CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Cirocco had given up on having opinions. "You know what?" she asked, feeling more than a little giddy. "If somebody said right now that Ringmaster had never left Earth orbit, that this whole thing had been staged in a Hollywood backlot, I don't think I'd bat an eye."

"A perfectly natural reaction," Gaea soothed. She was waddling around the room, getting a glass of wine for Gaby and a double shot of Scotch on the rocks for Cirocco, straightening paintings, brushing dust from tables with the ragged hem of her skirt.

Gaea was short and squat, built like a barrel. Her skin was weathered and brown. She had a nose like a potato. But there were laugh lines at the corners of her eyes and her sensuous mouth.

Cirocco tried to place the face, giving her mind something to do while she studiously avoided making theories. W.C. Fields? No, only the nose qualified for the role. Then she had it. Gaea looked a lot like Charles Laughton in The Private Life of Henry VIII.

Gaby and Cirocco sat on opposite ends of a slightly frayed couch. Gaea put a glass on the end table beside, each of them, then huffed across the room to hoist heir bulk into a high-backed chair. She wheezed, and laced her fingers in her lap.

"Ask me anything," she said, and leaned forward expectantly. Cirocco and Gaby looked at each other, then back at Gaea. There was a short silence.

"You speak English," Cirocco said.

"That's not a question."

"How do you speak English? Where did you learn it?"

"I watch television."

Cirocco knew what she wanted to ask next, but didn't know if she should. Suppose this creature was the last remnant of the builders of Gaea? She had seen no proof that Gaea was actually one organism, as April had said it was, but it was possible this person thought she was a Goddess.

"What about all that ... that show outsider" Gaby asked.

Gaea dismissed it with a wave.

"All done with mirrors, dear. Mere sleight-of-hand." She glanced at her lap, then looked sheepish. "I wanted to scare you off if you weren't real hero material. I gave it my best shot. I thought at this stage it would be easier for us to relate in here. Comfortable surroundings, food and drink-would you like something to cat? Coffee? Cocaine?

"No, I'd ... did you say ... "

"Did you say coffee? "

"... cocaine?"

Cirocco's nose was tingling but she felt more alert and less afraid than she had since they entered the hub. She settled back on the couch and looked into the eyes of the creature who called herself Gaea.

"Mirrors, you said. What are you, then?" Gaea's smile broadened.

"To the heart of the matter, eh? Good. I like directness." She pursed her lips and seemed to consider the question.

"Do you mean what is this, or what am I." She put her hands just above her enormous breasts, then didn't wait for in answer. "I am three kinds of life. There is my body itself, which is the environment you have been moving through. There are my creatures, such as Titanides, who belong to me but are not controlled by me. And there are my tools, separated from me, but part of me. I have certain powers of the mind-which were helpful in the illusions you just saw, incidentally. Call it hypnotism and telepathy, though it is neither. "

"I am able to construct creatures that are extensions of my will. This one is eighty years old, the only one of her kind. I also have other sorts. They built this room and the stairway outside, mostly from plans I stole from movies. I'm a big fan of movies, and I understand you---"

"Yes, but getting-"

"I know, I know," Gaea soothed. "I wander. This is a damn nuisance, you see. I have to talk to you this way. When I said 'I hear you' earlier ... well, I was using the upper Oceanus valve as a larynx, forcing air from the spoke. It plays hell with the weather. those three words sent snow all over Hyperion.

"But letting you see this body makes you want to believe something else. Namely, that I'm a dizzy old woman, all alone up here."

She looked narrowly at Cirocco.

"You still suspect that, don't you?"

"I ... I don't know what to think. Even if I believe you, I still don't know what you are."

"I am a Titan. You want to know what a Titan is." She leaned back in her chair and her gaze became distant.

"What I really am is lost in the past. "We are old, that much is clear. We were constructed, not evolved. We live for 3,000,000 years, and have been around for over a thousand of our generations. In that time we have changed, though not through evolutionary processes as you understand them.

"Much of our history is lost now. We do not know what race built us, nor for what purpose. Suffice it to say that our creators built well. They are gone, but we are still here. Perhaps their descendants still live within me, but if so, they have forgotten their former greatness. I listen to messages from my sisters spread through this galaxy, and no one speaks of the builders."

She closed her eyes for a moment, then opened them again, waiting.

"All right," Cirocco said. "You left out a lot of details. How did you get here ? Why is there only one of you? You listen to the radio; do you talk over it, too? And if so, why haven't you contacted the Earth before this?

Gaea held up a hand and chuckled. "One at a time, please. You're making a lot of assumptions. "What makes you think I'm a visitor? I was born in this system, just like you. My home is Rhea. On Iapetus my daughter is at this moment approaching maturity. There is a family of Titans circling Uranus. They make up the invisible rings. They're all smaller than I; I'm the largest Titan is this neighborhood."

