Titan (GAIA) (33 page)

“Those radish dinguses are best left crunchy,” she said. “Give me your plate.”

She ladled a generous helping and the two of them sat back, side by side but at arm’s length, and ate.

It was delicious. Listening to the small sounds, the pop of the fire and the scraping of spoons on wooden plates, Cirocco was grateful to relax and think of nothing.

“Do you have any more salt?”

Cirocco dug in her pack and found the sack, and also two forgotten sweets, wrapped in yellow leaves. She pressed one into Gaby’s hand and laughed when her eyes lit up. She put her own plate down and unwrapped the chewy, bite-sized confection, held it under her nose and sniffed. It smelled too good to eat all at once. She bit it in half, and the flavor of sugared apricots and sweet cream burst through her mouth.

Gaby was just short of hysterical at Cirocco’s expression of delight. She ate the other half, then began casting covetous glances at the sweet Gaby had put at her side, while Gaby tried to keep a straight face.

“If you’re keeping that for breakfast, you’re going to have to stay awake all night.”

“Oh, don’t worry. I just have enough manners to know dessert is for
after
dinner.”

She made the unwrapping last five minutes, then examined it critically for another five, sputtering helplessly at Cirocco’s antics. Cirocco did a passable imitation of a cocker spaniel at the dinner table and a homeless waif looking in the window of the bakery, and gasped when Gaby finally put it in her mouth.

She was having so much fun that it hurt when she wondered—while sniffing eagerly with her face close to Gaby’s—if the silliness was wise. Gaby was obviously in heaven with all the attention; her face was flushed with laughter and excitement, her eyes sparkled.

Why couldn’t she just relax and enjoy it?

She must have let some of her worry show, because Gaby was immediately serious. She touched Cirocco’s hand and looked at her urgently, then slowly shook her head. Neither of them dared speak, but Gaby had told her more plainly than any words she might have said, “You have nothing to fear from me.”

Cirocco smiled, and so did Gaby. They spooned up the last of the stew, holding the plates close to their mouths and not worrying about table manners.

But it was not quite the same. Gaby was silent. Soon her hands began to tremble, and the plate clattered to the steps. She sat up, gasping and sobbing, and Cirocco’s hand on her shoulder brought her groping blindly. She drew her knees up and clenched her fists under her chin, buried her face under Cirocco’s neck and wept.

“Oh, I hurt, I hurt so much.”

“Then let it out. Cry.” She put her cheek on the short, black hair, very fine and beginning to look tousled, then lifted Gaby’s chin and looked for a place to kiss that wasn’t covered by bandage. She was going for the cheek but at the last moment, not sure why she did it, she kissed her lips. They were moist, and very warm.

Gaby looked at her for a long moment, sniffed loudly, and put her face back on Cirocco’s shoulder. She burrowed into the hollow of her neck, then was still. No shakes, no sobs.

“How are you so strong?” she asked, her voice muffled but very close.

“How are you so brave? You keep saving my life.”

Gaby shook her head. “No, I mean it. If I didn’t have you to lean on right now, I’d go crazy. And you don’t even cry.”

“I don’t cry easily.”

“Rape is easy?” She searched Cirocco’s eyes again. “God, I hurt so bad. I hurt from Gene, and I hurt for you. I don’t know which is worse.”

“Gaby, I’d be willing to make love to you if that would help stop the pain, but I hurt, too. Physically.”

Gaby shook her head.

“That’s not what I want from you, even if you were feeling great. If you’re ‘willing,’ that’s no good. I’m not Gene, and I’d rather keep the hurt than have you like that. It’s enough to love you.”

What to say, what to say? Stick to the truth, she told herself.

“I don’t know if I’ll ever love you back. Not that way. But so help me,” she hugged Gaby and wiped quickly at her nose, “so help me, you’re the best friend I ever had.”

Gaby let out her breath with a soft sigh.

“That will have to do, for now.” Cirocco thought Gaby was going to cry again, but she didn’t. She hugged Cirocco once, briefly, and kissed her neck.

“Life is very hard, isn’t it?” she asked in a small voice.

“It is that. Let’s get to bed.”

They started out on three steps; Gaby stretched on the highest, Cirocco tossing and turning on the next, and the embers of the fire on the step below her.

But Cirocco cried out in the night and woke in utter darkness. Sweat was pouring from her body as she waited for Gene’s knife to slash. Gaby pulled her down and held her until the nightmare had passed.

“How long have you been here?” Cirocco asked.

“Since I started to cry again. Thanks for letting me join you.”

Liar. But she smiled when she thought it.

It grew hotter for a thousand steps, so hot that the walls could not be touched and the soles of their boots were burning. Cirocco tasted defeat, knowing there had to be at least several thousand more steps before they were in the middle, from which point they might expect it to cool again.

