Demon

by John Varley

  There was something else humans had to learn which this infant had not even started on yet. Titanides never learned it; on the other hand, Titanides never had to be carried around, so it wasn't a problem. Valiha twisted and handed the child back to its mother.

  "Its diaper is full again."

  "He, Valiha. Please. His diaper is full." Robin took him.

  "I'm sorry. His sex just seems so irrelevant at this point."

  Robin laughed bitterly.

  "I wish you were right. But it's practically all that's important about him in this lousy world."

  Valiha didn't want to get into that. She turned and thought of Chris again. It would be nice to see him. It had been almost a myriarev.

  Serpent (Double-Flatted Mixolydian Trio) Madrigal had seen Chris many times over the last myriarev. He spent a lot of his time with Chris.

  He viewed himself as uniquely lucky. Though Chris had not participated in the trio that gave birth to Serpent, he had acted like a father to the child for his first four years. Serpent had a Titanide father-forefather and hindfather in the same individual-and two mothers: Valiha, his hindmother, and a foremother who was now dead. But none of his parents had been quite like Chris. He knew parenting was different for humans. He had only to look at the cheerful idiot in Robin's arms to understand why that must be so. But though Titanide childhood was short, it was there, and quite different from adulthood. As Titanides grew they tended to get serious-solemn, in Serpent's view. Too solemn. They lost much of their sense of play.

  Humans did that, too, but they didn't go overboard about it. No Titanide father would have taught him to play baseball. Titanides liked to race, but beyond that sports were foreign to them. It hadn't been easy to organize the leagues Chris and Serpent had set up in sports ranging from baseball and football (Chris had called it Polo at first, then threw away the mallets and just let the kids kick the ball) to tennis, hockey, and cricket, but they had done it. They had found that a Titanide raised with team sports will continue playing well into adulthood. Serpent was the best bowler in the Key of Thunderers, the champion cricketeers of the Hyperion League.

  There were a lot of reasons Serpent wanted to talk to Chris. One was his recent realization regarding the World Cup. It had been held on Earth four years earlier, in spite of the war. The matches had been spread around the globe to avoid making a tempting target. Even so, three games had ended early when stadium, players, and spectators were incinerated. Eastern Siberia had eventually claimed the Cup.

  But there was simply no possibility of any games this year, a World Cup year. There were no arenas left. By default, the World Cup should be decided in Gaea. Serpent planned to organize it.

  The thought so excited him that he increased his pace, only to remember for the hundredth time the tail-end charlie. He slowed, and looked over his shoulder at her, trudging along when she could just as well be riding.

  He had offered her a ride, hadn't he?

  He snorted. It was her own fault if her feet were sore.

  Nova had more than sore feet. Like her mother, she had never been known for having a long fuse. By now she was ready to explode.

  Only a year ago she had known the shape of life, all the turnings of the world. The Coven floated at LaGrange Two, solid and steady and real. Then the Council had decided to move it. Too many O'Neils had been blown up. No one could tell what the maniacs on Earth would do next. So preparations had been made and the mighty engines started. The witches of the Coven proposed to fly to Alpha Centauri.

  At the start of the year, Robin had been Black Madonna. Now, Robin was nothing. She had narrowly avoided execution. Her manner of leaving allowed no possibility of return. It was a staggering fall, and it had brought Nova down, too. She was a stateless person. Her entire culture was on its way to the stars.

  And, of course, there was him.

  What a way to sum it up, she thought. A being so terrible that a whole new set of pronouns were needed. He. Him. His. The words hurt her ears like grotesque laughter.

  All that wasn't enough. Now there was this awful place.

  Upon entering it she and Robin had fought for their lives. They had killed almost a hundred people. The magnitude of the carnage had overwhelmed her. She had never killed anyone before. She knew how, but found theory and practice were completely different things. She had been sick for days. Not an hour passed that she didn't see the heaped bodies leaking blood, or the wolf packs of children tearing the clothes off the corpses.

