Wizard (31 page)

Robin hated it. She stood in mud that covered her ankles and looked out over land that must have been heaven for eels and frogs but for nothing else. It was already hard to remember the exhilaration of the white water. She was drenched and saw no chance of drying out soon. It didn’t help to think that had she not been in the front of the canoe, the accident might not have happened. She wondered once again what she was doing here.

She was not the only one who didn’t like it. Nasu squirmed restlessly in the bag slung under her arm. The trip had not been easy on the snake. She knew she should have left the demon at the Coven—had planned to do so but at the last moment had not been able to. When she loosened the string, Nasu poked her head out and sampled the air with her tongue. Finding it at least as cool and damp as the inside of the sack and seeing no dry place to curl up, she soon retreated.

Hautbois and Psaltery were busy breaking down the damaged canoe, transferring its contents to the other three. Robin saw the others some distance away, standing on what passed for high ground in Phoebe, which meant their feet were a few centimeters above the water. Cirocco sat on a rock facing the central Phoebe cable, which loomed above them, but the others looked north. Robin could not find anything worth seeing, but she slogged through the mud to join them.

“What’s so interesting?” she asked.

“I don’t know yet,” Chris said. “I’m waiting for Hornpipe to get to it.”

Hornpipe stamped the ground restlessly.

“Maybe I shouldn’t have brought it up,” he said.

“You certainly shouldn’t have,” Valiha agreed, glowering at him. But Hornpipe went ahead doggedly.

“Well, you are here to find a way to prove your heroism to Gaea. I just thought I should point out opportunities. Take it or leave it.”

“I leave it,” Robin said. She looked at Chris. “You aren’t serious, are you?”

“I don’t really know,” Chris admitted. “I came because Gaby said it was better than sitting around and waiting for opportunity to come to me, and that made sense. I never did really decide if I was rejecting Gaea’s rules. I’m here, so I must not have rejected them completely. But I’ll admit I hadn’t given much thought to taking off on my own.”

“And you shouldn’t,” Valiha said.

“Still, I ought to hear what’s out there.”

Robin snorted but had to admit she was interested to know.

“That mountain,” Hornpipe said. Robin saw a conical black smudge. “It’s nearly at the northern rampart,” he went on. “It’s a bad area, from all accounts, where little lives. I have never been there myself. But all know it is the home of Kong.”

“What’s Kong?” Chris asked.

“A giant ape,” said Gaby, who now joined them. “What else? Let’s get going, folks. The canoes are ready.”

“Just a minute,” Chris said. “I’d like to hear more.”

“What’s to hear? He sits up there… .” She looked suspicious. “Say, you weren’t thinking of … right. Come over here, Chris, and I’ll tell you about Kong.” She took him a few meters away, glancing at Cirocco. Robin followed, but the Titanides did not. When Gaby spoke, she kept her voice low.

“Rocky doesn’t like to hear about Kong,” she said, and grimaced. “I can hardly blame her. Kong is a one-shot, about a hundred years old and the only one of his species. He’s in the same class with the dragons Gaea told you about; each one different, no provision to breed. They pop out of the ground after Gaea creates them, live as long as they’re programmed to live, which is usually quite a long time, and die. Kong was based on a movie Gaea saw, like the giant sandworm in Mnemosyne. There’re several things like that in here. Of course, they become objects for quests by pilgrims. I hate to think how many people have been slaughtered by Kong. Short of a gun the size of a tree or one hell of a lot of dynamite, he’s unkillable. Believe me, a lot of people have tried it.”

“It must be possible,” Chris said.

Gaby shrugged. “I guess anything is if you try long enough. I don’t think
you’re
ready to take him, though. I know I wouldn’t try it. Come on, Chris. There are simpler ways to commit suicide.”

“Why does Cirocco fear him?” Robin asked. “Or perhaps ‘fear’ is not the right word.”

“‘Fear’ is
precisely
the right word,” Gaby said almost in a whisper. “Kong will eat anything that moves. The Wizard is the one exception. Gaea built him with a tropism. He can smell her at a hundred kilometers, and her scent is the only thing that will bring him from his mountain. I don’t think you can call it love, but it’s a strong compulsion. He’ll follow her right to the edge of the twilight zone. Whatever else I might say about Gaea, she usually leaves an escape clause, so she made Kong with an aversion to light, like the sandworm hates the cold on either side of Mnemosyne. He won’t follow her into Tethys or Crius.

