Demon

by John Varley

  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?"

  "No. I feel a lot of affection for him. And I'd die defending him. My feelings for him ... Chris, ambivalent just doesn't say it. Maybe I do love him." She sighed again. "But Adam is not tearing me apart. I made my peace with him, and with our joint destiny, and I will be a good mother."

  "I never doubted it."

  She frowned at him, and rubbed her hand through her hair.

  "I don't get it, then."

  "Robin, I never intended to rescue him, because I never imagined he needed it." His face darkened for a moment. "I'll admit I worry about Nova."

  "She almost killed him herself."

  "That doesn't surprise me. She's a lot like you were at her age."

  "I was meaner. The difference between me and her is I would have succeeded in killing him, and she didn't. And the reason she didn't is that she really didn't want to. She picked a time when I would have to catch her. She was acting out her pain, and seeing if I really would stop her."

  "Do you think he is safe from her now?"

  "Utterly. She gave her word. And you remember how important an oath was to me? Well, I was positively wishy-washy compared to her." She reached for the candle in the center of the table and moved it to one side. "Maybe you could tell me why you still want him."

  "Because I'm his father." He took a deep breath. "I'm working from ignorance. I don't know what a family is like in the Coven. I don't know how it works with only women around. Do you marry? Does the child have two parents?"

  Robin thought about it for a while, then grimaced.

  "I talked to Gaby about some of this, a long time ago, and she told me about heterosexual customs. I finally decided the two lifestyles aren't that different. About thirty or forty percent of us pair-bond and make it work. Most of the rest of us try to make a life commitment, but it falls apart in a few years. About ten percent separate sex life and family life completely, have casual or serial lovers and leave it at that."

  "Single parents," Chris said. "The divorce rate where I grew up was about seventy-five percent. But I'm talking about my upbringing, my feelings of ... what is right and wrong. And that tells me a father has a responsibility to his children."

  "What about Nova? She's yours, too."

  "I was afraid you'd ask me that. She's no longer a child. But she's still a part of me, and I will do right by her."

  Robin laughed.

  "You shouldn't grit your teeth so hard," she said. "It makes me wonder if you really mean it."

  "It won't be easy, I'll admit that."

  "Don't worry. She's a lot of things, but easy to like isn't one of them. But leaving that aside for a mi
nute, and tabling the notion of you 'doing what's right' for Nova, whatever that may be ... you still haven't told me why you want Adam. Just because you're his father?"

  Chris spread his hands, looked at them there on the table-big, work-roughened, and ineffectual.

  "I don't know if I can." He realized he was very close to tears. "I've been bothered... I have ... doubts." He gestured toward his ears, half-hidden in his long hair. They were long and pointed. "I'm changing. I asked for it, and I want it ... I think. It's a little late to go back. Me and Valiha... oh, God, I can't get into that now. I can't begin to tell you about that yet."

  He put his face in his hands and wept. There seemed no way to make her understand.

  He didn't know how long he cried. When he looked up, she was still looking at him curiously. She gave him a small smile that was probably meant to be reassuring. He wiped his eyes.

  "I feel cheated. I had Serpent and I love him dearly. I love Titanides. I'm going to be one some day."

  "When?"

  "That's part of my doubts. The process is mysterious. It's taking a long time, and it's starting to be painful. I suppose I could stop now, and be forever stuck between human and Titanide.

  "See, Robin... Titanides are not human. They're better and they're worse, and they're similar and they're different, but they aren't human. Ninety-nine percent of me wants to be one so ... so I can't hurt again the way I hurt for such a long time. So I can understand Valiha, so maybe I can explain to her why I did the things I did. But that nagging one percent is scared to death to stop being human."

  "So you're the one who's being torn apart."

  "I guess that sums it up."

  "He's your link to being human."

  "Yes. And I'm his father, no matter how roundabout it was."

  Robin got up and walked once more to the wall. Chris took the candle and followed her. He held it high as she gently touched the hammered copper.

  "I like this," she said.

  "Thank you."

  "I didn't think I would at first, but it grows on you." She gently traced the outline of the copper Robin, moving her finger along the line of the pregnant belly. She turned to him.

  "Why did you make me pregnant in this?"

  "I don't know. It wasn't a conscious decision."

  "And you left off ... " She put her hands on her own abdomen, over the place where there had been a hideous tattoo, a monstrous, defiant, and despairing graffito scrawled on her own body by a proud child. The fountain had taken it away. It was as though it had never existed.

  "Take him, then," she said.

  For a moment Chris could not believe he had heard her right.

  "Thank you," he said.

  "You look like you didn't expect to convince me."

  "I didn't. What changed your mind?"

  One corner of her mouth curled in amusement.

  "You have forgotten a lot about me. I made up my mind about a half second after you asked me. Then I had to hear your reason before I knew if I was just trying to take the easy way out."

  Chris was so elated that he picked her up as easily as if she were a child and kissed her, as she laughed and pretended to fight him off.

  They were still laughing when the sound of the scream reached them. It went right past the conscious part of Chris's mind, directly to something so basic as to be a reflex action, and he was sprinting for the door long before he knew who had screamed.

  NINE

  Rocky and Valiha were two kilometers from Tuxedo Junction, in one of the few flat, open pieces of land in that neighborhood, pulling a plow like the draft animals they most definitely were not. The comparison would not have bothered them. A Titanide farmer simply walked in front of the plow, not behind it.

