Demon (GAIA)

by John Varley

  “I advise you to retreat.”

  She waited for a comment, and got none.

  “You might successfully breach the wall. I think you could. Inside, you’re more than a match for her people. But you’re outnumbered. You’d take heavy losses…and you’d lose in the end. If Gaea decides to pursue you…it’ll be a nightmare such as you’ve never imagined. She would rampage through your troops. She never sleeps, never gets tired. She might only kill a few of you at first. But as your troops get tired, she’ll kill more. Maybe a Legion a day, until you’re wiped out. That’s why, if I’m killed, you should start your pull-out immediately. Once you get to Oceanus, you’ll be safe, for a while, because I don’t think she’ll go in there.”

  She saw she had managed to frighten at least two of them. Park had merely narrowed his eyes, and Cirocco had no idea what was going on behind them.

  “If she lives…” Park began. His eyes got even narrower. “She will eventually come to Bellinzona.”

  “I think it’s inevitable.”

  “What do we do then?” Shalom asked.

  Cirocco shrugged.

  “I haven’t the faintest idea. Maybe you can whip up a weapon that can kill her. I hope you can.” She jerked a thumb in the direction of the unseen walls of Pandemonium. “Maybe your best course is to knuckle down to her like those poor souls in there. Bow down to her and tell her how great she is, and how much you liked her last picture. Go to her movies three times a day like a dutiful slave, and be thankful you’re alive. I don’t know if it’s better to die on your feet than live on your knees.”

  “I, personally,” Park said, quietly, “would rather die. But this is beside the point. I appreciate your evaluation of this hypothetical situation. Could you tell us now, what we do today?”

  That extra star sure emboldens one, Cirocco thought. She leaned forward, putting her elbows on the table, earnest as could be. She felt like a three-card-Monte dealer about to go into her spiel.

  “Have any of you ever heard of a bullfight?”

  Eighteen

  Chris climbed down the ladder from the top of the wall to the ground. He had been standing up there for several revs, just to the west of the Universal Gate, watching Cirocco’s troops in the distance.

  At first he had been impressed. It seemed like a lot of people. Through an observation telescope he had been able to make out the size and shape of the wagons, the type of uniforms the soldiers wore, and the business-like way they moved.

  The longer he looked, the less sure he was. So he did his best to make an estimate of just how many soldiers were out there. He did it again and again, and even the largest number he came up with was smaller than he had hoped. There were fewer Titanides than he had expected, too.

  Chris had not been completely idle. As the news of the approaching army whispered through the nervous Pandemonium grapevines, he had gone about assessing Pandemonium’s strength. He had tried not to be obvious about it—though he doubted Gaea really cared. She made no attempt to conceal anything from him or anyone else in Pandemonium. In fact, she often bragged openly that she had a hundred thousand fighters.

  That was true, Chris had decided…and deceptive. There were that many people inside the wall, and they would all fight. But he assumed Cirocco’s army would know how to fight. What Gaea’s troops had been trained to do, it seemed to Chris, was wait for the cameras to get into position, wear fierce expression’s when charging, shout, and pose in attitudes of stalwart determination.

  But there were some things he wished he could get to Cirocco. A spy wasn’t worth much if he couldn’t get his information out of the country. That thought made him want a beer….

  He shook his head, violently. He was determined to stay dry until the fighting was over. He had to be ready, if the chance came…though he didn’t know if he would recognize it, if and when. He was too much in the dark. And that made him want a beer—

  Damn it.

  Gaea came striding along the wall. She had been going around and around, checking the deployment of her troops, ordering units back and forth, wearing them out before the fighting even started.

  “Hey, Chris!” she called out. He turned and looked up at her. She gestured out to the north, where the army was assembling. “What do you think? They’re real pretty, aren’t they?”

  “They’re going to whip your ass, Gaea,” he said.

  She roared with laughter, stepped over the Universal globe, and continued on her rounds. Increasingly, Chris found himself in the role of court jester, able to say the outrageous things permitted a comic figure. It didn’t do anything to improve his morale, and it hardly even amused him anymore.

  Damn it, if there was only some way to get word to Cirocco.

