Titan (GAIA) (15 page)

“We can take care of our own casualties,” Cirocco said, coldly.

“Whatever you think is best.”

“She’s barely aware that you’re leaving, anyway. Just get out of my sight, will you?”

August proved to be not as comatose as Cirocco had thought. When she heard Calvin was leaving, she insisted on joining him. After a brief battle, Cirocco gave in, though with even more misgivings than before.

Whistlestop came in low and began spinning a cable. They watched it whip and twist in the air.

“Why is he willing to do this?” Bill asked. “What does he get out of it?”

“He likes me,” Calvin said, simply. “Also, he’s used to carrying passengers. The sentient species pay for their rides by moving food from his first stomach into the second. He doesn’t have the muscles for it. He has to save on weight.”

“Does everything here get along so well?” Gaby asked. “We haven’t seen anything like a carnivorous animal so far.”

“There are carnivores, but not many. Symbiosis is the basic fact of life. That, and worship. Whistlestop says all the higher life forms owe allegiance to a godhead, and the seat of divinity is in the hub. I’ve been thinking of a goddess that rules the whole circle of the land. I call her Gaea, for the Greek mother.”

Cirocco was interested, in spite of herself. “What is Gaea, Calvin? Some sort of primitive legend, or maybe the control room of this thing?”

“I don’t know. Themis is a lot older than Whistlestop, and a lot of it is unknown to him, too.”

“But who runs it? You said there were many races in here. Which one? Or do they cooperate?”

“Again, I don’t know. You’ve read the stories of generation ships where something went wrong and everybody slipped back to savagery? I think something like that might be going on here. I know something’s working somewhere. Maybe machines, or a race that stays in the hub. That may be the source of the worship. But Whistlestop is sure there’s a hand on the wheel.”

Cirocco scowled. How could she let him go, with all that information in his head? It was spotty and they had no way of knowing how much of it was true, but it was all they had.

But it was too late for second thoughts. His foot was in the stirrup at the end of the long line. August joined him and the blimp reeled them in.

“Captain!” he shouted, just before they disappeared. “Gaby shouldn’t have called this place Themis. Call it Gaea.”

Cirocco brooded about their departure, plunging into a black depression during which she sat on the side of the river and thought about what she should have done. No course seemed right.

“What about his Hippocratic oath?” she asked Bill at one point. “He was sent along on this trip for one damn thing, to take care of us if we needed it.”

“It changed us all, Rocky.”

All but me, she thought, but did not say. At least, as far as she could tell, she had suffered no lasting effects from her experience. In a way, that was stranger than what it had done to the others. It should have driven them all catatonic. Instead, there was an amnesiac, an obsessive personality, a woman with an adolescent crush, and a man in love with living airships. Cirocco’s was the only level head.

“Don’t kid yourself,” she muttered. “You probably look as crazy to them as they do to you.” But she discarded that notion, too. Bill, Gaby, and Calvin all knew they had been changed by their experience, though Gaby would not admit that her love for Cirocco was a side-effect. August was too distracted by her loss to think about anything at all.

She wondered again about April and Gene. Were they still alive, and if so, how were they taking it? Were they alone, or had they managed to link up?

They had a regular routine of listening and broadcasting, trying to contact the two, but nothing came of it. No one heard a man crying again, and no one heard anything from April.

Time drifted by, all but unmarked. Cirocco had Calvin’s watch to tell them when to sleep, but it was hard to adjust to the unfailing light. She would never have suspected it of a group of people who had lived in the artificial environment of
Ringmaster
, where the day was set on the ship’s computer and could be varied at will.

Life was easy. All the fruit they tried was edible, and seemed to be nourishing them. If there were vitamin deficiencies they had yet to make themselves known. Some fruits were salty, and others had a tang they hoped was vitamin C. Game was plentiful, and easy to kill.

