Titan

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Oceanus brooded for 10,000 years while he felt Gaea's grip grow weaker. There was still a chance she could wipe out the budding independence he concealed so carefully. Its grievances festered.

Why must he be in the dark? He, the mightiest of oceans, eternally covered with ice. The life that struggled on the bleak ground above him was stunted. Many of his children would die in the full light of day. What was so good about Hyperion that he should be so lush and fair?

Quietly, a few meters a day, he extended a nerve beneath the ground until he could speak directly to Rhea. He recognized the seeds of insanity in her, and began casting his eyes to the west for an ally.

Mnemosyne was no good. She was desolate, physically and emotionally, mourning the passing of her lush forests. Try as he might to kindle resentment against Gaea, Oceanus could not penetrate the depths of Mnemosyne's depression. He tu

Beyond Mnemosyne was the night region of Cronus. Gaea's grip was strong here the satellite brain that held sway over the territory was a tool of the overmind, and had not as yet developed a personality of his own.

Oceanus kept moving west. Without realizing it, he was laying a communications net that would unite the six rebellious lands.

He found his strongest ally in Iapetus. If only he had been closer, they might have overthrown Gaea. But the tactics they imagined depended on close physical cooperation, so he and Iapetus could only plot together. He was forced to fall back on his alliance with Rhea.

He made his move around the time the pyramids were being built on Earth. Without warning, he stopped the flow of cool fluids passing through his immense body and through the support cables he controlled. At the far eastern end of the sea that dominated his frozen landscape, he had control of two river pumps.-huge three-chambered muscles that lifted the waters of Ophion into western Hyperion. He stopped their massive beating. To the east, Rhea did the same with the five pumps that raised water over her eastern mountain ranges, while speeding the operation of her pumps near Hyperion. Shut off from west and sucked dry from the cast, Hyperion began to wither.

In a few days, Ophion ceased to flow.

"I got all this second-hand from Rhea," Gaea said. "I had known I was losing control of my peripheral brains, but no one had mentioned any grievances. I had not imagined they could exist."

It had grown gradually darker as Gaea told of the rebellion of Oceanus. Most of the luminescent floor panels had gone out. Those remaining gave off a flickering orange glow. The walls of the room receded in the gloom.

"I knew I had to do something. He was about to destroy whole ecosystems; it might he a thousand years before I could put them together again."

"What did you do?" Gaby whispered. Cirocco jumped; Gaea's quiet voice had nearly mesmerized her.

She held out her hand, slowly made a fist that looked like a lump of stone.

"I squeezed. "

The vast, circular muscle had been dormant for 3,000,000 years. It had only one function: to contract the hub and draw out the spokes behind it, just after the Titan was born. Gaea's network of cables depended on it. It was the center of her ring the mighty anchor that held her together.

It jerked.

Gigato

The muscle relaxed.

For one giddy moment weightlessness reigned in Oceanus. Kilometer-square ice floes drifted like snowflakes, turning in the hurricane that had begun to blow from the hub.

When Oceanus bottomed out, fifteen cables twanged the deadly music of Gaea's revenge. The sonic energy alone stripped ten meters of topsoil from the surrounding regions and hurled opposing dust storms a dozen times around the rim before their fury abated.

Like a hand squeezing a ball, the muscle in the hub contracted and relaxed in a two-day rhythm that made Gaea vibrate like a plucked rubber band.

She had one more trick, but she waited until the cataclysm had flayed Oceanus to the bare rock- She had only six other muscles. Now she flexed one of them.

The spoke that towered over Occanus contracted, squeezed to half its normal diameter. Deprived of water for over a week, the trees were tinder-dry. They fractured, sloughing off their tenuous grip in Gaea's flesh, and began to fall.

On the way down, they began to burn

Oceanus was an inferno.

"I meant to burn the bastard," Gaea said. 'I meant to cauterize him for all time."

Cirocco coughed, and reached for her forgotten drink. The ice cubes clicked alarmingly in the silence and near-darkness.

"He was too deep, but I put the fear of God into him." She chuckled quietly. "I burned myself in the process--the fire damaged my lower valve, and from then on I've blasted him with hurricanes and noise every seventeen days. The sound is not my Lament; it's my warning. But it was worth it. He was a very good boy for thousands of years. Make no mistake, you can't have a dozen Gods ru

"But the catch, you see, is that his fate is linked with mine. He's another part of my mind, so in your terms, I'm insane. It will destroy us all, eventually, the good with the bad.