  Robin expected Nova to treat these monstrous animals as if they were people. To be friends with them, Great Mother save us.

  They all expected her to talk with this Conal abomination, this twisted, reeking, hairy, graceless, pinheaded lump of muscle whose finest hour would have been an early abortion. They were on their way to see yet another male. Apparently there hadn't been enough of them in Bellinzona; her mother felt they had to tramp through the jungle to find this one.

  Everything about Gaea was awful. The temperature was wrong. She sweated buckets every day. Climbing was all wrong. She was always too light, and kept stumbling as learned reflexes played her false.

  It was too damn dark.

  The air smelled of decay, and smoke, and wild things.

  It was too big. The Coven, on the rim of Gaea, would have rolled around like a BB in a truck tire.

  And it never changed. Nobody ever closed the windows and let night come, or opened them for a decent day. The concept of time was not the same in here. She missed the nice little half-hours and the comfortable cycles of days and weeks. Without them, she was adrift.

  She wanted to go to sleep and wake up to find it had all been a dream. She would go to the Council and she and Robin would have a good laugh over it. Remember that place you went when you were a kid, mother? Well, I dreamed we went there, and you had a baby. A boy, would you believe it?

  It wasn't going to happen.

  She sat down on the trail. The yellow Titanide named Serpent, which looked exactly like its mother but which she was supposed to believe was a male, stopped and called something to her. She ignored it. It waited for a moment, then went on. That was fine with Nova. She could see the treehouse now. She would go to it when she felt ready. Or maybe she'd just sit here and die.

  The last member of the party was the happiest of the lot.

  He had been near death three times in his short life, but he did not know that. His mother had been his first potential murderer. Robin had thought long and hard on it, when she saw what she had miraculously brought forth from her troubled womb into a troubled world. Most recently he had almost been killed by a babylegger. His memories of that were vague. It had all been over so quickly. He remembered the man who had smiled down at him. He liked the man.

  There were a lot of new people. He liked that. He liked the new place, too. It was easier to walk here. He didn't fall down so much. Some of the new people were very big, and they had a lot of legs. They were many exciting colors, so bright and vivid that he laughed in delight every time he saw them. He had learned a new word: Tye-Nye.

  A bright yellow Tye-Nye was carrying him now. He was satisfied with the ride. Only two things marred an otherwise perfect afternoon. His ass felt wet, and he was wondering if it was about time for dinner.

  He was just about to mention these points when the Tye-Nye handed him to mother. Mother put him on the Tye-Nye's back, and he watched the Tye-Nye's long, fluffy pink hair bouncing above him as his mother changed his diaper. The Tye-Nye turned her head around, and he found that hilarious. And mother was laughing! She hadn't been doing that much lately. Adam was ecstatic.

  Robin opened her shirt, lifted him, and he found the nipple.

  And now the world was perfect.

  The group reached the far end of the suspension bridge and began to file across. Adam was asleep now. Robin was ready to sleep. Nova was more than ready, but still lagged far behind the rest.

  They passed under an arched gateway with the name of Chris'
s treehouse painted on it: Tuxedo Junction. Robin wondered what it meant.

  Pandemonium was on the move again.

  Gaea, as she moved through the forest of northern Hyperion, pondered recent events. She was not happy, and when Gaea was unhappy those around her always knew it. One elephant failed to get out of her way in time. She kicked it without breaking stride. The elephant flew into the air and landed a hundred meters away, torn in half.

  She was deciding on the program for the next encampment. After much thought she decided on Kurosawa's Seven Samurai. Then she remembered the other two, waiting at Tuxedo Junction. Chris and Cirocco. Well there was that film from 1994, it had nine in the title, didn't it? Surely her librarian could ferret it out.

  Then she had it, and laughed aloud. The second feature would be Fellini's 8 1/2.

  TWO

  Chris deftly flipped fried eggs out of the copper pan and onto an earthenware plate. The pan was almost a meter across. All his cookware was outsized. Most of his guests were Titanides, who loved to eat as much as they loved to cook.