"Iapetus?" Gaby said. "One of the reasons we--"

"Rest easy; I shall explain, and save you a trip. We cannot travel between the stars. We can't move at all except for minor orbital adjustment. I release eggs from my rim, where they already have a respectable velocity because of my rotation. I aim them as best I can but over these distances hitting the target is problematic, since the eggs have no guidance once launched. "

"When they fall on a suitable world-Iapetus is perfect: no air, rocky, plenty of sunlight, not too large and not too small-they take root. In 50,000 years the infant Titan is ready to be born. At that stage, she has covered an entire hemisphere of the birthing body. That's how Iapetus locked seventy-five years ago; one side was significantly brighter than the other.

"The Titan infant then contracts until she is a thick band that circles the world from pole to pole. That is what Iapetus has become. My daughter has delved deep. She has reached to the core to find the elements she needs for viability. I'm afraid that Iapetus had been quite looted by now; my grandmother, and her mother before her, all used that one moon.

"My daughter is engaged in synthesizing the fuels she will need to break free of Iapetus. That should happen in five or six years. When she is ready-and not a day before, because once horn she will contain all the mass she will ever have---.she will blast herself into space. It's likely that Iapetus will split in the process, like the one that eventually became the Rings. Then--"

"You're saying Titans are responsible for the Rings?" Gaby asked.

"Didn't I just state it?" Gaea looked a bit annoyed, but was quite absorbed in her story.

"That was long ago, and you can't hold me responsible. At any rate, once free my daughter will kill her present rotation and begin to spin as I do. The part of her that will become her hub is presently touching the surface of Iapetus. In space, this will contract, pulling the spokes out behind it. She will spin faster, stabilizing, fill herself with air, begin moving mountains inside her to prepare for -the creatures that will ... well, you get the picture. I ramble when talking of my daughter, like any parent, I suppose."

"No, no, I'm fascinated," Cirocco said. "Your daughter will have Titanides and angels and blimps inside her?

Gaea chuckled. "Not Titanides, I suspect. If she fancies them she'll have to invent them herself, like I did."

Cirocco shook her head. "You've left me behind."

"Simple enough. Most of my species are descendants of creatures Titans sheltered when we were created. Each egg I release contains the seeds of a million species, such as the electronic plants. I don't think my builders cared much for machines. They grew everything they needed, from clothing to houses to circuit.

"The Titanides and angels are different. You wondered, before you got used to them, how it was possible for them to look so human. The answer is simple. I used humans as a model. Titanides were easy, but angels ... the headaches! Your storytellers were much more fanciful than practical. The wingspread had to be tremendous to get them off the ground, even with my low gravity and high air pressure. I'll admit they don't look like the Biblical model, but they work! The basic problem, you see, was--"

"You made them yourself," Cirocco said. "Everything about them, from scratch."

"I just said that, didn't I? I designed the DNA. It's no more difficult for me than making a clay model is for you."

"Everything about them is your design. And you got the basic ideas over the radio, which means they couldn't be very old as a culture. We haven't been broadcasting very long by your standards."

"Less than a century, for the Titanides. The angels are younger than that."

"Then... then you are a God. I don't want to get theological here, but I think you know what I mean."

"For all practical purposes, here in my little corner of the universe ... yes, I am." She folded her hands and looked smug.

Cirocco looked longingly at the door. It would be so nice to go through it and try to forget this ever happened.

What did it matter if this person was an insane survivor of the builders? Cirocco asked herself. She had control of the world they called Gaea. It made no difference if she was in fact identical to it; she was the ultimate power, either way.

And oddly enough, Cirocco found herself liking her in her unguarded moments, until she recalled what had brought her to the hub in the first place.

"There are two things I want to ask you," Cirocco said, as firmly as she dared.

Gaea sat up alertly.

"Please, go ahead. There happen to be two things I want to ask you, as well."

"I ... you? Ask me?" The idea was completely unexpected. Cirocco was nervous enough at the idea of bringing up Ringmaster. She knew she and her crew had been wronged, but how do you say that to a Goddess? Cirocco wished she had even a thousandth of the bravado that had enabled her to stand in the hub and shout curses to the empty air. "What could I possibly do for you? "

Gaea smiled.

"You might be surprised."

Cirocco glanced at Gaby, who widened her eyes slightly and surreptitiously crossed her fingers.

"The first ... ah, the first concerns the Titanides." Damn it, that was supposed to he number two. But it wouldn't hurt to test the water.

"A Titanide called Meistersinger ….." She sang his name, then went on. "He asked me to ... if I ever got so far as to see you, to ask why they must be at war."

