"On our way down?" Robin squeaked. "She dropped me."

"I know, I know," Cirocco said soothingly. "Believe me, I detest that. I've protested it every way I can, but it hasn't done any good. Don't forget, I work for her, not the other way around." She looked at Gaby, expressionless, held her gaze for a moment, then resumed her soaping.

"Anyway, we knew you were on your way, and we knew you'd probably both make it. Oddly enough, most of the pilgrims do. About the only way to die in the Big Drop is to panic. Some people-"

"You could drown," Robin put in, darkly.

"What can I say?" Cirocco asked. "Obviously it's dangerous, and it's a disgusting thing to do. Do I need to apologize any more for something I have no part of?" She looked at Robin, who said nothing but finally shook her head.

"As I was saying, some people fight the angels who are trying to help them, and the angels can do only so much. So her purpose-as she has expressed it to me, understand, don't think I'm defending this-is to teach you to respond safely in a crisis. If you panic, you'll never be a hero. Or so her thinking goes."

Chris had been looking increasingly puzzled.

"If all this is supposed to mean something to me, I'm afraid I missed the important part."

"The Big Drop," Gaby explained. "It's probably just as well you don't recall. Gaea drops pilgrims out of a false elevator after her interview. They fall all the way to the rim."

"You still don't remember any of it?" Cirocco asked. The flow of water stopped, and one of the Titanides handed her a towel.

"Nothing. From the time I left her until not long ago, it's blank."

"That would be understandable, even without your condition," Cirocco said. "But I've talked to one of the angels." She glanced at Robin. "It was old Fat Fred."

Gaby laughed. "Is he still around?" She saw Robin's glare and tried to get rid of the smile on her face, with no success.

"He's still around, still chasing human tail. He told me about meeting two wildcats. One eventually cooperated, and he eased her down in Ophion. Another was just plain crazy. He couldn't approach him at all, but he followed him in, thinking that when the ground got close, the man would come to his senses. Imagine his surprise when the guy hit dead center on the back of a blimp."

"Who was it?" Gaby asked. "The blimp, I mean."

"Fred said it was Dreadnaught."

Gaby looked surprised. "That must have been just after I had him and two others help me unclog Aglaia."

"No doubt." Cirocco paused in her toweling to look intently at Chris, who quickly looked away. She stepped out of the shower and into a white robe held by one of the Titanides. She wrapped it around herself and sat cross-legged on the floor in front of the three humans and the Titanide. Her servant knelt behind her and began brushing her wet hair.

"I'm wondering about luck," she said. "Gaea told me about your condition, of course, and mentioned luck. Frankly, I don't want to believe that anyone could be that lucky. It goes counter to everything I've learned. Of course, most of that is seventy years out of date."

"It's regarded as pretty well-proven," Chris said. "From what I've heard, most people think none of the psi powers will ever amount to much. They've got equations that describe what's happening, but I don't pretend to understand them. Free-will particle theory, reality strata... I read an article about it."

"We don't get many newspapers out here." Cirocco frowned at her hands. "I don't like it. Never did."

"Einstein didn't like quantum mechanics," Gaby pointed out.

"You're right," Cirocco sighed. "But I'm always surprised at how things turn out. In my day they were sure they'd have the genetic code cracked in a few more years. We were going to wipe out all physical diseases and genetic conditions. And nobody thought we'd be solving psychological problems any time soon. So just the opposite happened. A couple things were a hell of a lot harder to do than anybody imagined, and there were breakthroughs in areas where nobody expected them. Who can figure it? Anyway, we were talking about luck."

"I don't know what it is," Chris put in. "But I do seem to get luckier at times."

"I don't like to think of what it implies if it's true that luck guided you to a landing on Dreadnaught's back," Cirocco said. "It depends on how far you take your reasoning, but you might say a Titan tree came loose and jammed in the Aglaian pump so Gaby would call Dreadnaught into that area for you to land on his back. And I refuse to believe the universe is that deterministic!"

Gaby snorted. "So do I, but I believe in luck. Come on, Rocky. Why should you object to a puppet master pulling a few of your strings? Don't you know what it feels like by now?" Cirocco shot Gaby a deadly glare, but for a moment her eyes had looked haunted.

"Okay," Gaby soothed, holding out her hands. "I'm sorry. We won't get off on that, all right?"

Cirocco relaxed quickly enough and nodded almost imperceptibly. She brooded for a moment, then looked up.

"I'm forgetting my manners," she said. "Hornpipe, ask these folks what they'd like to drink, and bring a couple of those trays over here where we can all reach them."

Gaby welcomed the pause. The last thing she wanted was to get into a fight with Cirocco. She stood and helped Hornpipe with the food, introduced Psaltery to Robin and Chris, and Cirocco to Robin. There were polite comments about the food and drink, small jokes and pleasantries exchanged. She had them all laughing at one point with a tale of her first encounter with a Titanide soup the main ingredient of which was live worms marinated in brine. In fifteen minutes everyone seemed more relaxed with a little something alcoholic inside.

"As I was saying," Cirocco resumed at last, "we heard you would be coming down here. I don't know what your plans are, but I figure if you were going to leave, you would have done so by now. How about it? Chris?"

"I don't know. I really haven't had any time to make plans. It seems like just a few hours ago that Gaea told me what I had to do."

"And confused you completely, I imagine."

He smiled. "That's a fair description. I guess I'm planning to stay, but I don't know what I'm going to do while I'm here."

"That's the nature of the test," Cirocco said. "You'll never know until you're facing it. All you can do is go out seeking. That's why we call you a pilgrim. What about you, Robin?"

Robin looked down at her hands and said nothing for a while, then looked steadily at Cirocco.

"I don't know if I should tell you what my plans are. I don't know if I can trust you."

"That's direct anyway," Cirocco said, half smiling.

"She has this grudge to settle with Gaea," Gaby explained. "She didn't trust me for a while either. Maybe she still doesn't."

"I'm going to kill her," Robin said with quiet deadliness. "She tried to kill me, and I swore I would get her. You can't stop me."

Cirocco laughed. "Stop you? I don't think I'm needed for that. Did you bring a couple of nuclear weapons with you?" She glanced at the .45 on Robin's hip. "Is that thing loaded?"

"What good is an unloaded gun?" Robin asked, honestly baffled by the question.

"You've got a point. Anyway, you can set your mind at ease about one thing. I'm not Gaea's bodyguard. She has eyes and ears enough for that, without needing me. I wouldn't even tell her you're after her. It's none of my concern."

Robin considered it. "All right. I plan to stay. Pretty soon I'll start out climbing a spoke, and when I get there, I'll kill her."

Cirocco looked at Gaby, and her eyes seemed to say, where did you get her? Gaby shrugged and smiled.

"Well... ah ... okay. I don't guess there's much I can add to that."

"Why don't you go on, Rocky? She still might be interested."