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.”
“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 circle—I 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, Iapetus, Cronus, and Mnemosyne. You can see Mnemosyne 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 be 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 name 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 feeding into Rhea. And over here on the north slope, starting at the east—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’s
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 rainbow. From her vantage point, the rainbows were lined up like croquet wickets. It was breathtaking, almost too beautiful to be 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. 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 Oceanus. 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
“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 circle—I 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, Iapetus, Cronus, and Mnemosyne. You can see Mnemosyne 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 be 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 name 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 feeding into Rhea. And over here on the north slope, starting at the east—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’s
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 rainbow. From her vantage point, the rainbows were lined up like croquet wickets. It was breathtaking, almost too beautiful to be 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. 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 Oceanus. 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
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