（外文电子版资料）TITAN-JohnVarley_ch15-ch2.docVIP

CHAPTER FIFTEEN Cirocco found she had some Preconceptions that had to be discarded. The first was the most obvious. When B Flat arrived and looked much like C Sharp except for his sexual organs, she- had assumed Titanides were going to be hard to tell apart. The group that showed up in response to C Sharps call looked like escapees from a merry-go-round. The healer had emerald green head and tail hair. The rest of her body was covered in thick, snow-white fur. There was another hairy one.. a strawberry blonde with a dappling of violet. There was a brown and white pinto, and one without any hair at all except on his tail. His skin was pale blue. The last of the group looked naked but was not; she had the pelt of a horse not only on the part of her where it would have looked reasonable, but on her human upper-half, too. She was zebra-striped in bright yellow and searing orange, and had lavender head and tail hair. Looking away from her did no good; 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, stuck baubles in holes pierced through noses and cars, tied chains of brass links and colored stones or ropes of flowers around their legs. Each had a musical instrument slung over the shoulder or protruding from the pouch, made of wood or animal horn or seashell or brass. The second preconception-which was actually the first, since Calvin had told them about it-was that Titanides were all female. A tactful question to the healer brought a straightforward answer and an awesome demonstration. The Titanides each had three sex organs. She knew about the frontal, human-sized male or female genitalia. These determined the pronoun gender for reasons that must have made sense to a Titanide. 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 Ci