"The egg."
"Right here." She reached into her pouch-how handy to have a built-in pocket, Chris thought-and tossed him something the size of a golf ball. He almost dropped it, and Valihaa laughed.
"It doesn't have a shell," she said. "But haven't you seen one before?" A slight frown creased her forehead.
Chris had no idea. This one was quite hard, apparently solid. It was a perfect sphere, pale gold with brown whorls like fingerprint smudges. It had milky areas in its translucent depths. Someone had printed a series of Titanide characters on it.
He gave it back to her, then looked at the sign she had mentioned earlier. It rested on the ground, a ten-centimeter metal plate engraved with symbols and lines:
I FJVtF*|
UF^ f
F M M
"The F stands for female," someone said, behind him. He turned and saw two human women talking to each other. They both were short and rather pretty. The smaller one had a green, staring Eye painted on her forehead. There were more drawings partially visible on her legs and arms. She looked young. The other, darker one was the voice he had heard. He could not guess her age, though she did not look older than her middle thirties.
"The M, of course, is male. The star at the right is the semifertilized egg produced by the foremother, and the arrow pointing up from the bottom line shows the first fertilization. This is a Double-flatted Mixolydian Trio, which means the foremother is also the hindfather. Mixolydian ensembles are those with two females participating, except for Aeolian Duets, where the whole ensemble is female. All Aeolian modes are all-female. Lydian modes have one female and one, two, or three males, and the Phrygian mode, of which there is only the quartet, has three females and one male, the forefather."
Chris stepped out of the way as the smaller woman knelt to peer at the legend on the sign. He wanted to find out how he fitted into the picture and hoped he could learn by eavesdropping. It was a tactic he had used well in the past after memory lapses, a common one among people with mental problems, whose almost universal urge was not to reveal the extent of their condition.
The woman sighed as she straightened up.
"I guess I'm still missing something," she said with a faint accent Chris could not place. She pointed to Chris as if he were a statue. "How does he fit in?"
The older one laughed. "Not at all, into a Mixolydian Trio. There are two modes that include humans-the Dorian and Ionian - but there are none of those here today. You'll seldom see them. No, if anything, he's part of the decorations. He's a fertility fetish. A good-luck charm. Titanides are very superstitious at Carnival."
She had been looking at him while she spoke; now her eyes met his for the first time, searched for something, and did not seem to find it, and she broke into a smile. She extended her hand.
"I don't think you really are, though, anymore," she said. "I'm Gaby Plauget. I hope I didn't offend you."
Chris was surprised at the strength of her grasp.
"I'm-"
"Chris Major." She laughed again. It was innocent laughter, impossible to take the wrong way. "I shouldn't do that. You've probably gathered I know a little about you. We haven't met, though."
"I get the feeling that ... never mind." Chris thought he knew the name from somewhere, but she had said they had not met, so he dropped it. If he spent too much time trying to recall shadow experiences buried in his head, he would never get anything done.
She nodded. "I'll tell you more later. I'll see you around." She fluttered the fingers of one hand, still grinning, and returned to the other woman. "Look at the top row of symbols as one Titanide," she explained. "Hind legs to the left, head to the right. The top row represents a female: vagina in back, penis in the middle, another vagina between the forelegs. The second row is also a female, and the third row is a male. Now does it make sense? Top row is foremother and hindfather, middle row is hindmother, bottom row... ."
"What was that she was saying to you?"
Chris turned, saw Valiha looking nervous.
"Well, just what did I say to you?"
"That you were very lucky, and you ... you mean it's not true?" Her eyes grew wide, and she put her hand to her mouth.
"I seem to have times of being lucky," he said. "It's not reliable, though. And I don't recall how we met, or what we've talked about, or what we've done together. I'm blank from ... well, the last thing I remember is talking to Gaea in a big room at the hub. I'm sorry. Did I make some kind of promise?"
But Valiha had returned to her two partners. They put their heads together and sang a sweet moaning melody. He gathered they were talking it over. He sighed and looked around for Gaby and her companion, but they had moved far down the row, walking toward a large white tent that stood on the edge of the judging field.
Valiha asked him to be near for the review when it came. She wanted to know if he brought bad luck when he was not crazy, and he said he didn't think so. It was clear the three Titanides were upset and did not know what to do. He thought it might be best to melt into the crowd, not burden them with what seemed to him the black cloud of doom he carried with him. With that intention he started off down the field, not hurrying, studying the groupings of Titanides.
It made more sense now. Each square contained an ensemble the purpose of which was to be certified for reproduction. To that end they had created proposals according to arcane rules of their own. They grouped themselves in twos, threes, and fours, each specifying one of the twenty-nine possible modes of procreation, each having already produced a semifertilized egg: the first stage of the Titanide sexual minuet.
Chris wondered, as he ambled slowly between the groups, just how many of these proposals would ever be put into effect and who made the decisions. It didn't take a lot of insight to realize that Gaea was a finite world. He supposed that with industrialization Gaea could be made to support many more sentient beings than she now did, but a limit would soon be reached. It followed that only a small number of the groups around him would be chosen to procreate. He made a guess at how few that would be, thought he was being conservative, and later learned he had overshot the mark by a factor of five.
Such competition produces stress, and stress leads to irrationality. Had Titanides been humans, there would have been much fighting at Carnival, but Titanides did not fight among themselves. Losers retired to weep in private. They emerged after a period of sorrow to wild drinking and dancing and much talk about next time. But before that they grasped at anything, decorating their assigned squares with talismans, amulets, and charms, becoming for a time intensely superstitious, like bettors at racetracks or primitives aware of their status as small beings doing their best to attract God's attention.
The displays they created to enhance their proposals ranged from the baroque to the minimalist. Chris saw one group of two who had built a shaky pagoda festooned with broken glass, flowers, empty cans, and beautiful ceramic pots. Another square was carpeted in white feathers, sprinkled with blood. Some practiced tableaux or short skits; others juggled knives while standing on their hind legs. There was a starkly simple display that Chris found irresistible, consisting of a worn gray stone with an egg sitting on it, set off by a twig and two tiny flowers.
There was one square with a single occupant. Chris at first thought the rest of the ensemble had not yet arrived, but when he studied the sign in front of the proposal, he was even more puzzled:
According to Gaby's explanation, each row on the sign represented a Titanide. Further, the sign seemed to indicate that this female intended to be forefather, foremother, hindfather, and hind-mother to her child. He looked at her. She was a lovely creature, covered in snowy fur, sitting down with a single clear green egg resting on the grass between her knobby front knees. He couldn't resist.