"Fifteen, Captain," came the voice over the radio. Cirocco turned to Chris.
"Does that sound right?"
"No. I'm sure I had a rack of sixteen in that room. It was full."
"Conal," Cirocco said, "what can you tell me about the rack of Titanide eggs you let Adam play with?"
"It was the standard keepsake rack, Captain. Two rows, eight above and eight below. It was full." Cirocco hit the keypad again.
"Rocky, it seems-"
"I've found the rack, Captain," Rocky said. "It held sixteen. I've been searching diligently, according to your orders."
"Rocky, so help me, if you-"
"Captain, permit me to interrupt before you say something that might insult me. I have the fifteen eggs here before me. I have not waited to find them all before destroying them. To be exact, I have split them in half, so you may count the pieces upon your return-as I anticipated the embarrassing situation which seems to have arisen. Now, I may still find the missing egg, or it could be that Adam was holding it when he was taken. But if it is not found, it would be rather incriminating if I were shortly to be pregnant, wouldn't you think?"
"I'm sorry, Rocky," Cirocco said. "It's just that I've seen the lengths a desperate Titanide will go to if-"
"No offense taken, Captain."
"Jesus." Conal's voice was awed. "I didn't see that, Cirocco."
"What are you talking about?" Robin asked.
"It's Adam," Cirocco said. "Suddenly he's more than just personally important to all of us."
"He's capable of fertilizing Titanide eggs," Chris told Robin. "The ones he chewed on turned transparent-they're activated."
"Yes," Cirocco said. "He can do the thing that only I could do for almost a century. So we have to get him back. We can't let Gaea have him, because if she has him the Titanides become her slaves. And if we can keep him free..." She looked up, out the windshield into nothing, and seemed surprised. "... then I can die."
"Settle down, settle down," Conal said. "She didn't mean it like that."
"How the hell else could she mean it?" Nova demanded.
"She didn't say she was going to kill herself, did she?" He let her think about that for a while. The truth was, Cirocco's words had rocked him, too, but he had soon been able to understand the meaning behind them.
"Then what did she mean? Explain it to me."
"First you have to understand what Gaea did to her," Conal said. "It was a long time ago, back when Cirocco and the rest of the original crew had just got here. Gaea offered her the job of Wizard. She took it. Part of it-and Gaea didn't mention this-was that the race of Titanides was changed. Gaea took out the built-in hatred of angels and stopped the war that had been going on for so long. She also changed them so ... do you know how Titanides reproduce?"
"Only vaguely."
"Okay. They have frontal intercourse first. The female produces a semi-fertilized egg. You saw some of them in Adam's room. They have to be implanted in a rear vagina and fertilized again by a rear penis."
Nova's lips thinned, but she nodded.
"The step I left out is Cirocco. The egg will never be fully fertilized unless it's activated by Cirocco's saliva. Gaea planned it that way. They used to have big festivals, where Cirocco would pick who could have a baby. Population control. Cirocco got so tired of playing God to the Titanides that she became an alcoholic. But she couldn't get away from it, even these days, when Gaea's agents are after her all the time."
Conal saw compassion in Nova's eyes, and it touched him.
"It must be very hard," Nova said.
"Extremely. And in some ways you might not think of. Gaea has never given any sign that Cirocco would ever be let off the hook. What I mean is, if Cirocco died, then the Titanides would die, too. Her own survival had to take first place over everything. It meant that she had to do some things she wasn't proud of. Like with me, she had to... " He stopped himself just in time, and swallowed a bitter taste. There were some things Nova wasn't entitled to know.
"I know of two times in the last seven years when she has had to let a Titanide friend of hers go into a sticky situation where Cirocco knew he couldn't survive, because she couldn't risk her own life. One of those times... I know she feels she betrayed him. One day she might have to betray me so she can survive. I know that, and I accept it.
"That's not an easy way to live. You become the ultimate survivor, but you can't take any pride in it, because you know the lengths you'll go to. It doesn't leave much room for honor. And Cirocco laughs at honor, but I know it's important to her-not the way somebody else defines it, but the way she does."
Nova was giving him an entirely new look. It made him uncomfortable. None of the things he had said had come easy to him. It had taken him a long, painful time to work them out.
"What I'm trying to say," Conal went on, diffidently, "is that Cirocco would like the pressure to end. She'd like to go back to having only herself to worry about. And she'd still be a survivor, she'd still be awful tough to kill, but her death would just be ... her death. What happens to us all."
"Yes," Nova said, still with that odd look. "I see that."
SIXTEEN
Robin watched through the binoculars as the first hand-off was made. She kept her hand on the door latch, ready to leap.
The second angel had been on their screens for half an hour, making its way up from the darkness of Cronus. In the last few minutes they had found it visually, then it had been swallowed up in the deeper darkness above. She could barely make out the two shapes at top magnification as she listened to Conal describe what was happening.
"The second angel is about fifty meters behind. He's coming up now ... getting closer. The first one is turning over. He's handing the baby over ... okay, the second one's got him. He's holding him the same way the first one did. Adam's awake. He's ... uh, he's crying."
Robin swallowed hard. She heard a sound from Chris, but did not look back.
"The first one's dropping back now. He's ... Jesus!"
"What?" Cirocco rapped out. "Report, Conal!"
"He, uh ... the first angel just came apart. I mean, he goddamn well exploded. We just flew through his feathers. His bones and the deathsnakes are falling... . I can't see them anymore. If you're in the right spot to catch Adam, you ought to be flying through them in a minute."
They all waited. Robin watched the diffuse cloud that had been the angel growing. Soon she had to put the binoculars down, and could watch it with her unaided eyes. There was a patter, like hail. A limp deathsnake draped itself over the left wing for a moment, then was swept away.
"That's the trick, then," Cirocco said. "The angels aren't going to land at all. If we shoot the next relay, the one that's got Adam will just fly until it dies."
"But it wasn't alive to begin with ... " Chris began.
"Don't be silly, Chris. A zombie is as alive as you or me. It is a group organism, a hive mentality that invades a corpse and lives in it. The deathsnakes slowly eat the dead flesh, and whatever else they can find. There's nothing supernatural about it."
"You don't think this one ... just decided to die? I mean, all the deathsnakes went at once. Is that likely?"
Robin watched Cirocco think it over.
"You don't understand zombies. First, they have no instinct for survival as individuals, or as hives. They don't feel pain. I don't believe they are intelligent, but they can follow orders. Whoever is directing these probably gave them the general objective-which was to get the child, unharmed-and some specific tactics, and they pulled it off."
"This whole thing has the look of calculation to me," Robin said.