Free Titan (GAIA) by John Varley Page A

knees, trying not to feel disgusted by it. Gaby seemed short of breath.
    “Do you think it’s dead?” she asked.
    “Looks like it. Kind of anti-climatic, don’t you think?”
    “It’s okay with me.”
    Gaby wiped a hand across her forehead, then smacked the rock repeatedly into the creature’s head until red blood flowed. Cirocco winced. Gaby dropped the rock and wiped her hands on her thighs.
    “That’s that. You know, if you could gather up some of that dry underbrush I think I might be able to make a fire.”
    “How’re you going to do that?”
    “Never mind. Just get the wood.”
    Cirocco had half an armload of it before she stopped to wonder when Gaby started giving the orders.

    “Well, the theory was good,” Gaby said gloomily.
    Cirocco tore again at the stringy red meat that clung so tenaciously to the bone.
    Gaby had sweated for an hour with a piece of her spacesuit and a rock she had hoped was flint but which proved not to be. They had a pile of dry wood, a fine moss-like substance, and splinters carefully shaved from tree branches with the sharp edge of Cirocco’s helmet. They had all the essential ingredients of fire except the spark.
    In that hour Cirocco’s opinion of Gaby’s kill had undergone a revolution. By the time she had it skinned and Gaby had given up on the fire she knew she would eat it raw and be thankful for it.
    “That thing didn’t have any predators,” Cirocco said, around a mouthful. The meat was better than she had expected, but could have used some salt.
    “It sure didn’t act like it,” Gaby agreed. She squatted on the other side of the carcass and her eyes roamed the ground over Cirocco’s shoulder. Cirocco was doing the same thing.
    “That could mean no predators big enough to bother us.”
    Dinner was a drawn-out affair because of all the chewing necessary. They spent the time examining the carcass. The animal didn’t seem too remarkable to Cirocco’s untrained eyes. She wished Calvin was there to tell her if she was wrong. The meat, skin, bones and fur were of the usual colors and textures, and even smelled right. There were organs she couldn’t identify.
    “The skin ought to be good for something,” Gaby pointed out. “We could make clothes out of it.”
    Cirocco wrinkled her nose, “If you want to wear it, go ahead. It’s probably going to stink pretty soon. And it’s warm enough so far without clothes.”
    It didn’t seem right to leave the biggest part of the animal behind, but they decided they had to. They both kept a leg bone for use as a weapon, and Cirocco hacked off a large chunk of meat while Gaby cut strips of skin to tie the spacesuit parts together. She made a crude belt for herself and tied her things to it. Then they started downstream again.

    They saw more of the kangaroo creatures, both singly and in groups of three or six. There were other smaller animals that moved up and down the tree trunks almost too fast to see, and still more that stayed close to the water’s edge. None of them were hard to approach. The tree animals, when they held still long enough to examine, didn’t seem to have heads. They were blue balls of short fur with six clawed feet sticking out around the edges, and they moved in any direction with equal ease. The mouth was on the underside, centered in a star of legs.
    The countryside began to change. Not only did they see more animals, but there were more varieties of plant life. They plodded on through light that turned pale green by the forest canopy, one hundred thousand steps to the twenty-four-hour day.
    Unfortunately, they soon lost count. The huge, simplified trees gave way to a hundred different species, and a thousand kinds of flowering shrubs, trailing vines, and parasitic growths. The only things that remained constant were the stream that was their only guide, and the tendency of Themis trees to be gigantic. Any one of them would have rated a plaque and a tourist turn-out in Sequoia National Park.
    It