[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

"It's clear that something toyed with us while we were asleep. Somebody gav e
me the languages don't know how or why- and that somebody gave me somethi ng
else. It's a feeling that the purpose behind the gift was not evil. And
the more I talk to the Titanides, the more I like them."
"Calvin said pretty much the same things about the goddam blimps," Gaby sa id,
darkly. "You nearly arrested him."
"I think I understand him a little better now."
The Titanide healer-a female whose name was also in the key of B Flat---en
tered their tent and spent some time examining Bill's leg under Cirocco's
watchful eye. The edges of the wound were yellow and blue-black. Fluid bub
bled out when the healer pressed around it.
The healer was aware of Cirocco's concern. She twisted her human torso and
rummaged in a leather satchel held to her equine back by a cinch strap, cam e
up with a clear round flask filled with brown fluid.
"A strong disinfectant," she sang, and waited. "What is his condition, healer?
', "Very grave. Without treatment, he will be with Gaea in a few tens of
revolu tions." Cirocco translated it that way at first, but there had been one
word used for the time period. Applying metric prefixes, she thought of it as
a decarev. One revolution of Gaea took nearly one hour.
The meaning of "be with Gaea" was clear, though she did not use the word Ga
ea. She referred at once to her world, to the Goddess who was the world, an d
to the concept of returning to the soil. There was no connotation of immo
rtality.
"Perhaps you would prefer to await the arrival of a healer of your own kind,"
the Titanide sang.
"Bill may never see him." "This is so. My remedies should remove the infesta
tions of small parasites. I don't know if they will inhibit the workings of
his metabolism. I could not promise you, for instance, that my treatment wou
ld not harm the pump which propels his vital fluids, as I don't know where t
his pump is located in your kind."
"It's right here," Cirocco sang, thumping her chest. The Titanide's ears jump
ed up and down. She pressed one car to Bill's chest.
"No fooling" she sang. "Well, Gaea is wise, and says not why she spins."
Cirocco was in an agony of indecision. The concepts of metabolism and of germs
were not things a witch doctor would know about. Those words had tr anslated
exactly that way. Yet even the healer was aware that her medicin e might harm
a human body.
Page 74
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
But Calvin was gone, and Bill was dying. "Pray, what are these used for?" the
healer sang. She was holding Bill's foot. Her fingers gently bent the toes.
"Uh, they're ... " she groped, but could not find the words for atrophied evo
lutionary vestiges. There was a word for evolution, but not as applied to liv
ing things. "They're useful in keeping one's balance, but not indispensable.
They are oversights, or imperfections of design."
"Ah, " the healer crooned. "Gaea makes mistakes, it is well known. Take, fo r
instance, the one with whom I was first hind- sexed, many myriarevs ago."
Cirocco wanted to translate the object of the last sentence as "my husband
," but that didn't fit, it could as easily have been "my wife," though that
was off the mark, too. There was not an English equivalent, she realized, then
remembered her problem.
"Do what you can for my friend," she sang. "I commend him into your hands
."
The healer nodded, and got to work. She first bathed the wound with the brown
liquid. She packed it with a yellow jelly and put a large leaf next to the s
kin, "to lure out the small eaters of his flesh." Cirocco's hopes rose and fe
ll as she watched. She didn't care for the leaf, nor for the reference to lur
ing. It looked too primitive. But when the healer dressed the wound, she used
bandages taken from sealed packets that she said had been "cleansed of paras
ites."
As she worked, she examined Bill's body with great interest, sometimes humm
ing a little ditty of astonishment.
"Now who would have thought of that . . . ? ... a muscle here? Attac
hed so? Like walking on broken feet ... no, I don't believe it." She de
scribed Gaea variously as wise, endlessly inventive, needlessly elaborate, and
a silly fool. She also observed that Gaea enjoyed the occasional joke as well
as the next deity- this while staring in astonishment at Bill's buttocks.
Cirocco was covered in sweat when the healer was through. At least she had not
produced rattles or voodoo dolls, nor drawn magical marks in the sand.
When she had tied the last knot in the bandages, she began to sing a song o f
healing. Cirocco couldn't see that it would hurt anything.
The healer bent over Bill and put her arms around and under him, lifted him
gently from the waist and held him close to her body. She placed his head on
her shoulder and bent her own head down until her lips were close to his ear.
She rocked back and forth, crooning a lullaby without words.
Bill gradually stopped shivering. Color began to return to his face, which b
ecame more peaceful than it had been since the injury.
In a few minutes, Cirocco would have sworn he was smiling.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Cirocco found she had some Preconceptions that had to be discarded.
The first was the most obvious. When B Flat arrived and looked much like C
Sharp except for his sexual organs, she- had assumed Titanides were going t o
be hard to tell apart.
The group that showed up in response to C Sharp's call looked like escapee s
from a merry-go-round.
The healer had emerald green head and tail hair. The rest of her body was co
vered in thick, snow-white fur. There was another hairy one.. a strawberry b
londe with a dappling of violet. There was a brown and white pinto, and one
without any hair at all except on his tail. His skin was pale blue.
The last of the group looked naked but was not; she had the pelt of a horse
Page 75
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
not only on the part of her where it would have looked reasonable, but on he r
human upper-half, too. She was zebra-striped in bright yellow and searing [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]