"Pardon me. I don't think I understand just how... ."
She was smiling at him, but her look showed incomprehension.
She sang a few notes to him, lifted her shoulders eloquently, and shook her head.
He left her, still curious as to just what it was she intended to do.
He had meant to steal away, but somehow he was still around when the Wizard emerged from her tent and began making her review. Chris happened to be close by. He decided to watch for a while.
She was a big woman and made no attempt to hide the fact, carrying herself erectly, shoulders back, chin out. Her skin was light brown, her hair a fine mahogany, blowing carelessly to each side of a part down the center. Her brow was a bit too prominent, her nose too long and her jaw too wide to play glamour roles in the movies, but she had a power in her movements, something about her that transcended more conventional beauty. She walked on the balls of her bare feet, a quarter-gee gait Chris had seen before that involved the knees' bending very little with each stride, with her hips doing most of the work. It was feline and very sexy, though not meant to be; it was simply the most efficient way to walk in Gaea.
He followed her for a while as she moved up and down the rows of applicants. She was accompanied by a brace of Titanide bucks of the Cantata clan: light-skinned and hairless but for their heads, tails, forearms, and lower legs, and large even among Titanides. One carried a clipboard; the other, a gold box. They were apparently identical twins. They wore only gold bracelets and bands around arms and legs. The Wizard looked less regal. Her sole garment was a faded brick-red blanket with a hole she could put her head through, covering her to the knees. Her arms were often lost in its folds, but when they came out, Chris could see she wore nothing under it.
The Wizard ignored the white lines on the ground, moving from one square to another as it suited her. Her Titanide retinue and the small number of other observers stuck to the lanes between squares, however, and Chris did, too. One of the Cantatas was making sure she looked at every group, checking off squares on his board, once calling the Wizard back when she turned at the wrong place.
She knew many of the Titanides. Often she would stop to sing with them, kissing some, embracing others. She walked slowly through the groups after first reading the sign in front and looking the Titanides up and down with no expression on her face. Sometimes she stopped and appeared lost in thought, then would confer with an aide, mutter something to him, and move on. At some squares she asked questions of one or more candidates.
She went through the entire group that way, then started through again. Chris began to be bored with it. He decided to say good-bye and good luck to Valiha and her ensemble.
"Where were you?" Valiha hissed.
"I'm really not going to do you any good," Chris said. He noticed that the lovely Titanide egg had been balanced on the neck of an empty tequila bottle at Valiha's feet. He gestured to it. "I'll have no more effect than that trash."
"Please, Chris, humor me in this. You promised you would." Her eyes were pleading, and he thought uncomfortably that, yes, he had promised something like that. He looked away from her eyes, looked back, and nodded.
"All you have to do is stand just on the edge of the line. You can't come into the square during the review ... shhh! Quiet, everybody, she's coming!"
Chris turned, and there she was, moving up the line behind him. She was judging the row opposite Valiha's, going fairly quickly, and passed just a few meters from Chris. After she had taken a few more steps, she paused, tilted her head slightly, then turned and looked at him with her brow lowered. He felt awkward but could not look away. Eventually one corner of her mouth turned up.
"So you're back with us," she said. "We met, briefly, about a dekarev ago. I'm Cirocco. You can call me Rocky." She did not offer her hand but continued to look him over. He felt underdressed in the shorts he had awakened in. The Wizard glanced at Valiha, did a double take, and fixed her with the gaze that had so unsettled Chris. Then she moved into the potential Double-flatted Mixolydian Trio.
"You're Valiha," Cirocco said. The Titanide made an odd curtsy in reply. "I knew your hindmother well." She was walking around Valiha, rubbing her hand along the smooth mottled flanks. She nodded to Hichiriki and Cymbal, bent to squeeze Valiha's right-hind fetlock, then resumed her smoothing motions. She came around front again, reached up and stroked Valiha's cheek. She knelt and rubbed the Titanide's foreleg with both hands, then turned her head and spoke to Chris.
"You've fallen into good company," she said. "Valiha's an Aeolian Solo. I believe it's the only one I've ever granted for this particular Madrigal-Samba mix. In another two or three hundred kilorevs her descendants might form a chord of their own. What she's proposing here is well thought out, though. It's a consolidation instead of the rather daring Locrilydian Duet she proposed last Carnival. But she's only ... oh, make it five Earth years old, and the young want to do it all themselves, don't they, Valiha?"
A tinge of pink colored the Titanide's yellow cheeks as the Wizard stood up. She looked away and blushed deeper when Cirocco laughed and patted her hip.
"I expected you to be singing an Aeolian Solo this time," Cirocco teased. She glanced at Chris, who felt uncomfortable with the exchange. It all had too much of the aspect of a horse show for his taste. He expected her to peel back the Titanide's lips and look at her teeth.
"Singing an Aeolian Solo is a Titanide euphemism for conceit," Cirocco explained. "A Titanide female can effectively clone herself, being all four parents to her offspring by using frontal and hind self-insemination. But I don't let 'em do it too damn often." She put her hands on her hips, then reached up again and brushed the back of her hand down the Titanide's chest. "Are these breasts ready for this great responsibility, my child?"
"They are, Captain."
"You've chosen well in the foreparents, Valiha. Your hindmother would have been proud." She turned and picked up the egg from its glass pedestal. It grew very quiet as the Wizard held the sphere up to the light, then brought it to her lips. She kissed it, opened her mouth, and carefully put it in. When she took it out, it was already changing color, to become as clear as glass in a few seconds. Now Valiha was the only one moving, and what she did was to set her hind legs apart, lift her tail, and lean her torso forward. Her pink hair fell over her face, and she waited. Chris had a momentary return of memory: being present while two Titanides engaged in anterior intercourse-something they did often and with great relish during Carnival. This was the female position, ready to be mounted by the Titanide taking the male role. The Wizard walked around behind Valiha, who quivered in anticipation.
Chris looked away, wincing. Her arm had gone in past the elbow. When it came out, the egg was no longer in her hand.
"Queasy?" The Wizard had a towel, which she used to dry her arm and then tossed to a waiting aide. "Ranchers do that sort of thing all the time."
"Yes, but these are ... well, they're people. It just struck me as undignified. Maybe I shouldn't say that."
Cirocco shrugged. "Say what you please. This is what they know. They think our marriage customs are pretty dull, and maybe they've got a point." She narrowed her eyes at him. "Say, are you and Valiha shooting marbles?"
"I don't know what you mean." As he said it, he had the uncomfortable feeling that maybe he did know what she meant.