Wizard (50 page)

“You are a human,” Serpent said quite distinctly.

Chris stared into the wide-set eyes looking guilelessly back at him, realized his mouth was still open, and shut it. Serpent’s mouth carried the hint of a smile as elusive as the Mona Lisa’s. The conversational ball was in his court, and all he had wanted to do was stay in the background.

“I’m a very surprised human. I—” He stopped when Valiha shook her head almost imperceptibly.

Chris examined his words. All right, wit was not called for. He had to hit a middle ground between goo-goo and the Gettysburg Address, and he wished he knew where it was to be found.

“What is your name?” Serpent asked.

“I’m Chris.”

“My name is Serpent.”

“I’m happy to meet you.”

The smile emerged in full, and Chris felt warmed by it.

“I’m pleased to meet you, too.” He turned to his mother. “Valiha, where is my serpent?”

She reached behind her and handed him the lovingly carved serpentine horn clad in soft leather. He took it, and his eyes sparkled as he held it and turned it in his hands. He put the mouthpiece to his lips and blew, and a dark bass tone drifted into the air.

“I’m hungry,” he announced. Valiha offered him a nipple. His curiosity was such that he could not give it his whole attention. His eyes roamed, and his head twisted, and he just managed to keep the nipple in his mouth. He looked at Chris, then at his instrument, still held tightly in his hand, and Chris
saw an expression of awed wonder come into the Titanide’s eyes. Chris knew, at that moment, that he and Serpent were thinking the same thought, though each with a different meaning.

So
this
is a Serpent.

* * *

The child lived up to everything Valiha had said about him.

The word “coltish” might have been coined for him alone. He was lanky, awkward, eager, and frisky. When it came time to walk, he tottered for all of ten minutes and then lost interest in every gait but the breakneck gallop. Ninety percent of him was legs, and most of that was knees. His angularity precluded the elegant bearing of his elders, yet the seeds of it were there. When he smiled, there was no need of glowbirds.

He had great need for affection, and they did not spare it. He was never far from a physical touch. A kiss from Chris was accepted as eagerly as one from his mother, and as eagerly returned. He loved to be stroked and petted. Valiha tried to nurse him lying down, but he would have none of it. She stood supported on her crutches while he embraced her. Often he would fall asleep while nursing, standing up. Valiha could then move away and leave him there, his chin on his chest. He would sleep irregularly for three kilorevs, then give it up forever.

For many days Chris regarded him as a disaster looking for a place to happen. It had been trouble enough easing Valiha through the rough places. All he had needed was an adventurous youngster to age him prematurely, and Serpent filled the role well. But nothing happened, as Valiha had predicted. Eventually Chris stopped worrying about it. Serpent knew his limits, and while he was constantly seeking to expand them, he did not go beyond them. Titanide children had a built-in governor; while they could not be made accident-proof, they suffered mishaps at about the same rate adult Titanides did. Chris wondered about this—toyed with the idea that the difference between humans and Titanides might be the absence of foolhardiness—but he was in no mood to complain.

* * *

Serpent succeeded so well in brightening things that for quite a long time Chris seldom thought of something that had caused him much worry for the first part of the trip. But the worry came back strongly when they found Robin’s heavy winter coat and a pile of equipment beside one of her trail marks.

“I
told
her to keep this at
all costs
,” he fretted, holding it up for Valiha to see. “Damn it, she doesn’t understand cold at all, does she?”

“What does cold taste like?” Serpent wanted to know.

“I can’t answer that, child,” Valiha said. “You’ll have to wait and taste it yourself. She had other clothing, Chris. If she wore all of it …”

“Who is Robin, Chris?”

“A good friend and companion,” he said, “who I’m afraid will be in very bad trouble if we don’t catch up to her.”

“May I wear that?”

“You can try it on, but you’ll get too hot. Then you can carry it and these other things. Will you?”

“Sure, Chris. If you can catch me.”

“We’ll have none of that, my man. And stop giggling at me. I can’t help it if I’m slow. But can you do this?” He stood on one pointed toe—easy in the low gravity—and did a ballet dancer’s pirouette, one finger touching the top of his head, and finished with a bow. Valiha applauded, and Serpent looked suspicious.