“But if the wind were from the south, we wouldn’t be in Phoebe right now. Rocky crosses at the southern rampart when she can—if she has to visit Phoebe at all—because if Kong smells her, he will come running. If he catches her, he takes her back to his mountain. He did catch her once, about fifty years ago. It was six months before she could get away.”

“What did he do?” Robin asked.

“She won’t talk about it.” Gaby raised her eyebrows and looked at each of them, then turned and walked away.

Robin looked back to the mountain, then saw that Chris was staring at it, too.

“You aren’t—”

“What has she been telling you?”

Robin was startled at the nearness of the Wizard and wondered how she had approached so silently.

“Nothing,” she said.

“Come on, I heard some of it before she so cleverly moved you away. You didn’t believe all that, did you?”

Robin thought back over it and realized, with some chagrin, that she had.

“Well, it wasn’t
all
lies,” Cirocco conceded. “Kong is there, and he is twenty meters tall, and he did capture me and hold me prisoner, and I don’t talk about it much because it was extremely unpleasant. He fouls his nest. By now the compressed shit in his cave must be ninety meters deep. He likes to take his prisoners out and look at them from time to time, but as for the sexual innuendo, forget it. He isn’t even equipped; he’s neuter.

“He does have a terrific sense of smell, too, but that business about smelling just
me
is bunk. He is attracted to all human females. What he homes in on is menstrual blood.”

Robin felt concerned for the first time. Why had they come through Phoebe
now
?

“Don’t worry,” Cirocco soothed. “His nose is so good there’s not really any time when you’re safe. Anyhow, your smell is what would protect you, in a way. When he catches a man, he eats him. Titanides confuse him. He doesn’t rely on his eyes too much, but when he gets a Titanide, he bites off part and saves the torso because at least it looks right. Then he plays with it until it falls apart.” She frowned at the memory, looking away from them.

“But he
is
killable,” she went on. “I could think of a couple of ways that should turn the trick. There was one go-getter about thirty years back who even managed to capture him. I think he planned to bring him back alive, though I don’t know how because Kong got loose and ate him. The point is the
guy had him tied down and could have killed him.

“But nobody goes to his mountain to kill him because there’s something that’s marginally easier and will get the same result if you’re a pilgrim. You can rescue one of his captives. If you’re a woman, there isn’t even the risk of getting killed yourself because he never kills women. Not that I’d recommend being captured by him; there’re more pleasant ways to spend your time. Still, he’s usually got somebody up there. I know for sure there’s one woman he’s had for six months now, and there might even be more.”

She turned away from them, reconsidered, and came back.

“One thing Gaby didn’t tell you is how I got out. If you think it was a case of turning my knowledge of Gaea to good use or of out-thinking the old bastard, you’re wrong. I might still be there if I had been left to my own devices. The fact is that Gaby got me out at great risk to her own freedom, and I don’t talk about it because it frankly doesn’t fit well with my image of myself. Kong is a pretty scruffy monster, but he’s nothing to laugh about, and Gaby fills the role of knight in shining armor as well as anyone could, but I’m afraid I was a miserable damsel in distress. I didn’t have much self-respect left by the time she dragged me out of there.” She shook her head slowly. “And I couldn’t give her the traditional reward.” She hurried away from them.

Robin looked once more toward the mountain, then back at Chris, saw a suspicious look in his eye, and remembered what she had been about to say before Cirocco interrupted.

“No,” she said firmly, taking his arm and pulling him toward the waiting canoes. “That’s what Gaea wants you to do. She wants you to put on a good show for her, and she doesn’t care whether you live through it.”

Chris sighed but did not resist her.

“You must have a pretty low opinion of my ability to take care of myself.”

The remark surprised her, and she searched his face. “Is that what you think? Look, I understand the need to prove yourself. I probably have it stronger than you do, after all. But personal honor cannot
be placed at the service of malevolence. It must
mean
something.”

“It would mean something to that woman up there. I’ll bet she doesn’t see it as a game.”

