Wizard (52 page)

“I won’t even resent that. The fact is that I’m through with the job, effective immediately after the next Hyperion Carnival. Between now and then I will visit all the other Titanide lands to—”

“‘Effective immediately after …’” Gaea burst in with feigned surprise. “Will you listen to her? Who would believe a day could be so full of impudence?” She laughed and was quickly accompanied by some of her disciples. Cirocco looked at one of the people and did not take her eyes off him until he had thought it well to slink back out of her sight. By then it was quiet again, and Gaea motioned for her to go on.

“There’s little to add. I promised a Carnival to remember, and I will deliver it. But after that I am demanding that you establish another way for the Titanides to reproduce, subject to my approval, and with a ten-year waiting period, during which I will observe the new method and weed out any tricks.”

“You are demanding,” Gaea said. She pursed her lips. “I’ll tell you, Cirocco, you have me going
back and forth on this thing. I frankly never thought you’d have the gumption to show up here, knowing what I just learned. That you have speaks well for you. It demonstrates those qualities I first observed in you that caused me to make you Wizard in the first place. If you recall, among them were courage, determination, a sense of adventure, and the capacity for heroism: qualities you have sadly lacked. I was not going to speak of my recent wavering. But then you follow it with these foolish demands, and I wonder if you have lost your sanity.”

“I have regained it.”

Gaea frowned. “Let’s get it out in the open, shall we? We both know what we’re talking about here, and I’ll concede I acted hastily. I admit I
over
reacted. But she was foolish, too. It was not wise for her to have used those children as the medium for her message; no doubt in her condition she couldn’t think of everything. But the fact remains that Ga—”

“Don’t speak her name.”
Cirocco had raised her voice only slightly, but Gaea was stopped short, and the first rows of her audience unconsciously edged back. “Never speak her name to me again.”

Gaea, to all appearances, was genuinely surprised.

“Her name? What does her name have to do with it? Unless you have been taken in by the tales of your own magic, I don’t see the sense. A name is just a sound; it has no power over anything.”

“I will not hear her name coming from your lips.”

For the first time Gaea looked angry.

“I put up with much,” she said. “I allow insults from you and from others that no God would ever endure because I see no point in slaughtering day in and day out. But you try my patience. I will go only so far, and you should take that as a warning.”

“You put up with it because you love it,” Cirocco said evenly. “Life is a game to you, and you control the pieces. The better show they give you, the more you like it. You have all these people to kiss your ass any time you tell them to. And I will insult you as I please.”

“They would, too,” Gaea said, smiling again. “And of course, you’re right. Once again you prove
that when you try, you can give me a better show than anyone.” She waited, apparently thinking Cirocco would go on. Cirocco said nothing. She leaned her head against the back of her chair and looked up at the distant, geometrically straight, razor-sharp line of red light overhead. It was the first thing she had seen on her first trip to the hub, so very long ago. She had stood side by side with Gaby, and they had wondered what it was, but it was so high above them there seemed little point in speculating. They could never have reached it.

But Cirocco had felt even then that it was important. It was just a feeling, but she trusted her feelings. Some vital part of Gaea lived up there in the most inaccessible spot of a world filled with daunting vistas. It was at least twenty kilometers from where she sat.

“I would think you would be curious as to the answers to your requests,” Gaea finally said. Cirocco brought her head forward and looked at Gaea again. There was no emotion on her face, as there had not been from the time she arrived.

“I couldn’t be less interested. I told you what I was going to do, and then I told you what you were going to do. There is nothing further to say.”

“I doubt that.” Gaea looked at her narrowly. “Because this is absolutely impossible. You must know that, and you must have some threat to make, though I can’t imagine what it might be.”

Cirocco merely looked at her.

“You could not imagine that I would meekly grant your … very well, accede to your demands, if you prefer it that way. Demand or request, it matters little if the answer is no. Then you must tell me what you will do.”

“The answer is no?”

“It is.”

“Then I must kill you.”

