Demon

by John Varley

  "Vut you have to light the fire," Luther cackled. "Vring the vodies to we," he told his remaining Apostles.

  Bartholomew and Simon Peter scrabbled in the dirt and came up with a dismembered body. Someone had thought they could beat the system, but Luther knew better. Even this was not beyond the power of almighty God.

  The corpses were fairly fresh, except one that had been gone about two days. One was in a white winding cloth: a rich man, considering the price of fabric in Bellinzona. The rest were naked. Luther slit the cloth over the rich man's face and knew at once this was Judas Iscariot.

  He worked himself into a minor frenzy. This was nothing compared to the holy-rolling toot he had thrown for the Free Females; resurrection was a routine matter, like handing out wafers. When he was in the proper state he knelt and kissed each pair of cold lips. He had to wait while Peter fit the pieces of the last one together.

  In a few minutes they began opening their eyes. The Apostles helped them to their feet, while Luther studied them with a top sergeant's eye. That black female could be Thaddeus, he decided. And the Chinese would make a good John. He assigned names without regard to what sex they had been. After a few weeks, it was damn hard to tell, anyway.

  The seven new zombies were weak and unsteady. It would take ten or twenty revs for them to attain their full strength. The dismembered one would take even longer. Luther would have it carried into the woods and left with the two others he would not be needing, to eventually make their way back to Pandemonium. Luther always traveled with just Twelve.

  By the side of the river, Luther knelt in prayer.

  Good, bad-there wasn't a lot of difference anymore. Luther could feel hatred, fury, and a religious ecstasy that was a great deal like both hatred and fury. The closest he ever came to feeling good, in the sense that Arthur Lundquist might have understood, was when he communed with God. When he prayed.

  He didn't do it often. God was a very busy Woman, and didn't like to be bothered with trivia. Just to have Her not answer was stinging enough. To have Her deliver a rebuke could dash him to the ground like an insect. But today She heard, and She answered. Luther knew where the child was. He got to his feet and gathered his troops, gave them their marching orders.

  He just hoped that spawn-of-a-whore Kali didn't get to Tuxedo Junction before he did.

  SIX

  Cirocco felt tired after her swim in the fountain. It hadn't always been that way. When she was younger, it had left her so full of energy it was almost painful. She had not needed to eat for two or three days. Chris said it was still that way for him. He was only forty-nine. It would probably be like that for Robin, too. But for the last fifty years or so, Cirocco needed to lie down for a few hours after a rejuvenation.

  She did not do it at the fountain. It was the principle of the water hole. There were enemies who could come into Dione. They might come to the fountain, knowing Cirocco had to visit it once every three kilorevs.

  So she went to a secluded lake she knew, about five miles from Tuxedo Junction. There was a beach of black sand, fine as powder, and warm from sub-Gaean heat.

  She stretched, rested her head on her pack, and dozed.

  Nova saw them when they reached the bridge. For a moment she didn't know who it was walking with the big hairy man, but there really could be little doubt. Robin wore only shorts, and the tattoos that made her body unique were visible. The snakes seemed almost alive. Robin glowed with vivid colors Nova knew only from photographs of her mother as a young woman. If anything, the colors were even brighter now. Patches of gold seemed to glitter, and reds and violets and greens and yellows shimmered like precious jewels. She looked like a little brown Halloween egg.

  Brown?

  Nova looked again. Sure enough, Robin had managed to get a sun tan. It was a neat trick in this buttermilk sunlight. Even neater to do it in just two hours and not burn in the process.

  She kept watching the other end of the bridge, but Cirocco did not appear. She sighed, and went down the stairs to meet them.

  It was shocking to see the change up close. Robin had shed five years. Nova had begun to realize that Cirocco was a very powerful witch indeed, but this was almost beyond belief. It irked her in some way she wasn't proud of to see how fresh and happy her mother looked. She just didn't have the right to be that happy when Nova was so miserable.

  A meal was served, and still Cirocco didn't show.

