John Varley - Wizard

Cirocco's Stairs. She smiled wryly, but without any bitterness. Almost everyone seemed to have forgotten that two people had made that first climb. It did not bother her. She knew that, aside from the highway, she had not left nearly as many marks on this crazy world as Cirocco had.

She walked to the top of the bluff and watched with amusement as Chris and Robin tried to make themselves useful. The Titanides were too polite to refuse most of their offers of help, so things that might have been done in five minutes were taking fifteen. And of course, it was the right thing to do. Chris had not spoken of his background, but he was a city kid aside from a few excursions into Earth's tamed wildernesses. Robin came from a hypercity, no matter that the Coven floor was picturesque crops and cattle. She might never have seen a wild, unplanned thing in her life.

When it came time to cook, however, the Titanides put all four feet down and shooed the young humans away. Titanides cooked almost as well as they sang. For this first day of travel they were digging into the packs and getting items most likely to spoil, the choice morsels brought along to be eaten quickly. They fed the fire and rimmed it with smooth stones, broke out the copper cookware, and did the magical things Titanides could do to turn fresh meat and fish into wonders of improvisation.

Before long the fruits of their labors could be smelled. Gaby sat back and savored the wait, feeling happier than she had in a long time. It took her back to a much simpler meal shared many years ago, when somehow, torn and bruised and with no assurance they would live another day, she and Cirocco had been as close as they would ever be. Now those memories were bittersweet, but she had lived long enough to know one must hold onto the good things to survive. She might have brooded about all the things that had gone wrong between that day and this or worried about Cirocco, who was even now throwing up in her tent and plotting to get her liquor back from Psaltery's saddlebags. Instead, she chose to smell the good food and listen to the soothing sounds of rain mix with the songs of the Titanides and to feel the long-awaited cooling breeze begin to blow from the east.

She was one hundred and three years old, setting off on a trip that, like all her other trips, she might never finish. There were no life-insurance policies in Gaea, not even for the Wizard. Certainly not for the free-lance pest that Gaea tolerated only because she was more reliable than Cirocco.

The thought did not disturb her. She would survive and prosper. There had been a time when her present age would have been impossible to contemplate, but now she knew that centenarians are always young under the skin; she just happened to be fortunate enough to look and feel young as well. In her own case, she was sixteen, in the San Bernardino Mountains, with her telescope and the fire-both built with her own hands-waiting for the sky to darken and the stars to come out. What more could one ask of life?

She knew she was not growing anymore. She no longer expected to. Increasing age, she had found, brings increased experience, knowledge, perspective; it brings many things that one could apparently accumulate forever, but a plateau of wisdom is reached. If she completed her second century, she did not expect to be significantly changed. That had caused her some concern around the time of her eightieth birthday, but she no longer worried about it. The worries of the day were sufficient.

This day held only one worry for her as it drew to a close.

She watched Robin moving around the fire and sighed deeply.

The meal was up to the Titanides' usual high standards but for one literally sour note. Titanide cookery occasionally employed a powerful spice obtained from the crushed and prepared seeds of a watermelon-sized blue fruit. It had an elegant name in Titanide song, but humans generally called it hyperlemon. It was white and granular. A few grains were enough for any recipe.

When the meal was almost ready for dishing out, Psaltery suddenly turned and spit a mouthful of vegetables onto the ground. For a moment his lips were too puckered for speech as the other Titanides looked at him questioningly. He held out a spoon, and Valiha put her tongue to it. She made a face.

It did not take long to discover that a leather bag marked salt actually contained hyperlemon concentrate. The bag had been bought by Hautbois. The conclusion reached after much scandalized discussion among all four Titanides was that the vendor-a reformed tequilaholic named Kithara-had for some reason decided to play a joke on the Wizard's party.

None of the Titanides was amused. Gaby thought it was no big thing, even though a pot of vegetables had to be thrown out. They still had plenty of good salt. A check of other provisions revealed no substitutions. But to a Titanide, ruining good food was a sin. None of them could understand why Kithara had done it.

"I'll be sure to ask him upon our return," Psaltery vowed darkly.

"I would like to be there with you," Valiha said.

"Why make such a fuss?" Gaby wanted to know. "It was a harmless joke. Sometimes you folks get to looking a little somber to me. I'm glad you can make jokes."

"It's not the joke we object to," Hautbois said. "I like them as well as anyone else. But this one was in ... bad taste."

Though the aging process had passed her by, there was one thing about Gaby that had changed as she grew older. She required less sleep than she used to. Two hours out of twenty were generally enough. Often she stayed awake for sixty or even seventy revs with no ill effects.

The Titanides said she was getting more like them every day and soon would entirely lose the disgusting habit.

Whatever the reason for it, she had decided she could get by without sleeping at this camp. She went off by herself, walked by the river for a time, and when she returned, the camp was quiet but for the low, humming songs of the Titanides in rest phase. They sprawled around the fire, four improbably limber comic nightmares, their hands occupied with unimportant tasks, their minds wandering. Valiha was on her side, propped up on one elbow. Hautbois was on her back, her human torso now in line with the rest of her body, her legs curled in the air like a puppy waiting for her belly to be scratched. Of all the things Titanides could do, Gaby thought that was the funniest.

There were four tents pitched among the trees a good distance from the fire. She passed by her own unoccupied shelter. In the second, Cirocco slept uneasily. She had two stiff drinks in her, and an ocean of coffee. Gaby knew it wasn't the coffee that made her toss and turn.

She paused outside Chris's tent and knew it would just be snooping to look inside it. She had no business with Chris. So it was on to the next one in line. She waited outside for several minutes until she heard someone stirring.

"Can I talk to you for a minute?"

"Who is that? Gaby?"

"Yeah."

"I guess so. Come on in."

Robin was sitting up on her sleeping bag, which rested on a deep pad of moss put there by Hautbois. Gaby lit the lamp hanging from the ridgepole and saw Robin's eyes glittering alertly but with no particular malice. She was dressed in the clothes she had worn all day.

"Did I disturb you?"

Robin shook her head. "Can't sleep," she admitted. "This is the first time in my life that I've not had a bed to sleep in."

"Hautbois would be happy to get more moss."

"That's not it. I'll get used to it, I suppose."

"It might help if you wore something looser."

Robin held up the elaborately patterned nightgown Hautbois had laid out for her. "It's not my style," she said. "How could anyone sleep in something like that? It ought to be in a display case."

Gaby chuckled, then squatted with one knee on the ground and picked at a cuticle. Robin was looking at her when she glanced up. Might as well get on with it, she thought. She knows you didn't come in to see if she needed fresh towels.