  He was only a mediocre chef, but Cirocco didn't seem to mind. She used her fork to make a gesture of thanks as he removed the first plate and set the second batch of eggs before her. She sat at the high table on a high stool, her feet hooked around the crossbraces, her elbows set wide and her head held low as she shoveled it in. Her wet hair was tied back out of harm's way.

  Chris pulled a stool over to the table across from her and hitched himself up onto it. As Cirocco tore into her fourteenth egg, Chris began eating the two he had fixed for himself, and watched her over the table.

  She seemed pale. She was thin. He could count her ribs; her breasts were hardly there.

  "How was the trip?" he asked.

  She nodded, then reached for her coffee cup to wash down the last mouthful of eggs. The job required two hands. It was a Titanide cup.

  "No problems," she said, and wiped her mouth on the back of her arm. Then she looked surprised, gave him a guilty glance, and picked up her napkin. She wiped her arm first, then her mouth.

  "Sorry," she said, with a nervous giggle.

  "Your table manners don't concern me," he said. "This is your house, too."

  "Yeah, but that's no reason to be a pig. It just tastes so good. Real food, I mean."

  He knew what she meant. She had been foraging for a long time. But he smiled at the description of the food. The "bacon" was meat from a smiler with swine genes in its ancestry, in the baffling Gaean system of crossbreeding that would have driven Luther Burbank to the madhouse. The "eggs" came from a shrub common in Dione. Left unharvested, they would eventually hatch a many-legged reptile that scattered the plant's seeds in its excrement. But the fruit tasted very much like real eggs. The coffee, oddly enough, was real coffee, a hybrid adapted to the low light of Gaea. With the collapse of the Earth-Gaea trade it had become as profitable to grow coffee in the highlands as cocaine, the traditional Gaean export. Coke glutted the market, but coffee was hard to get.

  "Kong's dead," she said, around another mouthful.

  "Really? Who did the job?"

  "Do you need to ask?"

  Chris thought it over, and could come up with only one likely candidate.

  "You going to tell me about it?"

  "If you'll slap some more bacon in that pan." She grinned at him. He sighed, and got up.

  As the bacon began to sizzle, she told him what she had seen in Phoebe. While she talked, she finished her second helping. She got up and rinsed her plate, then stood beside him and sliced hunks off a huge loaf of bread and arranged them on a tray for toasting.

  "I figure he's got to die when they cut his brain up. Doesn't he?" She squatted and slid the tray into the bottom drawer of the stove, beneath the firebox where the radiant heat would warm it slowly.

  "I guess so." Chris made a face.

  She stood and unbound her hair, shook it out, and ran her fingers through it. Chris watched, noted that it was almost entirely white now. It reached far down her back. He wondered if she would ever cut it again. Before her brain surgery, five years earlier, she had seldom let it get below her shoulders. Then her head was shaved, and she seemed to have found a new affection for long hair.

  "Anything else I should know?" he asked.

  "I talked with Gaby again."

  Chris said nothing, but continued to turn the bacon strips. Cirocco started rummaging through a cabinet.

  "What did she say?"

  Cirocco came up with a Titanide curry-comb and began running it through her hair. She said nothing for a time, then sighed.

  "I saw her twice. Once about three hectorevs before I went to Kong's mountain. Again in Tethys, not long afterward. The first time she told me Robin was returning to Gaea. She didn't say why. She has children with her."

  Chris said nothing. Not long ago, he would have, but he had begun to wonder about a few things since then. Things like the definitions of "rational", the meaning of magic, the line between the quick and the dead. He had always thought himself a rational man. He was civilized. He didn't believe in sorcery. Though he had lived twenty years in a place with a "God" he had talked to, had loved a "Demon" who had once been a "Wizard," he took none of these words with their literal definitions. Gaea was a bush-league God. Cirocco was remarkable, but she had no magical powers, for good or evil.