There was now no sound to be heard in the vastness of the hub. Several hundred humans stood grouped loosely behind Gaea’s chair, hanging on to every word. They all were fearful people or they
would not have been there, and certainly most of them were wondering only how Gaea would dispose of this woman. But a few, looking at Cirocco, began to wonder if they had put their allegiance in the right place.

“You really have taken leave of your senses. You have no plutonium or uranium and no way to get any. I doubt if you could fashion a weapon if you did. If you could conjure a nuclear device with the magic you seem to believe you possess, you would not use it because to do so would destroy the Titanides you have such affection for.” She sighed again and turned one hand over carelessly. “I never pretended immortality. I know how much time I have left. I am not indestructible. Atomic bombs—in large quantities and placed with calculation—could fragment my body or at least render me uninhabitable. Short of that, I know of nothing that can do me serious harm. So how do you propose to kill me?”

“With my bare hands, if necessary.”

“Or die in the attempt.”

“If it comes to that.”

“Exactly.” Gaea closed her eyes, and her lips moved soundlessly. At last she looked at Cirocco again.

“I should have expected it. You would find it less painful to throw away your life than to live with what has happened. It
is
my fault, I admit it, but I don’t want to see you wasted. You are worth this entire group, and more.”

“I am worth nothing unless I do what I must do.”

“Cirocco, I apologize for what I did. Wait, wait, hear me out. Give me this chance. I thought I could conceal what I was doing, and I was wrong. You won’t deny that she was plotting my overthrow and that you were helping her—”

“I regret nothing but the fact I hesitated too long.”

“Surely. That’s understandable. I know the depth of your bitterness and of your hatred. It’s all so
unnecessary because what I did was done more from pride than fear; you can’t think I was seriously worried that her puny efforts would—”

“Watch what you say about her. I won’t warn you again.”

“I’m sorry. The fact remains that nothing she or you could do would cause me any discomfort. I destroyed her for the insolence of thinking it would be done and, by doing so, have cost myself your loyalty. I find that a heavy price to pay. I want you back, fear I cannot, and yet want you to stay if for no other reason than to give the place some class.”

“It needs some, but I can’t do it, even if I had any.”

“You underrate yourself. What you have demanded is impossible. You are not the first Wizard I have nominated in my three million years. There is only one way to leave the job, and that is feet first. No one has survived it, and no one will. But there is something I can do. I can bring her back.”

Cirocco put her head in her hands and said nothing for a very long time. At last she moved, putting both arms under her shapeless blanket, hugging herself, and rocking slowly back and forth.

“This is the only thing I was afraid of,” she said, to no one.

“I can re-create her
exactly
as she was,” Gaea went on. “You are aware that I carry tissue samples of you both. When you were examined initially, and when you report for the immortality treatments, I tap your memories. Hers are quite up to date. I can grow her body and fill it with her essence. She will be
herself
, I swear it; it will be impossible to tell any difference. It is what I will do with you if despite everything, it becomes necessary to kill you. I can give her back to you, with only one change, and that is to remove her compulsion to destroy me. Only that and nothing more.”

She waited, and Cirocco said nothing.

“Very well,” Gaea said, waving a hand impatiently. “I won’t even change that. She will be herself in all respects. I can hardly do better than that.”

Cirocco had been looking at a point slightly above Gaea’s head. Now she brought her eyes down and shifted on her chair.

“This was the only thing I was afraid of,” she repeated. “I thought about not even coming here so I wouldn’t have to listen to the offer and be tempted. Because it is tempting. It would be such a nice way to feel better about so many things and to find an excuse to go on living. But then I wondered what Gaby would have thought of it and knew just what a stinking, corrupt, foul deviltry it would be. She would have been horrified to think she would be survived by a little Gaby doll made by you out of your own festering flesh. She would have wanted me to kill it immediately. And thinking a little more, I knew that every time I saw it I would eat out a little more of my guts until there was nothing left.”

She sighed, looked up, then down to Gaea.

“Is that your last offer then?” Cirocco said.

