Titan (GAIA) (24 page)

“What the hell’s going on?” Gaby held a bronze sword Cirocco had not seen before.

“Watch out!” Bill was tossed from his bed. Cirocco crawled to him and tried to get him back in, but the wagon kept crashing over rocks and crevices.

“Stop this thing, goddam it!” Cirocco yelled, then sang it in Titanide: It made no difference. The two hitched in front were heading for the battle and nothing would stop them. One held a sword which she brandished above her, shrieking like a demon.

Cirocco slapped one of them on the rump and almost lost her scalp as the sword flashed at her. Keeping her head low, she looked down at the knots hitching the Titanides to the wagon.

“Gaby, give me that thing, quick.” The sword came through the air hilt-first and landed at her feet. She hacked at the leather harnesses. One came free, then the other.

The Titanides did not notice the loss. They quickly outdistanced the wagon, which then slammed to a halt against a boulder.

“What was that all—”

“I don’t know. All anyone told me is to stay low. Give me a hand with Bill, will you?”

He was awake, and did not seem to be hurt. He watched the sky as they put him back on the pallet.

“Holy Christ!” he said, just loud enough to be heard over the screech of the Titanides. “They’re getting murdered up there.”

Cirocco looked up in time to see one of the flying creatures slash three parachute shrouds above one of the descending Titanides. The chute folded. With sickening speed the Titanide vanished behind a low hill to the west.

“Those are angels?” Bill wondered.

To Titanides, they were angels of death. Human in shape, with feathered wings that measured seven meters from tip to tip, the angels turned the peaceful air over Hyperion into a slaughterhouse. All the parachutes were soon cleared from the sky.

The battle went on behind the hill, out of their sight. Titanides screeched like fingernails on a blackboard, and high above was an eerie wail that had to be the angels.

“Behind you,” Gaby warned. Cirocco turned quickly.

An angel approached silently from the east. It skimmed the ground, great wings motionless, growing larger with impossible speed. She saw the sword in its left hand, the human face twisted with bloodlust, tears streaking from the corners of the eyes, the muscles knotting in the arm as it brought the sword back …

It passed over them, beating its wings to rise over the low hill. The tips touched the ground and stirred gouts of dust.

“Missed me,” Gaby said.

“Sit down,” Cirocco told her. “You make a great target standing up like that. And it did
not
miss you. It changed its mind at the last moment; I saw it stop the swing.”

“Why did it do that?” She crouched beside Cirocco and scanned the horizon.

“I don’t know. Most likely because you don’t have four legs. But the next one might not be so observant.”

They watched another angel approach from a slightly different angle. It sliced through the air, legs together, some kind of tail surface extending behind its feet, arms at its sides, wings twitching just enough to maintain speed. In grace and economy of motion, Cirocco had never seen its equal.

They saw another build speed by flying straight at the ground. It pulled out at the last possible instant, kissing the ground until it vanished over the brow of the hill. Any crop duster in the world would have been hollow-eyed and white-faced.

“They’re very good,” Gaby whispered.

“I wouldn’t want to get in a dogfight with them,” Cirocco agreed. “They’d fly the pants off me.”

A chilly wind blew up from the east, raising dust from the dry ground.

Then the Titanides came charging around the hill, followed by a flock of angels. Cirocco recognized Lullaby and Clarino and Foxtrot. Clarino’s left foreleg was red with blood. The Titanides carried wooden lances tipped with brass, and bronze swords.

They were no longer giving voice to their battle song, but the frenzy was still in their eyes. Steam puffed from their nostrils and the ones with bare skin glistened. They thundered by, then wheeled to face the angels.

“They’re using the wagon for cover!” Gaby shouted. “We’re going to be caught in the middle. Get off, quick!”

“What about Bill?” Cirocco yelled.

Gaby’s eyes locked with hers for an instant. She seemed about to speak, then growled something unintelligible and took her sword from Cirocco. With a lot more courage than common sense, she stood at the back of the wagon and faced the oncoming angels. Once again, all Cirocco could see was her back as she stood between her love and approaching danger.

The angels ignored her.

She stood with her sword ready, but they went around the sides of the wagon to reach the Titanides who were making a stand behind it.

The noise was beyond belief. The wail of the angels mixed with the shriek of the Titanides while scores of giant wings tore the air.

A monstrous shape loomed out of the dust cloud, a nightmare painted in shades of brown and black, wings moving like shadows come to life. It was blind, sword and lance jabbing aimlessly as the angel tried to get its bearings in the miasma. It seemed no larger than a child of ten. Dark blood ran from a wound in its side.

It was above them when it hurled its lance. The brass tip passed through the sleeve of Gaby’s robe
and bit into the floor of the wagon, twanging like a bowstring. Then the angel was past them, and a wooden spear was growing from its neck. It fell, and Cirocco could see nothing more.

As quickly as the battle had come to them, it was gone. The wailing took on a different note and the angels rose, dwindled, became nothing but flapping shapes high in the air, headed east.

There was a commotion on the ground beside the wagon. The three Titanides were trampling the body of the fallen angel. It was hard to tell that the body had ever looked human. Cirocco looked away, sickened by the blood and the murderous rage on the faces of the Titanides.

“What do you think made them go away?” Gaby asked. “Just a couple more minutes and they’d have wrapped it up.”

“They must know something we don’t,” Cirocco said.

