Demon

by John Varley

  They had to camp twice in the jungle. Nobody slept much.

  There was another constant tension. Word had come down that an attack in force might be made against them while they were in Cronus, who was an ally of Gaea. Nobody knew the nature of the possible enemies, but from what they had seen, it would be awful.

  But for some reason, Cronus did not attack. The army came out the other end and breathed a sigh of relief-all but fifty-two Titanides and sixteen humans who would never breathe again.

  They made a more elaborate camp by the river Ophion, on the verge of the great desert of Mnemosyne, not too far from where the river plunged underground and ran for two hundred kilometers before emerging.

  Cirocco let them rest, recover from the jungle, and gather strength for the desert crossing. Football games were organized. Men and women soldiers retired to the conjugal tents and forgot about fear for a while.

  Every available water container was topped off. There would be no oasis, no spring, no water of any kind until they reached the snows of Oceanus.

  THIRTEEN

  There was a universal mystic dread of the sandworm.

  Many a tale had been told of it, though of the humans there only Cirocco had ever seen it.

  It was ten kilometers long and had a mouth two hundred meters wide, some said. It thirsted for human blood, according to others. It liked to stay under the sand, where it could move faster than a Titanide could run, then come bursting to the surface to devour whole armies.

  Well... sort of.

  A lot of the tale-tellers were remembering the beast who had first appeared in a movie long ago-one of Gaea's favorites. She had liked it so much she had built the beast, and let it loose in Mnemosyne, which, according to Titanide legend, had once been the Jewel of the Wheel.

  The truth was a lot more, and a lot less.

  They passed one great loop of the worm midway through their crossing. The worm was three hundred kilometers long and four kilometers in diameter. It preferred to stay below the surface, but where the bedrock was less than four kilometers down it had no choice, so loops of it were visible far into the distance. It was gradually crunching the rock into finer and finer sand, and somehow living on the minerals it ingested.

  As to its speed ...

  Three hundred kilometers of sand creates a great deal of friction. The sandworm was made of huge ring-segments, each about a hundred meters long. What happened was, one of the visible segments would hitch itself forward six or seven meters, then the next one in line would pull itself back up against the first, then the next, and so on down. Two or three minutes later the segments would hitch along another six or seven meters.

  The relief of seeing it, awesome as it was and so utterly harmless, was so great that a fad developed which Cirocco did nothing to stop. The army began covering it with graffiti.

  As each Legion passed the two or three kilometers of visible worm, their commanders gave them a short break, and they crowded around to write on the biggest damn living wall any of them had ever seen, and to laugh at the messages left by those who had gone before. Names and hometowns were sentimental favorites. "Marian Pappadapolis, Djakarta." "Carl Kingsley, Buenos Aires." "Fahd Fong, the GREAT Texas Free State!"

  You could carve the surprisingly soft hide of the thing with sword or sheath-knife; it didn't give a damn.

  There was poetry: "Those who write on a sandworm's balls ... "

  Urgent messages: "Sammy, call home!"

  Advertising: "For a good time, see George, Fifth Legion, Tent Twelve."

  Criticism: "Sonja Kolskaya gives great head!"

  Philosophy: "Screw the Army."

  Helpful suggestions: "Blow it out your ass!"

  And patriotism: "DEATH TO GAEA!!!!!"

  That message was repeated up and down the length of the worm. There were touching eulogies to dead friends, homesick laments common to soldiers everywhere. Even a bit of history: "Kilroy Was Here."

  It was a good thing the sandworm was there, Cirocco knew. The army was in need of some comic relief. The crossing of Mnemosyne was hellish.

  The temperature soared as high as one hundred and forty Fahrenheit, and seldom went below one-ten. The humidity was very low, which helped. Nothing else did. There was no relief of night, no cooling breeze.

  The strategies of dealing with Gaean desert were quite different from those useful on the Sahara. The sunshine was weak as diluted tea. You couldn't even tan in it, much less burn. So hats were not worn, nor any sort of protective garment. Many preferred to strip right down to the buff so the sweat could evaporate at the maximum rate. Others wore the lightest possible garments to trap some of the water.

