Wizard

33 Firebrand

"It was Gene," Gaby said in a hoarse whisper. "I could hardly believe it, but it was Gene who jumped out of the buzz bomb before it hit."

"Gaby, you have to take it easy," Chris said.

"I will. I'll sleep in a minute. But I wanted to tell you this first."

There was no way for Robin to tell how long the four of them had been on the stairway. She thought it might have been a full day. She had slept once, only to wake to the sound of Gaby's screams.

Robin could hardly look at her. They had stripped away what was left of her clothing and put her on top of one of their two sleeping bags. Valiha's first-aid kit contained tubes of a salve for the treatment of burns, but they had run out of it long before they had covered all the seared skin. They had not even been able to spare enough water to wash the sand from her adequately, for when the waterskins were empty, there would be no more.

It was merciful that the one lantern, turned low to conserve fuel, cast so little light. Gaby was a mass of second- and third-degree burns, painful to behold. Her entire right side and most of her back were charred black. The skin cracked when she moved and oozed clear liquid. She said she could feel nothing there; Robin knew that meant the nerves had been destroyed. But the reddened areas that surrounded the destruction hurt her terribly. She would doze fitfully for a few minutes, then come to tortured awareness with croaking screams tearing at her throat. She would beg for water, and they would give her a few sips.

But now she seemed calmer, in less pain, more aware of the people around her. She was on her side, legs drawn up, head cradled in Valiha's lap, and she spoke of the minutes before her immolation.

"This was his doing. He contacted the buzz bombs-they're damn intelligent, by the way. He contacted the wraiths, too; only they don't work with outsiders. I knew that, and he knew it, and he tried not to tell me how he got them to cooperate. I persuaded him." She smiled, a terrible sight with half her face ruined.

"I've got to give him credit for one thing. That stunt with the wraiths surprised me completely. He dipped the bastards in plastic. He had them all go through a sprayer that coated them with some gunk, and he marched them out to do battle.

"But then he assumed we were smarter than we actually were, and that's what fouled him up. Remember, halfway to the cable, Rocky pointed out if we'd gone north to the road, doubled back on it, and then struck out for the cable, we'd have had less distance to travel over deep sand? If we had, we'd have run right into his ambush. He had his waterproof army deployed between the road and the cable, and a flotilla of buzz bombs hiding in the north mountains to bomb us to hell after we were pinned down. Where we came through, he had only a small force, not waterproofed. He said the plastic didn't last long, it got worn away in the sand, and he had only the one machine to put it on. He had to station that with his main force."

She coughed, and Robin offered her more water. She shook her head.

"We'll have to make that stuff last," she said. She seemed weakened from talking so long, and Chris again suggested she rest.

"Got to tell this first," she said. "Where was I? Oh. You were right, Chris. We allowed ourselves to get stopped by the small force of wraiths; then we hid when that buzz bomb appeared. That was Gene, looking for us. When he saw us, he radioed his main force to join up with him. If we'd gone then, we'd have been under the cable before the infantry or the air force could have reached us. I don't think Gene would have risked his neck trying to get us from the air, but I could be wrong. He had a pretty powerful motive.

"He was after me," she said, and began to cough again. When she had it under control, she resumed her story. "The whole thing and just about all our troubles on this trip, was Gene trying to kill me. The wraiths and the buzz bombs had orders to go for me first, get the rest later if they could. Cirocco was not to be harmed, but I think Gene had other ideas."

"What do you mean?" Robin asked. "Was he under orders himself?"

"Yes," Gaby said. "Goddamn right. He really didn't want to tell me about that. I told him if he didn't, I'd see to it he lived at least a day and I'd take him apart piece by piece. I had to take off a few pieces to make sure he believed me."

Robin swallowed nervously. She had thought herself no stranger to violence, but the scale of recent events had shaken her. She knew about bloodied noses and broken bones and even death, but war had been just a tale of the forsaken Earth. She did not know if she could have done the things Gaby now described. She could have slit his throat or stabbed him in the heart. Torture was foreign to her, yet she felt the deep current of hatred that flowed in Gaby, with this man Gene as its source. Once again she knew the tremendous gap between her nineteen years in the Coven and Gaby's seventy-five in the great wheel.

"So who was it?" Chris was asking. "Oceanus? Tethys?"

"I wanted it to be Oceanus," Gaby said. "But I didn't expect it to be. Gene was getting his orders from who I suspected all along. It was Gaea who told him I must be killed and Cirocco spared. That's why when Psaltery died, I couldn't help crying out that she had done it to him. I think she heard me and told Gene to step up his efforts. She gave him a source of napalm and explosives."

"Gene was behind that attack, too?"

