Wizard

"Yet we have a love-hate relationship with your species. We admire and sometimes envy the fire of your emotions. Each of you has a streak of violence, and we accept that. It's easier since we are so much larger; without a gun, there is little chance any of you could harm any of us. One of the things we would like to do is ban those equalizing weapons. Lacking the spur of aggression, we ca

"And there are among you individuals with life burning so brightly within them that we are dazzled by your brilliance. The best of you are better than the best of us. We know that and accept it. None of you is so nice as we are, but we have realized that niceness isn't everything. We have much to offer the human species. So far it has shown only the mildest interest, but we remain hopeful. But we would learn from you, too. We have tried long to absorb your fire by getting to know you. And since, in Gaea, Lysenko was right, we are now trying to breed you into us. That's why we learn English."

Chris had never heard her speak so long on anything, or so forcefully. He had thought he knew everything about her, and now he wondered why, since he was not normally such a fool as to think he could know everything about anyone. He knew, and had even mentioned to Valiha, that her ma

"I don't want to sound harsh, but I have to ask this. Is that what that business with the egg was all about? Lysenkoism?"

"I don't want to sound harsh either, but I will not lie to you. Yes, that entered into it. But I would never have done it with you without something much stronger. I speak of love, which so far as I know is the only emotion identical in humans and Titanides."

"Cirocco didn't think so."

"She is wrong. I realize that, commonly, love is bonded with jealousy and covetousness and territoriality in humans, and it never is in Titanides. That does not make the emotion different. It is simply that few humans experience love uncolored by these other things. You must take my word for that; it is one of the things I mentioned that we do better than humans. Humans have written and sung for thousands of years on the nature of love and never succeeded in defining it to anyone's satisfaction. Love is no mystery to us. We understand it thoroughly. It is in song-and its close friend poetry-that humans have come closest to it. That is one of the things we could teach humans."

Chris wanted to believe that but was still disturbed by something he could not quite bring into the open. She had explained how she could tolerate his spells of violence. Maybe it was just that, deep down, he could not believe it.

"Chris, would you come touch me?" she asked. "I feel I have upset you, and I don't like that feeling."

She must have seen his hesitation because tears started in her eyes. They sat only a meter apart, yet he felt a gulf had opened between them. It frightened him because only a short time ago he had felt very close to her.

"I'm terribly afraid," Valiha said. "I'm afraid that in the end, we will be too alien to each other. You will never understand me, and I will never understand you. And you must! I must!" She stopped and made herself slow down. "Let me try again. I will never give up.

"I said the best of you are better than us.

"I tell you that any of us can see it. Serpent will see it immediately, newborn, when he looks at you. I can see it, and I could not describe it if I had read a thousand dictionaries. When one of those better humans appears, we can tell it. But if I brought a group of them together, you would be at a loss to say what they had in common. It is no one quality, and it is not even always the same qualities. Many of them are brave, and others are cowards. Some are shy, and others brash. Many are intelligent, but others are far from geniuses. Many are outwardly exuberant; they taste life better; they burn with a brighter fire than we have ever seen. Others, to human senses, are quite subdued, as you are at times, but to our eyes the light shines through. We don't know precisely what it is, but we want some of it if we can have it without the urge to self-destruction that is the bane of your species. Perhaps even then, because its warmth is so glorious.

"We have a song for it. It is-" She sang it, then rushed on in English, as if she felt time were against her and she would once again fail to reach him. "In translation, that is, roughly, 'Those-who-might-one-day-sing,' or, more literally, 'Those-who-can-understand-Titanides.' If they want to. The word grows unwieldy, I fear.

"Cirocco is such a human. You have not felt one-hundredth of her heat. Gaby was one. Robin is. A handful of people back in Titantown. The settlement we passed in Crius. And you. If you were not, I could no more love you than a stone, and I love you fabulously."

That was a fu

But that was all swept away by a feeling Chris was later to describe as like a drowning man's having his life pass before him all in an instant, or possibly the flash of genius that is so often spoken of-with a corollary that read "How have I been an idiot for so long"-and, in the end, might best be expressed as the sudden realization that he loved her fabulously, too.

She saw the flash of his emotion-if he had wanted proof of her propositions, that would have been it, but he didn't need it-and while he was trying to think of something more intelligent to say than "I love you, too," she kissed him.

"I told you you loved me," she said, and he nodded, wondering if he would ever stop gri

Knowing the processes of Titanide birth was not the same thing as understanding the linked minds of the mother and child. Nor did Chris comprehend the nature of that link. He pestered her with questions about it, and determined that, yes, she could ask Serpent a question and he could answer it, and no, Serpent could not tell her if he knew how to speak English.

"He thinks in pictures and song," she explained. "The song is not translatable except emotionally; in a sense Titanide song never is, and that's why no human has been able to compile a dictionary of Titanide. I hear and see what he thinks."

"Then how did you ask him what he wanted to be named?"

"I pictured the instruments it was feasible to make down here and played them in my mind. When his awareness indicated delight, I knew he was Serpent."

"Does he know about me?"

"He knows you very well. He doesn't know your name. He will ask that quite soon after birth. He is aware that I love you."

"He knows that I'm human?"

"He knows it very well."

"What does he think about that? Will it be a problem?"

Valiha smiled at him. "He will be born without prejudice. From that point, it is up to you."

She was lying on her side in a comfortable spot Chris had prepared. The birth was close, and Valiha was serene, delighted, in no pain. Chris knew he was acting as badly as any first-time father outside the delivery room and could not help it.

"I guess I still don't understand a lot of things," he admitted. "Will he come out, sit up, and start offering his opinions on the price of coffee in Crius, or will there be a goo-goo and ga-ga stage?"

Valiha laughed, paused for a moment while the muscles of her belly worked like a hand squeezing a water balloon, and took a sip of water.