Bill was looking to the west.

“There,” he said, pointing. “Somebody’s coming.”

Cirocco saw two familiar figures. It was Hornpipe and Banjo, the shepherds, approaching at full gallop.

Gaby laughed, bitterly. “You’ll have to show me something better than that. One of those kids is only three years old, Rocky said.”

“There,” Bill said again, pointing the other way.

Over the hill came a wave of Titanides, like a motley cavalry.

It was six days after the angel attack, the sixty-first day of their emergence in Gaea. Cirocco was prone on a low table with her feet in improvised stirrups. Calvin was down there somewhere, but she refused to watch him. Lullaby, the white-haired Titanide healer, watched and sang as the operation progressed. Her songs were soothing, but nothing helped a great deal.

“The cervix is dilated,” Calvin said.

“I’d just as soon not hear about it.”

“Sorry.” He straightened briefly, and Cirocco saw his eyes and forehead above the surgical mask. He was sweating profusely. Lullaby wiped it away and his eyes showed his gratitude. “Can you move that lamp closer?”

Gaby positioned the flickering lamp. It threw huge shadows of her legs onto the walls. Cirocco heard the metallic click of instruments taken from the sterilizing bath, then felt the curette rattle through the speculum.

Calvin had wanted stainless steel instruments, but the Titanides could not make them. He and Lullaby had worked with the best artisans until he had brass tools he felt he could use.

“It hurts,” Cirocco gritted.

“You’re hurting her,” Gaby explained, as if Calvin could not understand English.

“Gaby, you’ll either be quiet or I’ll find someone else to hold the lamp.” Cirocco had never heard Calvin speak so harshly. He paused, wiped his brow on his sleeve.

The pain was not intense, but persistent and hard to place, like an ache of the inner ear. She could hear and feel the scraping, and it set her teeth on edge.

“I’ve got it,” Calvin said softly.

“Got what? You can see it?”

“Yeah. You’re further along than I thought. It’s a good thing you insisted we get it done.” He resumed his scraping, pausing from time to time to clean the curette.

Gaby turned away to examine something in the palm of her hand. “It’s got four legs,” she whispered, and started to come to Cirocco’s side.

“I don’t want to see it. Get it
away
from me.”

“May this one look?” Lullaby sang.

“No!” She was fighting nausea, and could not sing the answer to the Titanide, but shook her head violently. “Gaby,
destroy
it. Right now, do you hear me?”

“It’s done, Rocky.”

Cirocco let out a deep breath that turned into a sob. “I didn’t mean to yell at you. Lullaby said she wanted to see it. I probably should have let her. Maybe she’d know what to make of it.”

Cirocco protested that she could walk, but Titanide ideas of medicine included much cuddling, body warmth, and songs of reassurance. Lullaby carried her across the dirt street to the quarters the Titanides had given them. She sang the song of support in times of mental anguish while lowering her into a bed. There were two empty ones beside it.

“Welcome to the veterinary hospital,” Bill greeted her. She managed a weak smile as Lullaby arranged the covers.

“Your humorous friend cracks jokes again?” Lullaby sang.

“Yes, he calls this the place-of-healing-for-animals.”

“He should be ashamed. Healing is healing. Drink this, and you will relax.”

Cirocco took the wineskin and drank deeply. It burned all the way down and warmth spread through her. The Titanides drank fermented beverages for the same reasons humans did, one of the more pleasant discoveries of the last six days.

“I’ve got a feeling my wrists were just slapped,” Bill said. “I know that tone of voice by now.”

“She loves you, Bill, even when you’re naughty.”

“I was hoping to cheer you up.”

“It was an interesting try. Bill, it had four legs.”

“Ouch. And me making jokes about animals.” He reached across and took her hand.

“It’s okay. It’s over now, and all I’d like to do is sleep.” She took two more deep pulls on the wineskin, and did just that.

Gaby spent the first hour after her operation telling everyone she felt fine, then she threw up and was feverish for two days. August came through with no ill effects at all. Cirocco was sore but healthy.

Bill was doing well in that he was healing, but Calvin said the bone had not been set properly.

“So how much longer will it be?” Bill asked. He had asked the question before. There was nothing to read, no television to watch; nothing but the window looking out over a dark street in Titantown. He could not speak to his nurses except in pidgin ditties. Lullaby was learning English, but very slowly.

“At least two more weeks,” Calvin said.

“I feel like I could walk on it now.”

“You probably could, and that’s the danger. It’d pop like a dry stick. No, I won’t let you up, even on crutches, for another two weeks.”

“What about taking him outside?” Cirocco asked.

“Would you like to go outside, Bill?”

They took Bill and his bed out the door and a short distance along the street before putting him down beneath one of the canopied trees that made Titantown invisible from the air, and provided the nearest approach to night they had seen since their exploration of the cable base. The Titanides kept their homes and streets lighted all the time.

“Have you seen Gene today?” Cirocco asked.

“Depends on what you mean by today,” Calvin asked, with a yawn. “You still have my watch.”

“But you haven’t seen him?”

Calvin shook his head. “Not for a while.”

“I wonder what he’s been up to.”

Calvin had found Gene following the Ophion through steep terrain as it wound its way among the Nemisis Mountains of Crius, the day region just west of Rhea. He said he had emerged in the twilight
zone, and had been walking ever since, trying to hook up with the others.