  She should know Gaea had cannons.

  Maybe she did know, and Chris was worrying for nothing. And it was true they weren’t very good cannons. Chris had watched the testing—from a safe distance, after one of the early models had blown up, killing sixteen.

  The range of the cannons was not good, and their accuracy was low. But the Iron Masters had recently come up with some new, exploding cannonballs. They sprayed thousands of nails over a wide area. They would be a problem if Cirocco planned to storm the walls.

  There were the vats of boiling oil, too, but he figured Cirocco expected that. And she knew Gaea would have archers….

  There was other bad news: Gaea had guns. The good news was there weren’t many of them, and they were primitive flintlocks that took forever to re-load, and they blew up even more often than the cannons. The men who had to carry them were scared to fire the damn things.

  Chris wondered which would be worse: to carry a weapon that might blow your hands off…or to go into battle with a prop.

  He had had a very bad moment not long ago when he saw a regiment of soldiers dressed in modern, lightweight body armor, carrying laser rifles and the big backpacks to power them. One company of such troops could massacre an entire Roman legion, Chris was sure.

  Then he had encountered one of the soldiers in a commissary. From ten feet away, the deception was obvious. The laser rifles were just wood and glass. The backpacks were hollow shells. The armor was some kind of plastic.

  He started back toward Tara. On his way there he had to move aside frequently for dog-trotting formations of soldiers.

  There was a troop of cavalry, mounted on the horses Gaea used in her western epics. Their sabers were real, but their six-shooters were carved out of wood. And he happened to know that, at the right signal, most of those horses would fall over, pretending to be shot, as they had been trained to do. Wouldn’t it be great if he could get that signal out to Cirocco?

  Later, a Roman legion marched by, resplendent in brass shields and breastplates and crimson skirts. They were followed by a goose-stepping regiment of Nazi storm troopers, and they were followed by a shambling bunch of Star Wars storm troopers. Before he got back to Tara he saw Ghurkas from Gunga Din, doughboys from All Quiet on the Western Front, Johnny Rebs from Gone With the Wind, Huns, Mongols, Boers, Federales, Redcoats, Apaches, Zulus, and Trojans.

  Whatever else he thought about Pandemonium, the costume department was terrific.

  He mounted the broad plantation-house steps and found Adam in one of the huge rooms, sitting on the marble floor playing with his train set. It was a wonder, made of silver and embellished with jewels too big for him to swallow if he were to pry them loose—and Adam was always prying things loose, though he no longer tried to eat things that weren’t food. He hooked cars to the engine, then he scooted around on his knees, jerking the train forward, cars flying off the end as he went, shouting choo-choo-choo-choo-choo!

  He saw Chris, and joyously threw his priceless engine against a wall, badly denting the soft metal (which would be repaired during his next sleep, Chris knew).

  “Wanna fly, Daddy!” he crowed.

  So Chris went to him and picked him up and zoomed him through the air like an airplane. Adam got a great case
of the giggles. Then he put the child on his hip and carried him to a second-floor balcony. They looked out toward the north.

  Gaea was still striding the wall. She had reached the Goldwyn Gate, and was returning to Universal, which was closest to Cirocco’s concentration of troops. It was one of Adam’s top three gates: he liked Mickey Mouse atop the Disney Gate, the big stone lion at MGM, and the turning globe at Universal, in that order. Adam pointed.

  “There’s Gaea!” he crowed. He was always proud and pleased when he spotted her vast bulk from a great distance. “Want down, Daddy,” he ordered, and Chris set him down.

  Adam hurried to the telescope. Tara had about a hundred very good telescopes, just for this purpose. Adam was rough with them, as he was with all his toys. And every time he woke up, the broken lenses had been repaired, the finger smudges had been wiped away, and the brass barrels gleamed.

  He was skilled with them by now. He swung the scope back and forth and quickly located Gaea. Chris went to another, so he could see what Adam saw.

  She was shouting orders to troops inside the wall, pointing this way and that. Then she turned to face outward, her fists on her hips. Chris glanced at Adam, and saw him move the scope slightly to focus on the beautiful fields of Hyperion, where the army was swarming like a mass of ants. He pointed.