“One thousand more steps,” she said. “If we can make it that far. If it’s not cooler, we go back and try it on the outside.” But she knew the cable was too steep now. The trees had become inconveniently far apart even before they entered the tunnel. The tilt of the cable would reach eighty degrees before they arrived at the spoke. She would be faced with her hypothetical glass mountain, the worst possibility she had imagined when preparing for the trip.

“Whatever you say. Just a minute, I want to take off this shirt. I’m smothering.”

Cirocco stripped down, too, and they continued to hike through the furnace.

Five hundred steps later, they put their clothes back on. Three hundred steps beyond that, they opened their packs and got out their coats.

Ice began to form on the walls, and snow crunched underfoot. They donned gloves and pulled up the hoods on their parkas, then stood in lamplight which had become amazingly bright with the white walls to reflect it, watching ice crystals condense from their breaths and looking forward at a corridor that was unquestionably narrowing.

“A thousand more steps?” Gaby suggested.

“You must have read my mind.”

The ice soon forced Cirocco to bend her head, then get on her hands and knees. It quickly grew dark again as Gaby led with the lamp in front of her. Cirocco paused and blew on her stiff hands, then got on her belly and crawled.

“Hey! I’m stuck!” She was pleased to hear no panic in her voice. It was frightening, but she knew she could get free if she backed up.

The scrabbling sounds in front of her stopped.

“Okay. I can’t turn around here, but it’s getting wider. I’ll go ahead and see what it’s like. Twenty meters. Okay?”

“Right.” She listened to the sounds getting farther away. The darkness closed in and she had just enough time to work up a very cold sweat before the light dazzled her. In a moment Gaby was back. There were ice crystals on her eyebrows.

“This is the worst spot, right here.”

“Then I’ll get through. I didn’t come this far to end up like a cork in a bottle.”

“It’s what you get for eating all those sweets, fatty.”

Gaby could not pull her through, so she backed up and managed to get the brass pick from her pack. They chipped at the ice and tried it again.

“Breathe
out
,” Gaby suggested, and tugged on her hands. She came through.

Behind them, a flat chunk of ice about a meter long fell from the roof and skidded noisily toward daylight.

“That must be why this passage is open,” Gaby said. “The cable is flexible. It bends and the ice cracks.”

“That and the warm air from behind us. Let’s stop plugging it up, okay? Get moving.”

Soon they could stand, and shortly afterward the ice was just a memory. They took off their coats and wondered what was next.

The rumbling began 400 steps farther on. It grew louder until it was easy to imagine huge machines thrumming just beyond the walls of the tunnel. One of the walls was hot, but not anything like what they had already traveled through.

They felt sure it was the sound of the air being sucked from the place of winds toward some unknown destination high above. Two thousand more steps brought them beyond it and into another hot region. They hurried through it, not bothering to strip as they knew they were close to the far end of the tunnel. As expected, the heat diminished after reaching a sauna-bath peak that Cirocco estimated at seventy-five degrees.

Gaby was still in the lead, and saw the light first. It was no brighter than it had been on the other side, just a pale silver strip that began on their left and gradually widened until they were standing on a ledge beside the cable. They slapped each other on the back, then started climbing again.

They crossed over the top of the cable, always rising, always trending to the south, over the broad hump and down again on the far side. The cable was completely bare now; no trees, no earth clinging anywhere. It was the first time Gaea had really looked like the machine Cirocco knew it to be: the incredible, massive construct made by beings who might still be alive in the hub. The bare cable was smooth and straight, rising at an angle of sixty degrees now, getting closer to the flaring bottom edge of the spoke. The wedge of space between the cable and the spoke had narrowed to less than two kilometers.

On the south side the stairs entered another tunnel. They thought they were ready for it, but it almost fooled them. They hurried through the first zone of heat and congratulated themselves when they felt the temperature begin to drop again. It reached about fifty degrees, and began to rise once more.

“Damn! It’s a different set-up. Let’s go!”

“Which way?”

“Back would be just as bad as forward. Move!”

They would have been in danger only if one of them had fallen and hurt herself, but it frightened Cirocco, and reminded her never to take Gaea for granted. She had forgotten the cable was made up of wound strands, and that the path of whatever hot and cold fluids ran through it could be quite complex.

They made it past the zone of vibration which was still in the center, and through the cold zone, which was not as choked with ice as the first had been, and emerged once again on the north side of the cable.

Across the top, and down into the third tunnel. Through it, and across the top again.

They did that seven more times in two days. It would have been faster but for a delay in the fourth tunnel, which was so choked with ice even Gaby had to chip before she could squeeze through. It took them a frigid eight hours to break a path.

But the next time they reached the south side of the cable, there was no tunnel. The angle of rise was now between eighty and ninety degrees, and the staircase began to wind along the outside of it like the red stripe on a peppermint stick.

Neither wanted to camp on a ledge a meter and a half wide that hung over a drop of 250 kilometers. Cirocco knew she tossed in her sleep and one toss could carry entirely too far. So, though both of them were weary, they kept trudging around and around the outside of the cable, always pressing their left
shoulders to the reassuring solidity.