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od; the image burned itself into the retina.
Not satisfied with the carnival atmosphere, the Titanides painted their bare
skins and stained patches of their hair. They wore necklaces and bracelets, s
tuck baubles in holes pierced through noses and cars, tied chains of brass
links and colored stones or rop es of flowers around their legs. Each had a
musical instrument slung over th e shoulder or protruding from the pouch, made
of wood or animal horn or seas hell or brass.
The second preconception-which was actually the first, since Calvin had tol d
them about it-was that Titanides were all female. A tactful question to t he
healer brought a straightforward answer and an awesome demonstration. Th e
Titanides each had three sex organs.
She knew about the frontal, human-sized male or female genitalia. These de
termined the pronoun gender for reasons that must have made sense to a Tit
anide.
in addition, each had a large vaginal opening under the tail, just like a
female horse. It was the one in the middle that shocked Gaby and
Cirocco. in the soft belly between the healer's hind legs was a thick, fleshy
sheath, and out of it came a penis that was human in every detail but for th e
fact that it was as long and thick as Cirocco's arm.
Cirocco had thought herself sophisticated. She had seen many naked men, an d
it had been years since any of them had any- thing new to show her. She liked
men and she liked intercourse, but that thing made her think about b ecoming a
nun. Her strong reaction disturbed her; She knew it was the same feeling Gaby
had expressed, that of being more upset by close parallels than by something
utterly alien
.
The third thing Cirocco had to rethink was triggered by the realization tha t,
though she knew the language and could now use the nouns for each of the
Titanide sex organs, she had not known of the rear ones until told about t
hem. she still did not know why there were three, and could not find the kn
owledge in her mind.
What she had were word lists and grammatical rules of corn- position. it w
orked well for nouns; she had only to ~ of an object to know the word. It
began to fail with some of the verbs. Running and jumping and swimming and
breathing were clear enough. Verbs for things Titanides did and humans di dn't
were not so neat.
Where the system fell apart was in describing familial relationships, code s
of behavior, mores, and a host of other things where Titanides and human s
shared little common ground. These concepts became null notes in the Tit anide
songs. She sometimes translated them to herself or to Gaby with comp lex
hyphenates such as she-who-is-my-hindmother's-frontal-ortho-sibling, o r
the-sense-of-righteous-loathing-for-angels. These phrases were each one word
in Titanide song.
It came down to the fact that an alien thought in her head was still an alien
t hought. She could not deal with it until it was explained to her; she had no
re ferrents.
The last complication caused by the arrival of the healer's group was in th e
matter of names: There were too many names in the same key signatures, so her
original system fell apart. Gaby couldn't sing them, so Cirocco had to find
English words to use.
She had started off in a musical vein, and decided to continue it. The fir st
one they met she now dubbed C-Sharp Hornpipe because the name sounded l ike a
sailor's hornpipe. B Flat became B Flat Banjo. The healer was B Lull aby, the
strawberry blonde was G-minor Valse, the pinto B Clarino, and the blue
Titanide now bore the name of G Foxtrot. She called the yellow and o range
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ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
zebra D-minor Hurdy-gurdy.
Gaby promptly dropped the key signatures, as someone who was always bei ng
called Rocky should have known she would.
The ambulance was a long wooden wagon with four rubber- tired wheels, pull ed
by two Titanides in loose harness. It had a pneumatic suspension and fr iction
brakes operated by the team of pullers. The wood was bright yellow, like new
pine, milled wondrously smooth and fitted together with no nails
.
Cirocco and Gaby put Bill on a huge bed in the center of the wagon and clim
bed in after him, along with Lullaby, the Titanide healer. She took her sta
tion at his bedside, legs folded beneath her, singing to him and wiping his
brow with a wet cloth. The other Titanides walked alongside, except for Ho
mpipe and Banjo, who remained behind with their flocks. They had around 200
animals the size of cows, each with four legs and a thin, supple neck thre e
meters long. The necks had digging claws and
puckered mouths at the end. They fed by forcing their mouths into the grou nd
and sucking milk from the backs of sludge- worms. They had one eye at t he
base of the neck. With their heads in the ground they could still see w hat
was happening above.
Gaby looked at one with a faintly scandalized expression on her face, relucta
nt to admit that such a thing could exist.
"'Gaea has her good days and her bad days,"' she concluded, quoting a Tit
anide aphorism Cirocco had translated. "She must have come off a nine-day
hinge when she thought that one up. What about those radios, Rocky? Can we get
a look at them?"
"I'll see." She sang to Clarino, the pinto, asking if they might look at his s
peakerplant, then stopped as soon as she had the word out.
"They don't build them," she said. "They grow them." "Why didn't you say s o
before?"
"Because I just now realized it. Bear with me, Gaby. The word for them means
'the seed of the plant that carries song.' Take a look."
The item strapped to the end of Clarino's staff was an oblong yellow seed, s
mooth and featureless but for a soft brown spot.
"It listens here," Clarino sang, indicating the spot. "Do not touch it, as it
wil l go deaf. It sings your song to its mother, and if she is pleased she
sings it t o the world."
"I fear I do not entirely understand."
Clarino pointed over Gaby's shoulder. "There is one who still has her childre
n."
He trotted to a clump of bushes growing in a hollow. A bell- shaped growth
emerged from the ground beside each bush. Grasping the bell, he wrenched a [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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