  Neither strategy was very good. They had enough water to make it across without rationing, so Cirocco made no decrees. The problem was saving one's feet, and getting some sleep.

  Odd devices, carried all the way from Dione, were broken out and passed around. They looked like snowshoes, and were woven of tough reeds. It took some practice to walk in them, but it was worth the effort. All the heat came from below, up through the sand, which in some places was hot enough to cook on. The sand shoes spread the weight so one didn't sink in. And, most of the time, they kept the soles of the boots away from contact with the ground.

  Titanides had their own, heavy duty versions. But the jeeps had an awful time of it. They honked almost continuously.

  The encampments were nightmares.

  People slept standing up, leaning against wagons. It was possible to heap folded tents, clothes, and anything else that came to hand in a pallet that would insulate to some degree. People crowded onto them-and awoke gasping, drenched in sweat, from nightmares of burning.

  It was better to sleep during the march. Troops did it in rotation, climbing atop the wagons and grabbing a few hours of sleep until roused by the next shift. Still, many fell asleep while marching, fell down, and jumped up screaming.

  There were cases of exhaustion, and dehydration. The Air Force flew in and out constantly, taking the worst cases ahead to the edge of Oceanus. Even so, there were deaths, though not as many as Cirocco had feared. At the twilight zone between Mnemosyne and Oceanus, on the shores of the warm lake where Ophion emerged from his subgaean journey, Cirocco allowed a brief encampment. It was possible to sleep on the ground. Then she hurried them on to the shores of the biggest sea in Gaea, the one that took up sixty percent of the land surface of Oceanus and was called, simply, Oceanus.

  The water was cool. Plants grew along the shore. The Legions stripped off what little they had been wearing and plunged into the sea. Jeeps clambered into the water with joyous hoots. Titanides swam out where it was deep, looking like improbable Loch Ness monsters with their human torsos just out of the water.

  Cirocco gathered her Generals once more to discuss the arrangements for troops too weakened by Mnemosyne. She tried to conceal her fear from them, and didn't think she succeeded. To Cirocco, Oceanus was the great unknown. She had crossed it many times, but always with a deep fear. It was hard to explain, since nothing really bad had ever happened to her there. But Gaby had refused to talk about it, and that worried her.

  It was decided that those soldiers certified by the Medical Corps as too debilitated to stand the Oceanus crossing would stay here at the west shore of the lake. No troops would guard them. They would have to take care of themselves, if it came to fighting.

  Cirocco showed them what they could eat and what to stay away from, and, having put it off as long as she could, led her army into Oceanus.

  FOURTEEN

  The wagons were as light as they would ever be. Gear brought along for the jungle had been left at the west edge of the desert. Desert gear was with the convalescents on the eastern edge. There was no need to carry water into Oceanus, and the cold-weather gear, carried so long and so far, was now on the backs of the troops. If the jeeps appreciated their lighter burdens, they didn't let on.

  Their route through Oceanus took them along the southern shore of the se
a, past the point where the great ice sheet began forming, and to the edge of one of the three major glaciers that inched their way from the southern highlands. At that point the ice sheet was more than a hundred meters thick, plenty of safety margin to bear the weight of the army.

  There was no Circum-Gaea Highway in Oceanus, just as there had not been in Mnemosyne. It would have been silly to try to carve a permanent route. The easiest way was across the frozen sea. While it was not flat-pressure from the glaciers fractured the ice and pushed huge sheets of it up and over other sheets-it was possible to find a reasonably level route. Now that the angels had used all the dynamite they would ever need, regular flights by Conal's remaining planes brought in tons of the stuff, which was used by the scouts to blast passages.

  As they moved into the ice-bright night of Oceanus toward their first encampment, a familiar shape grew in the east. It was Whistlestop, once again doing the inexplicable. Blimps always went through Oceanus at high altitude. But here he came, as if he had a down payment on the place.

  He stopped short of the army, and what looked like fine dust began to fall from his belly. It kept falling for a long time. At intervals they would hear the eerie foghorn bellow as he valved away excess hydrogen. Even so, he gradually rose higher as the dust kept falling.

