Demon

by John Varley

  What he had in his lap was a timing device. He had thought he understood how to use it. Hook this here dingus to that there whatchamacallit over there, wind up the little hammenframis on the back of that doohickey...

  Nothing. It wasn't ticking or nothing.

  He was supposed to hook it up and get the hell out of there. He didn't plan to get out, so when Gaby gave him the go-on-ahead, he'd waited it out here what he figured was a goodly chunk of time, and then set to work. Now it didn't look like it was gonna work no-how, on account he'd hooked it up ever whichway, and nothing was happening.

  He sobbed his frustration.

  It'd be nice to have him a nice hunk of fish right about now. It was a wonderment, it surely was, how much better the stinking things tasted if you charred them a bit over the fire. Now why hadn't he thought of that?

  He was about to get up and get him some fish, when he remembered how long it would take to get up there and back. Phooey! That's why he'd waited so long before setting to work on this dingus anyway, figuring in the time it would have took him to of clumb up to the top of them stairs ...

  He was woolgathering again, and he knew it. He rearranged the parts of the detonator, wondering if he'd ever get it right.

  And he kept thinking that he was forgetting something.

  And it was the most important part.

  The brakes on the frigging little train didn't work.

  Luther cursed it mightily, then, as the station came by, he leaped, and he rolled.

  He got up shakily. There were little bits of Luther scattered here and there on the platform. Luckily, they weren't important bits. An ear, a fragment of skull, part of a foot.

  He didn't have much time left, and he knew it.

  Luther watched the little train puff away around the broad curve of the track. It would keep going forever, round and round the great wheel of Pandemonium, round and round the Great Gaea...

  No it wouldn't. The track was broken, because ... thump ... Gaea had fought the snake because ... thump, thump ... Cirocco was attacking! And Gaea had sent him here on an important mission!

  His brain was thumping along pretty good by now, actually. A square wheel, if it rolls long enough, wears off some of the corners. He felt as alert as he'd been since the day he ... died. What was left of his brow furrowed, then he shrugged it off and hurried down the stairs-

  He was met by Gautama. Little fat-ass gold-painted pissant Gautama, yammering something in some godless language. Luther drew his cross-the mighty Sword of the Lord-and lopped off his head.

  Which didn't kill Gautama, of course, but when Luther kicked the head a hundred yards down the road it sure inconvenienced him some.

  Gautama blundered around, senseless, his hands held out in front of him. Luther didn't give him another thought. He was humming, trying to mouth the words, though there wasn't enough mouth left to form many of them.

  "But now a champion comes to fight, Whom God Herself elected! No strength of ours can match Her might! We would be lost, rejected!"

  Up on the walls, people were shooting their guns. He heard a cannon go off. And he marched up to the gate and threw it open. People were shouting at him. He couldn't understand the words. He went to the drawbridge mechanism, located the proper lever to pull ...

  Thump.

  I'm lowering the drawbridge, he told himself. Thump.

  Why am I lowering the drawbridge?

  Ah ... why, to help Gaea, of course. To help Gaea to ...

  Get in? Thump thump thump.

  Maybe this was some sort of trick. His hand moved away from the lever.

  "This is not a trick, my darling Luther," said a voice close to his ear.

  He turned his head and saw her.

  It was Gaea, it was his wife, his mother, all motherhood and womanhood and the virginmary god-help-me, with thorns wrapped around her heart and that saintly expression on her face (and it was a little brown woman) and the dazzling white robes and the halo - halo! Why, it was a searing, screaming light that burst from her, the burning light of goodness/pain/death-and millions of angels were hovering above her, blowing their trumpets (and he didn't even know the little brown woman)... thump-trick? How could it be a trick?!

  People were hacking at him with swords now. Absently, he saw one of his arms fall to the stone floor. But, O Lord, I have another to do Thy bidding.

  He lunged at the lever, thrust it forward, and fell into the rattling clattering chewing mechanism as the tons of drawbridge fell forward and rended him limb from limb... .

  Arthur Lundquist's first death had been horrible. His second was glorious.