“She’s not your affair. She’s a stranger.”

“I’m surprised to hear you say that about a sister.”

Robin had been a little surprised to hear it herself and uneasily searched for a motivation. When she found it, she was not delighted but faced it anyway. Part of it was, truly, that she detested the thought of anyone doing anything to impress the slime-Goddess, Gaea. The other part …

“I don’t want to see you hurt. You’re my friend.”

“This could be the most dangerous part of the trip,” Cirocco told them.

“I disagree,” Gaby said. “Iapetus will be the worst.”

“I thought Oceanus would be,” Chris put in.

Gaby shook her head. “Oceanus is tough, but I’ve never had too much trouble getting across. He’s still lying low, making his plans. I don’t expect to live to see the results. These beings think in terms of millennia. Iapetus is the most actively hostile region. You can count on him to notice you when you pass through and to try to do something about it.”

The group was gathered around the base of the central Phoebe cable, which, like the one in Hyperion, came to ground in a wide bend of the river. It was actually more accurate to say the cable had created the bend through a process Cirocco called millennial sag. Gaealithic evidence beneath the cable proved that in earlier times Ophion had flowed among the cable strands. As its rim stretched, the land beneath the juncture had been pulled up and the river had found a new path.

“You’re right about Iapetus and Oceanus,” Cirocco said. “Though I’m not sure Oceanus will stay quiet much longer. The thing is that this is the only place where two strong regionals opposed to Gaea’s rule are border to border. Rhea’s too insane to be called an enemy. Beyond Tethys is Thea, who is still loyal to Gaea, and past her is Metis, who’s an enemy but cowardly. Dione is dead, and beyond her—”

“One of the regional brains is dead?” Robin asked. “What effect does that have on things?”

“Not as much as you’d suspect,” Cirocco said. “Dione’s bad luck was to be squeezed between Metis and Iapetus when the war came. She was too loyal to cooperate or even to stay in the background, so they attacked her and she was mortally wounded. She’s been dead for three or four centuries, but the land itself is doing okay. Iapetus has tried to take it over, but he hasn’t had much luck. I believe Gaea is able to handle most things that need doing.”

“I’ve had a fair amount of work there,” Gaby pointed out. “Things break down more rapidly in Dione. But it’s pretty peaceful.”

“The point is,” Cirocco continued, “that only here with Phoebe and Tethys do we have a situation with two strong enemies of Gaea side by side. I blimp over it when I can, and I thought you two ought to know you have that option if you want to leave us now. We’re going to cross Phoebe and Tethys just as quickly as we can, but it has to be on land because while I can get a blimp to come in here and pick us up, none of them would take us from central Phoebe to central Tethys, which is what I have to do.” She looked at Chris, then at Robin.

“I’ll stick it out,” Robin said. “But I would like to get out of here. I worry that Kong has … you know. I’ve got two more days to go.”

“As long as the wind holds, we’re okay,” Gaby said. “If it shifts, we’ll get moving very fast, I promise you. What about you, Chris?”

Chris was still thinking about Kong, too, but not in the way Robin seemed to assume. He was not anxious to become a hero, dead or alive, but was bothered to know that this was the first real opportunity he had seen.

“I’ll stick around,” he said.

The Titanides did not like Phoebe. They tended to jump at unexpected sounds. Valiha almost stepped on Robin’s foot at one point. They stayed near the fire a short distance from the outlying cable strands and sang their songs, which sounded to Chris like whistling in the dark.

He didn’t blame them. He felt it, too.

Cirocco had said she did not expect to be long. There had been no question of anyone, even Gaby, going with her when she called on Phoebe. The Wizard knew Phoebe would not go as far as to drain her acid pool, so she would have to stand on the stairs and communicate as best she could. There seemed little reason why the encounter should last more than a few minutes. Cirocco would ask Phoebe to return to Gaea’s arms and reap the benefits of her love—which meant avoid the consequences of her wrath since there was little Gaea could do to improve anything but a lot she could do to hurt Phoebe. Phoebe would refuse and send Cirocco on her way, possibly with a demonstration of power meant to frighten but not to seriously injure her. Phoebe was no fool. She was aware of the spoke pointed at her like a cosmic siege gun, and she knew about the Big Squeeze.