John Varley - Wizard

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 feeeling 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 up 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." She went to him and kissed him on the cheek. "I can't believe we did all that and you can't remember any of it. Sort of hurts my professional pride." For a moment he thought she was going to cry and could not imagine what was wrong.

"There's a girl going with you on your trip," she said.

"Robin?"

"That's the one. You tell her I said "hi" and to be careful. And good luck. Wish her good luck for me. Will you do that?"

"If you'll tell me your name again."

"Trini. Tell her to watch out for the Plauget woman. She's dangerous. When she gets back, she's always welcome here."

"I'll tell her."

Titantown was sheltered by a massive tree that had formed when many smaller trees united into one colony organism. Though Titanides never indulged in town planning, their own preferences imposed a certain structure on the settlement. They liked to live within 500 meters of the light, so their dwellings tended to form a ring under the tree's outer periphery. Some of the homes were set sensibly on the ground. Others perched on the gigantic limbs that spread horizontally and were supported by subsidiary trunks themselves as large as sequoias.

Scattered through the residential ring but predominately inward were the workshops, forges, mills, and refineries. Farther out, toward the sunlight and sometimes in the open air, were bazaars, shops, and markets. Throughout the city were public buildings and facilities: the fire brigades, libraries, storehouses, and cisterns. The public water supply was from wells and collected rainfall, but the well water was milky and bitter.

Robin had recently spent a lot of time in the outer ring, using the medallion Cirocco had given her to purchase supplies for the trip. She had found the Titanide artisans polite and helpful. They invariably steered her to the highest-quality merchandise when something less elaborate would have done as well. Thus, she now owned a copper canteen with elaborate filigree chasings which would have made it seem right at home on the Czar's banquet table. The hilt of her knife was shaped to fit her hand. It sported a ruby like a great glass eye. They had tailored her sleeping bag from material so lushly embroidered that she hated to let it touch the ground.