Demon (GAIA)

by John Varley

  “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 filched 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, black hair covered their faces.

  She opened her eyes. It was getting light; Gabby 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.

  She might have thought about it longer, but suddenly she smelled something else, quite far away but unmistakable. She grabbed her pack and sprinted at top speed toward Tuxedo Junction.

  Eight

  Robin nattered on for almost a rev.

  Chris had expected it, and didn’t mind. The little witch was riding high on a wave of rejuvenation. Part of it was chemical, the result of mystic compounds still surging through her blood, entering every cell and working their changes there. Part of it was psychological, and entirely understandable. Robin looked five years younger, but she felt better than she had in ten years. The result was something like amphetamines, something like manic-depressive psychosis. The highs were Himalayan and almost unendurable, the lows sharp but mercifully brief. Chris remembered it well.

  It was no longer so exhilarating for him. When he visited the fountain it felt just as good as it used to, but the feeling didn’t last, and was replaced by pain within a few revs. He felt it beginning along his spine and on the sides of his head. He didn’t mind that; it was simply growing pains.

  Robin chirruped out most of her life story, unable to sit down, pacing the pentagonal room he had built and coppered with remembrances of her. Chris simply sat at the table in the center of the room, nodding at the right places, offering noncommittal responses when it seemed polite to do so, and contemplating the single candle before him.

  Eventually she wound down. She took the high stool opposite him and rested her elbows on the table, looking at the candle with eyes brighter than the flame. Slowly her breathing quieted and she shifted her gaze from the candle to him.

  It was as if she was noticing him for the first time. She made several attempts to speak, and was eventually successful.

  “Sorry,” she said.

  “Don’t be. It’s refreshing to see somebody so exuberant. And since you tend to be close-mouthed, it saved me a lot of questioning.”

  “Great Mother, I sure babbled, didn’t I? I just couldn’t seem to stop, I had to tell you—”

  “I know, I know.”

  “Chris, it’s so…miraculous!” She looked at her arm, at the tattoo blazing forth on it. For the hundredth time she rubbed her skin in disbelief, her face showing that small remaining fear that it would rub off.

  Chris reached for the fat candle, rolled it moodily around on its base, watching wax drip down the sides.

  “It is wonderful,” he agreed. “It’s one of the few places Gaea can’t touch. When you go there, you realize this must have been a pretty damn wonderful place to be, a long time ago.”

  She cocked her head and looked at him. He could not return her stare.

  “Okay,” she said. “You asked me out here to discuss something. A proposal, you said. You want to tell me what it is?”

  He scowled at the candle again. He knew Robin valued directness and would be impatient if she sensed him stalling for more time, but he was unable to come out with it.

  “What are your plans, Robin?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Where are you going to stay? What are you going to do?”

  She looked startled, then took another quick look around the crazy room he had built.

  “I’m afraid I didn’t think. That man, Conal, said it would be all right with you if we stayed here for a while, so—”

  “That’s no problem, Robin. This place belongs to all my friends. I’d be delighted if you made this your home. Forever.”

  She looked at him gratefully, but with a trace of suspicion.

  “I appreciate it,
Chris. It’ll be good to spend a little time here and sort out the possibilities.”

  He sighed, and looked directly across the table at her. “I’m going to ask you right out. I hope you’ll think about it before you answer. And I hope you’ll be honest.”

  “All right. Shoot.”

  “I want Adam.”

  Her face froze. For a long time she did not move a muscle.

  “What are you feeling right now?” Chris asked.

  “Anger,” she said, tonelessly.

  “Just before that. Just before you clamped down on it.”

  “Joy,” she said, and got up.

  She went to the copper representation of herself on the far wall, and slowly ran her hand over it. She looked back at him.

  “Do you think I’m a bad mother?”

  “I haven’t seen you in twenty years. I don’t know. But I see Nova, and I know you are a good mother to her.”

  “Do you think I’m a good mother to Adam?”

  “I think you’re trying to be, and it’s tearing you up.”

  She came back to the table, pulled the chair out, and climbed back up onto it. She folded her hands on the table, and looked at him.

  “You’re good, but you’re not perfect, Chris. I told you I almost killed him when he was born. Maybe this will be hard for you to understand. If I had killed him…I would not feel like a murderer. It would have been the proper thing to do. Letting him live ruined me, politically, socially…just about every way there is. I’m asking you to believe those things didn’t enter into my decision.”

  “I believe that. The opinions of other people were never very important to you.”

  She grinned at him, and for a moment looked nineteen years old.

  “Thanks for that. For a while their opinions were very important. You wouldn’t have known me. But when he came out of my body and into the air, I took a good look at myself. I’m still doing it.”

  “Do you love him?”