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"Titanides?" He snffled uncertainly, and spread his hands. "It's a word I
substitute for a whistle he uses. I only get a hazy idea of what they're like
because I can't do too well with complex descriptions. I gather they're
six-legged, and they're all females. I call them Titanides because that's the
name in Greek mythology for female Titans. I've been naming other things,
too."
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"Such as?"
"The regions and the rivers and the mountain ranges. I named the land areas
after the Titans."
"What ... oh, yeah, I remember now." Calvin had studied mythology as a hobby.
"Who were the
Titans, again?"
"The sons and daughters of Uranus and Gaea. Gaea appeared from Chaos. She gave
birth to Uranus, made him her equal, and they produced the Titans, six men and
six women. I named the days and nights here after them, since there's six days
and six nights."
"If you named all the nights after women, I'm going to think up names of my
own."
He smiled. "No such thing. It's pretty much at random. Look back there at the
frozen ocean. That seemed like it ought to be Oceanus, so that's what I called
it. The country we're over now is
Hyperion, and that night over there in front of us, with the mountains and the
irregular sea, is
Rhea. When you face Rhea from Hyperion, north is to your left and south is to
your right. After that, going around the circles haven't seen most of these,
you understand, but I know they're there-I call them Crius, which you can just
see, then around the bend are Phoebe, Tethys, Thea, Metis, Dione, lapetus,
Cronus, and Mnemosyne. You can see Mnernosyne on the other side of Oceanus,
behind us. It looks like a desert."
Cirocco tried to string them all together in her head. "I'll never remember
all that."
"The only ones that matter right now are Oceanus, Hyperion, and Rhea.
Actually, not all the names are Titans. One Titan is Themis, and I thought
that would he confusing. And, well. . - ." He looked away, with a sheepish
grin. "I just couldn't recall the names of two Titans. I used Metis, which is
wisdom, and Dione."
Cirocco did not really care. The names were handy, and in their own way,
systematic. "Let me guess about the rivers. More mythology?"
"Yeah. I picked the nine largest rivers in Hyperion-which has got a hell of a
lot of them, as you can see-and named them after- the Muses. Down south over
there is Urania, Calliope, Terpsichore, and Euterpe, with Polyhymnia in the
twilight zone and file:///F|/rah/John%20Varley/Varley,%20John%20-%20Titan.txt
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file:///F|/rah/John%20Varley/Varley,%20John%20-%20Titan.txt feeding into Rhea.
And over here on the north slope, starting at the cast-is Melpomene. Closer to
us are Thalia and Erato, which look like they make a system. And the one you
came down is a feeder of the Clio, which is just about below us now."
Cirocco looked down and saw a blue ribbon winding through dense green forest,
followed it back to the cliff face behind them, and gasped.
"So that Is where the river went," she said.
It arched from the cliff face, nearly half a kilometer below where they had
been standing, looking solid and hard as metal for fifty meters before it
began to break up. It fragmented rapidly from that point, reaching the ground
as mist.
There were a dozen more plumes of water issuing from the cliff, none so close
or spectacular, each with its attendant rain- bow. Froin her vantage point,
the rainbows were lined up like croquet wickets. It was breathtaking, almost
too beautiful to he real.
"I'd like to have the post card concession for this place," she said. Calvin
laughed.
"You sell film for the camera, and I'll sell tickets to the rides. What do you
think of this one?"
Cirocco glanced back at Gaby, still frozen to the window. "Reactions seem
mixed. I like it okay.
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What's the name for the big river? That one that all the others join?"
. "Ophion. The great serpent of the north wind. If you'll look closely, you
can see that it comes out of a small lake back there at the twilight zone
between Mnemosyne and Occanus. That lake must have a source, and I suspect
it's Ophion flowing underground through the desert, but we can't see where it
goes under. Other than that, it flows without a break, into seas and out of
them on the other side."
Cirocco traced the convoluted path and could see that Calvin was right. "I
think a geographer would tell you that it's not the same river going into a
sea as it is coming out," she said. "But
I know all the rules were made for Earth rivers. Okay, so we'll call it a
circular river."
"That's where Bill and August are," Calvin said, pointing. "About halfway down
the Clio, where that third tributary - "
"Bill and August. We were supposed to try and contact them. With all that
commotion about getting on the blimp---"
"I borrowed your radio. They're up, and waiting for us. You can call them now,
if you like."
Cirocco got her helmet ring and radio from Gaby. "Bill, can you hear me? This
is Cirocco."
"Uh ... yeah, yeah! I hear you. How are you doing?"
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