  Some photofauns had somehow managed to swim the moat. There were a dozen of them clustered around Cirocco as she stood her ground and watched Gaea striding confidently forward.

  The giant Monroe-thing had its arms wide, as if to cut Cirocco off no matter which way she ran. She came on like a dreadful professional wrestler, her face contorted with hate.

  She was five hundred meters away. Four hundred. Three hundred.

  And she stopped, listening, as Luther died.

  Where is the Child?

  As they neared the end of the bridge, a cannon shell burst over their heads. Conal heard something rattle off his helmet, felt something sting his arm, and heard Robin cry out.

  He saw she was holding her hand to her forehead, and there was blood under it. He started to jump-

  "No!" Robin shouted. "I'm all right."

  There was no time, anyway. They were on the bridge now, the Titanides' hooves pounding on the thick timbers. They charged toward the big gap. The drawbridge was up. We'd better turn back, Conal thought.

  Then it fell, and not a moment too soon. With part of his mind Conal noticed that Rocky was bleeding from many wounds. Up on the wall, something was making odd little barking sounds. Smoke was drifting around them. He looked up and saw people pointing rifles at them. He hoped they couldn't shoot any better than he could.

  They entered the arched gate, passed quickly through it. Conal didn't have time to fire at anything. The Titanide swords were at work, and the humans that fell beneath them were probably dead before they hit the ground. Still they came charging up. Conal began to shoot at anything that moved.

  There had been no time to see who he was fighting, no sense of them as individuals. Finally, he started to notice they were dressed oddly. They wore long coats, some of them, or suits of white armor, or multi-colored green-gray-brown pants and helmets like his own.

  A man came shrieking up to him, getting under Rocky's sword thrust. He was carrying an impossibly long sword. How could he even lift it, much less swing it?

  But swing it he did, and it hit Conal on the leg, and Conal started saying his prayers, certain his leg was off and it would be a few seconds before the shock hit him.

  He looked down. Part of the sword was clutched in his hand. He saw broken wood. He saw silver paint. The paint came off on his hand as he threw it away.

  It was too much for his confused mind to deal with. My god, did they think this was a game? Then he heard Valiha's shout. She was far ahead of the rest, unencumbered, and she had found Chris.

  "Turn around!" she screamed. "I've got them! Turn around!"

  "Chicken!" Cirocco screamed.

  Gaea paused.

  "Gaea's a stinking, gutless, yellow COWARD! Gaea is CHICKEN!!"

  The naked, sweating giant turned slowly. She had been on her way to Fox, on her way to stop the theft of Adam. But ... Cirocco was right here. Adam was miles away.

  "Come on back here and fight, you yellow bitch! What are you ... afraid? Gaea's afraid, Gaea's a coward, Gaea's a stinking whore!"

  Gaea hung there, swaying back and forth, torn between going for Adam and taking care of this insect once and for all. She knew it was a trick. She knew Cirocco wanted her to come and silence her filthy mouth. She knew it ... and more than anything in this stinking, dreary universe she wanted to go back and crush this horrible upstart.

  C
irocco spat in Gaea's direction. She picked up a rock and threw it as hard as she could. It bounced off Gaea's head, leaving a bloody mark. She drew her sword and held it high in the sweet light of Hyperion. It flashed as Cirocco brandished it.

  "God? You make me laugh, Gaea. You are a pig. Your mother was a pig, your grandmother was a pig, and her mother fucked dead pigs. I spit on you. I piss on you. I dare you to come out and fight. If you run away, everyone will know you for the coward you are!"

  Tears of rage were streaming from Cirocco's eyes.

  Gaea might still have turned away and gone after Adam, but Cirocco gave a bloodcurdling shriek ... and charged at her.

  Which was simply too much. Gaea began to move.

  Toward Cirocco.

  "It's time, Gene."

  "I know it's time, Gaby. I'm sorry I ra ... r-r-r-raped you. I'm sorry I killed you. I didn't mean to do it."

  His bands rumbled with the detonator on his lap. It was a simple mechanism, he knew it was simple. It was just so horrible. He couldn't remember.

