Demon

by John Varley

  NASA had been alarmed when only two of the seven people from Ringmaster could be convinced to return to Earth, and infuriated when they learned the Captain was among the five deserters. But NASA was a civilian organization, and after discharging what she saw as her responsibilities, telling everything she knew about what had happened and why, she felt justified in resigning her commission in a place of her own choosing.

  NASA couldn't court-martial her, much as they would have liked to, even in absentia. But they did the civilian equivalent, which was to set up a dozen commissions and boards of enquiry.

  She had had almost a century to think things over. In that time she had given a lot of thought to leadership. There were different kinds of leaders, she had concluded. Some were good, and some were bad. It was probably true that there were leaders who never suffered the doubts she had experienced, who were absolutely sure of themselves and everything they did. They were the egomaniacs, monomaniacs, megalomaniacs-Atilla, Alexander, Charlemagne, Mussolini, Patton, Suslov-men with obsessions, driven men, often psychotic or paranoid. It was even possible for them to be good leaders, but Cirocco felt that, by and large, the world was a worse place when they were through stamping their designs upon it.

  For decades now Cirocco had been relieved of that kind of responsibility. She was most content when she had no one depending on her, and when she had to depend on no one. Her sole responsibility for the last two decades had been to keep herself alive, at almost any cost. Now maybe that was changing.

  But when the need arose, it was satisfying to discover how quickly she could change gears.

  Chris caught up with the rest of them just as they reached the cave.

  It was high, wide, and deep: the perfect place for part of Cirocco's arsenal. The cave seemed to stand open, undefended. Actually, there were guardians so well-concealed that an intruder could walk over one without seeing it. Cirocco had gathered the creatures in Rhea, where they had once guarded an ancient idol, and had learned how to re-program their simple brains to suit her needs. They ignored Titanides. But any human not accompanied by Chris or Cirocco would have been dead before entering the cave.

  Inside were the aircraft. There were six of them, but three had been cannibalized for parts to keep the others running. Twenty years ago, when Cirocco bought them and had them shipped to Gaea, they had been state-of-the-art. That state hadn't improved much in thirteen years, and not at all since the War. They were magnificent, incredible planes, bearing the same relation to the clumsy dinosaurs Cirocco had grown up piloting as the Wright Brothers Flyer did to a supersonic jet, though the differences would not have been obvious to the untrained observer.

  She started her walk-around.

  "How long since you took them out, Chris?" she asked.

  "About half a kilorev, Captain. According to your schedule. I observed no problems with the Two and the Four, but the Eight is going to need some work."

  "No matter. We won't need it. Robin. Nova. Can either of you fly?"

  "Fly an airplane?" Robin asked. "I'm sorry, Captain."

  "No need to overdo the Captain bit."

  "I've ... back home, I fl-fl-flew a ... "

  "Speak up, child. I won't hurt you anymore, I promise."

  "I've soared," Nova said, in a half-whisper. "We have these gliders, and we go out along the axis and-"

  "I've heard of it," Cirocco said. She considered it, still going over the Dragonfly Two, which was the smaller of the available planes and the one already perched on the catapult. "It's better than nothing. Conal, you'll fly this one, and Nova will go with you. Familiarize her with the basics if you get any free time. Get in now and heat it up and start your check-out. Chris, assemble five sets of survival gear. The basic kit, extra rations, hand weapons, rifles, clothing. Anything else you can think of that might come in handy and doesn't weigh too damn much."

  "Flak suits?" Chris asked.

  Cirocco paused, started to say something, then listened to her gut.

  "Yes. Nova can wear one of mine. Get the smallest size you can for Robin, and-"

  "I got you," Chris said. He was watching her, his eyes narrowed. "What about the cannons? You want them loaded?"

  Cirocco looked at the Two, which had heavy-caliber guns mounted in its transparent wings.

  "Yes. I'll get that. Robin, you help him."

  She got two cases of shells for the wing cannons and loaded them, hearing Conal conducting his radio check with the Titanides. She snapped the covers closed as Chris and Robin loaded the gear into the space behind the seats.

  "Stand clear!" Conal called out. He fired a test round from each cannon. It was quite loud in the cave.

  Cirocco dragged the fuel line over the cave floor and snapped it to the fuselage, then watched as the big, collapsible tank filled to capacity.

  "Get in," she told Nova.

  "Where can I step?"

  "Anyplace. The thing's a hell of a lot stronger than it looks." She understood Nova's concern. When Cirocco first saw the Dragonflys she thought some horrible mistake had been made. They seemed to be made out of cellophane and coat hangers. Nova climbed in and Cirocco slammed the door behind her. She watched as Conal showed her how to work the straps.

