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"We ate just before we jumped," Cirocco said, in Russian. "But if you had any
coffee ... ? "
"You didn't really finish your story," Bill was saying. "There's the matter of
getting back down after your conversation with God."
"We jumped," Cirocco said, sipping her coffee.
"You .... it
She and Bill and Gaby were in one "corner" of the round room, their chairs
drawn together, while the Unity's officers buzzed at each other around the
television set. Bin looked good. He walked with a crutch and his leg
apparently hurt when he stood on it, but he was in high spirits. The Unity's
doctor said she could operate on him as soon as he was aboard, and thought he
would he nearly as mobile as before.
"Why not?" Cirocco asked, with a faint smile. "We brought those chutes all the
way up as a safety measure, but why not use them?" His mouth was still open.
She laughed, relenting, putting her hand on his shoulder. "All right, we
thought about it a long time before we jumped. But it really wasn't dangerous.
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Gaea held the top and bottom valves open for us and called Whistlestop. We did
it free-fall for the first 400 kilometers, then landed on his back." She held
out her cup while an officer poured more coffee, then turned back to Bill.
"I've talked enough. What about you? How did things go?"
"Nothing so interesting, I'm afraid. I spent my time in therapy with Calvin,
and picked up a little Titanide."
"How old was she?"
"How. . the language, you idiot," he laughed. "I learned how to sing goo-goo
and wa-wa and Bill hungry. I had a great time. Then I decided to get off my
ass and do something since you wouldn't take me along. I started talking to
the Titanides about something I knew a little about, which was electronics. I
learned about coppervines and batteryworms and IC nuts, and before long I had
a receiver and transmitter."
He grinned at the look on Cirocco's face. "Then it wasn't .... "
He shrugged. "Depends on how you look at it. You kept thinking in terms of a
radio that would reach Earth. I can't build that. What I have isn't very
strong-I can only talk to Unity when it's above, and the signal only has to
punch through the roof. But even if I'd built it before you left, you probably
would have gone, wouldn't you? Unity wasn't here yet, so the radio would have
been useless."
"I suppose I would have. I had other things to do."
"I heard." He grimaced. "That gave me the worst moments of the trip," he
confessed. "I'd started to like the Titanides, and then out of nowhere they
all get this dreamy look and hurry out into the grassland. I thought it was
another angel attack, but none of them came back. All I ever found was a big
hole in the ground."
"I noticed a few when we came in," Gaby said.
"They've been drifting back," Bill said. "They don't remember us."
Cirocco's mind had been wandering. She was not concerned about the Titanides.
She knew they would be all right, and now they would not have to suffer in the
fighting. But it was sad to know
Hornpipe would no longer remember her.
She had been watching the Unity people, wondering why no one came over to
talk. She knew she did not smell very good, but didn't think that was the
reason. With some surprise, she realized they were afraid of her. The thought
made her grin.
She realized Bill had been talking to her. "I'm sorry, what was that?"
"Gaby says you haven't told the whole story yet. She says there's something
more, and that I
should hear it."
"Oh, that," Cirocco said, glaring at Gaby. But it had to come out soon,
anyway.
"Gaea, uh ... she offered me a job, Bill."
"A job? "' He raised his eyebrows, smiled tentatively.
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"A 'Wizard,' she called it. She tends to the romantic. You'd probably like
her; she likes science fiction, too."
"Just what did the job entail?"
Cirocco spread her hands. "General troubleshooting nature unspecified.
Whenever she had a problem
I'd go there and see what I could do. There are-literally-some unruly lands
down here. She could promise me limited immunity, a sort of conditional
passport based on the fact that the regional brains would remember what she
did to Oceanus and not dare to harm me while I traveled through them."
"That's all? Sounds like a chancy proposition."
"It is. She offered to educate me, to fill my head with a tremendous amount of
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lore in the same way I was taught to sing Titanide. I'd have her support and
backing. Nothing magic, but I'd be able to cause the ground to open up and
swallow my enemies."
"That I can believe."
"I took the job, Bill."
"I thought so."
He looked down at his hands, seemed very tired when he looked up again.
"You're really something else, you know?" He said it with a trace of
bitterness, but was taking the news better than Cirocco had expected. "It
sounds like the kind of job that would appeal to you. The left hand of God."
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