Wizard

"He will be weak and confused," she said. "He will see much and say nothing. He is not truly intelligent at this point. It is as if his thinking pathways have been packed in grease for shipment, needing to be cleansed upon arrival before use. But then..." She paused, listening to something Chris could not hear, then smiled.

"You'll have to let that wait," she said. "He is almost here, and there is a ritual I must perform, passed down through my chord for generations."

"Sure, go ahead," he said hastily.

"Please indulge me," she said. "I could do it with beauty in my own song, but since he will speak English, I've decided to break with tradition and sing it in that language ... also because you are here. But I'm not sure of my ability to make it beautiful in English, so my prose might sound awkward in-"

"Don't apologize to me, for God's sake," he said, waving his hands. "Get on with it. There may not be time."

"Very well. The first part is set, and I merely quote. I add my own words at the end." She licked her lips and looked into space.

"'Yellow as the Sky Are the Madrigals.'" She began to sing.

"'In the begi

And Gaea took from her body a lump of flesh and made of it the first Titanides and gave them to know that Gaea was God.

The Titanides did not dispute her.

They spoke to Gaea, saying, "What would you have us do?"

And Gaea replied, "Have no other Gods but me.

Be fruitful and multiply, but be aware that space is limited.

Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

Know that when you die, you return to dust.

And do not come to me with your problems. I will not help you."

And thus the Titanides received the burden of free will.

" 'Among the first was one called Sarangi of the Yellow Skin.

He went with many others to the great tree and saw that it was good.

In time he was to found the Madrigal Chord.

He looked out upon the world and knew that life tasted sweet, yet one day he would die.

This thought was a sad one, but he remembered what Gaea had said and wondered if he could live on.

He loved Dambak, Violone, and Waldhorn. The four of them sang the Sharped Mixolydian Quartet, and Sarangi became the hindmother of Piccolo. Dambak was the forefather, Violone the foremother, and Waldhorn the hindfather.'"

The song went on in that vein for some time. Chris listened more to the music than the words because the lists of names had little meaning for him. Descent was traced exclusively through the hind-mother, though the other parents were always mentioned.

Chris could not have traced his parentage back through ten generations as Valiha proceeded to do, yet he knew his forebears went back through thousands or millions of generations to apes or Adam and Eve. With Valiha, ten generations was the entire story. Serpent would be the eleventh. It brought home more forcefully than anything he had heard just what it was to be a Titanide, a member of a race that knew it was created. While he did not know how accurate the opening words of her song were, they could be literally true. The Titanides had been created around the year 1935. Even an oral tradition could cope with that time span, and the Titanides were meticulous record keepers.

But the song was more than just a list of her hindmothers and the ensembles they had used to produce the next generation. She sang songs of each, sometimes lapsing into the purity of Titanide, more often staying in English. She listed the brave and good things they had done but did not omit failings. He heard tales of suffering from the years of the Titanide-Angel War. Then the Wizard arrived, and the songs, more often than not, mentioned the stratagems employed to attract her attention to proposals at Carnival.

"'... and Tabla was favored of the Wizard.

Singing the Aeolian Solo, she gave birth to Valiha, of whom little has thus far been sung and who will leave the singing of her song to future generations.

Valiha loved Hichiriki, born by the Phrygian Quartet in another branch of the Madrigal Chord, and Cymbal, a Lydian Trio from the Prelude Chord.

They quickened the life of Serpent (Double-flatted Mixolydian Trio) Madrigal, who will sing his own song'"

She stopped, cleared her throat, and looked down at her hands.

"I told you it would be rough. Perhaps Serpent will do better, when his time comes. Though the song flows like a river in Titanide, in English-"

"You did him proud," Chris said. "This isn't the best begi

"Yes." She thought about it. "I should have asked you to sing."

"You'd have soon regretted it."

She laughed. "Hum, then. Chris, he's here."

He certainly was. A glistening shape was moving slowly but inexorably. Chris felt the powerful urge to do something: boil water, call a doctor, comfort her, ease his passage ... anything. But if his entrance into the world had been any quicker, he would have squirted across the ground like a pinched watermelon seed. Valiha had her head pillowed on her arm and was chuckling softly. If a doctor was needed, it was for Chris, not Valiha.

"Are you sure there isn't anything I should do?"

"Trust me." She laughed. "Now. You can pick him up-being careful not to step on the umbilicus, which he will need a little longer. Carry him to me. Lift him with both arms beneath his belly. His trunk will fall forward, so don't let him hit his head, but do not be alarmed by it."

She had already told him all that, but it was well she repeated it. He did not feel competent to pick his nose at the moment, much less handle a newborn Titanide. But he went, knelt, and looked at him.

"He's not breathing!"

"Don't be alarmed by that either. He will breathe when he's ready. Bring him to me."

Serpent was a shapeless puddle of sticks and moist skin. For a moment Chris literally could not make head or tail of him; then it all sprang into focus, and he saw a sweet-faced little girl-child with matted pink hair pasted to her sleeping face. No, not a child ... she had fully formed breasts. And not a girl either. That was merely the trick all Titanides played on all humans, which was to seem female no matter what their actual sex. The forepenis was there between his front legs, complete with pink pubic hair.

He was going to be gentle, do it gingerly. After a few tries, he gave that up and put his back into it. Serpent massed nearly as much as Chris. He was a slippery bundle, but there was not a drop of blood on him. He looked like a starving urchin, with matchstick legs longer than Chris's own. He was narrow-hipped and had a short body and long trunk, which promptly fell forward loosely when Chris lifted him. As Chris carefully payed out the loops of umbilical cord while bringing him around to his mother, Serpent stirred, and one of his hind legs kicked Chris in the shin. It was not too painful, but then he began a fitful struggle. Valiha sang something, and he calmed instantly.

Chris handed him to Valiha, who arranged him in front of her and held his upper body against her own. His head lolled. Chris noticed that it was as Valiha had said it would be: the umbilical did not attach under his belly but vanished into his anterior vagina, just as the other end still trailed from Valiha.

He had not known what to expect. He had seen young Titanides but none as young as this. Would he be able to love it? So far, he thought Serpent looked... he would not go so far as to say ugly. Fu