  "Clear!" Conal shouted again, barely audible in the enclosed cockpit.

  The engine started up. It was clearly visible through the transparent fuselage: about a meter long with an eight-inch bore. To the casual eye it looked about as basic and uncomplicated as a Bunsen burner. That was partly true, but deceptive. There was almost no metal in it. It was built of ceramics and carbon-filament windings and plastic. Its turbine revolved at speeds that would have been impossible without zero-gee bearings, and at temperatures that would have vaporized anything in use when Cirocco was young.

  The plane coughed one small cloud of smoke, and the engine went rapidly through red, to orange, to yellow-hot. Conal hit the catapult release, and it was launched into the air. After two hundred meters it turned and headed straight up into the sky.

  "Give me a hand with this," Cirocco said, and Robin and Chris grabbed the other wingtip and the tail of the Dragonfly Four. They lifted it easily and carried it to the catapult. Chris fueled it while Robin loaded the supplies and Cirocco got in the pilot's seat for her checkout. The Four was unarmed. Cirocco fretted about that for a second, then put it out of her mind. She had been unable to imagine a use for the Two's armament, but worked on the principle that if you've got it, it's stupid not to have it ready.

  "Conal, do you read me?"

  "Loud and clear, Captain."

  "Where are you?"

  "Headed due east from the Junction, Captain."

  "Call me Cirocco, and orbit your present location at five thousand until further notice."

  "Roger, Cirocco."

  "Valiha, Rocky, Serpent, do you read?"

  They all replied in the afirmative, and Cirocco told Nova to radio the recipe and ingredients of her love potion back to Rocky. When the plane was fueled and loaded, Chris climbed into the two rear seats and Robin sat next to Cirocco, and she started the engines.

  When the thrust was right, she turned to Robin.

  "Put your head back against the rest," she said. "This thing has a bit of a kick."

  And they were off.

  THIRTEEN

  Cirocco had taught Conal to fly not long after his arrival in Gaea. He was very good at it, and it gave him pleasure.

  Not that a Dragonfly was tough to learn. On a point-to-point they were capable of taking off, navigating, and landing all by themselves. They didn't need runways, and could get by with no more ground support than the occasional refueling stop. Anyone who had ever flown a Piper Cub would have been right at home in a Dragonfly in a few minutes, though the lack of instrumentation might have bothered him. The Dragonfly had, in a sense, just one instrument: a computer screen. A single keypad to the pilot's right called up any information the pilot might want, or the ship's brain, reviewing data fifty thousand times each sec
ond, would make the pilot aware of any critical situation and recommend a course of action. It had ground radar and air radar and all the radio capability anyone could need. Cirocco had replaced the compasses with inertial trackers.

  But the rudder pedals and the stick were the same type that had been in use on Earth for over a century and a half. Conal used the time waiting for Cirocco showing Nova the uses of these devices. She watched alertly, and did the right things when he handed control to her.

  When the Four rose up to join him, Conal fell in with the larger plane and flew to the right and slightly behind it.

  "Here's the plan," Cirocco said. "The radar is good for about thirty kilometers in all directions. An angel can do about seventy kilometers per hour, and can maintain that for maybe two hours. He's been gone slightly under one hour. We will assume he's headed for Pandemonium, which is currently in southern Hyperion. We're going up to twenty, that's two zero, kilometers, and we'll fly fifty kilometers apart, with the same heading. We will fly at one two zero kilometers per hour for another thirty minutes, and hope that puts us in his general area. We will then throttle back to sixty and attempt to locate him by radar. If that doesn't work, we will move ahead at high speed until we're sure we're in front of him, and conduct a search pattern, diagonally across his project path, until we find him or one of us thinks of something better to do. Comments?"

  Conal worked it out in his laborious but methodical way. Cirocco did not interrupt him. He realized that, aside from Chris, with whom she had already discussed this, he knew more about Gaea than anyone else.

  "What if he goes higher?" Conal finally said. "Should the search pattern be vertical as well as horizontal?"

  "I'm making the assumption that he's going to be fairly low."

  Conal worked that out, too, and wasn't sure it was a valid assumption to make. Angels might not like clinging to the curved rim roof, but they could do it if they had to. Cirocco was obviously counting on some sort of relay maneuver, since no single angel could move Adam from Dione to Hyperion, and she must think the most likely place for the later carriers to hide was the outer rim of Gaea.

  But Gaea was an unusual place for flying. You could climb a full hundred and fifty kilometers before running into the roof. And if you flew through a spoke, you could go even higher than that. If the angel went up to sixty kilometers, they could fly right under him, and never see him.