  When he was done he moved a few kilometers away, turning again toward the east, and dropped a torrent of ballast water that froze to sleet before it reached the surface.

  The payload turned out to be firewood. It was scattered all over the site Cirocco had picked for the first encampment, cut to lengths convenient to the burners which could be set up inside the troops' tents. It was dry and almost smokeless.

  Cirocco told the officers to pass the word through the ranks that the wood was a present from the Hyperion Titanides. The general opinion of Titanides, already high among the jungle veterans, went up another notch as they wolfed down hot meals and crawled into their bedrolls in the warm tents.

  It was during their second encampment in Oceanus that Gaby came to Cirocco again.

  She was in her tent. Her feet were stretched out toward the fire, which had been laid in a thing like a big oil drum. There was a cot in the tent. She had thought she might sleep. She hadn't done so since ... when was it? Somewhere in Cronus. But she wasn't having much luck.

  Still, she knew she needed it, so she stretched out again, yawned, closed her eyes ... and Gaby came through the tent flap. Cirocco heard her, and sat up. She didn't have time to think. Gaby took her by the hand and hurried her toward the outside.

  "Come on," Gaby said. "I've got something important to show you."

  They went outside into the swirling snow.

  It wasn't a blizzard. It wasn't even really a storm, but any sort of wind was unpleasant when it was ten below. The two guards outside her tent were alert, standing with their backs to their fire so they wouldn't be blinded ... and they didn't see Gaby and Cirocco. They looked right through them.

  Which was natural enough in a dream, Cirocco thought.

  They plodded through the snow toward another tent, and Gaby led Cirocco inside. There were two bedrolls, both occupied. Robin was asleep in one of them. In the other, Conal sat up, rubbing his eyes.

  "Captain? Is that ... "

  Conal apparently had no trouble seeing Gaby. He must be dreaming, too.

  "Who's that?" he said.

  "I'm Gaby Plauget," Gaby said.

  Cirocco really had to admire Conal then. He looked at Gaby for a time, saying nothing, apparently fitting the reality to the endless stories he had heard during his time in Gaea. The idea of a ghost didn't seem to give him a lot of trouble. Finally, he nodded.

  "Your spy, Captain ... right?"

  "That's right, Conal. That's very good."

  "It couldn't have been anybody else, I figured." He started to stand up, winced, then swung his legs around so he could lever himself up with his crutch.

  Conal should have been sent back to the city with his broken ankle. He had been prepared to put up a fuss if anybody suggested it, but it didn't come up. Cirocco needed him in Hyperion, disabled or not. And since he could ride on Rocky, it wasn't much of a problem.

  But it had been a bad break. The Titanide healers thought he would limp for a long time-possibly the rest of his life.

  Gaby knelt in front of him. With effortless strength she opened the bulky cast, then put her hands on the bare ankle. She squeezed for half a second. Conal gasped, then looked surprised. He stood up and put his weight on it.

  "Miracles, two for a quarter," Gaby said.

  "I'll have to owe you the quarter," Conal said. "But thank you ... " And he burst out laughing.

  "What's the matter?"

  "Thank you just seems a little ... " He shrugged, and his mouth worked in a foolish grin. He seemed unsteady. "What's the second miracle?"

  "I'll show you. Take my hands, children."

  Flying seemed to upset Conal a lot more than ghosts or magic healing. Cirocco could hear his teeth chattering.

  "Buck up, Conal," Gaby said. "After that trick you pulled on the Luftmorder, this ought to be a walk in the park."

  He said nothing. Cirocco simply endured. She didn't like things that were out of her control. But during these dreams it never seemed to matter so much.

  She found out she was wrong. When she realized where they were headed, she wanted to turn around and go back.

  "You've trusted me this far," Gaby said, gently. "Trust me a little longer. There's nothing here for you to be afraid of."

