"But after it was gone, there was nothing left for the guardians to do. Gaea didn't program them to die, so they eat a little and get a little older. But waiting to die is what they're doing."
"So it was all just for a challenge?" Robin asked. "It wasn't even here before she started daring people to ... to go out and prove themselves..." She was unable to finish the thought. It brought back her anger in full force.
"That's it. Something she didn't tell you, though, is that Gaea is rotten with places like this. I'm sure she fed you the whole spiel about a hundred and one dragons and jewels as big as blimp turds. The thing is, this place has been scoured by pilgrims for fifty years, all of them looking for some stupid thing to do. A lot of them have died trying it, but the thing about humans is if enough of them keep coming, they'll eventually do just about anything. The dragons have had the worst of it. There's not many left, and there's plenty of humans. Gaea can whomp up another dragon anytime she feels like it, but she's way behind. She's getting old and can't keep up anymore. Things break down and don't get repaired for a long time, if ever. I doubt there's a dozen dragons left, or two dozen unplundered monuments."
"There's a quest shortage," Valiha said, and couldn't understand why Robin laughed so hard.
Chris was subdued on the way back. Robin knew he had visions of doing something worthy of tales, even if he was not aware of it. He was, after all, a man and trapped in peckish toy-soldier games. Robin could not have cared less if there were no more dragons.
The second incident was more interesting, however. It happened after their second sleep period. Gaby, who had not slept the first time, awoke and came out of her tent to find huge tracks in the sand. She howled for the Titanides, who came from the raft at a gallop. By the time they arrived Chris and Robin were awake, too. "Where the hell were you?" Gaby wanted to know, pointing at a meter-long footprint.
"We've been down working on Constance," Hornpipe said. "Hautbois discovered the waves had damaged one end and-"
"But what about this? You were supposed to be-"
"Now wait a minute," Hornpipe said hotly. "You told me yourself there was nothing to worry about here. Nothing from the land and nothing-"
"Okay, okay, I'm sorry. Let's don't argue." Robin was not surprised Gaby had backed down so quickly. Titanides got angry so seldom that there was something sobering about it when one did. "Let's take a closer look at this."
They proceeded to do that, examining one track in detail and following the whole series to see where the creature had come from and where it had gone. The results were frightening. The tracks appeared at one edge of the cove, went straight to the camp, made a circle around Gaby's tent, then vanished again at the edge of the water.
"What do you think it was?" Valiha asked Gaby, who was down on one knee, studying a track by the light of her lantern.
"I sure as hell wish I knew. It looks like the claw of a bird. There are birds that big in Phoebe, but they can't fly or swim, so what would they be doing here? Maybe Gaea's whipped up something new again. Damn if it doesn't look like a giant chicken."
"I don't think I'd like to meet it," Robin said.
"Me either." Gaby straightened, still frowning. "Don't anybody disturb this one. Rocky should see it when she gets back. Maybe she'll know what it is."
Cirocco returned eight revs later. She looked tired and hungry, yet more confident than when she had gone in. Robin noticed that she smiled more easily. Whatever had happened in there, it had gone better than expected.
Robin wanted to say something, but all she could think of were questions like "How did it go?" or "What did you do?" Gaby had warned her away from that. For the time being she would let it go.
"Maybe you were right, Gaby," Cirocco said as they headed toward camp. "I sure as hell didn't want to-"
"Later, Rocky. We've got something you ought to look at."
She was taken to the site of the mysterious track. It was not as distinct as it had been, but still legible. She knelt in the lantern light, and one by one, deep lines etched themselves in her forehead. She seemed offended by the whole idea of this creature.
"You've got me," she said at last. "It's nothing I've ever seen, and I've been around and around this goddamn wheel." She sang something in Titanide. Robin looked at Hautbois, who frowned.
"Freely translated, she said, 'Gaea likes her jokes as well as the next deity.' This is well known, of course."
"Giant chicken?" Cirocco said incredulously.
Robin could not stand it anymore.
"Excuse me, I'm not feeling good," she said, and hurried into the darkness. When she reached the water's edge, she climbed down into a ravine like the one near the raft mooring. Once safely out of view she began to laugh. She made as little noise as possible, but she laughed until her sides hurt, until the tears rolled down her cheeks. She did not think she could laugh any harder; then she heard Gaby yell.
"Hey, Rocky, come here! We found a feather!"
Robin laughed harder.
When she finally had herself under control, she reached into a crack between round growths of coral and pulled out two contraptions made of sticks, bits of driftwood, and shells. They had ropes to tie around her legs and places to rest her feet.
"Gaby and Cirocco," she said. "The great Gaean wildlife experts." She kissed one of the devices, then tossed it far out over the water.
"You'd better hurry. Gaby will be coming to see how you are." She looked up and saw Hautbois. She waved the remaining stilt at her and sent it after the first.
"Thanks for the diversion."
"You're welcome," Hautbois said. "I think Valiha is suspicious, but she won't say anything." He grinned broadly. "I think I'm going to enjoy this trip. But no more fooling with the salt, okay?"
23 Tempest and Tranquil
A stiff breeze from the west propelled Constance on her wallowing way from the isle of Minerva. That was good news to Gaby. Looking up, she could see that the lower valve had closed. She knew from bitter experience that meant the spoke above was going through its regular winter. The trees and everything else would be coated in a layer of ice. After the thaw began, all that water and a respectable tonnage of broken branches would pool at the valve. When it opened, Rhea would not be a healthy environment. In fifty revs Nox would rise two meters or more.
No one asked where Cirocco had been. Gaby suspected they would have been surprised to learn the answer, and that included the Titanides.
Cirocco had been to an audience with Rhea, the satellite brain who dominated the land for a hundred kilometers in every direction. She was subject to no higher authority but Gaea herself. She was also quite mad.
The only way to visit the regional brains was through the central vertical cables. All of them lived down there, at the bottom of five-kilometer spiral stairways. Not even the Titanides were aware of this. Their knowledge of the twelve demi-Gods was limited; Gaea, when she made Titanides-complete with a culture and racial wisdom-had seen no reason why they should bother their heads about the regionals. They were Gaea's appendages and no more, the quasi-intelligent servomechanisms that kept things running smoothly in their own limited domains. For the Titanides to think of them as even so much as subordinate Gods would detract from their capacity to appreciate Gaea. Obediently the Titanides thought no more about the big clumps of neural matter than did the most ignorant tourist. Hyperion was a place, not a person, to them.