"Thank you," he said.

"You look like you didn't expect to convince me."

"I didn't. What changed your mind?"

One corner of her mouth curled in amusement.

"You have forgotten a lot about me. I made up my mind about a half second after you asked me. Then I had to hear your reason before I knew if I was just trying to take the easy way out."

Chris was so elated that he picked her up as easily as if she were a child and kissed her, as she laughed and pretended to fight him off.

They were still laughing when the sound of the scream reached them. It went right past the conscious part of Chris's mind, directly to something so basic as to be a reflex action, and he was sprinting for the door long before he knew who had screamed.

NINE

Rocky and Valiha were two kilometers from Tuxedo Junction, in one of the few flat, open pieces of land in that neighborhood, pulling a plow like the draft animals they most definitely were not. The comparison would not have bothered them. A Titanide farmer simply walked in front of the plow, not behind it.

Titanides were unfailingly honest and square-in the sense of a square deal. They paid debts. They would not think of accepting shelter or food without doing something in return. They also knew how to combine the payment of a debt with legitimate self-interest. Rocky and Valiha liked to visit the Junction, liked to stay with Chris in his fanciful aerie, and liked to eat well. There were certain items that did not flourish in a Gaean jungle, that would do well only in light, on flat land, and in the absence of competition. Hence the plowing. Chris could not have done it himself, and when it was done he would be able to grow more crops and set a better table. Everything balanced out nicely.

They had done about two acres. The fresh-turned soil smelled good to Rocky. It was good to exert oneself, to feel ones hooves dig the ground, to hear the creaking of the harness, to see the rich brown dirt steaming from sub-Gaean heat. It was good to rub haunches with Valiha. Yellow had always been a favorite color to him, and the Madrigals were ever yellow.

He had not known her long. That is, he had known about her almost since his birth, as she had gone on that terrible journey with the Captain, famous in legend and song. He had known her son, Serpent, for many myriarevs. But he had begun to know Valiha as a friend only about seven kilorevs ago.

Over the last kilorev he had begun to love her. This was a surprise to him. Titanides could be as quirky as the next intelligent species, and Rocky had a thing about Aeolian Solos. He tended not to like them. He knew it was illogical, since it was the single parent of the Solo who had the egotism to wish to birth a genetically identical copy of herself without help from any other Titanide. The child was as blameless as any child ... yet, if she was a copy, it stood to reason she would have her mother's egotism.

Valiha was an Aeolian Solo.

They came to the end of a row. Both were pleasantly sweaty, a little bit tired. Valiha reached for the buckles of her harness, so Rocky did the same. They shed the plow, and Valiha trotted forward a few paces, then turned, her tail high, and came back beside Rocky, facing the other way. She leaned over and reached beneath him to squeeze the bulge of flesh that sheathed his anterior penis.

"I'm horny," she sang. "Do you want to screw?"

"Sounds good to me," he sang, and trotted around behind her.

What they actually said in their song was much more than that, but Titanide song has never been readily translatable into English. Her four-note phrase was in an earthy mode, so "screw" and "horny" were close. But the way she walked was also a part of it, and the phrase included the idea that Rocky would mount her, not the other way around. Rocky's reply was more than simple assent. In a way, the entire exchange and their subsequent movements were as formalized as dressage.

She set her hind legs apart and lowered her hindquarters slightly. He walked his forelegs lightly up her back, straddled her, and entered her. He embraced her torso from behind and she reached back to hold his forelegs firmly. She reversed her head and they kissed, and humped merrily and lustily for a good two minutes before they reached their anterior orgasms-which, for sound Titanide neurological reasons, were always simultaneous. He rested in that position for a moment, his breasts squeezed firmly against her strong back, then backed down.

She asked if she might do him a similar service, and he declined, not because he didn't wish to be mounted-he wanted it very much-but because he had serious and intimate matters on his mind.

So he pranced out in front of her, lifting his forelegs high, and came to stand face-to-face, inches away from her. She smiled at him and put an arm over his shoulder and turned her head slightly to kiss him, then became aware of his frontal erection. She looked startled, but did not back away.

"Sir, I hardly know thee," she sang, in formal mode.

"It has been a short time," he agreed. "But a love as strong as mine sometimes grows quickly, in the manner of those-who-walk-on-two-legs. If she would permit, I would propose a union to my lady."

"Sing it, then."

"A trio. Myself the hindmother. I know not if I have spoken of it, but I have never been a hindmother."

"You are young."

"That is true."

"Mixolydian?"

"Lydian. And Serpent for the hindfather."

She lowered her eyes in thought.

"Sharped?" she sang.

"Yes."

What he had outlined was a Sharped Lydian Trio, one of the most common of the Twenty-nine Ways. He and Valiha would have frontal intercourse to produce a semi-fertilized egg: Rocky the forefather, Valiha the foremother. The egg would be activated by Cirocco Jones, implanted in Rocky's womb, and quickened by Serpent: Rocky the hindmother, Serpent the hindfather.

He could see her adding it up. Genetics was as instinctive in Titanides as it was imponderable to humans. He knew she would find no flaw in his proposal, though the fact that Valiha was Serpent's hindmother might make it seem incestuous to a human. But incest was a genetic problem to Titanides only in special and limited cases, and morally it was no problem at all.

"It is a good mating," she sang, finally. "It will require some thought."

"As she wills it."

"It is not thee, sir," she began, then dropped back into a less formal mode. "Dammit, Rocky, I'm beginning to love you, too, and you're an admirable fellow, but the times bother me."

"I know, Valiha. The world spins badly."

"I don't know if we should bring babies into a world like this."

"In your own hindmother's time, did we not war with the angels?"

She nodded, and wiped away a tear. She forced a smile.

"I know it. And Serpent will love it. Have you spoken of this to him?"

"No other soul knows of it."

"Then I pray you, hold it within thy heart while the world spins another thousand times. Then thou shalt have thy answer."

They kissed, and heard Serpent come out of the jungle at a full gallop. His hooves sprayed dirt as he thundered across the plowed field.

"I thought you two were plowing!" he sang. "I felt so guilty, staying home and baking, my only burden that fierce human child, while you labored like common farm hands. So I hurried, only to find you-"

He stopped, digging in with all four hooves, and stood perfectly still for two long seconds. Then he reared on his hind legs, wheeled, and dashed off the way he came.

"Zombies!" he shouted, in English, but by then Rocky and Valiha had smelled them, too, and were in hot pursuit.

"Rescue a kid and what does it get you?" Conal asked himself. He glanced at Adam. There was spit dripping down his chin. "You get to be a babysitter, that's what."