she hurt all over. She supposed it must be marathon euphoria, that boneless relaxation which can come when one completes an all-out effort. And after all, she was not injured. There would be bruises, and the shoulder would be weak for a while, but she was suffering mostly from the effects of exertion, not pummeling.

Robin got slowly to her feet. She held out a hand.

"Let's get down to the river. You need to wash up."

Gaby took her hand and managed to rise. Robin was walking with a limp, and Gaby didn't feel too steady herself, so they supported each other through the first painful hundred meters.

"I really did want to ask you about that tattoo," Gaby said as they approached the river.

Robin wiped her hands over her abdomen, but it was no use. "Can't see it now. Too much mud. What did you think of it?"

Gaby was about to say something polite and noncommittal but thought better of it.

"I think it's one of the most hideous things I ever saw."

"Precisely. It is a source of much labra."

"You want to explain that? Do all witches disfigure themselves like that?"

"I'm the only one. Therein lies the labra."

They walked carefully out into the river and sat down. The rain had relented, becoming a fine mist, while to the north there was a break in the clouds that let some light through. Gaby could no longer see the tattoo but could not stop thinking about it. It was grotesque, almost frightening. Rendered like an anatomical drawing, it depicted incised layers of tissue laid back with surgical precision to bare the organs beneath. The ovaries were like rotten fruit, crawling with maggots. The fallopian tubes were knotted many times. But the womb itself was the worst. It was swollen, bulging out of the "incision," and dripping blood from a ragged wound. It was clear the injury had been caused from the inside, as though something were tearing its way out. Nothing could be seen of the creature the womb sheltered but a pair of red, feral eyes.

As they went to retrieve their clothes, it began to rain hard again. Gaby was not alarmed when Robin stumbled and fell; the footing was terrible, and she was still favoring a turned ankle. By the time of Robin's fourth fall it was obvious something was wrong. She staggered, trembling, her jaw muscles knotted with determination.

"Let me help you," Gaby said when she could no longer bear it.

"No, thank you. I can make it on my own."

A minute later she fell down and did not get up. Her limbs shook in a slow rhythm, not violently. Her eyes did not track. Gaby knelt and put one arm under Robin's knees, the other under her back.

"Nnnn ... uunnnnuh. Nnnnuh."

"What? Be reasonable, friend. I can't leave you out here in the rain."

"Yyyuuu ... ssss. Yu ... yessss. Llluuh ... eeeeve. Leeeeeve muh-muh-muh-meee."

It was a hell of a problem. Gaby put her down and stood over her, scratching her head. She looked toward the campfire, not far away, and back again to Robin. They were atop a low hill; rising water would be no problem. Nor would she drown from the rainfall. This part of Hyperion held no predators that would give her trouble, though some small animals might try a nibble.

This would have to be straightened out later. Some sort of accommodation had to be reached, for Gaby would not do this again. But for now she turned away and headed back toward camp.

Hautbois stood up, alarmed, when Gaby returned alone. Gaby knew the Titanide had seen them leave together; it was likely she even knew what they intended to do, out there in the rain. Gaby reassured her before she could jump to conclusions.

"She's all right. At least, I guess she is. She's having a seizure and doesn't want my help. We can get her when it's time to go. Where are you going?"

"To bring her back to the tent, of course."

"I don't think she'll appreciate it."

Hautbois looked as angry as Gaby had ever seen a Titanide be.

"You humans and your silly games," she snorted. "I don't have to play by her rules or yours either."

Robin saw Hautbois looming through the wall of rain. Damn it, Gaby had sent back the cavalry; that much was obvious.

"I came on my own," the Titanide said as she picked Robin out of the mud. "Whatever human concept you are trying to defend by this insane act can remain unviolated because no human agency is taking you from here."

Put me down, you overgrown hobbyhorse, Robin tried to say, and heard the despised croaks and gurgles drool over her slack jaw.

"I'll take care of you," Hautbois said tenderly.

Robin was calm as Hautbois put her atop the sleeping bag. Stop fighting, submit to it, wait it out, and win eventually. You're helpless now, but you can get back at them.

Hautbois returned with a bucket of warm water. She bathed Robin, dried her, held her up like a defective robot rag doll, and put her into the embroidered finery of her nightgown. Robin might have weighed no more than a sheet of paper as Hautbois lifted her with one hand and slid her into the sleeping bag. She tucked it up around her neck.

