The discussion went on and on, and nothing was changed when it was over. Robin went out every other day, half as much as she wanted to and a thousand times more often than Chris liked. Every moment she was gone he saw her lying broken at the bottom of a pit, unconscious, unable to shout for help, or too far away to be heard. Every moment she was in camp she squirmed, paced, shouted at them, apologized, shouted some more. She accused him of acting like her mother, treating her like a child, and he retorted that she was acting like a child, and a wild, willful one at that, and each knew both allegations were true, and neither could do anything about it. Robin ached to strike out for help but could not so long as they needed her to hunt, and Chris wanted to go nearly as badly but could not say so for Valiha's sake, so they both seethed and fought, and there seemed to be no solution to the problem until the day Robin angrily plunged her knife into one of the gray teats and was rewarded with a faceful of sticky white liquid.

"It is the milk of Gaea," Valiha said happily and immediately drained the waterskin Robin had filled. "I had not expected to find it so deep. In my homeland it flows two to ten meters below the ground."

"What do you mean, the milk of Gaea?" Chris asked.

"I don't know how to explain further. It is simply that: Gaea's milk. And it means my worries are over. My son will grow strong on this. Gaea's milk contains everything needed for survival."

"What about us?" Robin asked. "Can pe ... can humans drink it, too?"

"Humans thrive on it. It is the universal nutrient."

"What's it taste like, Robin?" Chris asked.

"I don't know. You didn't think I'd just drink it, did you?"

"The humans I know who have tried it say it has a bitter flavor," Valiha said. "I myself find some of that but believe its quality varies from one rev to the next. When Gaea is pleased, it becomes sweeter. In times of Gaea's anger, the milk thickens and cloys but is still nourishing."

"How would you say she's feeling now?" Robin asked.

Valiha upended the skin again, letting the last drops fall into her mouth. She tilted her head thoughtfully.

"Worried, I would say."

Robin laughed. "What would Gaea have to worry about?"

"Cirocco."

"What do you mean?"

"What I said. If the Wizard still lives, and if we live to tell her of Gaby's last moments and her last words, Gaea will tremble."

Robin looked dubious, and Chris privately agreed with her. He did not see how Cirocco could ever present a threat to Gaea.

But the significance of her discovery had not been lost on Robin.

"Now I can go get help," she said, beginning an argument that would last for three days and that Chris knew from the start he was certain to lose.

"The rope. Are you sure you have enough rope?"

"How can I know how much is enough?"

"What about matches? Did you get the matches?"

"I have them right here." Robin patted the pocket of her coat, tied to the top of the pack they had improvised from one of Valiha's saddlebags. "Chris, stop it. We've been over the supplies a dozen times."

Chris knew she was right, knew that his last-minute fussing was simply to delay her departure. It had been four days since his final capitulation.

They had located the nearest of Gaea's teats and laboriously moved Valiha. Though it was only 300 meters from the old camp in a straight line, that line had crossed two steep ravines. They had taken her half a kilometer north to find passable land, then a kilometer south, then back again.

"You have the waterskin?"

"Right here." She slung it over her shoulder and reached for her pack. "I have everything, Chris."

He helped her get it settled on her back. She looked so small when it was in place. She was weighted down with gear and reminded him with an irresistible protective tug of a toddler dressed to go out and play in the snow. He loved her at that moment and wanted to take care of her. That was exactly what he could not do, what she did not want him to do, so he turned away before she could see the look on his face. He did not want to get the argument started again.

But he could not keep his mouth shut.

"You'll remember to mark the trail."

Wordlessly she held up the small pick, then slipped it back into a belt loop. It was a wonderful belt, fashioned from cured cucumber hide by Valiha's skilled hands. The plan was that when Valiha got well enough to move with crutches, she and Chris would follow the trail Robin had blazed. Chris did not like to think about it, for if Robin had not made it out and returned with help long before that, it would be because calamity had befallen her.

"If you stop finding the teats, you can go three sleeps beyond the point when your waterskin is empty, then turn back if you don't find another."

"Four. Four sleeps."

"Three."

"We agreed on four." She looked at him and sighed. "All right. Three, if it'll make you happy." They stood looking at each other for a moment; then Robin went to him and put one arm around his waist.

"Take care of yourself," she said.

"I was about to say the same thing." They laughed nervously; then Chris embraced her. There was an awkward moment when he did not know if she wished to be kissed; then he decided he didn't care and kissed her anyway. She hugged him, then backed away with her eyes averted. Then she did look at him, smiled, and started moving away.

"Bye, Valiha," she said.

"Good-bye, little one," Valiha called back. "I'd say, 'May Gaea be with you', but I think you prefer to go alone."

"That's exactly right." Robin laughed. "Let her stay in the hub and worry about the Wizard. I'll see you people in about a kilorev."

Chris watched her out of sight. He thought he saw her stop and wave but could not be sure of it. Soon there was nothing but the bobbing light of the three glowbirds she carried in a cage woven of reeds, and then even that was gone.

Gaea's milk was indeed bitter, made all the more so by Robin's departure. Its taste did change slightly from day to day, but not nearly enough to provide the variety Chris craved. In less than a hectorev he gagged at the thought of it, began to wonder if starvation might be better than subsisting on the filthy, revolting stuff.

He went foraging as often as he could, careful never to leave Valiha alone for too long. On these trips he gathered wood and from time to time brought back one of the indigenous animals. That was always a signal for rejoicing, as Valiha would bring out her hoarded spices and prepare each one in a different way. It soon became clear to him that she was eating only sparingly of the things she cooked. Chris was sure it was not because she preferred the milk. He thought many times of insisting she take her share but never had the determination actually to say it. He ate his portions like a miser, making the meal last for hours, and always took more when it was offered. He did not like himself for doing it but was unable to stop.

Time blurred. All the sharp edges of time's passage had been worn away since the day he arrived in Gaea. Since before that, actually; the trip in the spaceship had begun his detachment from Earthly time. Then there had been the freezing of duration into one eternal afternoon in Hyperion, the slow crawl into night and once again into day. Now the process was complete.

He started going crazy again, after a long hiatus that had lasted from before the Carnival in Crius until his arrival in the cavern. He thought of it that way now-as going crazy rather than having an "episode," as his doctors had so mincingly called it-because it was simply what happened. He no longer believed Gaea could cure him even if she wanted to, and he could think of no reason why she should want to. He was certainly doomed to go through life as a collection of maniacal strangers, and he would have to cope with them as best he could.