Demon

by John Varley

  He dropped his beer bottle, which shattered on the marble terrace. Adam laughed when he saw the broken glass. It was just like the Three Stooges.

  "Chris, are you sober?" she asked. as her eyes narrowed.

  "Sober enough."

  "Then here's what you have to do."

  She told him. It didn't take long. It was not too complicated, but it was frightening. One year I sat here, he thought. One year with nothing to do but talk baby-talk. Now I have to be a super-hero.

  He knew he would start to whine in a moment, so he nodded his head.

  And Gaby was gone.

  He hurried to Adam, picked him up, and smiled as well as he could.

  "We're going to take a walk," he said.

  "Don't wanna. I wanna watch Gaea fightin' some more."

  "We'll do that later. This is going to be even better."

  Adam looked doubtful, but said nothing as Chris hurried down the stairs, past the sleeping forms of Amparo and Sushi and all the other household servants. He went out the back door of Tara, and into the strand-forest behind it.

  Gaea paused in the middle of the causeway. Something didn't feel right.

  Her mind was a fragmented thing, but she was used to that, knew how to deal with it. A growing percentage of her had come to be concentrated in this body. While fighting the snake, she had been able to think of almost nothing else. It was the same way when she concentrated her energies on healing herself.

  But now something else was happening. She'd have it in a minute. The great brow furrowed in thought.

  Then there were shouts. At the same time, the other group of Titanides, who were organized into a drum and bugle corps, began an exceptionally loud number, and started marching toward the east. It left Cirocco out there alone, almost a kilometer in front of her army.

  Let's see now. The first group of Titanides must almost be to the Disney gate by now. This new group was headed the other way, toward Goldwyn. Was Cirocco dispersing her forces, getting ready for an attack?

  There were twelve explosions, Gaea looked up, saw the tiny planes passing by again, moving west to east. Another factor to consider. The planes passed Whistlestop ... who seemed shorter, somehow. And the blimp seemed to be smoking or steaming...

  She figured it out. Whistlestop looked shorter because he was coming at her. As she watched he straightened his course even more, until he was almost nose-down. Tons of ballast water spilled from his rear end, and it rose and rose, until he was a huge circle in the air, getting bigger.

  The "steam" was cherubs flying away from his upper vent holes, and a million creatures, some no larger than a mouse, leaping out the sides at the ends of tiny parachutes. An evacuation was under way. It was an awesome sight, accompanied by an awesome sound: a high, mournful wail that loosened her teeth.

  It was a blimp's death-cry.

  Luther stood alone, atop the wall near his chapel beside the Goldwyn Gate. It looked as if he would be left out of the action.

  He knew he didn't have long to live. He had endured wounds at the hands of Pope Joan's Kollege of Kardinals, he had been ignored by Gaea for too long following Kali's triumph. He was out of the inner circle, and it pained him, as all he wished to do was serve Gaea.

  He watched the battle with the snake. Gaea won, and he felt neither pleasure nor pain.

  He saw the blimp moving into position ...

  And that tiny part of his mind still attuned to Gaea's thoughts picked up her moment of doubt before she looked up into the sky.

  He fell to his knees. He tore at his flesh, and he prayed.

  Luther's mind was like a truck with square wheels. It was possible to move it, but only with great effort. He strained, lifting his mind up onto the edge, and then it thumped solidly down on a new thought. Then once again he strained.

  Where is the Child? he thought.

  Strain, lift ... thump.

  The devil's army is all here, in the north. Thump.

  What if this is all a distraction? Thump. What if the real attack is coming from somewhere else?

  A voice whispered very close to his ear. It sounded like his wife ... but he didn't have a wife. It was Gaea... of course, it was Gaea.

  "The Fox Gate is due south," the voice said.

  "Fox Gate, Fox Gate," Luther muttered. Well, not actually. His mouth was such a ruin now that all he could say was "Aah gay, aah gay."

  There was a train waiting in the Goldwyn station. Luther climbed aboard, out onto the narrow monorail track that ran around the top of the wall.

