Titan

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

It was six days after the angel attack, the sixty-fmt day of their emergence in Gaea. Cirocco was prone on a low table with her feet in improvised stirrups. Calvin was down there somewhere, but she refused to watch him. Lullaby, the white-haired Titanije healer, watched and sang as the operation progressed. Her songs were soothing, but nothing helped a great deal.

"The cervix is dilated," Calvin said.

"I'd just as soon not hear about it."

"Sorry." He straightened briefly, and sirocco saw his eyes and forehead above the surgical mask. He was sweating profusely. Lullaby wiped it away and his eyes showed his gratitude. "Can you move that lamp closer?"

Gaby positioned the flickering lamp. it threw huge shadows of her legs onto the walls. Cirocco heard the metallic click of instruments taken from the sterilizing bath, then felt the curette rattle through the speculum.

Calvin had wanted stainless steel instruments, but the Tita nides could not make them. He and Lullaby had worked with the best artisans until he had brass tools he felt he could use.

"It hurts," Cirocco gritted.

"You're hurting her," Gaby explained, as if Calvin could not understand English.

"Gaby, you'll,either be quiet or I'll find someone else to hold the lamp." Cirocco had never heard Calvin speak so harshly. He paused, wiped his brow on his sleeve.

The pain was not intense, but persistent and hard to place, like an ache of the i

"I've got it," Calvin said, softly. "Got what? You can see it? "

"Yeah. You're further along than I thought. It's a good thing you insisted we get it done." He resumed his scraping, pausing from time to time to clean the curette.

Gaby turned away to examine something in the palm of her hand. "It's got four legs," she whispered, and started to come to Circocco's side.

"I don't want to see it. Get it away from me."

"May this one look?" Lullaby sang.

"No!" She was fighting nausea, and could not sing the answer to the Titanide but shook her head violently. "Gaby, destroy it. Right now, do you hear me?"

"It's done, Rocky."

Cirocco let out a deep breath that turned into a sob. "I didn't mean to yell at you. Lullaby said she wanted to see it. I probably should have let her. Maybe she'd know what to make of it."

Cirocco protested that she could walk, but Titanide ideas of medicine included much cuddling, body warmth, and songs of reassurance. Lullaby carried her across the dirt street to the quarters the Titanides had given them. She sang the song of support in times of mental anguish while lowering her into a bed. There were two empty ones beside it.

"Welcome to the veterinary hospital," Bill greeted her. She managed a weak smile as Lullaby arranged the covers.

"Your humorous friend cracks jokes again?" Lullaby sang. "Yes, he calls this the place-of-healing-for-animals."

"He should be ashamed. Healing is healing. Drink this, and you will relax."

Cirocco took the wineskin and drank deeply. It burned all the way down and warmth spread through her. The Titanides drank fermented beverages for the same reasons humans did, one of the more pleasant discoveries of the last six days.

"I've got a feeling my wrists were just slapped," Bill said. "I know that tone of voice by now."

"She loves you, Bill, even when you're naughty."

"I was hoping to cheer you up."

"It was an interesting try. Bill, it had four legs."

"Ouch. And me making jokes about animals." He reached across and took her hand.

" It's okay. It's over now, and all I'd like to do is sleep." She took two more deep pulls on the wineskin, and did just that.

Gaby spent the first hour after her operator! telling everyone she felt fine, then she threw up and was feverish for two days. ,August came through with no ill effects at all. Cirocco was sore but healthy.

Bill was doing well in that he was healing but Calvin said the bone had not been set properly.

"So how much longer will it bell, Bill asked. He had asked the question before. There was nothing to read, no television to watch; nothing but the window looking out over a dark street in Titantown. He could not speak to his nurses except in pidgin ditties. Lullaby was learning English, but very slowly.

"At least two more weeks," Calvin said. "I feel like I could walk on it now."

"You probably could, and that's the danger. ltld pop like a dry stick. No, I won't let you up, even on crutches, for another two weeks."

"What about taking him outside?" Cirocco asked. "Would you like to go outside, Bill?"

