Wizard (14 page)

“He’s still around, still chasing human tail. He told me about meeting two wildcats. One eventually cooperated, and he eased her down in Ophion. Another was just plain crazy. He couldn’t approach him at all, but he followed him in, thinking that when the ground got close, the man would come to his senses. Imagine his surprise when the guy hit dead center on the back of a blimp.”

“Who was it?” Gaby asked. “The blimp, I mean.”

“Fred said it was Dreadnaught.”

Gaby looked surprised. “That must have been just after I had him and two others help me unclog Aglaia.”

“No doubt.” Cirocco paused in her toweling to look intently at Chris, who quickly looked away. She stepped out of the shower and into a white robe held by one of the Titanides. She wrapped it around herself and sat cross-legged on the floor in front of the three humans and the Titanide. Her servant knelt behind her and began brushing her wet hair.

“I’m wondering about luck,” she said. “Gaea told me about your condition, of course, and mentioned luck. Frankly, I don’t want to believe that anyone could be that lucky. It goes counter to everything I’ve learned. Of course, most of that is seventy years out of date.”

“It’s regarded as pretty well-proven,” Chris said. “From what I’ve heard, most people think none of the psi powers will ever amount to much. They’ve got equations that describe what’s happening, but I don’t pretend to understand them. Free-will particle theory, reality strata … I read an article about it.”

“We don’t get many newspapers out here.” Cirocco frowned at her hands. “I don’t like it. Never did.”

“Einstein didn’t like quantum mechanics,” Gaby pointed out.

“You’re right,” Cirocco sighed. “But I’m always surprised at how things turn out. In my day they were sure they’d have the genetic code cracked in a few more years. We were going to wipe out all physical diseases and genetic conditions. And nobody thought we’d be solving psychological problems any time soon. So just the opposite happened. A couple things were a hell of a lot harder to do than anybody imagined, and there were breakthroughs in areas where nobody expected them. Who can figure it? Anyway, we were talking about luck.”

“I don’t know what it is,” Chris put in. “But I do seem to get luckier at times.”

“I don’t like to think of what it implies if it’s true that luck guided you to a landing on Dreadnaught’s back,” Cirocco said. “It depends on how far you take your reasoning, but you might say a Titan tree came loose and jammed in the Aglaian pump so Gaby would call Dreadnaught into that area for you to land on his back. And I refuse to believe the universe is that deterministic!”

Gaby snorted. “So do I, but I believe in luck. Come on, Rocky. Why should you object to a puppet master pulling a few of your strings? Don’t you know what it feels like by now?”

Cirocco shot Gaby a deadly glare, but for a moment her eyes had looked haunted.

“Okay,” Gaby soothed, holding out her hands. “I’m sorry. We won’t get off on that, all right?”

Cirocco relaxed quickly enough and nodded almost imperceptibly. She brooded for a moment, then
looked up.

“I’m forgetting my manners,” she said. “Hornpipe, ask these folks what they’d like to drink, and bring a couple of those trays over here where we can all reach them.”

Gaby welcomed the pause. The last thing she wanted was to get into a fight with Cirocco. She stood and helped Hornpipe with the food, introduced Psaltery to Robin and Chris, and Cirocco to Robin. There were polite comments about the food and drink, small jokes and pleasantries exchanged. She had them all laughing at one point with a tale of her first encounter with a Titanide soup the main ingredient of which was live worms marinated in brine. In fifteen minutes everyone seemed more relaxed with a little something alcoholic inside.

“As I was saying,” Cirocco resumed at last, “we heard you would be coming down here. I don’t know what your plans are, but I figure if you were going to leave, you would have done so by now. How about it? Chris?”

“I don’t know. I really haven’t had any time to make plans. It seems like just a few hours ago that Gaea told me what I had to do.”

“And confused you completely, I imagine.”

He smiled. “That’s a fair description. I guess I’m planning to stay, but I don’t know what I’m going to do while I’m here.”

“That’s the nature of the test,” Cirocco said. “You’ll never know until you’re facing it. All you can do is go out seeking. That’s why we call you a pilgrim. What about you, Robin?”

Robin looked down at her hands and said nothing for a while, then looked steadily at Cirocco.

“I don’t know if I should tell you what my plans are. I don’t know if I can trust you.”

“That’s direct anyway,” Cirocco said, half smiling.