  "I know, but-"

  "But you've always felt an irrational fear every time you went through Oceanus, and you've never been within a hundred kilometers of the central cable. Oceanus is the enemy, your mind keeps telling you. Oceanus is Evil. Well, for twenty years now you've known it's Gaea that is evil. So what does that make Oceanus?"

  "... I don't know. Many times I've started out to come and look the bastard in the eye ... and I keep seeing the Ringmaster coming apart at the seams."

  "And hearing that fancy story Gaea told us up in the hub"-Gaby paused, and made her voice sound like a petulant child-"about how poor, misunderstood Gaea tried everything, honest she did. and she only wanted to be friends with humanity, to welcome us with open arms... but that foul conniving rebellious bastard Oceanus reached out and... oh, you poor souls, how terrible it must have been for you, but it wasn't my fault, you see, it was Oceanus, who used to be a part of my titanic brain, but is really his own semi-god now, and I just have no control over the rascal ... "

  Gaby fell silent, and Cirocco went over it in her mind again.

  "I'm not such an idiot that I haven't thought that out," Cirocco said. "But like I told you, I just couldn't come here."

  "Snitch had a lot to do with that," Gaby said. "Even when you got him out of your head, he left some of his garbage behind."

  Cirocco shuddered.

  "Sorry, it was a pretty bad metaphor, I guess. No more metaphors. Now we get down to the reality."

  They landed just outside the verge of the strand-forest of the central cable, and proceeded in on foot.

  It grew warmer as they neared the center. What little light there had been failed within the first hundred meters. Neither Conal nor Cirocco carried a lantern, but Gaby had some kind of light source that streamed ahead of her like beams of moonlight, or reflections from a mirrored ballroom globe. It was enough to see by ... and there was nothing to see. Cirocco had been under many cables, and there had always been the flotsam of centuries beneath them. Skeletons of long-dead creatures, fallen nests of blind flying annuals, the crumpled remains of dimpled tapestries that peeled away from the cable strands and hung for hours or millennia ... even old cardboard boxes and plastic sandwich wrappers and crumpled cans from the days of Gaea's tourist program, when thousands of humans had gone rafting on the Ophion or caving in the strand forests. Strand forests supported complex nocturnal ecologies, seldom seen, but indicated by animal droppings and seed-pods fallen fro
m the unseen interstices high above.

  In Oceanus, there was nothing. A cleaning team might have swept through only hours before, dusting and polishing. The ground had the texture of linoleum.

  Cirocco's fears were now vaguely remembered. When she thought about it, she was amazed that she had been afraid. Her times with Gaby had always been spent in a pleasant, half-drugged dream state. She knew nothing could go wrong. Even in retrospect, the dreams did not seem frightening. Now she walked in her usual state of placid expectancy. In a way, she felt like a small child walking with her mother on a winding, wooded path. It was interesting, without being exciting. There would be new things around each curve, but they would not be scary. She had a sweet what-comes-next expectancy, but no sense of urgency.

  She felt some of Conal's emotion, in a way difficult to describe. He was not afraid, either, but he was very curious. Gaby had to keep calling him back or he would have bounded ahead of them. Continuing her analogy, he was like a boy from the city who had never seen the forest; every curve held a new marvel.

  At a point Cirocco knew-without understanding how she knew-to be the exact center of the cable, they saw a light. As they got nearer they saw a man sitting beside the light. They approached him, and stopped. He looked up at them.

  He looked like Robinson Crusoe, or Rip Van Winkle. His hair and beard were long and gray. There were foreign objects, twigs and little bits of fishbone, matted in it, and a long brown stain in his beard below his mouth. He was crusted with dirt. He was wearing the same clothes Cirocco had last seen him in, twenty years ago, writhing in the sawdust on the floor of The Enchanted Cat taproom, in Titantown. To say the clothes were tatters did them an injustice; they were the most decrepit articles of apparel she had ever seen. Great gaps in them showed a lot of skin-taut, stretched tightly over the bones-and every inch of that skin had scars great and small. His face was old, but not the same way Calvin's was old. He might have been a sixty-year-old beachcomber. One of his eye sockets was empty. "Hello, Gene," Gaby said, quietly.