"You remember what happened? Chris saw the buzz bomb and pushed me off Psaltery. If he hadn't, we both would have been dead. After that Gene had to make it look like an attack on us all because it was necessary that Rocky not know they were after just me." She coughed again, then grabbed Chris by the collar, lifting herself with hysterical strength.

"And that's what you have to tell Rocky when she gets here. She has to know it was Gaea that did it. If I'm asleep when she gets here, tell her the very first thing. Promise me you'll do that. If I'm delirious or too weak to talk, you have to tell her."

"I'll tell her, I promise," Chris said. He glanced at Robin. He thought she was delirious already, and Robin agreed. Cirocco was probably dead, and even if she wasn't, there was little prospect she could move the mountain of stone clogging the stairway above them.

"You don't understand," Gaby said, sagging back. "All right, I'll tell you what we were really doing while we pretended to be taking you two on a little walk in the park.

"We were plotting the overthrow of Gaea."

What Gaby and Cirocco had been doing was more an exploration of ways and means than an actual plot. Neither of them was at all sure it was physically possible to overthrow Gaea or if Gaea the being could be disposed of without wrecking Gaea the body, upon which all of them depended for survival.

As with so many things in Gaea, the situation had its roots in events long past. Gaby had felt an itch to change things at least thirty years before. Robin sat beside her in the flickering darkness and heard her speak of things she had been able to confide to no one but Cirocco.

"Rocky didn't even want to hear about it for a long time," she told them. "I don't blame her. She had a lot of reasons to be satisfied with things the way they were. So did I, for that matter. I didn't find life in Gaea a terrible thing. Every once in a while I found something I didn't like, but hell, it was worse on Earth. The universe isn't fair, and it isn't pretty, whether or not it's governed by a living God. I honestly believe that if the Christian God existed, I'd hate him more than I do Gaea. She isn't even in his league.

"And yet, just because you could talk to this God, just because she was actually there and I had spoken to her and knew that she was responsible, that every injustice and every pointless death was the result of a conscious decision... it made it much harder to take. Cancer is acceptable to me only if I feel it just grew, that no one thought it out and decided to inflict it on people. On Earth, that's the way it was. If an earthquake happened, you suffered and patched your wounds and picked up the pieces and moved on to whatever the universe threw at you next. You didn't rail against God, or at least not many of the people I knew did.

"But if the government passed a law you didn't like, you raised hell. You either tried to throw the bastards out at the next election or organized to take power away from them by other means. Because those injustices came from people, and not an indifferent universe, you felt you could do something about it.

"It took me a long time to realize that it's the same way here, but I finally did. The obstacle was in thinking of her as a God, and believe it or not, for a long time I guess I did. There are so many resemblances. But she doesn't operate by magic. Everything she does is theoretically within the reach of beings like ourselves. So I gradually moved away from the God proposition and began viewing Gaea as City Hall. And damn it, I guess I can't resist fighting City Hall." She had to stop talking because she was seized by a coughing fit. Robin held the waterskin to her lips, and she drank, then looked down at herself with tears in her eyes. "You can see where it got me."

Valiha gently stroked Gaby's forehead. "You should rest now, Gaby," she said. "You must save your strength."

"I will," Gaby said. "I just have to get this out first." She breathed heavily for a short time, and Robin saw her eyes widen. She tried to raise herself, but Valiha kept her down, carefully not touching her burned skin. Robin could see a realization growing in the other woman as she looked wildly from one to the other. When she spoke, her voice was childlike.

"I'm gonna die now, aren't I?"

"No, you should just-"

"Yes," said Valiha, with a Titanide's directness about death. "There can be very little hope now."

Gaby inhaled with a racking sob.

"I don't want to die," she moaned. Once again she tried to sit up. She fought them, gaining strength with hysteria. "I'm not ready yet. Please don't let me die, I don't want to die, I ... I don't want ... don't let me die!" She suddenly stopped resisting them and collapsed. She wept bitterly for a long time, so long that when she tried to speak again, her words were broken almost beyond understanding. Robin bent to put her ear close to Gaby's mouth.

"I don't want... to die," Gaby said. And a long time later, when Robin had hoped she was asleep, she said, "I didn't know it could hurt so much."

Finally she slept.

It might have been eight hours before she spoke again. It might have been sixteen; Robin could not know. None of them had expected her to awake at all.

Over the next several hours she told them the rest of the story. Her strength had failed alarmingly; she was barely able to lift her head to take the sips of water that she needed with increasing frequency if she was to speak at all. She had inhaled flames. Her lungs were filling up, and her breath bubbled. She drifted in and out of dreams, talking to her mother and other people who must have been long dead, calling often for Cirocco. But always she returned to the story of her private heresy, her quixotic and ultimately fatal mission to topple the arbitrary power that held sway over her life and those of everyone dear to her.