“She has this grudge to settle with Gaea,” Gaby explained. “She didn’t trust me for a while either. Maybe she still doesn’t.”

“I’m going to kill her,” Robin said with quiet deadliness. “She tried to kill me, and I swore I would
get her. You can’t stop me.”

Cirocco laughed. “Stop you? I don’t think I’m needed for that. Did you bring a couple of nuclear weapons with you?” She glanced at the .45 on Robin’s hip. “Is that thing loaded?”

“What good is an unloaded gun?” Robin asked, honestly baffled by the question.

“You’ve got a point. Anyway, you can set your mind at ease about one thing. I’m not Gaea’s bodyguard. She has eyes and ears enough for that, without needing me. I wouldn’t even tell her you’re after her. It’s none of my concern.”

Robin considered it. “All right. I plan to stay. Pretty soon I’ll start out climbing a spoke, and when I get there, I’ll kill her.”

Cirocco looked at Gaby, and her eyes seemed to say, where did you get
her
? Gaby shrugged and smiled.

“Well … ah … okay. I don’t guess there’s much I can add to that.”

“Why don’t you go on, Rocky? She still might be interested.”

“I don’t think so,” Robin said, standing. “I don’t know what you’re going to propose, but if it has anything to do with going out and being ‘heroic’—” she looked as if she wanted to spit, but couldn’t find a place not covered with rug— “you can count me out. I won’t get involved in that kind of game. I have a score to settle, and I mean to take care of it and then get out of here, if I’m still alive.”

“So you’re going to climb the spoke.”

“That’s right.”

Cirocco turned to Gaby again, and Gaby understood the look. This was your idea, she was saying. You take it from here if you want her along.

“Listen, Robin,” Gaby said. “Your object is to get back to the hub, of course, but since you already had your one free ride, the elevator won’t work for you. There’s about one chance in thirty of your making it to the top alive. Less, really, since you’ll be doing it alone. Cirocco and I did it, but we were damn lucky.”

“I know all that,” Robin began, and Gaby hurried on.

“What I’m saying is, what we’re proposing just might get you to the top safer and faster. I’m not asking you to play Gaea’s game: I’m dead set against that, myself. I think it’s … well, never mind what I think. But consider this. She’s not asking you to hurt anyone or do anything dishonorable. She suggested that you start out to travel around the rim. That’s what we propose to do.”

“There are some things I have to attend to,” Cirocco said.

“Right. We happen to be going in the same direction, and Gaea told us you and Chris were on your way here. Rocky and I have done this before, with other pilgrims, together and separately. We try to keep them out of trouble until they learn their way around.

“What I’m saying is, you could go with us. You’d learn some things that might help you if you’re still determined to climb it. I’m not saying it won’t be dangerous. Get out of Hyperion, and everything in Gaea can be dangerous. Hell, even a lot of Hyperion can kill you. But here’s the beauty of it. It might happen that along the way you’ll do something that Gaea would see as heroic. It wouldn’t be anything you’d be ashamed of, I can promise you that. I’ll give Gaea that much—she knows how to pick her heroes. This is only if the opportunity arises, you understand. You wouldn’t have to think of it as playing her game, or seeking anything in particular. Just go with us. And when you get back, you’ll get a free ride to the top. What you do with it is your own business.” She sat back. She liked Robin, but damn if she could do anymore than that to protect her. In a way, Gaby felt like Fat Fred, the angel; there were people who would give an arm or a leg for the help she and Rocky were offering, and here she was trying to sell this stiff-necked little pup on the idea.

Robin sat down. She had the grace to look slightly abashed.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m grateful for the offer, and I’ll gladly go with you. What you say makes sense.” Gaby wondered if Robin had seen the same picture she had imagined: two or three hundred kilometers up the vertical spoke interior, Robin is suddenly seized with paralysis. No one who had taken the Big Drop was anxious to repeat it.

“Chris?”

“Me? Sure. I’d be a fool to turn you down.”

“That’s what I like,” Cirocco said. “A realistic appraisal.” She stood, removed her robe, and donned her faded serape. “Make yourselves at home. Food and drink are on the house. Carnival is over in about eighty revs, so enjoy yourselves. I’ll meet you all at the Enchanted Cat in one hundred revs.”

“Hey, lover, if you don’t come out of there soon, I’m coming in with you.”

