Titan

The music rose to a maddened crescendo as they approached a large throne surrounded in light. By the time they reached the broad, marble platform at the top of the stairs it was impossible to face the throne. The heat was too intense.

"Speak."

As the word was uttered-in the same deep tones they had heard outside, and yet with a more human sound-the light began to dim. Cirocco stole cautious glances, made out a tall, wide, human shape in the fog of light.

"Speak, or return from whence you came." Cirocco squinted, saw a round head set on a thick neck, eyes that blazed like coals, thick lips. Gaea was four meters tall, standing erect before her throne on a two-meter pedestal. Her body was round with a monstrous belly, huge breasts, arms and legs that would have awed a professional wrestler. She was naked, and the color of green olives.

The pedestal changed shape abruptly, became a grassy hill covered with flowers. Gaea's legs became tree trunks, her feet firmly rooted in the dark soil. Small animals stood around her while flying creatures circled her head. She looked directly at Cirocco, and her huge brow began to cloud.

"Uh ... I mean, I'll speak, I'll speak." She opened her mouth to do so, wondering where her righteous anger had gone, when she glanced at Gaby. She was trembling, looking up at Gaea with eyes that glittered.

"I was here," she whispered. "I was here."

"Hush," Cirocco hissed jabbing her with an elbow. "We'll talk about it later." She wiped sweat from her brow, and faced Gaea again.

"Oh Great--" No! Don't grovel, April said. She likes heroes, April said. Please, April, please be right.

"We came ... uh, me and six others came from ... we came from the planet Earth, quite some ... I don't really know how long..." She stopped, and knew she would never get any- thing out in English. She took a deep breath, straightened her shoulders, and began to sing.

"We came in peace, I know not how long ago. We were a tiny crew, by your reckoning, and presented no threat to you. We were unarmed. And yet we were attacked. Our ship was destroyed before we had a chance to explain our intentions. We were confined against our will, in conditions injurious to our minds, unable to communicate with each other or our comrades on Earth. Changes were made in us. One of my crew was driven insane as a result of this treatment. Another was near to insanity at the time I left her. A third no longer desires the company of his fellow humans, and a fourth has lost much of his memory. Yet another has been changed beyond all recognition; she no longer knows her sister, whom she once loved.

"All these things are monstrous to us. I feel we have been wronged, and deserve an explanation. We have been treated badly, and deserve justice."

She sagged a little, happy to have gotten it all out. What happened next was out of her hands. She was through kidding her- self; she could not fight this thing.

Gaea's frown deepened.

"I am not a signatory of the Geneva Accords."

Cirocco's mouth fell open. She didn't know what she had expected to hear, but it certainly wasn't that.

"What are you then?" It came out before she could stop it.

"I am Gaea, the great and wise. I am the world, I am the truth, I am the law, I am-"

"You're the whole planet, then? April was telling the truth?" Maybe it wasn't wise to interrupt a Goddess, but Cirocco was feeling like Oliver Twist asking for more gruel. She had to fight it somehow.

"I wasn't through," Gaea rumbled. "But yes, I am. I am the Earth Mother' though I am not of your Earth. All life springs from me. I am one of a pantheon that reaches to the stars. Call me a Titan."

"Then it was you that-"

"Enough. I listen only to heroes. You spoke of great deeds when you sang your song. Speak of them now, or leave me forever. Sing to me of your adventures."

"But I---"

"Sing to me!" Gaea thundered. She sang. The story took several hours because, though Cirocco wanted to condense it, Gaea insisted on detail. Cirocco began warming to the task. The Titanide language was well suited to it; as long as she stayed in declamatory mode it was impossible to, sing in awkward phrase. By the time she was finished she was feeling proud, and a bit more confident.

Gaea seemed to be pondering it. Cirocco shifted nervously. Her feet hurt, which proves, she thought, that you can get bored by anything.

At last Gaea spoke again.

"It was a good tale," she said. "Better than I have heard in many an age. You are truly heroic. I will speak with you both in my chambers."

With that, she vanished. There was only a flame which flickered for a few minutes, then died away.

They looked around them. They were in a large domed room. Behind them the stairs, unlighted now, reached down to the dark hub interior. Corroded nozzles lined the staircase, smoking fitfully, giving off the sharp pings of cooling metal. The smell of burnt rubber hung in the air.

The marble floor was cracked and discolored, covered with a film of dust that clearly showed their footprints. The place looked like a seedy opera house when the house lights come up and banish illusion.

"I've seen some screwy things since we got here," Gaby said, "but this takes it. Where do we go now? "

Cirocco pointed silently to a small door set into the wan on their left. It was ajar, and light was shining through the crack.

Cirocco pushed it open, looked around with a growing sense of recognition, then stepped in.

They entered a large room with a four-meter ceiling. The floor was composed of milky glass rectangles. Light shone through from below. The walls were paneled in beige painted wood and hung with gilt-framed oil paintings. The furnishings were Louis XVI.

"Deja vu, eh?" said a voice from the far end of the room. It was a short, dumpy woman in a shapeless sack dress. She looked like Gaea in the same way a carved bar of soap might resemble Michelangelo's "Pieta."

"Sit down, sit down," she said, jovially. "We don't stand on ceremony in here. You've seen the razzle-dazzle here's the bitter reality.

"Can I get you something to drink?"