They took Bill and his bed out the door and a short distance along the street before putting him down beneath one of the ca- nopied trees that made Titantown invisible from the air, and provided the nearest approach to night they had seen since their exploration of the cable base. The Titanides kept their homes and streets lighted all the time.

"Have you seen Gene today?" Cirocco asked. "Depends on what you mean by today," Calvin asked, with a yawn. "You still have my watch."

"But you haven't seen him?"

Calvin shook his head. "Not for a while."

"I wonder what he's been up to."

Calvin had found Gene following the Ophion through steep terrain as it wound its way among the Nemesis Mountains of Crius, the day region just west of Rhea. He said he had emerged in the twilight zone, and had been walking ever since, trying to hook up with the others.

When asked what he'd been doing, all he would say was "surviving." Cirocco didn't doubt that, but wondered just what he incant by it. He brushed off his own experiences in sensory deprivation, saying he had been worried at first but calmed down when he understood the situation.

Cirocco wasn't sure she knew what he meant by that, either. At first she was happy to have someone who seemed as minimally affected as she had been. Gaby still moaned in her sleep. Bill had gaps in his memory, though it was returning slowly. August was chronically depressed and verging on the suicidal. Calvin was happy but wanted to be alone. Only she and Gene seemed relatively unchanged.

But she knew she had been touched by mystery during her stay in the darkness. She could sing to the Titanides. She felt more had happened to Gene than he was talking about, and she began to look for signs of it.

He smiled a lot. He kept assuring everyone he was okay, even when no one asked. He was friendly. Sometimes it was too hearty, but other than that he seemed fine.

She decided to find him and try once more to talk about the missing two months.

She liked Titantown. it was warm under the trees. Since the heat in Gaea came from the ground up, the high vault acted to trap it. It was a dry heat; by wearing a light shirt and no shoes, Cirocco found her body cooled itself at peak efficiency. The streets were pleasantly light ed with paper lantems that reminded her of the Japanese. The ground was hard-packed earth, moistened by things called sprinklerplants that sprayed mist once per revolution. When that happened it smelled like a summer night's light rainfall. Hedges were so crusted with flowers that petals fell from them in a steady rain. They grew quite well in perpetual darkness.

The Titanides had never heard of urban pla

Everyone had a cheery song of greeting for her. "Hello, Earth monster! Still balanced, I see."

" Oh,look, it's the two-legged oddity. Come and feast with us, Sheer-ah-ko."

"Sorry, folks," she sang. "Got business. Have you seen C- sharp Meistersinger?"

It amused her to translate their songs that way, though in Titanide, monster and oddity held no insult.

But the invitation to feast was a hard one to tum down. After two months of raw meat and bland fruit, the Titanides' food was too good to be true. Their cuisine was their greatest art form, and with a few minor exceptions the humans could eat anything the Titanides could eat.

She found the building she called City Hall more by luck than design, stopping frequently to ask directions. (First left, second right, then around the ... no, that was blocked last kilorev, wasn't it?) The Titanides understood the layout, but she didn't think she ever would.

It was City Hall simply because Meistersinger lived there, and he was the Titanides' closest approach to leadership. Actually, he was a warlord, but even that was limited. It was Meistersinger who led the reinforcements on the day of the battle with the angels. Since then, he had behaved like everyone else.

Cirocco had meant to ask if he knew where Gene might he found, but it was not necessary. Gene was already there.

"Rocky, so glad you could drop by," he said, getting up and putting his arm over her shoulder. He kissed her lightly on the cheek, which a

"Me and Meistersinger were just talking over a couple things you might be interested in."

"You were... you can speak to them?"

"His phrasing is atrocious," Meistersinger sang, in the difficult aeolian mode, "in the ma

"I heard some of that," Gene sang, laughing. "Thinks he can talk over my head, like spelling words in front of a baby."

"Why didn't you tell me this before, Gene?" she asked, searching his eyes.

"I didn't think it was important," he said, waving it off. "I got a dose of what you got, but it didn't take so well."

"I just wish you'd told me, that's all."