They were all used to the strict time-lines of an astronaut, where every chore is assigned by ground control and the chief pastime is bitching about how it was impossible and yet doing it anyway. They had been prepared to struggle for survival in a hostile environment, but Hyperion was about as hostile as the San Diego Zoo. They had expected Robinson Crusoe, or at least the Swiss Family Robinson, but Hyperion was a creampuff. They had not yet adjusted enough to think in terms of a mission.

Two days after Calvin and August left, Gaby presented Cirocco with clothes she had made from the discarded chutes. It touched Cirocco deeply to see the expression on Gaby’s face when she tried it on.

The outfit was half toga and half loose pants. The material was thin, but surprisingly tough. It had taken Gaby a lot of hard work to cut it into usable sizes and sew it together with thorn needles.

“If you can work out something for moccasins,” she told Gaby, “I’ll promote you three grades when we get home.”

“I’m working on it.” Gaby glowed for a day after that, and was frisky as a puppy, brushing against Cirocco and her fine clothing at the slightest excuse. She was pathetically eager to please.

Cirocco was sitting by the side of the river, alone for once, and glad of it. Being the bone of contention between two lovers was not to her taste. Bill was starting to get annoyed by Gaby’s behavior, and seemed to feel he should do something.

She reclined easily with a long limber pole in one hand and watched a small wooden float bob at the end of her line. She let her thoughts drift over the problem of aiding any rescue party that might come for them. What might be done to make rescue easier?

It was a certainty that they couldn’t get out of Gaea on their own. The best she could do would be
to try contact with the rescue party. She had no doubt one would arrive, and few illusions that its primary purpose would be rescue. The messages she had managed to send during the break-up of
Ringmaster
described a hostile act, and the implications of that were enormous.
Ringmaster
’s crew would certainly be presumed dead, but Themis-Gaea would not be forgotten. A ship would arrive soon, and it would be loaded for bear.

“All right,” she said. “Gaea should have some communications facilities somewhere.”

Probably in the hub. Even if the engines were there too, its central location seemed the logical place for controls. There might be people up there running things, and there might not. There was no way to make the trip look easy, or the destination safe. It could be carefully guarded against entry and sabotage.

But if there was a radio up there, she should see what she could do about getting to it.

She yawned, scratched her ribs, and idly moved her foot up and down. The float bobbed in and out of the water. It seemed a good time for a snooze.

The float jerked, and vanished beneath the muddy waters. Cirocco looked at it for a moment, then realized with mild surprise that something had taken the bait. She stood and began pulling in the line.

The fish had no eyes, no scales, and no fins. She held it up and looked at it curiously. It was the first fish any of them had caught.

“What the hell am I doing?” she asked aloud. She tossed it back into the water, coiled her fishing line, and started around the bend in the river toward camp.

Halfway there, she began to run.

“I’m sorry, Bill, I know you put a lot of work into this place. But when they come to get us, I want to be working as hard as I can toward getting ourselves out,” Cirocco said.

“I agree with you, basically. What’s your idea?”

She explained her thinking about the hub, the fact that if there was a central technological control for this vast construct, it would be up there.

“I don’t know what we’d find. Maybe nothing but cobwebs and dust, and everything down here is still going by sheer inertia. Or maybe the Captain and a crew waiting to blow us to pieces for invading their ship. But we have to look.”

“How do you propose to get up there?”

“I don’t know for sure. I’m assuming the blimps can’t do it or they would know more about this goddess they talk about. There may not even be any air in the spokes.”

“That would make it a bit tough,” Gaby pointed out.

“We won’t know until we look. The way to get up the spokes is the support cables. They should go all the way up the insides, right to the top.”

“My God,” Gaby muttered. “Even the slanted ones are a hundred kilometers high. And that just brings you to the roof. From there it’s another 500 kilometers to the hub.”

“My aching back,” Bill groaned.

“What the matter with you?” Cirocco demanded. “I didn’t say we’d climb them. We’ll decide that when we get a good look. What I’m trying to tell you is that we’re
ignorant
of this place. For all I know, there’s an express elevator sitting in the swamp that would take us all the way to the top. Or a little man selling helicopter tickets, or magic carpets. We’ll never know unless we start looking around.”