  Robin and Chris went off together somewhere. Nova watched them go, then hurried up to her room. In a short time she came out again, and went to the kitchen. Serpent was alone in there, mixing something that smelled like cookie batter in a big bowl. He glanced at her, then looked back to his work.

  She wandered over to the tremendous spice rack on the wall. Hundreds of blown-glass bottles contained leaves and powders and crystals and some items Nova thought best left unnamed. Many were of Gaean ancestry. The problem was she knew there were many Earth spices in there, but they were all labeled in Titanide script, engraved on the glass. By lifting the stoppers and sniffing a few likely candidates she managed to locate aristolochia root, then after more trial and error something that smelled like powdered extract of cubeb. It was the right color, and it tasted right. But after that she was symied.

  "Perhaps I can be of assistance."

  She jumped in surprise-which was no small matter in the low gravity. She had been trying so hard to ignore the Titanide's existence that she had forgotten he was there.

  "I doubt it," she said. For some reason, she was embarrassed when these outlandish animalls talked. They pretended to be human, and did such a poor job of it.

  "You could try," Serpent suggested.

  "I was wondering if ... if you had any cardamom."

  "Great or small?"

  "What?"

  "We use two varieties: the Greater-"

  "Yes, yes, I know. The small."

  "Do you want the dried rind or the crushed seed?"

  "The seed, the seed!" Nova regretted being drawn into the conversation in the first place. But Serpent handed her a jar, and she tapped a portion onto a slip of paper and twisted it shut. Then he helped her find the cinnamon. She could see he wondered what she might be cooking, and that whatever it might be, he didn't approve.

  "Anything else?"

  "Uh ... would you have any benjamin?"

  Serpent pursed his lips primly.

  "You'd have to look in the medicine cabinet for that." It was clear his opinion of her recipe had dropped even lower. "It will be labeled in English, as 'benzoin' " He paused, seemed about to ask a question, but Cirocco had warned him to tread on eggs when dealing with this human. "If it matters," he went on, "there won't be any potassium cyanide left in the solution, but there might be some alcohol."

  Nova was going to say she meant the gum resin, not the crystal, but decided against it. She hurried away and upstairs to the infirmary, which she had already located and raided for other ingredients.

  Back in her room, she shut the door, pulled the drapes, lit a candle, and stripped off her clothes. Sitting cross-legged on the floor, she tapped out portions of her new acquisitions into the small metal dish she was using as a crucible, added some water, and stirred it with her finger. She used a pin to draw blood from her thumb, and dripped it into the aromatic mess as it began to bubble from the heat of the candle. When it was going well, she plucked three pubic hairs, singed them in the candle flame, and added them to the crucible.

  A dollop of vodka nicked from the cabinet in the living room soon had the mixture sizzling with a blue flame. She continued to cook it until she had a few ounces of grayish powder. She sniffed it, and made a face. Well, she wouldn't use much. She fretted for a moment about the benjamin, and the fact that the recipe called for mushroom liqueur instead of vodka. But this was supposed to be sympathetic magic, not literal sorcery, so it ought to do.

  She began plucking more hairs. She plucked until she was sore, and then wound them together and tied them up into a tiny,
golden brush. Pulling on her shirt and pants, she peered out the door. When she was sure she was unobserved she hurried down the hall to Cirocco's room.

  Inside, she used the brush to dab tiny spots of powder onto the bedposts and under the pillow. Under the bed she drew a five-sided figure and left a pubic hair in the middle. Then she retreated to the door, leaving an infinitesimal dab every three feet.

  Down the hall she went, dabbing her brush in the pan and leaving little dots of powder in a trail to her doorway.

  When she closed her door she had to lean against it for a moment. Her heart was pounding and her cheeks were hot. She tore off her clothes and jumped into bed. She used the brush to make a mark between her breasts, then thrust it down between her legs, muttering an invocation. Then she set the pan on the floor near the wall, where Robin would not see it. She pulled the bedclothes up to her neck and took a deep, shuddering breath.

  Be still, heart. Your beloved will come.