  In the face of the things he had witnessed or heard about, why should he worry about one measly resurrection?

  But it had given him a lot of trouble. Gaby had died in his arms. He would never forget her horrible burns. The first time Cirocco told him she had seen Gaby, he had exploded. Later, he had been gentle, fearing his old friend was getting senile. But senility was too easy an explanation. Even if rationality was down the drain, pragmatism was still valuable, and Chris thought of himself as a pragmatist. If it works, it's there. And Cirocco's conversations with Gaby had been very good at predicting the future.

  "When will she get here?" he asked.

  "Here in Gaea? She's here already. In fact, she should be getting near the Junction by now."

  "She's coming here?"

  "Conal's bringing them. There'll be some Titanides with them, too. What's the matter? Don't you want them here?"

  "It's not that. It'll be great to see her again. I never thought I would." He looked around the kitchen. "I was just wondering if I have enough on hand for guests. Maybe I should run over to the Hua's and see if they have-"

  Cirocco laughed, and put her arms around him. He looked down at her face, and recognized the glint of mischief there.

  "Don't be such a housewife, Chris," she said, and kissed him. "The Titanides are better at that, and they like it, too."

  "Okay. What do you want to do?" He embraced her, let his hands slide down her back to her buttocks, and lifted her easily.

  "First, let's get that bacon and toast off the stove before they burn. I've decided I'm not as hungry as I thought."

  "No?"

  "Well, not that way. I've been running all over this stinkin' wheel with nothing to look at but Iron Masters." She slipped a hand between them, down his belly, and squeezed. "Suddenly your homely face seems oddly attractive."

  "That's not my face, old woman."

  "It'll do," she said, and squeezed again.

  At the completion of her thirteenth decade, boredom was one of Cirocco's chief fears. She had been spared the depredations of aging, the dulling of the senses and mental powers. It was conceivable that someday bedding down with a lover and performing the ancient rituals of coitus would pall. That was the day she would be ready to die.

  But so far, so good.

  They were in the crow's nest, a garret rising over the main house at Tuxedo Junction. There were windows in each of the six walls. One ladder went down to the third floor, and another up to a belfrey that housed Chris's carillon. Two dozen ropes ran along one wall, through holes in the floor and ceiling.

  "Yowee!" Cirocco cried, and stretched an arm toward the ropes
. She selected one and gave it a yank. The largest brass bell above them gave a joyous peal.

  "That good, huh?" Chris said, and collapsed on top of her.

  "I tell thee thrice," she said, and rang the bell two more times. Then she wrapped her arms and legs around him and hugged as hard as she could.

  There were good and bad things about living in Gaea. Some things, such as the unchanging light, Cirocco hardly noticed anymore. The passing of day into night was just a vague memory. One of the good things she usually didn't notice was the low gravity. The one time she did notice it was during the act of love. Even a man as large as Chris did not weigh much. Instead of becoming an oppressive burden, his body was a warm and comforting presence. They could lie this way for hours if they wanted to, he utterly relaxed, she in no danger of being squeezed. And she loved that. Once a man was inside her, she always hated to give him up.

  Chris raised himself slightly and looked down at her. He glistened with sweat, and she liked that, too.

  "Did she say anything about ... " He didn't know how to finish the sentence, but it didn't matter. Cirocco knew what he meant.

  "Nothing. Not a word. But I know it's coming, and soon."

  "How do you know?"

  She shrugged. "I don't. Call it sexagenarian intuition."

  "It's been a long time since you were a sexagenarian."

  "What are you talking about? I've made it there twice. I'm a double sexagenarian, plus ten."

  "I guess that makes you twice as sexy as anyone, plus ten."

  "Damn right. I-"

  They both heard it at the same time. Not far away, Titanide voices were raised in song. Chris kissed her and went to stand in the window looking down toward the bridge. Cirocco rolled on her side and looked at him. She was pleased at what she saw, but wondered what Robin would think.