  Eugene Springfield had been a flyer. He had piloted jet fighter aircraft, rocket-powered moon tenders. He had been picked over a thousand others to fly the exploration vehicles Ringmaster brought to Saturn, and there was only one reason for it. He was the best.

  And now he couldn't sort out this jumble of wires any slack-brained terrorist could have put together in his sleep.

  He wiped away tears. Start from the beginning. What did Gaby say?

  Take out the ... .

  His eyes opened wide. The most important part, and he had almost forgotten it. By golly, his brains must be turning to mush.

  There it was, at his feet. The black glass jar with the metal lid.

  He picked it up, opened it, tossed the lid into the clattering darkness.

  The fat, toad-like parasite which had sucked his brains for ninety years hopped out and perched on the edge of the jar. Its eyes took in the scene, then bulged out. It made incoherent sounds: croaks, sobs, strangling gasps. It didn't mean jackass to Gene, but Gaby had said it was important.

  Gaea must see it, Gaby had said.

  "Think you're smarter'n me, do you?" Gene whispered, staring the thing in its ugly bloodshot eyes. "Well, ol' Gene'll show you a thing or two."

  He looked again at the detonator.

  Battery. That's this dingus right here.

  Wires. Well, there's a couple of them. This one goes to here, and this one goes to here. So it ought to logically follow that if a fella touched this wire to this one over here, he ought to get one hell of a

  Gaea froze as her eyes in Oceanus were uncapped, as they looked up out of the bottle, hopped up on the edge of it, and stared down at the spectacle of a brain-damaged child playing with matches and gasoline.

  "Gene!" she screamed. "Don't do it!"

  Cirocco charged, filled with a blood-red rage she hadn't known was in her. She ran at the monster and sank her sword in its foot.

  Then Gaea screamed, and Cirocco was filled with an incredible sense of triumph ... which lasted about two seconds. Gaea wheeled around, tossing Cirocco off like a pesky ant. Gaea had forgotten Cirocco existed.

  Cirocco got to her feet, saw Gaea stop dead in her tracks. Gaea put her hands to her head, then she looked slowly up at the sky.

  "Gaby!" she shouted. "Gaby, wait! Listen, I'm ... I'm not ready! Gaby, we've got to talk!"

  Then the ground was shaking as Gaea ran at top speed toward the cable.

  Cirocco sank to her knees and sobbed helplessly. She felt a hand on her shoulder, looked up, and saw all three of her Generals at her side. My god, she thought. They came to me. They didn't run.

  All around her was the army. Swords were drawn, arrows were fitted into bowstrings ... and nobody had anything to shoot at. They all watched, terrified and dumbfounded, as Gaea floundered through the moat, still shrieking at the top of her lungs.

  The wall didn't stop her. She lowered one shoulder and plowed right through it. She ran through the flames of the Universal studio complex, thundered along the rutted remains of the Twenty-four Carat Highway.

  At last she came to the cable.

  She leaped, her fingers dug into the incredibly hard material of one cable strand. Gaea began to climb it, agile as any monkey.

  Later, people speculated that she had been seeking the fastest way to the hub. Gaby was there, Gaby was taking control, and it was imperative that Gaea/Monroe, which now held over ninety percent of the thing that was called Gaea, get up there at once and begin negotiations.

  Gaea was five hundred meters up the strand when it broke off at ground level.

  The strand snapped up, quick as a mousetrap. Incalculable tons of cable strand curled, twisted ... and smashed the Gaea-thing against the unyielding bulk of the cable.

  "Hang on!" Cirocco shouted. "Get down, and hang on!"

  The ground below them dropped thirty meters.

  TWENTY-THREE

  Far above them, as these events were played out, a far less dramatic but far more important drama unfolded in the region known as the red line.

  The entity known as Gaea was dispersed. It was dealing with many things at once. The entity known as Gaby was pulled close in, in a defensive posture. One after another, horrible blows landed on the Gaea-mind. The important nerve being severed in Oceanus was the last blow. Gaby erupted from her place of concealment.

  There was no way to explain what happened to a human, or a Titanide, or a blimp, or anything with timebound senses.

