John Varley - Wizard

"I was wondering... ." She raised her eyebrows and seemed relieved. "Well, to be blunt, what can we expect of Cirocco? Robin isn't the only one who isn't impressed so far."

She nodded and ran both hands through her short hair.

"That's what I wanted to talk about, really. I want you to realize that you've seen only one side of her. There's more. Quite a lot more, actually."

He said nothing.

"Right. What can you expect? Frankly, not a lot for the next few days. Robin was telling the truth when she said Rocky's luggage is mostly alcohol. I dropped most of it in the drink a few minutes ago. It took me three days to get her presentable for Carnival, and as soon as it was over, she spun off the wheel again. She'll want to drink more when she wakes up, and I'll let her, a little, because tapering her off is easier than cold turkey. After that I'll keep just a little bit, for emergencies, in Psaltery's saddlebag."

She leaned forward and looked at him earnestly. "I know this is going to be hard to believe, but in a few days, when she gets over the withdrawal and away from the memories of Carnival, she'll be okay. You're seeing her at her worst. At her best, she's got more guts than all of us put together. And more decency, and compassion, and ... there's no use my telling you that. You'll either see it for yourself or always think she's a sot."

"I'm willing to keep an open mind about it," Chris offered.

She studied his face in that intense way of hers. He felt every gram of her considerable energy boring in, as if her whole being were intent on knowing what was inside him, and he didn't like it. It felt as if she could see things even he was not aware of.

"I think you will," she said at last.

Another silence descended. Chris felt sure she had more to say, so he prompted her again.

"I don't understand about Carnival," he said. "You said, get away from the memories of Carnival. Why is that necessary?"

She put her elbows on her knees and laced her fingers together.

"What did you see at Carnival?" She didn't wait for an answer. "A lot of singing and dancing and feasting, lots of pretty colors, flowers, good food. The tourists would love Carnival, but the Titanides don't let them go see it. The reason is it's a very serious business."

"I know that. I understand what it's for."

"You think you do. You understand the primary purpose, I'll grant you. It's an effective method of population control, which is something nobody's ever liked, human or Titanide, when it's aimed at them. It's fine for those other trashy folks." She raised her eyebrows, and he nodded.

"What did you think of the Wizard's part in the Carnival?" she asked.

He considered it. "She seemed to take it seriously. I don't know what standards she was using, but she seemed to be making a thorough study of all the proposals."

Gaby nodded. "She does. She knows more about Titanide breeding than Titanides do. She's older than any of them. She's been going to Carnivals for seventy-five years now.

"At first she liked them." Gaby shrugged. "Who wouldn't? She's a very big cheese here in Gaea, which you and Robin don't really seem to grasp yet. At Carnival, she gets her ego built up. Everybody needs that. Maybe she's been a little too eager to get it, but that's not for me to judge." She looked away from him again, and he thought, correctly as it turned out, that she did have a few judgments to make on that subject. He realized Gaby was one of those people who cannot look someone in the face while lying to them. He liked her for it; he was the same way.

"After a while, though, it began to wear on her. There's a lot of despair at Carnival. You don't see it because Titanides grieve in private. And I'm not saying they go out and kill themselves if they don't get picked. I've never heard of a Titanide suicide. Still, she was the cause of a lot of sorrow. She kept at it for a long time after the fun had gone out of it, you understand, out of a sense of duty, but about twenty years ago she decided she had done all that could be expected of anybody. It was time to hand the job over to someone else. She went to Gaea and asked to be relieved of the job. And Gaea refused."

She looked at him intently, waiting for him to understand. He did not yet, not completely. Gaby leaned back in the bow of the boat, her hands laced behind her head. She stared at the clouds.

"Rocky took her job with some reservations," Gaby said. "I was with her, so I know. She went into it with what she thought were open eyes. She did not trust Gaea to be completely true to her word; she was ready for some jokers in the deck. The funny thing, though, was that Gaea did live up to her end of the bargain. There were some good years. Some close calls, some really bad troubles, but all in all they were the best years of her life. Mine, too. You'd never hear either of us complaining, even when things got dangerous, because we knew what we were getting into when we decided not to go back to Earth. Gaea did not promise an easy ride. She said that we could live to a very ripe old age, so long as we kept on our toes. That's all been precisely as promised.

"We didn't think much about getting older because we didn't." She laughed, with a hint of self-deprecation. "We were sort of like the heroes of a serial or a comic strip. 'Join us again next week ...' and there we'd be, unchanged, off on a new adventure. I built a road around Gaea. Cirocco got carried off by King Kong and had to get loose. We ... hell, shut me up, please. You walk into an old folks' home, you get stories."

"It's all right," Chris said, amused. He had already thought of the comic-strip analogy. The lives of these two women had been so divorced from the reality he knew as to make them seem less than real. Yet here she was, a century old and real as a kick in the pants.

"So Rocky finally came up against it. The joker, and it was a hell of a trick. We should have expected it, though. Gaea does not conceal the fact that she never gives something for nothing. We had thought we were satisfying our end of that deal, but she wanted more. Here's how the swindle worked.

"You saw her put the Titanide egg in her mouth at Carnival?" Chris nodded, and she went on. "It changed color. It turned clear as glass. The thing is, no Titanide egg can be completely fertilized until that change occurs."

"You mean until it's put in someone's mouth?"

"You've almost got it. A Titanide mouth won't do the job. It has to be a human mouth. In fact, it has to be a particular human."

Chris started to say something, stopped, and sat back.

"Just her?"

"The one and only wonderful Wizard of Gaea."

He didn't want her to go on talking. He saw it now, but she insisted on being sure he saw all the implications.

"Until and unless Gaea ever changes her mind," she went on relentlessly, "Rocky is solely and completely responsible for the survival of the race of Titanides. When she realized that, she skipped a Carnival. She could not face another one, she said. It was too much to put on any one person. What if she were to die? Gaea wouldn't give her an answer. Gaea is perfectly capable of letting the race vanish if Rocky leaves here, if she stops going to Carnival, or even if she dies.

"So she started going to Carnivals again. What else could she do?"

Chris thought of the Titanide ambassador back in San Francisco. Dulcimer, her name had been. He had felt sick when she explained her position to him. He felt worse now.

"I don't understand how... ."

"It was very slickly done. When Rocky took the job, she had just convinced Gaea to stop a war between the Titanides and the angels. The animosity between the two races was built into their brains, into their genes, I guess. She had to recall all of them physically and make changes. At the same time Rocky and I submitted to the direct transfer of a great deal of knowledge from Gaea's mind. When it was done, we could both sing the Titanide language and a lot of others, and we knew a hell of a lot about the inside of Gaea. And Rocky's salivary glands had been changed to secrete a chemical which the Titanides had been changed to need for reproduction.