  For once there was a good head of steam in the thing. He got into the engineer's cab and pulled the big iron lever all the way back. The train started to move, and quickly gathered speed.

  Chris ran through the strand-forest. Adam seemed to love it.

  "Faster, Daddy, faster!" he shouted.

  It would have been pitch dark, but for a mysterious blue light that floated on ahead of them. He had to hope it was leading the way, because without it, and even with a flashlight, he would soon have been hopelessly lost.

  "Catch it, Daddy!"

  I hope not, he thought. If I caught it, I wouldn't know what to do with it. I hope it just keeps floating on out there, fifty meters ahead, and I hope I don't stumble over anything in here.

  Far away, he heard a deep, sustained, rumbling explosion.

  He wondered what it was.

  Calvin sat in the bombardier's seat, just under the very tip of Whistlestop's great airframe. He was swathed in rich fabrics, but he shivered. He didn't feel so good. He couldn't get rid of the chill. Everything he ate seemed to come right back up. And his head hurt most of the time.

  He didn't know what he had. It could probably be diagnosed, but he doubted it could be cured. What he did know was that there came a time for a man to pack it in.

  For Calvin, one hundred and twenty-six years was plenty. Old and sick, he had seen the great wheel turn just over a million times in his life, and it was enough.

  "Why don't you just drop me off here?" Calvin said, to Whistlestop. "I can walk it. You're good for another twenty, thirty centuries, I guess."

  He heard the gentle whistling. It did not come to him as words. It told of a relationship he knew he could never explain to a human. He and Whistlestop had grown together, shared something neither of them could tell another blimp or another human, and were ready to die together.

  "Well, I figured I had to offer," he chuckled. He leaned back, and took out the cigar and lighter Gaby had left with him, and he chuckled again. This time it turned to a laugh.

  "She remembered," he said. Calvin had smoked cigars so long ago he had almost forgotten it himself.

  This one was fresh and aromatic. He sniffed it, bit off the end, and snapped the lighter. He got it going, took a drag. It tasted good.

  Then he snapped the lighter once more, and held it to the cloth at his right side. Behind him, he heard the deep whoosh as valves opened, as air mixed with hydrogen and came rushing at him.

  He did not hear the explosion.

  TWENTY-ONE

  All blimps die in fire. It is their destiny. Nothing else can kill them.

  Cirocco watched as Whistlestop descended toward Gaea, who stood transfixed on the broad wooden bridge.

  It was voluntary, she told herself. They chose to do this.

  Somehow, it didn't help.

  "Everyone down!" she shouted over her shoulder. "Protect yourselves behind your shields." She turned back, and Whistlestop's nose was a hundred meters above Gaea and still descending.

  She had wondered if Gaea would run. She did not. She stood her ground, and as the mammoth gasbag bore down on her, she drew her fist back and would have punched it, but she was enveloped in fire.

  The flame started at Whistlestop's nose, and licked up his sides faster than the eye could follow. The sound was beyond imagining. A bloom of flames fifteen kilometers high roared into the air, and the blimp's body crunched down on the spot where Gaea had been standing. It seemed to hes
itate a moment, still held by internal gases not yet burning, then began a stately collapse. It took a long, long time.

  Being lighter than air does not mean a blimp is not heavy. It simply means it masses less than the volume of air it displaces. The volume of Whistlestop's gasbags alone was half a billion cubic feet; that amount of air at two atmospheres of pressure had tremendous mass.

  The first half of Whistlestop seemed to accordion pretty much at the spot where Gaea had been. The rest of him tumbled, no longer held up by the hydrogen. It fell, burning, into the Universal studio and along the western wall. Everything but the rock itself began to burn.

  The heat of the fire was intense at first, when it was a billowing plume that seemed to touch the sky. Cirocco did not move away, but had to hold her hand up to shield her face. She heard the ends of her hair sizzling, and thought her clothes were smoldering. Behind her, the army found their shields growing too hot to touch, and they were a kilometer away.