“What, on one foot? I can’t—”

“Ha! Gotcha. Now come and …”

He stopped and turned. Behind him was a light brighter than any he had seen in … he had no idea how long. There was a low rumble that he realized had been on the edge of his hearing for quite a while.
There was the sound of a distant explosion.

“What’s that? Is it—”

“Hush. No questions yet. I … Valiha, get him down behind that rock. Stay as low as you can until—”

Suddenly a voice was speaking through an amplifier. The echoes distorted it almost beyond recognition, but Chris heard his own name and Valiha’s. More flares burst and floated gradually down on little parachutes, and the roaring became the familiar sound of helicopters. The voice was Cirocco’s.

She had come for them at last.

The dancing man met them again as they stepped from the elevator. He was just as elegant and just as enigmatic as he had been the last time, his face in shadow, a dazzling shine on his shoes, with white leather spats, cane, top hat and tails. Robin stood silently with Chris and watched, not daring to interrupt. The dancing man executed a series of pullbacks with easy aplomb, went into a twirling motion whereby his head seemed locked in place until a flicker of motion brought it completely around.

“Well, I don’t understand the cathedrals either,” Chris sighed when he was gone.

Robin said nothing. She recalled from her last visit the kind of song and dance Gaea would do as she manipulated people for her amusement. Everything would have significance, and she did not expect to understand it all. The dance had left her cold; she was going now to listen to the song.

“I keep having this dream,” she said. “We sit down with Gaea, and the first thing she says is, ‘Now for the
second
part of your test …’”

He looked askance at her. “At least you’ve kept your sense of humor. Did you bring your novelty palm buzzer?”

“Already packed in my luggage.”

“Too bad. How are the feet? You need any help?”

“I can manage, thanks.” She had already noted that she did not need the crutches here in the hub. Her feet were still bandaged, but walking on them in the low gravity caused no pain. She and Chris
made their way through the jumble of stone buildings, this time without a guide.

Heaven was just as she remembered it. There was the same monstrous rug, the scattering of couches and elephantine pillows, and low tables heaped with food. There was the same air of gaiety rubbing elbows with blank despair. God sat in the middle of it, holding perpetual court for her retinue of idiopathic angels.

“So the soldiers return from the wars,” she said by way of greeting. “A bit subdued, a little the worse for wear, but, by and large, intact.”

“Not quite,” Chris said. “Robin is missing some toes.”

“Ah, yes. Well, she will find that has been taken care of if she wishes to remove her bandages.”

Robin had been getting strange feelings from her feet all during the walk but had thought it was the phantom awareness she already knew well. Now she lifted her feet and felt through the bandages. They were back, all ten of them.

“No, no, don’t thank me. I can hardly expect your thanks when you would never have lost them without my interference in your life. I took the liberty of correcting what I took to be a slip of the tattooist’s needle when restoring the bit of snake that formerly adorned one missing digit. I hope you don’t mind.”

Robin minded a hell of a lot, but she said nothing. She would find the change, she swore, and have it lasered out and put back the way it had been. Gaea was right to say she was subdued—during her first visit she would have shot Gaea for such a suggestion—but she still had enough pride to resent tampering.

“Have seats,” Gaea suggested. “Help yourselves to food and drink. Sit down, and tell me all about it.”

“We prefer to stand,” Chris said.

“We were hoping this would not take long,” Robin added.

Gaea looked from one to the other and made a sour face. She lifted a drink from the table beside
her and tossed it down. A sycophant hurried up and put a new one in the wet ring left by the first.

“So it’s like that. I should expect it by now, but I’m always a little surprised. I’m not denying you took risks you would rather not have taken. I suppose I can to some degree understand your resentment for having to prove yourselves before receiving my gifts. But consider my position. If I gave the things I have the power to give for free, I would soon be swamped with every mendicant, solicitator, fakir, conjuror, sponger, and just plain bum from Mercury to Pluto.”

“I don’t see the problem,” Robin could not resist saying.

“There are plenty of chairs, and you’ve made a good start already. You could form a choir.”

