Wizard

"Let them up," she said, sitting. There was blood dripping from her mouth, and she gri

"See what I mean?" Gaea said, as if nothing had happened. "The man who came here so long ago would not have done that. And I like it, though you really went too far, you know. But I will make a deal with you. I don't think you will stay with me very long. I know more of these matters than you do, I know something of Titanide love and how it differs from the human variety. Your friend will soon begin to open her fine legs for others-please, there's no need to go through that again." She waited until he seemed calmer. "Your reaction tends to prove my point. I won't deny she loves you, but she will love others. You will not handle it well. You will leave in great bitterness."

"Will you bet on that?"

"That's the deal. Come back in ... oh, say, five myriarevs. No, I'll be generous. Make it four. That's about four and a half years. If you still want to be uncured and if you still want to sing, I'll do both things for you. Do we have a deal?"

"We do. I'll be back."

Robin was never sure if he said more. It had finally penetrated to her conscious mind what part of her hand she was sucking on. She looked at it, stared in growing horror, screamed, and leaped. Once again Gaea went tumbling from her chair, and Robin's memory of what happened next blurred until she found herself sitting on the floor with pain in her little finger, the one that should not have been there. She was biting it, and Chris was trying to pull it from her mouth. He needn't have bothered. She released it and looked dumbly at the toothmarks.

"I can't do it," she said.

"You never could," Gaea reminded her. "You cut it off with a knife, remember? The story about biting was public relations. You were good at that back then; to enhance your image, you could have disemboweled yourself. I'm afraid you were a pain in the ass that only a mother could love." She was wheezing slightly. "As you are now. Really, children, this must stop. Twice in one day? Must I endure assault and battery? What God would put up with it, I ask you?"

Robin no longer cared what Gaea said. The sad fact, the one she must now face as she had faced so many others, was that Gaea was at least partly right. She was no longer Robin the Nine-fingered.

"Don't bother to say good-bye. Just leave," Gaea said.

Chris helped Robin up, and all the way back to the elevator which she knew might drop her through the Rhea Spoke Robin wondered if the tattoo on her belly was intact, and knew she would not look for as long as possible.

42 Battle of the Winds

Cirocco sat on a flat rocky outcropping above the Place of Winds, the last western march of the mesalike formation that made the cable known as Cirocco's Stairs look so much like a hand gripping the soil of East Hyperion. Below her the strand fingers splayed over the ground, knotted knuckles blasted smooth by millions of years of ceaseless wind. Between the strands, where the webs between fingers would be, elliptical chasms yawned to gulp air, feeding it to interstitial ducts in the cable, lifting it to spill in the distant hub and fall through the spokes in the grand cycle of replenishment that was the essence of Gaea's life. The ground was barren, yet the larger life that lay beneath it and around it and in some ways penetrated it to the uttermost molecule vibrated Cirocco's bones.

Gaea was so God-awful big, and it was so easy to despair.

It was possible that in all of Gaea's history, there had been only one who had dared defy her. Cirocco, the great Wizard, had pretended to, had put on airs as though she really could speak to Gaea as an equal, but only she herself knew just how empty that had been. Only she could count the loathsome list of her own crimes. At first it had been necessary for Gaea to stamp the ground quite close to the Wizard to bring her properly to heel. As time went by, she did not even have to lift her foot; Cirocco would wriggle under like a worm and feel any pressure as only right and good. That her course had been wise was now obvious. The one who had dared to stand defiant was now dead, her corpse consumed by the angry ground which was the body of Gaea. It was a powerful object lesson. There could be no doubt that Gaby had been a fool. Her rebellion, pitifully small and tentative as it had been, was gone with her life. No sooner had she taken the first steps than all of Gaea's might had come down on her. Gaea had killed Gaby with about as much concern as a sleeping elephant rolling over on a flea.

Cirocco had not moved for many hours, but at the shout from behind her she turned her head, then stood. The angel was a winged speck but quickly grew larger. His multicolored wings twisted skillfully in the tricky winds, brought him to ground two meters from Cirocco. Not far behind him were five more angels.

"They're back in Titantown," the angel said. Cirocco's shoulders relaxed slightly. They had insisted on going. Apparently they were too small for Gaea's wrath. The angel was regarding Cirocco with narrowed eyes.

"Are you sure you want to do this?" he said.

"I'm never sure of anything. Let's get going."

She walked with them to the lip of the precipice. Below her was the intake called the Great Howler, also known as the Forecrotch of Gaea for the way the mammoth vertical slit set between two rocky thighs resembled a vagina. It sang constantly in a mournful bass.

The angels moved up behind her. One on each side took her arms in their wiry hands. The other four were to provide relief for the dangerous flight in total darkness.

Cirocco stepped off the edge, and the wind caught her like a leaf. She entered the cable and sped toward the hub.

43 The Thin Red Line

Cirocco called it the Mad Tea Party and knew it was not appropriate; it was just that for some time she had felt a little like Alice. The retinue of despair that surrounded Gaea might have fitted better on Beckett's existentialist stage than in Carroll's Wonderland. Yet she would not have been surprised had someone offered her half a cup of tea.

The crowd was exquisitely sensitive to Gaea's mood. Cirocco had never seen them more restive than as she approached the party, or as suddenly wary as when Gaea finally spotted her.

"Well, well," Gaea boomed. "If it isn't Captain Jones. To what do we owe the honor of this spontaneous and una

Cirocco looked at it as if she had never seen anything quite like it before.

"Perhaps you'd prefer the bottle," Gaea suggested. Cirocco's eyes came up to meet Gaea's. She looked back at the drink, turned it over, and moved the glass in a slow circle until a sphere of liquid was formed, sinking slowly toward the floor. She tossed the glass into the air, and it was still rising when it left the circle of light. The sphere flattened and began soaking into the rug.

"Is this your way of telling me you're on the wagon?" Gaea asked. "How about a Shirley Temple? I just received the cutest mixer from an admirer on Earth. It's ceramic, shaped just like America's Sweetheart, and I daresay worth a lot of money. You can make martinis in it by mixing gin to the chin and vermouth to the-"