  Then she leaped out of bed and flung herself at the huge, wondrous vanity table with the wavy mirror. She dug into her cosmetics, heedless of the fact that some of them might be irreplaceable. She made up her face with infinite care, applied her best perfume, and jumped back into bed.

  What if the perfume covered up the scent of the potion? What if Cirocco didn't care for lipstick? She wore none herself. She didn't wear any cosmetics, and was the most beautiful woman Nova had ever seen.

  Sobbing, she flew down the hall to the bathroom. She scrubbed it all off, then was sick in the toilet. She cleaned it up, brushed her teeth, and hurried back to bed.

  This must be love; what else could hurt so much?

  She wept, she moaned, she thrashed the sheets to ribbons, and still Cirocco did not come.

  Eventually, she cried herself to sleep.

  SEVEN

  In the dream, Cirocco opened her eyes.

  She was on her back in the fine black sand. Her head rested on her pack. The sand was quite dry, and so was her body. She spread her arms and dug her fingers into the sand, pointed her toes and felt it shift under her heels, moved her shoulders and hips in a slow, sensuous circle that dug the Cirocco-shaped hole in the sand a few centimeters deeper. She let out a deep breath, and relaxed totally.

  She was aware of every muscle and every bone. Her skin was stretched taut, each nerve ending waiting to feel the strange thing again.

  It came after a timeless dream-time. A small hand was rubbing her left leg, from the top of her foot to her knee and back down again. She could feel it quite distinctly. Four fingers, a thumb, the heel of the hand. It was not pressing hard, not massaging, but neither was it the touch of a feather. She watched without alarm, in the way of some dreams. She could see the minute changes in texture on her skin where the hand moved.

  Her nipples hardened. She closed her eyes (it was not completely dark beneath her eyelids), pressed her head back against the pack, raising her shoulders from the sand and arching her back. The hand moved up to her thigh, and another cupped her breast, moved light fingertips around the curve of it, brushed a thumb over the wrinkled nipple. She sighed, and relaxed back onto the accepting sand.

  She opened her eyes again. In the dream.

  The land was darker. In a land of unchanging light, dusk seemed to be sweeping over the quiet lake. Cirocco moaned. Her legs were heavy, engorged; she opened them, offering herself to the darkening sky. Her hips seemed to grow from the ground; she thrust them out and up in the most primitive gesture of all, then relaxed again.

  Two small footprints appeared in the sand between her legs, one at a time. Then there was the imprint of knees. The sand swarmed, taking on the shape of legs, hollowing out a space for a hip as the phantom knelt and shifted. Both hands were on her thighs now, moving gently up and down.

  Cirocco closed her eyes again, and could immediately see better. Ghost images of the lake, the far shore, the sky pulsed against the inside of her eyelids. She lifted herself on her elbows and let her head fall back. Through the thin skin she saw trees converging on a point in the sky. The sky was the color of blood. She bent her legs, her knees up and open. She gasped as the hands explored her. Keeping her eyes closed, she lifted her head.

  When she looked straight ahead she could see nothing but the throbbing of her own pulse, the fulgurant and amorphous ephemera of her own retinas. But when she looked to the side-careful to keep her eyes closed-a figure was revealed kneeling between her open legs. It was a Cubist conception, existing from all sides at once, a layered thing with depths her peripheral dream-vision could not reach. It was a thing of colored smoke bound together by moonbeams. Cirocco knew who it was, and she was not afraid.

  In the dream, she opened her eyes to almost total darkness.

  The shadow knelt there. She felt the hands descend her thighs and spread out over her belly, saw her hyaline lover's face moving down, felt the brush of long hair, felt the tickle of a warm breath, felt the tender kiss, the more insistent kiss, the eager opening of mouth and vulva, the entry of tongue, the hands sliding around to clutch her buttocks and raise her from the yielding sand.

  For a moment she was transfixed. She threw her head back, mouth open but unable to make a sound. When finally she was able to sob, to release her breath, the breath became a moan that trailed off into a whispered word.