She began to sing.

Robin felt heat in the back of her throat. It horrified her. To be tucked in, bathed, dressed... it was a terrible affront to her dignity. She should be able to summon more anger than she was feeling. She should be composing the blistering verbal assault she would deliver to this creature as soon as she regained her body. Instead, she felt only the choking lump of an emotion she had long forgotten.

Weeping was unthinkable. Once it was surrendered to, one might never be free of the self-pity. It was her biggest fear, so terrifying that she seldom could so much as name it. There had been times, all alone, when she had wept. She could never do it while with someone. And yet in a sense she was alone. Hautbois had said it herself. Human rules, Coven concepts, need not apply here. It went beyond that; the Coven did not demand that she never cry. It was her own self-enforced discipline.

She heard moaning and knew it was coming from her mouth. Tears were leaking from the corners of her eyes. The lump in her throat could not be swallowed, so it would have to come out.

Robin surrendered and cried herself to sleep in Hautbois's arms.

Chris reclined on his sleeping bag in the damned half-light and trembled. For hours it had felt as if an attack might be imminent, but it refused to start. Or had it? As he had told Gaby, he was not the one to judge if he was in an episode. But that was not strictly true. If he were having an attack, he would not know it, it would seem perfectly reasonable for his mind to be operating like a machine with worn pulleys and bent gears, but he would not be here sweating.

He told himself it was the light and the rain beating on the tent roof. The light was all wrong. As it came through the tent walls, it had to be either early morning and time to get up, or late evening and much too early to sleep. It would not turn into decent night.

What with the rain, it was amazing the things he had been able to hear. There were the quiet songs of the Titanides and the crackle and pop of the fire. Someone had approached his tent, stood outside it, casting her shadow on the walls, and walked away. Later he had heard voices in conversation and people walking away. Much later someone had returned.

And now someone else was approaching. Not even the Wizard would cast a shadow as large as that.

"Knock, knock."

"Come in, Valiha."

She had a towel with her, and while she stuck her head and torso in to hold the tent flaps open, she used it to wipe the mud from her front hooves before stepping onto the canvas floor. She did the same with her back legs, twisting and leaning back while lifting each leg, managing to suggest a dog scratching behind an ear without looking at all awkward. She was wearing a violet rain slicker which was almost a tent in itself. By the time she had removed it and hung it on a peg near the door Chris had worked up considerable curiosity as to the purpose of her visit.

"Do you mind if I light the lantern?"

"Go right ahead."

The tent was Titanide-sized, meaning she could stand erect in the center and had just enough room to turn around. The lamp cast fantastic shadows of her until she hung it from the ridgepole and sat down with her legs folded.

"I can't stay long," she said. "In fact, it might have been a mistake to come here at all. However, here I am."

If she had intended to mystify him, she couldn't have done a better job. Her hands were nervously fiddling with the edge of her pouch, something that was hard for Chris to watch. Her thumbs hooked in the edge of it, and she stretched it out like the elastic band on a pair of bathing trunks.

"I've been upset since I realized that you ... you really don't remember the hundred revs we spent together after I found you wandering beneath Cirocco's Stairs, after your Big Drop."

"How long is a hundred revs?"

"A little over four days, in your reckoning. One rev is sixty-one minutes."

"That's quite a while. Did we have a good time?"

She glanced up at him, then resumed her fumbling.

"I did. You said you did, too. What has bothered me is that you might have the impression that I was using you solely for a good-luck charm, as I said when you first returned to your senses."

Chris shrugged. "It wouldn't bother me if you had. And if I brought you good luck, I'm glad I did."

"That isn't it." She bit her lower lip, and Chris was surprised to see a tear, quickly wiped away. "Gaea curse me," she moaned, "I can't say it right. I don't even know what I'm trying to say, except thank you. Even though you don't remember." She dug into her pouch and came out with something which she pressed into his hand. "This is for you," she said, and stood and was gone practically before he knew what had happened. He opened his hand and looked at the Titanide egg. Its dominant color was yellow, like Valiha herself, but there were swirls of black. There was an inscription on its hard surface, in tiny, spidery English characters:

Valiha (Aeolian Solo) Madrigal: Long-Odds Major

26th Gigarev; 97,628,6851 Rev (Anno Domini 2100)

"Gaea Says Not Why She Spins."