She told of grievances great and small, and often it was the little things, the injustices on a personal level, that meant more than the great wrongs. She spoke of the institution of the quests and how she grew more disgusted with each passing year as unfortunate people were compelled to fight and die to provide amusement for a God who was weary of the smaller passions. She detailed the cruel joke of the Wizard and the Titanides, ran down the roster of Gaea's macabre toys: a long and infamous list that had its culmination in the buzz bombs.

At one point she had dared to wonder if it must be this way. Having thought it, she was led inexorably to wonder what the alternative might be. At first she could tell no one, not even Cirocco. Later, when Cirocco had suddenly found cause to resent Gaea's machinations, she had approached the subject cautiously, been rebuffed, and let it lie for five years. But gradually Cirocco became interested. At first it was only a theoretical problem: could someone or something take Gaea's place? If so, what? They discussed and rejected Earth computers; none was large or complex enough. Various other solutions were also found wanting. At last they had narrowed the possible candidates for a heavenly succession to eleven-the living regional brains of Gaea.

For a long time Cirocco was content to leave it at that. It seemed possible that one of them, or a team, might conceivably take over Gaea's functions if she were to die. There were myriad problems with any of the possibilities, but they were at least thinkable. And that was as far as Cirocco cared to go. Gaby did not think it was cowardice, though this was during the worst of Cirocco's alcoholism. It was merely that the second part of the problem looked insignificant compared to the first. All their discussion presupposed the absence of Gaea. But who will bell the cat? Gaby could dismiss that, knowing from experience that the world is full of stupid heroes and knowing herself to be one of them. Cirocco was, too, if suitably goaded to it. She and Cirocco would dispose of Gaea.

But then they reached the question that had so far been unanswerable.

How does one dispose of Gaea?

"That one had me completely beat," Gaby confessed. "The whole thing was left at that point for a good seven or eight years. Rocky was pleased to forget it, but I never could. All that time my conscience was working on me, telling me I ought to be doing something. There was only one thing I could think of ... let me admit this, this seems like the right time for confessions. I never thought that by myself, I'd come up with the final answer. I knew Rocky could if she set her mind to it. So my job was to find a way to get her interested in doing something. I had to make it seem possible. I began to badger her about making a survey. I worried at her for several years, until she would hardly speak to me because I was getting to be such a pest. But I worked at her conscience-because she didn't like the things I've told you any more than I did; it's just a little harder to get her moving than it is me. She finally gave in.

"We used you people. I said I was confessing, didn't I? I will say we didn't think we were putting you in any more danger than you would have had anyway if you stayed here. But we were wrong. You would have been safer if you'd gone on your own. Because Gaea got wind of something, or she just decided she'd had enough of my being my own boss. Maybe she couldn't stand the thought of someone she didn't have anything on. Her only hold on me was the need for renewals of my youth-and you can believe this or not, as you wish-I countered that by being ready to reject it if the terms were too dear. I think I could have grown old and died gracefully. I'll never know, but I wasn't afraid of it like I'm afraid of this.

"So what Rocky's been doing is speaking to the regional brains, not even coming close to talking revolution. If you think Rocky planned to go up and offer any of them the Godhead on a silver platter, you're out of your mind. She was feeling them out, trying to find hidden resentments. We'd pretty much eliminated half of them before we started but thought it best to see them all. That way we could tell Gaea we were making another kind of survey, sort of scouting the mood of the land." She tried to laugh but succeeded only in coughing. "Gaea's the only place where that can be done literally."

"What the next stage would have been I don't know. We hadn't had any luck so far. Rhea's a spook, and Crius is a toady-he did make a few unexpected remarks... ah, what's the use? The project is over, and we struck out. Why the hell didn't I let her skip Tethys?"

She licked her lips but rejected water when it was offered.

"You people are going to need that. Do you see why it's vital you tell Rocky all this? That Gene was behind it and that he was under Gaea's orders? If she knows what we were doing, Rocky is in bad trouble. She needs to know, so she can figure out what to do. Will you promise to tell her?"

"We promise, Gaby," Valiha said.

Gaby nodded wearily and closed her eyes. She opened them again and looked troubled. Her voice was nearly inaudible.

"You know," she said, "the only thing I really regret is that Rocky couldn't be here with me. Chris, would ... no." She looked away from him and found Robin's eyes. Robin took her hand. "Robin, when you see her, give her a kiss for me."

"I will."

Gaby nodded again and quickly went to sleep. After a short time her breathing became ragged and then stopped. When Valiha listened for a heartbeat, she could find none.