"You tell me how those seeds work if it isn't electronically. Would you prefer mental telepathy?"
"Magic might be easier to swallow."
"Call it magic, then. I think there's crystals and circuits in those seeds. And if you can grow an organic radio, why not radar?"
"Maybe radio. Only because I've seen it with my own eyes, not because I want to have anything to do with it. But not radar."
The Titanide radar installation was under a tent in the front of the ambulance. it would have baffled Rube Goldberg. There were nuts and leaves attached to a pot of soil with thick copper- vines leading into it. Lullaby said the soil contained a worm which generated "essence of power." There was a rack of radio seeds connected with snarls of needle-tipped vines, apparently inserted with some precision since each seed had a tight cluster of oozing pinpricks around the spot where contact had finally been made. There were other things, all of a vegetable nature, including a leaf that glowed when struck by a beam of light from yet another plant.
"It's easy to read," Lullaby sang, cheerfully. "This dot of false fire represents the sky giant you see over there, toward Rhea."
She indicated a spot on the screen with her finger. "See how it loses life... there! Now it shines brightly, but shifted."
Cirocco began a translation, but Gaby interrupted her.
"I know how radar works," she grumbled. "The whole set-up offends me."
"We have little need of it now," Clarino assured them. "This is not the season for angels. They come when Gaea breathes from the cast, and torment us until she sucks them back to her breast."
Cirocco wondered if she heard that right; did she sing "sucks them at her breast"? She didn't pursue it because Bill groaned and opened his eyes.
"Hello," Lullaby sang. "So glad you could come back."
Bill yelped, then screamed when he put pressure on his leg. Cirocco put herself between Bill and Lullaby. He saw her, and sighed in relief
"Very bad dream, Rocky," he said.
She rubbed his forehead. "It wasn't all a dream, probably." "Huh? Oh, you mean the centaurs. No, I remember when the
white one was rocking me and singing." "Well, how are you feeling, then?"
'Weak. My leg doesn't hurt so bad. Is that a good sign, or is it dead?"
"I think you're getting better."
"What about ... uh, you know. Gangrene." He looked away from her.
"I don't think so. It looked a lot better after the healer treated you. "
"Healer? The centaur?"
"It was all there was left to do," Cirocco said, doubts overwhelming her again. "Calvin hasn't arrived. I watched her, and she seemed to know what she was doing."
She thought he had gone back to sleep. After a long time his eyes opened and he smiled faintly.
"It's not a decision I'd have wanted to make."
"It was terrible, Bill. She said you were dying, and I believed her. it was either do nothing until Calvin got here-and I don't know what he could do without any medicine-and she said she could kill the germs, which made sense because-"
He touched her knee. His hand was cold, but steady.
"You did the right thing," he said. "Watch me. I'm going to be walking in another week." -
It was late afternoon-always, monotonously, late after- noon-and someone was shaking her shoulder. She blinked rapidly.
"Your friends have arrived," Foxtrot sang.
"It was the sky giant we saw earlier," Lullaby added. "They were aboard all the time."
"Friends?"
"Yes, your healer, and two others."
"Two..." She got to her feet. "Those others. Do you have news of them? One is known to me. Is the second like her, or male, like my friend Bill?"
The healer frowned. "Your pronouns confuse me. I frankly do not know which of you is male and which female, since you hide behind strips of cloth."
"Bill's male, me and Gaby are female. I'll explain it to you later, but which one is on the sky giant? "
Lullaby shrugged. "The giant did not say. He is as bemused as I. "
Whistlestop hovered over the column of Titanides and the wagon, which had halted to wait for the drop. A chute blossomed with a tiny black figure on the end of it. Calvin, no doubt about it.
While he drifted down another chute appeared, and Cirocco strained to see who it might be. The figure looked too big, somehow. Then a third chute opened, and a fourth.
There were a dozen parachutes in the air before she spotted Gene. The rest, incredibly, were Titanides.
"Hey, it's Gene!" Gaby yelled. She was standing a short distance away with Foxtrot and Clarino. Cirocco had stayed with the wagon. "I wonder if April is-"
"Angels! Angels attacking! Form up!"
The voice was a screech.. a Titanide voice that had lost all its music, choked with hate. Cirocco was dumbfounded to see Lullaby hunched over the radar set, shouting orders. Her face was contorted, all thought of Bill forgotten.
'What's going on?" she began, then ducked as Lullaby vaulted over her.
"Get down, two-legs! Stay out of this."
sirocco looked up, and the sky was filled with wings.
They were dropping around the sides of the blimp, wings tucked to gain speed, attacking the falling Titanides who hung helplessly from their shrouds. There were dozens of them.
She was thrown to the floor of the wagon when it jerked for- ward to the sound of snapping harness leather. She just missed falling out the open tailgate, struggled to her hands and knees in time to see Gaby leap and catch the sides of the wagon with her hands. Cirocco helped her in.
"What the hell's going m?" Gaby held a bronze sword Cirocco had not seen before.
"Watch out! ", Bill was tossed from his bed. Cirocco crawled to him and tried to get him back in, but the wagon kept crashing over rocks and crevices.
"Stop this thing, goddarnn it!" Cirocco yelled, then sang it in Titanide. It made no difference. The two hitched in front were heading for the battle and nothing would stop them. One held a sword which she brandished above her, shrieking like a demon.
Cirocco slapped one of them on the rump and almost lost her scalp as the sword flashed at her. Keeping her head low, she looked down at the knots hitching the Titanides to the wagon.
"Gaby, give me that thing, quick." The sword came through the air hilt-first and landed at her feet. She backed at the leather harnesses. One came free, then the other.
The Titanides did not notice the loss. They quickly outdistanced the wagon, which then slammed to a halt against a boulder.
"What was that all-"
"I don't know. All anyone told me is to stay low. Give me a hand with Bill, will you?"
He was awake, and did not seem to be hurt. He watched the sky as they put him back on the pallet.
"Holy Christ!" he said, just loud enough to be, heard over the
screech of the Titanides. "They're getting murdered up there." Cirocco looked up in time to see one of the flying creatures
slash three parachute shrouds above one of the descending Titanides. The chute folded. With sickening speed the Titanide vanished behind a low hill to the west.
"Those are angels?" Bill wondered. To Titanides, they were angels of death. Human in shape, with feathered wings that measured seven meters from tip to tip, the angels turned the peaceful air over Hyperion into a slaughterhouse. All the parachutes were soon cleared from the sky.
The battle went on behind the hill, out of their sight. Titanides screeched like %emails on a blackboard, and high above was an eerie wall that had to he the angels.
"Behind you," Gaby warned. Cirocco turned quickly.
An angel approached silently from the east. It skimmed the ground, great wings motionless, growing larger with impossible speed. She saw the sword in its left hand, the human face twisted with bloodlust, tears streaking from the corners of the eyes, the muscles knotting in the arm as it brought the sword back...