  But that towering pyre of hydrogen died away quickly. Universal burned hot, but it was not unbearable.

  The huge heap of dry canvas-like skin that had been Whistlestop was going to burn for some time. Everyone watched it Gaea was under there. She was probably in the moat. No one knew how deep it might be.

  After ten minutes of no movement, some of the troops behind her began to shout. Cirocco glanced around. They were throwing things in the air. They were daring to believe Gaea was dead. They gradually quieted when they saw that Cirocco was not moving.

  She turned around, and watched the fire burn.

  Two hundred panaflexes, over a thousand arrflexes, and uncounted bolexes died in the conflagration, taking with them priceless footage of the battle with the Giant Snake.

  The Chief Cinematographer began ordering up battalions of photofauns from other studios ... but it was hardly necessary. Most had stayed at their posts, morosely shooting a few feet when the Titanide bands went by their gate, but quite a few had started hurrying toward Universal when they heard the sounds of the snake tearing itself from the earth.

  Then the great column of flame had erupted to the north.

  They had their orders, but it was too damn much. It was like asking a hungry child to sit still and touch nothing in a room made of chocolate. It was like telling a horde of savage papparazzi that, just a block away, the Queen of England was balling the biggest television star in the world right in the middle of the road... but c'mon, fellas, please, respect their dignity, okay? They don't want any pictures.

  Almost as one, every bolex, arrflex, and panaflex in Pandemonium headed toward the fire, by the shortest possible route.

  Chris emerged from the strand-forest into a strange quiet.

  He looked cautiously around, and didn't see anyone. They must all be at the wall, at defensive posts, he decided.

  Not far from him was the northern end of the Fox Main Street. There was not much of the studio this close to the cable. There were trees, and lawns, and some shrubs. It was called Producers' Park. Twice-life-size statues of past greats faced each other on each side of the road, standing on high pedestals listing their film credits. At the head of the road, with its back to Chris, was the even larger image of Irving Thalberg, presiding over the others: Goldwyn, Louis B. Mayer, Jack Warner, Zanuck, De Laurentiis, Ponti, Foreman, Lucas, Zamyatin, Fong, Conn, Lasker-there were over a hundred of them, dwindling in the distance. They were in thoughtful poses, most of them looking downward so visitors to the park would look up and see themselves being regarded by the greats of cinema history.

  All the statues regarded just then was a roadway covered with gold paint. It didn't seem to upset them.

  Chris no longer had his guiding light. He wondered what it had been, feeling sure Gaby had something to do with it.

  Apparently she felt his course from here was clear. She had said hurry, and there was no one in sight. So he dodged around the statue of Thalberg and ran down the road.

  The producers watched him in silence.

  Far away to his left, he noticed the little plume of white smoke that meant a train was heading south on the monorail. He and Adam had been on it many times. It was one of the nicer things in Pandemonium.

  He wondered if the people on it were aware the track was out at Universal.

  A safe distance from the Paramount Gate, the Titanide Drum and Bugle Corps stopped playing, carefully put their instruments aside, and started off at a full gallop, continuing in their clockwise direction.

  On the other side of Pandemonium, the Brass Band did the same.

  Both actions were observed from the walls, of course. But the Titanides made no move toward the gates. They stayed a careful distance away from the wall, just out of cannon range.

  Orders were specific. Stand and fight. Defend your gate. So while small detachments ran along the walls, vainly trying to keep up with the thundering herd and to report if they attempted to cross the moat and attack between gates, the actions had little effect on the defense of the Studio.

  The forest came relatively close to the Fox Gate. That had been one consideration in Gaby's mind.

  It was defended by Gautama and Siddhartha, possibly the two least able military Priests. That had been important, too. That it was one hundred and eighty degrees away from Universal, as far away as one could get and still be in Pandemonium, had been a bit of luck. She felt she was due a little. She'd need some more to pull this off and not lose any of her friends.

