Wizard

EPILOGUE: Semper Fidelis

The wheel still turned, and Gaea was still alone.

The Terran death ship remained where it had always been, deep in the gravity well of Saturn. Its crews alternated yearly to relieve the boredom of duty there. Each decade its cargo of nuclear weapons was serviced, and those found defective were replaced.

It was not an empty threat, but Gaea ignored it all the same. She would never give them an excuse to attack. As long as Earth needed her, she was utterly safe, and she would see to it that Earth did need her. It would have been politically unthinkable to impugn her in any dictatorship or deliberative body on the globe. The story of the quests, had it reached the ears of Earth's people, might have caused a momentary unease, but little more. Gaea had a thousand gifts to bestow. Her security system was for her own enjoyment; it amused her for pilgrims to arrive in ignorance.

It was a measure of her confidence that she rated the danger from Earth slightly below the new danger of the renegade Wizard, and that danger was so small as to be nearly incalculable. But she was a cautious being. High in the hub her thoughts whirled faster than light through a crystalline matrix of space the very existence of which defied the edicts of human physics. Great holes yawned in the matrix like the sockets of rotten teeth, yet even in decay her mind held a power to beggar the capacity of all human computing machines taken together.

The answer was as she had expected. Cirocco was no threat at all.

The highlands were unique in Gaea. Though every kilometer of them was associated with some regional brain, the control that could be exercised that far from the centers of power was negligible. In a sense, it was neutral territory.

In the twilight zone between Rhea and Hyperion, far above the land in the most inaccessible reaches of the highlands, a lone Titanide stood guard outside a cave. Not far away, a billion coca plants thrived. He heard a sound from within, turned, and entered.

Cirocco Jones, until recently the Wizard of Gaea but now called Demon, had awakened and was writhing in a cold sweat. She was naked, and so thin her ribs showed. Her eyes were deep hollows.

Hornpipe went to her and held her down until the shaking subsided. She had found a supply of liquor soon after landing in Hyperion, though the Melody Shop had been obliterated by the most singular phenomenon ever seen in Gaea: a rain of cathedrals. Hornpipe had found her and brought her to the cave.

He held her head and helped her drink a cup of water. When she coughed, he let her back down.

But soon her eyes opened. She sat up on her own for the first time in many days. Hornpipe looked into those eyes, saw the fire he had seen there so long ago, and rejoiced.

Gaea would be hearing from the Demon.