"But he was on his best behavior until you came along. "I had pla

"Oceanus exploited my weakness. My radio transmission organs are on the rim. There were three of them, but one broke down ages ago. The others are in Oceanus and Crius. Crius is my ally, but Rhea and Tethys managed to destroy his transmitter. Suddenly all my communications were in the hands of Oceanus.

"I decided not to make the pick-up. Not having been in con- tact with me, you would surely have misinterpreted it.

"But Oceanus wanted you for himself."

The battle raged beneath the surfaces of Oceanus and Hyperion. It was fought in the great conduits that supplied the nutrient fluid known as Gaea's milk.

Each of the human captives was encapsulated in a protective jelly while their fates were decided. Their metabolic rates were slowed. Medically, they were comatose, unaware of their surroundings.

The weapons of the war were the pumps that impelled nutrients and coolants through the underworld. Great pressure imbalances were created by both combatants, so that at one point a geyser of milk broke through in Mnemosyne and spurted a hundred meters into the air, to fall on the sands and fuel a brief spring.

They battled for the better part of a year. Then at last, Oceanus knew he was losing. The prizes began to flow toward Hyperion under the staggering pressure Gaea built from lapetus, Cronus, and Mnemosyne.

Oceanus changed his tactics. He reached into the minds of his captives and woke them up.

"I had been afraid all along held do that," Gaea said, as the room lights threatened to gutter into oblivion. "He had a link into your brains. It became imperative for me to sever that link. I used tactics that I don't think you'd understand. in the process, I lost one of you. When I got her back, she had been changed.

"He was trying to destroy you all before I got you-your minds, not your bodies. That would have been easy enough. He flooded you with information. He implanted the whistle speech in one of you, the songs of the Titanides in two more. That any of you survived with your sanity is a source of amazement to me. "

"Not all of us did," Cirocco said.

"No, and I'm sorry. I'll try to make it up to you, somehow."

While Cirocco was wondering what could possibly be done to put things right, Gaby spoke up.

"I remember climbing a huge stairway," she said. "I passed through golden gates, and stood at the feet of God. Then a few hours ago it seemed like I was in the same place again. Can you explain that?"

"I talked to all of you," Gaea said. "In your condition, mentally pliable from days of sensory deprivation, you put your own interpretation on it."

"I don't recall that at all," Cirocco said.

"You blanked it. Your friend Bill went further, and blanked most of his memories.

"Interviewing you through Hyperion, I decided what must he done. April was too far indoctrinated with angel culture and customs. Trying to return her to what she had been would have destroyed her. I transported her to the spoke and let her emerge to find her own destiny.

"Gene was sick in his mind. I took him to Rhea, hoping that he would remain separated from the rest of you. I should have destroyed him."

Cirocco sighed.

"No. I let him live when I could have killed him, too."

"You make me feel better," Gaea said. "As for the rest of you, it was imperative that you be returned at once to full consciousness. There was not even time to bring you together. I hoped you would make your way up here, and in time, you did. And now you can go home."

Cirocco looked up quickly.

"Yes, the rescue ship is here. It's under the command of Captain Wally Svensen, and-"

"Wallyl " Gaby and Cirocco said it simultaneously.

"A friend? You'll see him soon. Your friend Bill has been talking to him for two weeks now." Gaea looked uncomfortable, and when she spoke again there was a hint of petulance in her voice. "It's a bit more than a rescue mission, actually. "

"I thought it might be. "

"Yes. Captain Svensen is equipped to wage a war with me. He has a large number of nuclear bombs, and his presence out there is making me nervous. That's one of the things I wanted to ask you. Could you put in a good word? I couldn't possibly be a threat to the Earth, you know."

Cirocco hesitated a moment, and it was Gaea's turn to look uncomfortable.

"Yes, I think I can straighten it out."

"Thanks so much. He didn't actually say he was going to bomb me, and when he discovered there were survivors from Ringmaster that possibility became more remote. I've picked up some of his scout ships, and they are in the process of constructing a base camp near Titantown. You can explain to him what happened, as I'm not sure he believes me."