  The end result was simple. The mind of Gaea was destroyed. The mind of Gaby Plauget, of New Orleans, Louisiana, flew through the non-Einsteinian space of the red line, unchallenged.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  They waited for Valiha, Chris, and Adam to catch up with them. They waited, while hundreds of Pandemonium extras charged at them with swords of wood, cardboard ... and, occasionally, steel. "They're props!" Nova shouted to Virginal. "I see that," Virginal shouted back. "But not all of them are." It was horrible. Try as you might, it was hard to tell which weapon was real and which was an imposter. And the people of Pandemonium didn't seem to know the difference.

  They charged out the Fox Gate. Chris was badly hurt. Valiha had a deep gash in her left hind leg. Robin was being held in place by Serpent, who had several injuries himself.

  Conal felt an awful detachment. He shot at the people who came at him, but it didn't seem as if he were shooting at real things.

  They went through the gate, heading straight out toward the forest. The hordes of Pandemonium followed.

  They stopped, turned, and watched as the Brass Band arrived on schedule and began to slay the enemy by the hundreds.

  "Stop!" they shouted. "Wait, back off! They're not armed!"

  Gradually, with expressions of stunned horror, the three hundred Titanides slowed, saw what was happening ... and moved away. The Pandemonium troops milled around aimlessly. It seemed that most of them had been fleeing what they thought was an invasion from the inside.

  Conal remembered how so many of them had run. The gate to the outside must have seemed like a safe place.

  He jumped down from Rocky's back and went to his knees. He swayed there, not knowing if he would throw up. He felt an arm go around his shoulders, and turned to hug her tightly to him.

  But it was Nova, not Robin, and she was crying too. He hugged her, then they both hurried to Robin.

  They had just enough time to learn that no one had an injury that was surely fatal-though everyone was bleeding-when the ground dropped out from under them.

  The great wheel of Gaea vibrated for twenty revs.

  The first three or four were the worst. Many people died in the first wave, when the strand broke. Most of them were in Pandemonium, where structures toppled. But a few of Cirocco's army were badly hurt in the pounding.

  Then, on the fourth resonation, a strand in Tethys broke, and the next three bounces were bad, but not as bad as the first series.

  Eventually, it all settled dow
n. The interior of the rim was full of suspended dust motes for kilorevs, but the wheel had found a new equilibrium. Ophion rushed a little faster in some places, a little slower in others. A few lakes grew and a few shrunk. Two swamps claimed several thousand acres, and the desert of Tethys-which had always been desert, unlike Mnemosyne-advanced a few meters in each direction.

  Rocky was kept busy for a while, treating the major and minor wounds of the band of seven-which had grown to nine with Chris and Adam. None of the wounds were life-threatening.

  The Brass Band rounded up two thousand prisoners. It was expected that, after a short period of blockade, the holdouts in Pandemonium would surrender when they got hungry.

  Adam seemed to have enjoyed the whole thing. He was unmarked. It had been just like the movies, and a little bit like flying ... and he was looking forward to the sequel.

  Cirocco stood at the head of her cheering army and watched the remains of the thing that had been Gaea drip wetly down the side of the cable.

  She was the only one who understood why the cable had killed her, after Nasu and Whistlestop had failed-and she knew there were some questions still unanswered.

  She heard a plaintive howling from her backpack. She reached into it, and came up with the bottle that held Snitch.

  He was dying. She shook him out into her hand.

  "Can I have a drink?" he asked her, between wheezes. Cirocco found the bottle. She didn't bother with the eyedropper. She poured a generous dollop over Snitch's body, and he lapped up several swallows.

  She knew he was the last dying fragment of Gaea.

  Gaea had known she might lose when she started the game. She hadn't expected to ... but there it was. Gaby had outwitted her.

  So she lay in Cirocco's palm. Poetic justice, she thought. You spend twenty years of your life plotting how to wipe out a traitor, and what does it get you? You get to cough out your last seconds literally in the fist of your greatest enemy.

  She had devoted some thought to the matter of last words.

  If you were going to go out, you ought to do it with some style. So she had thought it over, on the off chance.