  “What’s that, Daddy?”

  “That, my bright boy, is Cirocco Jones and her army.”

  Adam looked back into the scope, obviously impressed. Maybe he thought he would get a glimpse of Jones herself. Lately, he had been seeing a lot of her, in movies like The Brain Eaters, Cirocco Jones Meets Dracula, and The Creature from the Black Lagoon. A few of the movies were genuine Earth product, with Cirocco substituting for the monster, and additional scenes showing her transforming from a rather sinister but recognizable Captain Jones into whatever latex calamity was devouring Tokyo this week. But most were new product, stamped Made in Pandemonium, with production credit given to “Gaea, the Great and Powerful.” Gaea had a convincing double for Cirocco in some of the scenes, and used computer-enhancement for others. The quality was not great, but the budgets were lavish. Chris knew from commissary gossip that a lot of the eviscerations, amputations, decapitations, and defenestrations in these monster adventures were not special effects and had nothing to do with stunt men. Often, to get the effect she wanted, Gaea found it easier to bury the extras.

  It was hard to tell what effect these movies had on Adam. They were usually flagrant morality plays, with Cirocco always cast as the evil one, usually being killed in the end to the cheers of onlookers. Still, Chris remembered that both Dracula and Frankenstein, ancient cinematic bad-guys, were viewed with a certain fascination by children. Adam seemed to react in the same way. He grew excited when Cirocco appeared on the television screen.

  Maybe that was part of Gaea’s plan. Maybe she wanted Adam to identify with the bad guy, even if it was Cirocco.

  On the other hand, there was the computer-altered version of King Kong.

  Chris had never seen any of these old films, but long ago Cirocco had told him the plot of that one, as he had been thinking of going into northern Phoebe to attempt the heroic slaughter of Gaea’s re-creation.

  The version on Pandemonium television was different. Gaea had been cast as Kong, and Cirocco as Carl Denham. Fay Wray was hardly in the movie. Kong/Gaea never threatened her in any way; everything he/she did was to protect innocent bystanders from Denham’s blundering attempts to kill Kong. At last, hounded to the top of a tall building, horribly wounded by little biplanes, Gaea had fallen. Chris remembered the classic last line: “It was beauty killed the beast.” In this version, Cirocco/Denham said “Now the world is mine!”

  It was impossible to think of Kong without a queasy glance down the Twenty-four Carat Highway. Not too far from where it ended at the gates of Tara was a big black ball with protruding ears. It was the head of Kong. Every time Chris passed it, the mournful eyes followed him.

  “What’s gonna happen, Daddy?”

  Chris was brought back to the present. It was Adam’s favorite question. When watching a movie on television, as the tension built Adam would look back at Chris with anticipation and fright, and ask what’s gonna happen.

  What happens next?

  It’s what we all ask ourselves, Chris thought.

  “I think there’s going to be a war, Adam.”

  “Wow!” Adam said, and looked back to his telescope.

  Nineteen

  The attack on Pandemonium commenced two decarevs after the last encampment had been made. It started with a rendition, by the three hundred members of the Titanide Brass Band of the Army of Bellinzona, of The Liberty Bell, by John Philip Sousa.

  Gaea, atop her wall of stone, had watched the band assembling, seen the polished instruments appear and gleam in the beautiful Hyperion light, listened to the two-bar opening phrase. Then she jumped up in delight.

  “It’s…Monty Python!” she shouted.

  She stared in astonishment. Somehow, Cirocco had taught or persuaded or convinced the Titanides to march. They had always adored march music, but had little talent for marching in step. Their usual habit was to caper about randomly—while still keeping that steady and invariable march tempo, as if metered by a metronome. But now they were in step, in formation, and belting it out as only Titanides could. And it was glorious. One of Sousa’s earliest marches, The Liberty Bell had been adopted by a comedy group as their theme song, and was familiar to Gaea from many movies and television tapes.

  Soon she was quite caught up in it. She marched back and forth along her stone wall, and shouted imprecations at her own troops inside until they wearily formed up and marched back and forth with her.