“So you still have a sharp tongue. Ah, would that I were human so its delicious lash would sting properly. Alas, I am indifferent to your contempt, so why waste it? Save it for those who are weak, who desert their comrades in time of need, who weep and soil themselves in the depths of their fear. In short, for those who have not proved themselves as you have done.”

Robin felt the blood drain from her face.

“Did anyone ever tell you,” Chris put in quickly, “that you talk just like the villain in a cheap murder mystery?”

“If you are telling me so now, you are the twelfth this year.” She shrugged. “So I like old movies. But I tire of this. The second feature of the night begins in a few minutes, so—”

“What was the dancer about?” Robin blurted. She was surprised as soon as she asked it, but for some reason she felt it was important.

Gaea sighed.

“Do you people cherish no mystery? Must everything be made plain? What’s wrong with a few minor enigmas to invest your lives with a little spice?”

“I hate mysteries,” Chris said.

“Very well. The dancer is a cross between Fred Astaire and Isadora Duncan, with a few pinches of Nijinsky, Baryshnikov, Drummond, and Gray. Not the actual people, mind you—though I’d love to rob a
few graves and sift bones for genes suitable for cloning—but homologues made from the records they left in life, written up in nucleic acids by yours truly, and given the breath of life. The dancing man is a very adept tool of my mind, as this meat is also a tool,”—Gaea paused to thump her chest—“but he is a tool nonetheless. In a sense, both he and this speaker dance in my brain; this one for talking to ephemeral creatures, he for a purpose I will get to in a moment. But first, I would expect that despite your distaste, you are curious to know the answer to a certain question, namely: did you or did you not grab the golden ring? Will I send you home as you are or cured?” She lifted an eyebrow and looked at each of them in turn.

Robin, though it pained her to admit it, was all ears. Part of her said that it was all right, that she had not set out to play Gaea’s game, and if she had done something along the way to earn the prize, it would be monumental stupidity to refuse it. But something deeper whispered treason. You did not fight very hard when invited on this geste, it said. You
always
wanted the prize. But she would not let Gaea see her eagerness.

“I always like to get your own opinions first before announcing my decisions,” Gaea said. She leaned back in her chair and laced her stubby fingers together over her belly. “Robin, you go first.”

“No opinion,” Robin said promptly. “I don’t know how much you know of the things I did or failed to do. I might as well assume you know it all, down to the blackest secrets of my heart. This is an interesting reversal, I guess. Before, it was me who scorned your rules and Chris who was fascinated by them—or at least I thought he was. Now I don’t know. I’ve thought a lot about the things that happened. I’m ashamed of many of them, including my inability when I got here to admit any human weaknesses. Whatever you do or don’t do to me, I’ve gained something. I wish I knew exactly what it was, and I wish it didn’t hurt so much to have it, but I wouldn’t go back to what I was.”

“You sound a little wistful about that.”

“I am.”

“Things are usually easier when you don’t have to look at yourself. But that attitude would not
have worn well.”

“I suppose not.”

“There will be greater satisfactions ahead.”

“I wouldn’t know about that.”

Gaea shrugged. “I could well be wrong. I never assume the cloak of infallibility when predicting the behavior of creatures with free will. I do have considerable experience, however, and I feel that as you said, win or lose, you are stronger for what you have gone through.”

“Perhaps.”

“My decision, then, is that you have earned a cure.”

Robin looked up. She would not say thank you, and it saddened her a little to see that Gaea did not expect her to.

“In fact, you have already been cured and are free to go any time you choose. I’ll wish you good luck, though I wonder—”

“Just a minute. How could I already be cured?”

“While you watched the dancing man. When you and Chris entered the elevator down at the rim, I quickly put you to sleep, just as I did the first time. Then it was necessary to determine the nature of your affliction and the means to cure it, if indeed it could be cured. Some things elude even me. Without that examination I could not have offered the pact I did. This time was more to my advantage than yours. I needed to know what you had done since I last saw you. I examined your experiences, tasted them thoroughly, and made my decision. You were aware of no transition. You didn’t notice waking up because I fabricated your ride in the elevator and eased you back into consciousness, blending the man who dances in my mind with the real fellow who wears real spats. You probably noticed a sense of unease, but I am quite adept at this by now, and while I can’t explain my methods, I can assure you they are sound and scientific. If you object, you should—”