Free Titan (GAIA) by John Varley Page B

was no longer quiet, either. During their first day of travel Cirocco and Gaby had only the sounds of their own footsteps and the clatter of their salvaged suits to keep them company. Now the forest twittered and barked and yammered at them.
    The meat tasted better than ever when they stopped for a rest. Cirocco wolfed it down, sitting back to back with Gaby beside the gnarled trunk of a tree that was warmer than any tree should have been, with soft bark and roots that knotted into burls bigger than houses. Its upper branches were lost in the incredible tangle overhead.
    “I’ll bet there’s more life in those trees than there is on the ground,” Cirocco said.
    “Look up there,” Gaby said. “I’d say somebody wove those vines together. You can see water leaking out the bottom.”
    “We ought to talk about that. What about intelligent life in here? How would you recognize it? That’s one of the reasons I tried to stop you from killing this animal.”
    Gaby munched thoughtfully. “Should I have tried to talk to it first?”
    “I know, I know. I was more afraid it would turn around and bite your legs off. But now that we know how unaggressive it is, maybe we ought to do just that. Try to talk to one.”
    “How stupid, you mean. That thing didn’t have half the brain of a cow. You could see that in its eyes.”
    “You’re probably right.”
    “No,
you’re
right. I mean, I’m right, but you’re right that we should be more careful. I’d hate to eat something I ought to be talking to. Hey, what was that?”
    It wasn’t a noise, but the realization that noise had ceased. Only the splash of water and the high hiss of leaves disturbed the silence. Then, building so quietly and so slowly that they had been hearing it for minutes before they could identify it, came a vast moan.
    God might moan like that, If He had lost everything He had ever loved, and if He had a throat like an organ pipe a thousand kilometers long. It continued to build on a note that somehow managed to rise without ever straying from the uttermost lower limits of human hearing. They felt it in their bowels and behind their eyeballs.
    It already seemed to fill the universe, and yet still it got louder. It was joined by the sound of a string section: cellos and electronic basses. Treading lightly on top of this massive tonal floor were supersonic hissing overtones. The ensemble grew louder when it was not possible that it could growlouder.
    Cirocco thought her skull would shatter. She was dimly aware of Gaby hugging her. They stared slack-jawed as they were showered by dead leaves from the vault overhead. Tiny animals fell, twisting and bouncing. The ground began to throb in sympathy. It yearned to fly apart and hurl itself into the air. A dust devil skittered indecisively, than dashed itself to pieces on the bones of the tree where they huddled. They were lashed with debris.
    There was crashing above them, and a wind began to reach down to the forest floor. A massive branch embedded itself in the middle of the stream. By then the forest was swaying, creaking, protesting: gunshots, and nails wrenched from dry wood.
    The violence reached a plateau and stayed at that level. The winds seemed to be about sixty kilometers per hour. Higher up it sounded much worse. They stayed low in the protection of the tree roots and watched the storm rage around them. Cirocco had to shout to be heard above the bass moaning.
    “What do you suppose could cause it to come up so fast?”
    “I have no idea,” Gaby yelled back. “Local heating or cooling, a big change in the air pressure. I don’t know what would cause that, though.”
    “I think the worst is over. Hey, your teeth are chattering.”
    “I’m not scared anymore. I’m
cold
.”
    Cirocco was feeling it, too. The temperature was plunging. In just a few minutes it had gone from balmy to chilly, and now she judged it was getting down around zero. With the wind coming at sixty klicks, it was no laughing