Chris was looking down at the water running off his body, splashing on his naked feet. There was a bar of soap in his hand. He looked up and got a faceful of spray.

Unusual to blank twice in a row.

“Leave me some water, will you?” It was a female voice, the voice of a stranger. Now where had he been, what was the last clear memory…? He turned off the water and stepped from the tiny shower stall. The walls and floor were bare wood planks. Through an open window he could see the ground thirty meters below. He was in a tree, probably in the Titantown Hotel. He peered cautiously around the doorjamb. The small connecting room held some lightweight furniture and a substantial bed, and on the bed was a nude woman, also substantial. She sprawled on her back in a pose that would have looked enticing had she not been so bonelessly relaxed. Was this before or after? he asked himself, but his body knew the answer. It was after.

“Ah, finally,” she said, lifting her head as he came out. “I don’t know how much more of this heat I can take.” She rose and stood before the bedroom window, lifted her mass of black hair from her shoulders, and fastened it with a pin. Chris thought she was lovely and was sorry he had missed having her. Most things he missed were just as well forgotten, but she looked like the exception. She had long legs and a perfect complexion. Her breasts were perhaps a trifle too large, but he would have liked the
chance to prove that experimentally.

She glanced at him. “Oh, no, you don’t. Not again, not now, brother. Haven’t you had enough?” She hurried into the shower.

He couldn’t find his shorts. Poking around, he saw a few unusual implements and many jars of creams and oils. He frowned, looked around some more, and there it was, tacked to the wall. It was yellowing and torn, but it was a prostitution license, issued five years before in Jefferson County, Texas.

“What’s wrong now?” she asked when she came out, drying her neck and shoulders. “You sure are changeable, you know?”

“Yeah, I do know. What do I owe you?”

“We talked about that, remember?”

“No, I don’t because I might as well tell you I can’t remember anything for the last … I don’t know how long. From before I met you. And that’s just how it is, and I don’t want to talk about it, but I can’t even remember your name, I can’t find my clothes, and would you just tell me how goddamn much I owe you so I can get out of here and not bother you anymore?”

She sat beside him on the bed, not touching him, then reached out and took his hand.

“Like that, huh?” she said, quietly. “You told me about that, but you said a lot of things, and I didn’t know what to believe.”

“That part was true. Everything else was probably lies. If I told you I had a lot of money somewhere, that was a lie. I had some when I arrived, but after my last blackout all I had left was a pair of shorts.”

She knotted the towel around her waist, went to a wooden bureau, and took something from the top. “You threw the shorts away just after you picked me up,” she said. “You were going back to nature.” She smiled, not teasingly, and tossed something to him.

It was a small gold coin. Stamped into one side were the words “BLANK CHECK” and some Titanide symbols. On the other side was a signature: “C. Jones.” Something was coming back to him,
and he closed his eyes to squeeze it into recall.

“You said that entitled you to anything in Titantown. ‘Just as good as money.’ I’d never seen one, but you were on a spending spree, and everyone seemed to honor it.”

“I cheated you,” he said, knowing it was true. “Only Titanides have to honor it. I was supposed to use it to … use it to … to outfit myself for a trip I’m supposed to make.” He stood up, suddenly panicked. “I bought a lot of things, I remember that now. I was supposed to … I mean, where are—”

“Easy, easy. That’s all taken care of. I had them take it over to La Gata, like you said to. It’s safe.”

He sat down slowly. “La Gata …”

“That’s where you’re supposed to meet your friends,” she prompted. She glanced at a gyroscopic Gaean clock on the bureau. “In about fifteen minutes.”

“That’s right! I have to …” He started for the door, then stopped with the feeling he was forgetting something.

“Do you have a towel I could borrow?”

Wordlessly she handed him the one she was wearing.

“I … uh, I’m sorry that I don’t have anything to give you. I don’t know what sort of line I gave you, but I guess I’m surprised you didn’t ask for—”

“Money in front? I wasn’t born yesterday. I knew what I was getting into.” She went to the window and put her hands on the sill, looking down at the town below. “I’ve been here for quite a while. The Earth was never too good to me. I like the people here. At least, I think of them as people. I guess I’m starting to go native.” She looked at him as though she expected him to laugh. When he didn’t, one corner of her mouth turned up. “Hell, I own a third interest in a Titanide myself. You stay here long enough, you start shooting marbles.”