  Titanides were unfailingly honest and square-in the sense of a square deal. They paid debts. They would not think of accepting shelter or food without doing something in return. They also knew how to combine the payment of a debt with legitimate self-interest. Rocky and Valiha liked to visit the Junction, liked to stay with Chris in his fanciful aerie, and liked to eat well. There were certain items that did not flourish in a Gaean jungle, that would do well only in light, on flat land, and in the absence of competition. Hence the plowing. Chris could not have done it himself, and when it was done he would be able to grow more crops and set a better table. Everything balanced out nicely.

  They had done about two acres. The fresh-turned soil smelled good to Rocky. It was good to exert oneself, to feel ones hooves dig the ground, to hear the creaking of the harness, to see the rich brown dirt steaming from sub-Gaean heat. It was good to rub haunches with Valiha. Yellow had always been a favorite color to him, and the Madrigals were ever yellow.

  He had not known her long. That is, he had known about her almost since his birth, as she had gone on that terrible journey with the Captain, famous in legend and song. He had known her son, Serpent, for many myriarevs. But he had begun to know Valiha as a friend only about seven kilorevs ago.

  Over the last kilorev he had begun to love her. This was a surprise to him. Titanides could be as quirky as the next intelligent species, and Rocky had a thing about Aeolian Solos. He tended not to like them. He knew it was illogical, since it was the single parent of the Solo who had the egotism to wish to birth a genetically identical copy of herself without help from any other Titanide. The child was as blameless as any child ... yet, if she was a copy, it stood to reason she would have her mother's egotism.

  Valiha was an Aeolian Solo.

  They came to the end of a row. Both were pleasantly sweaty, a little bit tired. Valiha reached for the buckles of her harness, so Rocky did the same. They shed the plow, and Valiha trotted forward a few paces, then turned, her tail high, and came back beside Rocky, facing the other way. She leaned over and reached beneath him to squeeze the bulge of flesh that sheathed his anterior penis.

  "I'm horny," she sang. "Do you want to screw?"

  "Sounds good to me," he sang, and trotted around behind her.

  What they actually said in their song was much more than that, but Titanide song has never been readily translatable into English. Her four-note phrase was in an earthy mode, so "screw" and "horny" were close. But the way she walked was also a part of it, and the phrase included the idea that Rocky would mount her, not the other way around. Rocky's reply was more than simple assent. In a way, the entire exchange and their subsequent movements were as formalized as dressage.

  She set her hind legs apart and lowered her hindquarters slightly. He walked his forelegs lightly up her back, straddled her, and entered her. He embraced her torso from behind and she reached back to hold his forelegs firmly. She reversed her head and they kissed, and humped merrily and lustily for a good two minutes before they reached their anterior orgasms-which, for sound Titanide neurological reasons, were always simultaneous. He rested in that position for a moment, his breasts squeezed firmly against her strong back, then backed down.

  She asked if she might do him a similar service, and he declined, not because he didn't wish to be mounted-he wanted it very much-but because he had serious and intimate matters on his mind.

  So he pranced out in front of her, lifting his forelegs high, and came to stand face-to-face, inches away from her. She smiled at him and put an arm over his shoulder and turned her head slightly to kiss him, then became aware of his frontal erection. She looked startled, but did not back away.

  "Sir, I hardly know thee," she sang, in formal mode.

  "It has been a short time," he agreed. "But a love as strong as mine sometimes grows quickly, in the manner of those-who-walk-on-two-legs. If she would permit, I would propose a union to my lady."

  "Sing it, then."

  "A trio. Myself the hindmother. I know not if I have spoken of it, but I have never been a hindmother."

  "You are young."

  "That is true."

  "Mixolydian?"

  "Lydian. And Serpent for the hindfather."

  She lowered her ey
es in thought.

  "Sharped?" she sang.

  "Yes."

  What he had outlined was a Sharped Lydian Trio, one of the most common of the Twenty-nine Ways. He and Valiha would have frontal intercourse to produce a semi-fertilized egg: Rocky the forefather, Valiha the foremother. The egg would be activated by Cirocco Jones, implanted in Rocky's womb, and quickened by Serpent: Rocky the hindmother, Serpent the hindfather.

  He could see her adding it up. Genetics was as instinctive in Titanides as it was imponderable to humans. He knew she would find no flaw in his proposal, though the fact that Valiha was Serpent's hindmother might make it seem incestuous to a human. But incest was a genetic problem to Titanides only in special and limited cases, and morally it was no problem at all.

  "It is a good mating," she sang, finally. "It will require some thought."

  "As she wills it."

  "It is not thee, sir," she began, then dropped back into a less formal mode. "Dammit, Rocky, I'm beginning to love you, too, and you're an admirable fellow, but the times bother me."

  "I know, Valiha. The world spins badly."

  "I don't know if we should bring babies into a world like this."

  "In your own hindmother's time, did we not war with the angels?"

  She nodded, and wiped away a tear. She forced a smile.

  "I know it. And Serpent will love it. Have you spoken of this to him?"

  "No other soul knows of it."

  "Then I pray you, hold it within thy heart while the world spins another thousand times. Then thou shalt have thy answer."

  They kissed, and heard Serpent come out of the jungle at a full gallop. His hooves sprayed dirt as he thundered across the plowed field.

  "I thought you two were plowing!" he sang. "I felt so guilty, staying home and baking, my only burden that fierce human child, while you labored like common farm hands. So I hurried, only to find you-"

  He stopped, digging in with all four hooves, and stood perfectly still for two long seconds. Then he reared on his hind legs, wheeled, and dashed off the way he came.

  "Zombies!" he shouted, in English, but by then Rocky and Valiha had smelled them, too, and were in hot pursuit.