He saw she was holding her hand to her forehead, and there was blood under it. He started to jump-
"No!" Robin shouted. "I'm all right."
There was no time, anyway. They were on the bridge now, the Titanides' hooves pounding on the thick timbers. They charged toward the big gap. The drawbridge was up. We'd better turn back, Conal thought.
Then it fell, and not a moment too soon. With part of his mind Conal noticed that Rocky was bleeding from many wounds. Up on the wall, something was making odd little barking sounds. Smoke was drifting around them. He looked up and saw people pointing rifles at them. He hoped they couldn't shoot any better than he could.
They entered the arched gate, passed quickly through it. Conal didn't have time to fire at anything. The Titanide swords were at work, and the humans that fell beneath them were probably dead before they hit the ground. Still they came charging up. Conal began to shoot at anything that moved.
There had been no time to see who he was fighting, no sense of them as individuals. Finally, he started to notice they were dressed oddly. They wore long coats, some of them, or suits of white armor, or multi-colored green-gray-brown pants and helmets like his own.
A man came shrieking up to him, getting under Rocky's sword thrust. He was carrying an impossibly long sword. How could he even lift it, much less swing it?
But swing it he did, and it hit Conal on the leg, and Conal started saying his prayers, certain his leg was off and it would be a few seconds before the shock hit him.
He looked down. Part of the sword was clutched in his hand. He saw broken wood. He saw silver paint. The paint came off on his hand as he threw it away.
It was too much for his confused mind to deal with. My god, did they think this was a game? Then he heard Valiha's shout. She was far ahead of the rest, unencumbered, and she had found Chris.
"Turn around!" she screamed. "I've got them! Turn around!"
"Chicken!" Cirocco screamed.
Gaea paused.
"Gaea's a stinking, gutless, yellow COWARD! Gaea is CHICKEN!!"
The naked, sweating giant turned slowly. She had been on her way to Fox, on her way to stop the theft of Adam. But ... Cirocco was right here. Adam was miles away.
"Come on back here and fight, you yellow bitch! What are you ... afraid? Gaea's afraid, Gaea's a coward, Gaea's a stinking whore!"
Gaea hung there, swaying back and forth, torn between going for Adam and taking care of this insect once and for all. She knew it was a trick. She knew Cirocco wanted her to come and silence her filthy mouth. She knew it ... and more than anything in this stinking, dreary universe she wanted to go back and crush this horrible upstart.
Cirocco spat in Gaea's direction. She picked up a rock and threw it as hard as she could. It bounced off Gaea's head, leaving a bloody mark. She drew her sword and held it high in the sweet light of Hyperion. It flashed as Cirocco brandished it.
"God? You make me laugh, Gaea. You are a pig. Your mother was a pig, your grandmother was a pig, and her mother fucked dead pigs. I spit on you. I piss on you. I dare you to come out and fight. If you run away, everyone will know you for the coward you are!"
Tears of rage were streaming from Cirocco's eyes.
Gaea might still have turned away and gone after Adam, but Cirocco gave a bloodcurdling shriek ... and charged at her.
Which was simply too much. Gaea began to move.
Toward Cirocco.
"It's time, Gene."
"I know it's time, Gaby. I'm sorry I ra ... r-r-r-raped you. I'm sorry I killed you. I didn't mean to do it."
His bands rumbled with the detonator on his lap. It was a simple mechanism, he knew it was simple. It was just so horrible. He couldn't remember.
Eugene Springfield had been a flyer. He had piloted jet fighter aircraft, rocket-powered moon tenders. He had been picked over a thousand others to fly the exploration vehicles Ringmaster brought to Saturn, and there was only one reason for it. He was the best.
And now he couldn't sort out this jumble of wires any slack-brained terrorist could have put together in his sleep.
He wiped away tears. Start from the beginning. What did Gaby say?
Take out the ... .
His eyes opened wide. The most important part, and he had almost forgotten it. By golly, his brains must be turning to mush.
There it was, at his feet. The black glass jar with the metal lid.
He picked it up, opened it, tossed the lid into the clattering darkness.
The fat, toad-like parasite which had sucked his brains for ninety years hopped out and perched on the edge of the jar. Its eyes took in the scene, then bulged out. It made incoherent sounds: croaks, sobs, strangling gasps. It didn't mean jackass to Gene, but Gaby had said it was important.
Gaea must see it, Gaby had said.
"Think you're smarter'n me, do you?" Gene whispered, staring the thing in its ugly bloodshot eyes. "Well, ol' Gene'll show you a thing or two."
He looked again at the detonator.
Battery. That's this dingus right here.
Wires. Well, there's a couple of them. This one goes to here, and this one goes to here. So it ought to logically follow that if a fella touched this wire to this one over here, he ought to get one hell of a
Gaea froze as her eyes in Oceanus were uncapped, as they looked up out of the bottle, hopped up on the edge of it, and stared down at the spectacle of a brain-damaged child playing with matches and gasoline.
"Gene!" she screamed. "Don't do it!"
Cirocco charged, filled with a blood-red rage she hadn't known was in her. She ran at the monster and sank her sword in its foot.
Then Gaea screamed, and Cirocco was filled with an incredible sense of triumph ... which lasted about two seconds. Gaea wheeled around, tossing Cirocco off like a pesky ant. Gaea had forgotten Cirocco existed.
Cirocco got to her feet, saw Gaea stop dead in her tracks. Gaea put her hands to her head, then she looked slowly up at the sky.
"Gaby!" she shouted. "Gaby, wait! Listen, I'm ... I'm not ready! Gaby, we've got to talk!"
Then the ground was shaking as Gaea ran at top speed toward the cable.
Cirocco sank to her knees and sobbed helplessly. She felt a hand on her shoulder, looked up, and saw all three of her Generals at her side. My god, she thought. They came to me. They didn't run.
All around her was the army. Swords were drawn, arrows were fitted into bowstrings ... and nobody had anything to shoot at. They all watched, terrified and dumbfounded, as Gaea floundered through the moat, still shrieking at the top of her lungs.
The wall didn't stop her. She lowered one shoulder and plowed right through it. She ran through the flames of the Universal studio complex, thundered along the rutted remains of the Twenty-four Carat Highway.
At last she came to the cable.
She leaped, her fingers dug into the incredibly hard material of one cable strand. Gaea began to climb it, agile as any monkey.
Later, people speculated that she had been seeking the fastest way to the hub. Gaby was there, Gaby was taking control, and it was imperative that Gaea/Monroe, which now held over ninety percent of the thing that was called Gaea, get up there at once and begin negotiations.
Gaea was five hundred meters up the strand when it broke off at ground level.
The strand snapped up, quick as a mousetrap. Incalculable tons of cable strand curled, twisted ... and smashed the Gaea-thing against the unyielding bulk of the cable.
"Hang on!" Cirocco shouted. "Get down, and hang on!"
The ground below them dropped thirty meters.
TWENTY-THREE
Far above them, as these events were played out, a far less dramatic but far more important drama unfolded in the region known as the red line.