"Do you? You presume too much. Since you won't answer my question, I will tell you that you, too, are cured. Now, how do you know if I based my decision on your exploit in saving Gaby's life in Phoebe or your decision to endure boredom to stay at Valiha's side?"
"You-" Robin could see the anger boiling in Chris and see it contained. She was sure he had checked himself because of the same realization that had suddenly frightened her at the mention of Gaby's name: how much did Gaea know?
"I don't want to be cured," Chris was saying. "I'm not going back to Earth, and my problems don't matter so much here. And I don't want to accept a cure from you."
"Because you despise me," Gaea said, looking away with a bored expression. "You said that. Granted, you can't hurt the Titanides, but what about the humans who live here? Who will look out for them?"
"I'm not going to be around them. Besides, I've improved on my own. Since I got back to Titantown, my episodes have been more uniform and not nearly so violent. Listen, I ... I'll admit it. I'm not too proud to accept something from you. I shouldn't have said I was. I had it in my mind that if you did offer to cure me, I would propose that you do something else instead. I mean, you said I had earned the cure, whether I think I did or not. I thought you might consider the idea that you owed me something."
Gaea was smiling now, and Robin's face burned with sympathy for what she knew must be humiliating for Chris.
"We had a verbal contract," Gaea said. "Quite specific. I admit I had all the better of it, I dictated all the terms, and they were non-negotiable, but I do run this place, don't forget. But I'm dying to hear what you thought I might agree to." She adopted an exaggerated listening posture and blinked several times at him.
"You did it for Cirocco and for Gaby," he said quietly, not looking at her. "If you're waiting for me to beg, I'm not going to."
"Not at all," Gaea said. "I knew you wouldn't-I have some idea what this is costing you after all the high-flown prose-and I'd have been appalled if you did. I've never been that far wrong about even a human. I'm merely waiting for you to spell it out. Be specific. What do you want?"
"The ability to sing."
Gaea's laugh rang in the empty darkness of the hub. It went on and on. Soon all the regulars at her heavenly film festival were laughing, too, on the well-known principle that what's funny to the boss is funny. Robin watched Chris, thinking he would surely attack the obscene little potato-faced pustule, but he somehow managed to hold it in. Gradually the laughter died away, Gaea's first, then everyone else's.
She cocked her head and appeared to be thinking about it.
"No. No to both requests. I will not uncure you, and I will not teach you to sing. You should have read the fine print and known your own desires before you came here. I am enforcing the letter of the contract. This may seem harsh, but you will find that things are not so bad as you think. When I cured you, there was some blending of your various personalities. You'll find yourself a little more in touch with the violent tendencies that so turned on your Titanide bitch. That, combined with a little more skilled use of your penis, ought to keep the animal quite tame and loyal for at least-"
Chris was on her by then. Robin moved in to help but had to deal with the swarms of Gaea's guests, who-while not the strongest collection of backbones Robin had ever seen-were unanimously eager to shine in Gaea's eyes if all it cost them was a broken nose. Robin handed out several. Not many of them would be getting up soon, but before long they overwhelmed her and pinned her to the ground. She saw that Chris was down, too, and Gaea was being shown back to her chair.
"Let them up," she said, sitting. There was blood dripping from her mouth, and she grinned in spite of it. Perhaps because of it; Robin could not know. Robin got up and stood beside Chris. She had cut her hand and raised it to her mouth to suck on it.
"See what I mean?" Gaea said, as if nothing had happened. "The man who came here so long ago would not have done that. And I like it, though you really went too far, you know. But I will make a deal with you. I don't think you will stay with me very long. I know more of these matters than you do, I know something of Titanide love and how it differs from the human variety. Your friend will soon begin to open her fine legs for others-please, there's no need to go through that again." She waited until he seemed calmer. "Your reaction tends to prove my point. I won't deny she loves you, but she will love others. You will not handle it well. You will leave in great bitterness."
"Will you bet on that?"
"That's the deal. Come back in ... oh, say, five myriarevs. No, I'll be generous. Make it four. That's about four and a half years. If you still want to be uncured and if you still want to sing, I'll do both things for you. Do we have a deal?"
"We do. I'll be back."
Robin was never sure if he said more. It had finally penetrated to her conscious mind what part of her hand she was sucking on. She looked at it, stared in growing horror, screamed, and leaped. Once again Gaea went tumbling from her chair, and Robin's memory of what happened next blurred until she found herself sitting on the floor with pain in her little finger, the one that should not have been there. She was biting it, and Chris was trying to pull it from her mouth. He needn't have bothered. She released it and looked dumbly at the toothmarks.
"I can't do it," she said.
"You never could," Gaea reminded her. "You cut it off with a knife, remember? The story about biting was public relations. You were good at that back then; to enhance your image, you could have disemboweled yourself. I'm afraid you were a pain in the ass that only a mother could love." She was wheezing slightly. "As you are now. Really, children, this must stop. Twice in one day? Must I endure assault and battery? What God would put up with it, I ask you?"
Robin no longer cared what Gaea said. The sad fact, the one she must now face as she had faced so many others, was that Gaea was at least partly right. She was no longer Robin the Nine-fingered.
"Don't bother to say good-bye. Just leave," Gaea said.
Chris helped Robin up, and all the way back to the elevator which she knew might drop her through the Rhea Spoke Robin wondered if the tattoo on her belly was intact, and knew she would not look for as long as possible.
42 Battle of the Winds
Cirocco sat on a flat rocky outcropping above the Place of Winds, the last western march of the mesalike formation that made the cable known as Cirocco's Stairs look so much like a hand gripping the soil of East Hyperion. Below her the strand fingers splayed over the ground, knotted knuckles blasted smooth by millions of years of ceaseless wind. Between the strands, where the webs between fingers would be, elliptical chasms yawned to gulp air, feeding it to interstitial ducts in the cable, lifting it to spill in the distant hub and fall through the spokes in the grand cycle of replenishment that was the essence of Gaea's life. The ground was barren, yet the larger life that lay beneath it and around it and in some ways penetrated it to the uttermost molecule vibrated Cirocco's bones.
Gaea was so God-awful big, and it was so easy to despair.
It was possible that in all of Gaea's history, there had been only one who had dared defy her. Cirocco, the great Wizard, had pretended to, had put on airs as though she really could speak to Gaea as an equal, but only she herself knew just how empty that had been. Only she could count the loathsome list of her own crimes. At first it had been necessary for Gaea to stamp the ground quite close to the Wizard to bring her properly to heel. As time went by, she did not even have to lift her foot; Cirocco would wriggle under like a worm and feel any pressure as only right and good. That her course had been wise was now obvious. The one who had dared to stand defiant was now dead, her corpse consumed by the angry ground which was the body of Gaea. It was a powerful object lesson. There could be no doubt that Gaby had been a fool. Her rebellion, pitifully small and tentative as it had been, was gone with her life. No sooner had she taken the first steps than all of Gaea's might had come down on her. Gaea had killed Gaby with about as much concern as a sleeping elephant rolling over on a flea.