  On the bad side, Gautama had two companies of Minutemen with functional flintlock rifles. Siddhartha had a couple of cannons.

  And Luther had a long way to go to reach Fox.

  Gaby had been working on Luther's deteriorating mind for some time. She used the discontent she found there and built on it. There was no way to sway him in his loyalty to Gaea, but he resented her just enough that he would not be as cautious as usual. She had managed to whisper in his ear back at his post at Goldwyn, and he was on his way. And she had a few more tricks in store.

  Luther was a weak reed. She hated to rely on him so much. But she could not take direct actions within the walls of Pandemonium. Putting the staff of Tara to sleep was about as far as she could go.

  Gene was a weak reed, too. But what could you do? He had to have his part to play, she owed him that much. And ... there was no one else who could do what Gene had to do.

  She was waiting on the verge of the forest when the four Titanides and three humans showed up. She greeted each of them by name. She noted the shocked surprise on Robin's face, wished she had more time to talk to the little witch, who she loved dearly, but there was so much to do.

  So she gave them their instruction. They had brought their weapons.

  The rest was going to be up to them.

  Conal sat astride Rocky and watched as the little plume of steam crawled around the rim of Pandemonium. He didn't know what it was. All he knew was that Gaby said that when it reached a certain mark on the wall, they were to go.

  He was surprised to discover that he was not afraid for himself. But he was absolutely terrified Robin would die.

  They had their weapons. Each Titanide had a long sword and a rifle with interchangeable magazines. The humans carried handguns. They had practiced with both rifles and handguns, and found it was practically impossible to hit anything with either, even from the relatively steady moving platform of a Titanide's back. But they were fractionally better with the smaller weapons. They also carried short swords, and hoped they didn't have to use them, because it was hard to see what use they would be unless they were dismounted. To be thrown from a Titanide generally meant the Titanide was badly hurt.

  The puff of steam was at the proper mark. Conal felt his hand being squeezed tightly. It was Robin, and her hand was very cold. He leaned over and kissed her. There didn't seem to be anything to say.

  The Titanides moved out into the open and began their charge.

  The body of Whistlestop had almost burned out before the remains began to stir.
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  Behind it, Universal was still burning madly. The waters of the moat were full of floating debris. The corpses of a hundred parboiled eight-meter Great White sharks floated belly-up all around the crumpled ruin of the blimp.

  As with Nasu, it was a hand that appeared first. Then, slowly, struggling, Gaea pulled herself out of the black mess and stood, looking dazed, on the outer shore of the moat.

  Cirocco sternly repressed an impulse to laugh. Once it started, it would never stop, it would quickly become hysteria. But Gaea...

  She looked like some cartoon character in one of the oldest gags in the trade. Hapless cartoon animal is handed a round black bomb with a sizzling fuse, looks at it, does a double-take-eyes bug out and BLAM! Smoke clears to reveal character standing in exactly the same position, holding nothing, but completely black, hair standing on end, wisps of smoke curling away ... character blinks twice-only the eyes are visible-and falls over.

  Completely black but for the eyes. That was Gaea. But she didn't fall over.

  She began to writhe. It was awful to watch. She stretched this way and that, and her skin began to crack. She reached down to her belly, to her legs, her feet, and scrubbed herself vigorously with her hands. And the skin began to peel away.

  It came off in one big chunk, like a child's bunny-suit pajamas. Beneath was glistening white skin, blonde hair... a new Gaea, unhurt. She stood for a moment, having lost perhaps two feet in height, then began to walk toward Cirocco.

  TWENTY-TWO

  "It's time, Gene."

  "I know it's time," he said. "Tarnation, didn't you tell me ... "

  He stopped his work and looked around. Gaby wasn't there. He thought he had heard her, but he couldn't be sure. He shrugged, and returned to the device in his lap.

  He was sitting on a big crate labeled DYNAMITE: PRODUCT OF BELLINZONA. It sat, in turn, on the great green nerve nexus down in the dead heart of Oceanus. Stacked all around him were similar crates.