He went back to the stove, still chuckling, and broke ten greenish eggs into the bacon grease.

What we want is a story that starts with an earthquake and works its way up to a climax.

-Sam Goldwyn

ONE

Soon after Cirocco's arrival at the treehouse, a party of seven-three Titanides and four humans-crested the last hill to look down at the bend of the river Briareus. They saw the great rock, the great tree, and Chris's treehouse sprawled in it.

In the time it had taken the party to travel the two hundred kilometers from Bellinzona to Briareus, Cirocco had run almost halfway around Gaea's rim.

They could have moved faster. One of their number refused to ride a Titanide, so the whole group had slowed rather than leave her behind. Several of the other six had noted how little the seventh seemed to appreciate this fact.

After a short pause during which the Titanides sang praises of the magnificent view and composed a few songs of arrival, the group moved down the faint trail to the river.

Conal was in love again.

Not that he was unfaithful to Cirocco. He still loved her, and always would. But this was a different kind of love.

And not that this one was going to be his lover, since she hated him totally. Still, love was love, and it didn't cost anything to hope. And she hated everybody. He couldn't believe anyone could hate everybody forever. Maybe when she got over it she'd notice what a fine fellow Conal Ray was.

Conal was not exactly thinking these things as they began the final leg of their journey to Briareus, though they were going through his mind. He was in a pleasant state between sleep and waking, stretched out on the broad back of Rocky the Titanide. He had spent most of the trip asleep. Working for the Captain, who might go a full hectorev without sleep and who never seemed to tire, he had learned the value of getting all the sleep he could get. His was an infantryman's philosophy: plenty of sacktime in a dry bed, a full belly, and he was content with life.

He only woke up when the women had one of their high-voltage, shrieking arguments. At first he had feared they would come to blows, in which case one of them would surely die. But they always stopped short. He finally decided they always would, and was able to enjoy the shouting matches for the great theater they were. The curses those women knew! It broadened his vocabulary, and deepened his love.

Conal turned on his side and went deeper into sleep. Though the path was steep and rocky, the ride was smooth as a gurney rolling on linoleum. It had been said that Titanides were the most comfortable mode of travel ever discovered.

Titanides did not exactly appreciate being considered a mode of travel, but neither did they resent it. They carried only those they wished to carry. Very few humans had taken a ride on a Titanide.

Phase-Shifter (Double Sharped Lydian Trio) Rock'n'Roll didn't mind carrying Conal. Since the day of his operation on Cirocco Jones, almost five myriarevs ago, he and Conal had been the closest of friends. Sometimes that happened between a Titanide and a human. Rocky knew of Chris and Valiha, who had loved each other for twenty years, and of Cirocco Jones and Hornpipe, who were sometime lovers and also grandmother and grandson-though it was not that simple a relationship, as no Titanide family tree is ever simple. He had heard of the great love Gaby Plauget had had for Psaltery (Sharped Lydian Trio) Fanfare.

Rocky had never made physical love to Conal, did not expect to, knew Conal would be shocked to know Rocky would like to. And it was not quite what humans think of as love. Chris Major had learned that about Valiha and it had hurt him. Nor was it the love one Titanide could feel for another. It was something else. It was something any Titanide could see. All at once, and with no good excuse, everyone knew this or that human was so-and-so's human, though they had the taste not to put it in those words. Rocky knew Conal was his human, for better or worse.

He wondered if Conal thought of him as "his" Titanide.

Behind Conal and Rocky rode Robin and Valiha.

Robin was emotionally exhausted. She was not looking forward to meeting Chris again after all these years.

He had stayed in Gaea, she had returned... but not gone home. She no longer had a home. She had risen as high as one could go in the Coven, had been for a time the Black Madonna, head of the Council.

She had won every honor her society could bestow, at an age younger than any before her.

She had been, and still was, miserably unhappy. It had been a tough twenty years. She wondered what it had been like for Chris.

"Valiha, do you know if ... "

The Titanide turned her head around. Robin wished she wouldn't do that. Titanides were frighteningly supple.

"Yes? What is it?"

Robin had forgotten what she wanted to ask. She shook her head, and Valiha returned her attention to the path. She looked exactly as Robin remembered her. What had she been? Five? That would make her twenty-five now. Titanides didn't change much from their third year, when they were mature, to somewhere around their fiftieth, when they began showing signs of age.

She had forgotten so many things. The timelessness of Gaea, for instance. They had been traveling a long time but she had no idea how long. They had camped twice and she had been so tired that she had slept better than she had in years. It had been long enough for her nose to heal, and for the wound in her shoulder to improve.

A long time, as only Gaean time could be.

How had it been for Chris?

Valiha (Aeolian Solo) Madrigal was worried about Robin.

It seemed such a very short time since the young witch had boarded the ship for her return to the Coven. Valiha, Robin, Chris, and Serpent had gone for a picnic. The Wizard was not there, but her presence was felt, just like the other unseen presences: Psaltery, Hautbois, and Gaby.

Then Robin had left them.

Now she was thirty-nine Earth years old, and looked forty-nine. She had this insufferably marvelous mad child who burned all the time. The child was more Robinish than Robin was. And there was this ... embryo.

Valiha knew about human infants, had seen thousands of them. But she never lost her sense that something was wrong.

She peeled back the blanket and looked at it. So small it hardly seemed to fill her palm, the infant looked back with pale blue eyes and grinned. It only had a couple of teeth. It waved a tiny hand at her.

"Mama!" it said, then gurgled happily.

That was about the limits of its powers of speech. It was learning to walk and talk. Within a few years it would master other skills. This was a stage Titanides did not go through. Titanides skipped infancy and the biggest part of what humans would think of as childhood. They walked a few hours after birth, talked shortly after that.

There was something else humans had to learn which this infant had not even started on yet. Titanides never learned it; on the other hand, Titanides never had to be carried around, so it wasn't a problem. Valiha twisted and handed the child back to its mother.

"Its diaper is full again."

"He, Valiha. Please. His diaper is full." Robin took him.

"I'm sorry. His sex just seems so irrelevant at this point."

Robin laughed bitterly.

"I wish you were right. But it's practically all that's important about him in this lousy world."

Valiha didn't want to get into that. She turned and thought of Chris again. It would be nice to see him. It had been almost a myriarev.