Gaea frowned, but in confusion more than anger. "Surely you have deduced that."

"Well, yes, I did. Aggression against angels is built into them. It's an instinct, and the reverse is true for the angels."

"That's precisely correct."

"And since you designed them, you must have had a reason ... "

Gaea looked surprised.

"Well, of course. I wanted to have a war. I'd never heard of them until I began watching your television programs. You people seemed to like them so much, holding one every few years, that I thought I'd give it a try."

Cirocco could think of nothing to say for a very long time. She realized her mouth was open.

"You're serious, aren't you?"

"Utterly."

"I don't know quite how to put this."

Gaea sighed. "I wish you wouldn't be afraid of me. I assure you, you are in no danger from me."

Gaby leaned forward. "How can we know that? You ….." She stopped herself, and glanced at Cirocco.

"I destroyed your ship. That's item two on the agenda, I'm sure. There are many things you don't know about that. Would you like some more coffee?"

"Not now, thank you," Cirocco said, hastily. "Gaea, or your holiness, or whatever I'm supposed to call you-"

"Gaea is fine."

"-we don't like war. I don't, and I don't think any sane person does. Surely you've seen anti-war movies, too."

She frowned, and chewed on a knuckle.

"Of course I have. But they were in the minority, and even then, they were popular. They contained more bloodshed than most of the pro-war movies. You say you don't like war, but why are you so fascinated by it?"

"I don't know the answer to that. All I know is I hate war, and the Titanides hate it, too. They would like to see it stopped. That's what I came here to ask you."

"No war?" She peered at Cirocco suspiciously.

"No."

"Not even a skirmish now and then?"

"Not even that. "

Gaea's shoulders slumped, then heaved in a great sigh. "Very well," she said. "Consider it done."

"I hope it wouldn't be too much trouble," Cirocco went on. "I don't know how you go about--"

"It's done[" The room was lit by a flash of lightning that made a crown around Gaea's head. The thunderclap brought Gaby and Cirocco to their feet. Gaby had her sword half out of its scabbard, standing between Cirocco and Gaea.

Several uncomfortable seconds passed.

"I didn't mean to do that," Gaea said, her hands fluttering nervously. "It was just... well, something of a disappointment." She sighed, and motioned them to their seats.

"I should have said it's being done," she elaborated, when things had calmed down. "I'm recalling all the angels and Titanides. The re-programing will take a while."

"'Re- programing?' " Cirocco asked, suspiciously.

"No one will be hurt, my dear. The ground will swallow them up. They'll emerge after a time, free of the compulsion. Satisfied?"

Cirocco wondered what the alternative was, but nodded her head.

"Very good. Now to the other matter. Your ship. "I didn't do it."

She held up her hand, waited until she was sure Cirocco would not interrupt her, then went on.

"I know I told you I was the whole world, that I am Gaea. That was completely true at one time. Now it is less so. Bear in mind that I'm 3,001,266 years old." She paused, and raised one eyebrow.

"Three million ... " Cirocco's eyes narrowed. "That's what you said your life span was."

"Correct. I am old by my own standards, not just yours. You've seen it on the rim and in the hub. My deserts are drier and my wastelands deeper in ice than they have ever been, and I can do nothing about it. I doubt that I'll live another 100,000 years. "

Suddenly Cirocco laughed. Gaby looked startled and Gaea merely sat politely, her head cocked to one side, until Cirocco got it under control.

"Pardon me," Cirocco said, still gasping, "but somehow, I find it hard to be properly sympathetic. Only 100,000 years!" She laughed again, and this time Gaea joined in.

"You're right," she said. "There's still plenty of time to send flowers. I could outlive your whole race." She cleared her throat. "But back to what I was saying. I'm dying. I am malfunctioning in thousands of ways---still holding together, mind you, but not what I once was.

"Think of a dinosaur. A brain in its head, another in its rump. Decentralized control over a bulky body.

"I work the same way. When I was young my auxiliary brains worked with me, as your fingers obey you. In the last half million years that has changed. I've lost much control over my outlying areas. There are twelve separate intelligences on the rim, and I am fragmenting into two personalities even at my central nerve nexus, in the hub.

"In a way, it's like the Greek theogony I've grown so fond of. My children tend to be unruly, willful, antagonistic. I fight them constantly. There are good lands and bad lands down there. Hyperion is one of the good ones. She and I get along well.

"Rhea is temperamental and quite mad, but at least I can often wheedle her into doing the right thing.

"But Oceanus is the worst. He and I do not speak any more. What I do in Oceanus I do by misdirection, by deceit, by cunning.

"It was Oceanus that snared your ship."