"Then why didn't you?" Cirocco demanded. Gaea threw up her hands.
"Let's stop kidding each other, shall we? Number one, I don't know if I owed it to you. Number two, I was-and still am-a bit frightened of you. Not you personally, but humans. You're inclined to he hasty."
"I won't argue with that."
"You made it up here anyway, didn't you? That's what I wanted to see: if you could do it. And you should be thanking me for it, because you had a great time."
"I can't imagine how you could think a thing like--"
"We're being honest now, remember? You're really overjoyed that you're about to go home now, aren't you?"
"Well, of course I-"
"Everything about you says you're not. You've had a goal to achieve-getting up here. Now it's over. The best time of your life. Deny that if you can."
Cirocco was nearly speechless. "How can you say that? I saw my lover nearly killed-I was nearly killed myself. Me and Gaby were raped, I went through an abortion, April has been turned into a monster, August is--"
"You could have been raped on Earth. As for the rest of it ... you expected it to be easy? I'm sorry about the abortion; I won't do that again. Do you blame me for the rest of it? "Well, no, I think I believe what you-"
"You want to blame me. It would make it easier to leave. You find it hard to admit that even with all those things that happened to your friends-none of it your fault-you've had a great adventure."
"That's the most-"
"Captain bones, I submit to you that you were never really cut out to be a Captain. Oh, you've done well, just like you do a good job of most things you tackle. But you're not a Captain. You don't enjoy ordering other people around. You like your independence, you like to go to strange places and do exciting things. In an earlier age you would have been an adventurer, a soldier of fortune."
"If I'd been born a man," Cirocco corrected.
"That's because it's only recently that women have had a crack at adventure on their own. Space was the only frontier available to you, but it's done by the numbers, very civilized. It's not really your cup of tea."
Cirocco had given up on trying to stop her. It was all so far-fetched, she decided to let Gaea ramble on.
"No, what you're cut out for is exactly what you've been doing. Scaling the unscalable mountain. Communing with strange beings. Shaking your fist at the unknown, -spitting in God's eye. You did all those things. You got hurt along the way; if you keep on that path you'll be hurt more. You'll freeze and go hungry and bleed and fall down from exhaustion. So what do you want? Spend the rest of your life behind a desk? Go home; it's waiting for you. "
Far down the curved abyss that was Gaea's hub, wind howled faintly. Somewhere volumes of air were being sucked into a vertical chamber 300 kilometers high, and that chamber was peopled by angels. Cirocco looked around her, and shivered. To her right, Gaby was smiling. What does she know that I don't know? Cirocco wondered.
"What are you offering me?"
"A chance at a long life span, with the possibility that it might be quite short. I'm offering good friends and evil enemies, eternal day and endless night, rousing song and strong wine, hardships, victories, despair and glory. I'm offering you the chance at a life you won't find an Earth, the kind of life you knew you wouldn't find in space but hoped for anyway.
"I need a representative on the rim. It's been a long time since I've had one, because I demand a lot. I can give you certain powers. You'll define your job, pick your hours and companions, see the world. You'll get some help from me, but little interference.
"How would you like to be a Wizard?"
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Seen from the air, the expedition base camp was an ugly brown flower. A ragged wound had opened in the soil just cast of Titantown and had begun discharging Earth people.
It looked like it would never stop. As Cirocco watched from Whistlestop's gondola, a blue glob of gelatin shaped like a pill oozed from the ground and fell on its side. The encapsulating material quickly turned to water and sloughed away from a silvery crawler-transporter. The vehicle churned through the sea of mud and made its way to a rank of six similar machines parked beside a complex of inflatable domes before discharging its Rye passengers.
"These folks came in style," Gaby observed.
"Looks that way. And that's just the landing party. Wally won't bring his ship in close enough to get picked up."
"You sure you want to go down there? " Gaby asked.
"I have to. Surely you know that."
Calvin looked it all over and sniffed.
"If it's all the same to you," he said, "I'll just stay up here. It might get nasty if I went down."
"I can protect you, Calvin."
"That remains to he seen."
Cirocco shrugged. "Maybe you'd like to stay, too, Gaby."
"I go where you go," she said, simply. "Surely you know that. Do you think Bill's still down there? He might have been evacuated by now."
"I think held wait. And besides, I have to go down to get a look at that."
She pointed to a shiny heap of metal a kilometer west of the camp, sitting in its own flower of overturned dirt. There was no pattern to it, no hint that it had ever been more than a scrap heap.
It was the bones of Ringmaster.
"Let's hit the silk," Cirocco said.
"... . and says she was actually working in our interests throughout the alleged aggressive incident. I can offer you no concrete proof of most of these statements. There can he no proof, except the pragmatic one of her behavior over a suitable time. But I see no evidence that she is a threat to humanity, now or in the future."
Cirocco sat back in her chair and reached for her glass of water, wishing it was wine. She had talked for two hours, interrupted only by Gaby amplifying or correcting details of her account.
They were in a round dome that served as mission command headquarters for the ground party. The room was adequate for the seven assembled officers, Cirocco, Gaby, and Bill. The two women had been brought there promptly when they landed, introduced to everyone, and asked to begin the debriefing.
Cirocco felt out of place. The crew of the Unity and Bill were dressed in spotless, wrinkle-free red and gold uniforms. They smelled clean.
And they looked entirely too military for Cirocco's tastes. The Ringmaster expedition had avoided that, even eliminating military titles except Captain. At the time Ringmaster was launched, NASA had been at pains to erase its military origins. They had sought U.N. auspices for the trip, though the notion that the expedition was anything but American was a transparent fiction. Still, it had been something.
Unity, by her very name, testified that the nations of Earth were cooperating more closely. Her multi-national crew proved that the Ringmaster experiment had drawn the nations together in a common purpose. I
But the uniforms told Cirocco what that purpose was.
"Then you counsel a continuation of our peaceful policy," Captain Svensen said. He spoke through a television set on the fold-up desk in the center of the room. Aside from the chairs, it was the only article of furniture.
"The most you can lose is your exploratory party. Face it, Wally. Gaea knows that would he an act of war, and that the next ship would not even be manned. It would be one big H-bornb."
The face on the screen frowned, then nodded.
"Excuse me for a moment," he said. "I want to talk this over with my staff." He started to turn away, then reversed the motion.
"What about you, Rocky? You didn't say if you believe her. Is she telling the truth?"
Cirocco didn't hesitate.
"Yes, she is. You can bank on it."
Lieutenant Streikov, the ground commander, waited until he was sure the Captain had nothing more to say, then stood. He was a handsome young man with an unfortunate chin and- though Cirocco found it hard to believe-he was a soldier in the Soviet Army. He seemed little more than a child.
"Could I get you anything?" he asked, in excellent English. "Perhaps you're hungry after your trip back here"
"We ate just before we jumped," Cirocco said, in Russian. "But if you had any coffee ... ? "