  The Titanides stayed a reasonable distance from the moat that encircled the walls, and began marching counterclockwise around Pandemonium, heading for the United Artists gate. They finished The Liberty Bell, and, without a pause, swung in to Colonel Bogey. Gaea frowned for a moment, remembering the bad scene with the movie not so very long ago, but quickly brightened, especially when half the Titanides put down their instruments and whistled the refrain.

  After that came Seventy-six Trombones. Many of the subsequent numbers seemed to be identified with movies in one way or another.

  As the sound faded with distance, Gaea looked back to the north, where a single black-clad figure was approaching, a good fifty meters in front of another group of three hundred Titanides. Behind them, in perfect formations, were the Legions. Only the commanding officers, at the head of each group of soldiers, wore brass brightwork, which Gaea thought was rather cheap of Cirocco. But what brass there was was polished to a high gloss, and she had to admit the common footsoldiers looked rested, alert, competent, and dedicated.

  Also approaching from the northwest was a blimp. Even at twenty kilometers it was easy to see that it was Whistlestop.

  The group on the ground continued to march forward, and the blimp came in closer, stopping at about five kilometers distance and three kilometers altitude. Slowly, the great mass turned until its side faced Gaea and Pandemonium.

  Some humans were hurrying up beside Cirocco. These didn’t look like soldiers. They set something up in front of her. Then Whistlestop’s side flickered, and built up a pattern of lights that became Cirocco’s face. Gaea thought it was a good trick. She hadn’t known blimps could do that.

  “Gaea,” Cirocco’s voice boomed out from the blimp.

  “I hear you, Demon,” Gaea shouted back. There was no need for technical tricks to amplify her voice. She could be heard in Titantown.

  “Gaea, I am here with a mighty army, dedicated to the overthrow of your evil regime. We do not want to fight you. We ask you to surrender peacefully. You will not be harmed. Spare yourself the humiliation of final and total defeat. Lower the bridges to Pandemonium. We will be victorious.”

  For a fleeting moment Gaea wondered what the stupid bitch would do if she did surrender. She wondered if Cirocco had broug
ht a pair of handcuffs that big. But the thought passed. This must be fought out to the end.

  “Of course you don’t want to fight,” she taunted. “You will be killed, to the last soldier. My troops will march to Bellinzona and overwhelm the few who remain loyal to you. Give up, Cirocco.”

  The reply certainly did not seem to surprise Cirocco. There was a long pause, then a rapid-fire series of explosions that caused a lot of unrest inside the walls of Pandemonium. People looked up, and saw the Bellinzona Air Force, all twelve operable planes, pulling out of their powerdives. All they had dropped on Pandemonium were sonic booms, however.

  The planes had been traveling from east to west. Now they pulled up sharply, performed a very spiffy roll-over maneuver that left them traveling in a straight line, wingtips almost touching. They began emitting pulsed dots of smoke at high speed. As they passed over again, the sonic booms were heard. And the dots were forming words.

  “People of Pandemonium,” Cirocco’s massive image on the side of Whistlestop bellowed…and the planes printed PEOPLE OF PANDEMONIUM across Gaea’s pristine sky.

  Gaea’s jaw dropped. It was impressive as hell, she had to admit that. The planes went up and over, and very quickly were in position for another run.

  “Throw off your chains,” Cirocco boomed. THROW OFF YOUR CHAINS. Then up, and over, and straightening out….

  It was done with computers, obviously. Human reflexes couldn’t be fast enough, at supersonic speeds, to drop all those little dots of smoke in the precise pattern. All the pilots had to do was stay in a perfectly straight line. Almost as soon as the line was written, the words were whipped away by the high winds caused by the planes’ passage, leaving the sky clear for the next line.

  “Reject Gaea’s bondage…lower the drawbridges…flee to the hills…you will be protected….”

  That was about enough of that, Gaea decided. She gave the orders for her own display. In a few moments the sky was filled with bursting fireworks. It served to take the people’s minds off the skywriting. She saw to it that a lot of the pyrotechnics were directed at the big blimp. There was no hope of reaching him, of course, but it wouldn’t hurt to rattle him a bit.