“It is. Don’t do—”

The explosions could not be separated. Five closely spaced holes appeared in the front of Cirocco’s serape, and her heavy chair slid backward two meters before she was through firing. The back of Gaea’s head erupted blood. At least three of the bullets entered her body near chest level. She was thrown backward and rolled loosely for thirty meters before coming to rest.

Cirocco stood, ignoring the pandemonium, and walked to her. She brought Robin’s Colt .45 automatic from beneath her wrap, aimed it at Gaea’s head, and squeezed off the last three shots. Moving rapidly now in a gathering quiet, she took out a metal can and opened it, poured a clear liquid over the corpse. She dropped a match and stood back as flames burst into the air and began to creep along the carpet.

“So much for gestures,” she said, then turned to the crowd. She pointed with her gun toward the nearest cathedral.

“Your only chance is to run toward the spoke,” she told them. “When you reach the edge, jump. You will be picked up by angels and landed safely in Hyperion.” Having said that, she forgot them totally. It was a matter of no consequence if they lived or died.

She was breathing rapidly as she ejected the empty magazine and took a loaded one from her
concealed pocket. She snapped it in, pulled the slide back and let it return forward, then walked away from the growing fire.

When she was far enough away to see clearly, she set her feet wide and raised the gun over her head. Aiming nearly straight up, she fired at the thin red line. She spaced the shots, taking her time, and did not stop firing until the clip was empty.

She pulled out another clip and snapped it home.

It was in the middle of her fourth magazine that the feeling began to trouble her. At first she could not put her finger on it. She shook her head, aimed, and fired another round. She swallowed dryly. It was quite possible the “gesture” was still going on; she could not know. Even if she hit the thing, her bullets were small and probably harmless. Nevertheless, she fired another shot and was about to shoot again when the feeling returned, stronger than before.

Something was telling her to run. That this should strike her as an unusual feeling to have in her present situation might have amused her at another time, but it did not now. She fired twice more, and the slide locked open on the empty chamber. She released the empty clip and let it fall beside her, where it clattered noisily. She swallowed again.

The feeling came back, stronger than ever. Unaccountably tears came to her eyes and ran down her cheeks. Damn it, she was waiting to die, and it was taking longer than she had thought.

But she knew what she was feeling now, and the tiny hairs stood up on her arms and the back of her neck. For whatever reason, she was sure Gaby was telling her to move.

It was some trick of Gaea’s. She moved a few uncertain steps, and it felt good. But she stopped moving, and the feeling started again.

Why was she determined to die? It had not been in her plan when she started, except in the sense that she had been prepared to die if it had to be. There were certain things she had to do. She had done
them, and it had been her intention to flee afterward. Was this the trick? Was Gaea putting Gaby’s voice in her mind to confuse her until vengeance could arrive?

But suddenly she trusted it. She began to walk toward the cathedrals.

The air seemed to split as a bolt of lightning crashed into the spot where she had been standing. She ran, and Gaea’s wrath poured from the world all around her. The red line above glowed more brightly than ever.

Jump!

She obeyed, cutting sharply to her left, and another bolt crashed where she had been.

It was possible to build up a frightening speed in the negligible gravity of the hub, but it came slowly. Feet on the ground could not provide enough traction to accelerate quickly. She had to begin with short, choppy steps, gradually lengthening them until her feet touched the ground many meters apart. And the speed, once attained, stayed with her. She streaked along, touching the ground infrequently, as the lightning crashed.

The biggest difficulty was changing direction. When she decided she must veer to the right, it was hard to put the urge into action, but she managed and could not tell this time if it had done any good. No bolt hit where she had been.

The ground was shaking. Some of the cathedrals, hit by repeated bolts and now attacked from beneath, were coming apart. Stone gargoyles crashed around her as she overtook some of the people who had fled. Spires tottered in slow motion, fragmented, and monstrous blocks of stone started to float inexorably down. Though they might weigh only a few kilograms, their mass would crush anything they encountered.