  "... Gaby ... "

  It was utterly dark. Cirocco reached down and ran her hands through thick hair, down to Gaby's neck, over her shoulders. She squeezed the smaller woman between her legs, and Gaby kissed Cirocco's belly, her breasts, her neck. Cirocco felt the familiar heavy breasts sliding over her, the wonderful weight pressing down on her. Her hands greedily explored the impossible solidity of Gaby's body. She heard Gaby's breathing next to her ear, smelled the special complex of scent she knew to be Gaby. She wept.

  In her dream, Cirocco closed her eyes again. She saw tears in Gaby's eyes, and a smile on her lips. They kissed. Gaby's black hair covered their faces.

  She opened her eyes. It was getting light. Gaby still rested on her. They made meaningless noises at each other as a dim twilight stole over the land. Cirocco saw the beloved face. She kissed it. Gaby laughed quietly. Then she put her hands on the sand and lifted herself onto her knees, straddling Cirocco. She held out her hand and got to her feet, pulling Cirocco behind her. The ground clung like flypaper. She had to pull hard to get up. When she was finally standing, Gaby turned her and pointed down. Cirocco saw her own body reclined on the sand, unmoving.

  "Am I dead?" she asked. It did not seem an important question.

  "No, my beloved. I am not the angel of death. Walk with me." Gaby put her arm around Cirocco and they started up the beach.

  In the dream, they spoke to each other. They did not use sentences. A word here and there was enough. Old hurts, old joys were brought out, held up to the yellow sky of Iapetus, cried over and laughed about, and tucked carefully away again. They spoke of things that had happened a century ago, but nothing of the last twenty years. The two decades didn't exist for the old friends.

  At last it was time for Gaby to go. Cirocco saw that Gaby's feet no longer touched the sand. She tried to hold her, but the smaller woman kept drifting up into the sky and, in the manner of dreams, all Cirocco's movements were too slow and ineffectual to prevent it. It was a sad time. Cirocco cried for a while when Gaby was gone, standing there in the restored light.

  Time to wake up, she thought.

  When nothing happened, she looked down at the beach. Two sets of footprints led to where she stood, tired and discouraged.

  She closed her eyes and slapped her cheeks. She opened them to find no change in her situation. So she started back along the edge of the water.

  She watched her bare feet as she walked. They made new imprints beside the two trails going the other way. Where the Woozle Wasn't, she thought, and could not remember where that came from. Getting senile, Cirocco.

  Her body was a short distance from the water, up where the sand was dry and fine enough
for filling hourglasses. It reclined with its head on the pack, its hands folded on its belly, and its legs straight out and crossed at the ankles. She knelt close to it. It breathed slowly and evenly.

  She looked away from the body and down at ... at herself. At the body she was living in. It was completely familiar to her. She touched herself, rubbed her hands together, held a hand up and tried to see things through it and failed to do so. She pinched her thigh and watched the skin turn red.

  After a while she reached out and touched the body on the forearm. The body was other, not self. It was an everyday dichotomy, with a disturbing twist. What if the body sat up and wanted to talk?

  It was definitely time to wake up, she decided.

  Or to go to sleep.

  She reached back into a century's experience of living from her gut as well as her mind, and found a non-verbal notion tickling the back of her head. There was no use in trying to think it out. Sometimes, in Gaea, this was the only way to deal with life. Things happened here. Not everything could be explained.

  She allowed her instinct to take over. Without thought, she closed her eyes and toppled forward, turning as she fell. She felt the brief touch of the skin of the other, a singular but not unpleasant sensation of fullness-something like the sensations of pregnancy-and rolled along the sand. She opened her eyes and sat up, alone.

  The tracks in the sand were still there. Two sets led away, one returned.

  She moved on hands and knees to the harder, wetter sand nearer the water. Selecting one of the smaller prints-high-arched, five toes clearly visible and digging in-she ran her fingertips lightly through the depressions. She moved to the next print and lowered herself until her nose almost touched the print. She scented Gaby quite distinctly. The prints of the larger feet did not smell at all. Her own prints never did. Cirocco's sense of smell, though inhumanly keen, could not distinguish her own spoor from the ever-present odor of herself.