  "Hyperion is about halfway around," Conal pointed out. "He might just go up a spoke, through the hub, and down again."

  "You're absolutely right, Conal," Cirocco came back. "But for now, I'm going to assume the rim route. If we don't find anything in two or three revs, we can reassess."

  "You're the boss," Conal said.

  "Yeah, but don't let that stop you from giving me ideas. And besides, I'm going to do my best to cheat, in just a few minutes."

  Conal could tell from Nova's frown that she had no idea what the Captain was talking about. Conal could make a pretty good guess, but kept his mouth shut.

  "Weather advisory," the computer said. "You are entering a region where severe turbulence has-" Conal hit the override and the computer shut up.

  "What was that about?" Nova asked. Conal glanced at her. She seemed to be feeling better. She must be, he thought, if she was willing to talk to him. He had not been looking forward to a long trip in the small space with somebody who hated him.

  "The brain carries a model of Gaea in its head," he told her, calling up a cut-away side view of the wheel-world. "This plane and all the others share the model, and they make a note of places where the storm probability is high, based on past experience. Mostly it's a nuisance."

  "I'd think it would be helpful."

  "Not too much. Look." He zoomed in on the segment of wheel rim that contained Dione, showing part of the spoke that loomed above it. Two blue dots winked on and off near the bottom of the picture, labeled 2 and 4. "That's us," he said, pointing to the 2. "We're moving toward Iapetus, and we're getting close to the twilight zone, which means warmer air coming up from the ground. When air rises in Gaea, it moves into masses of air that are traveling slower, because they're nearer the hub. So it sort of curls over, like a breaking wave. You get a lot of quick downdrafts in the transitional zone."

  He glanced at her to see if she understood. It had taken him a while to get it straight, with his Earth-based thinking. The equivalent effect on Earth was the rotation of air masses caused by north-south currents, and depended on the fact that air at the equator was moving faster with the turning of the planet than air to the north or the south. When the effect was very intense, it was called a hurricane.

  "Sure," she said. "The Coriolis effect. We have to take that into account when we go soaring at home."

  "It's not as bad here. Gaea's much bigger than the Coven. I don't have to think about it when I'm flying the plane, but the computer takes it into account for navigation." He pointed to the screen again. "The thing is, the weather's pretty regular in Gaea. Bad weather comes out of the spokes. Gaea sucks up a lot of air in one spoke, moves it through the hub into another one, and then lets it all fall out over a night region. It's all done by a schedule. So that's what the computer was telling me: I'm moving into a boundary line between day and night, which means I'm coming out from under a spoke, which means we can expect some bumps. The thing is," and he pointed up at the gargantuan mouth of the Dione Spoke looming above them, "I can see that easy enough."

  She didn't say anything, but looked around her, studying the spoke, the curved roof ahead of them that arched over Iapetus, comparing them to the model on the screen. He knew the convoluted geometry of Gaea took some getting used to. It was one thing to look at a map of it, and something else to stand on the hurtling rim and get an ant's-eye view.

  "I see what you mean about finding the angel," she finally said. "What's to prevent him from just going so high we'd never find him? It's shorter that way, too."

  "All air distances in Gaea are shorter than ground distances," he said. "And if you wanted to go from Dione to Rhea, all the way around the wheel, the shortest way is straight up the spoke, through the hub, and down the Rhea spoke. It gets easier as you go, because you get lighter. And once you're in the hub, it's downhill all the way."

  "Why does Cirocco think he won't do that?"

  "A couple of reasons. Different flights of angels live in different spokes. They don't like each other and they're jealous of their territory. No matter which flight this one comes from, he'll have to go through unfriendly territory if he goes through two spokes. They might kill him, and he'd have a lot of trouble getting food. He'd do better foraging on the rim. It'd be easier for the others to hide on the rim, where no other flight has nesting rights."

  "Why are you assuming he's going to Hyperion?"

  Conal shrugged. "You'd have to ask the Captain about that. She has special knowledge which she doesn't always tell me about. Then again, that angel grabbing Adam was one hell of a surprise to her, I can tell you that."

  They were in the west end of Iapetus when Cirocco gave the order to throttle back. Conal's plane was far to the north, invisible to the eye but making a strong steady blip when the computer displayed the ground map.

  When the three-dimensional display was used, Robin found it hard not to be discouraged.

  In that mode, Gaea's rim was a gently curved tube. The angel's possible locations made a hemisphere with Tuxedo Junction at the center. The search profile of the planes was a lengthening tube a hundred kilometers wide and fifty high. When compared with the region where the angel might be, it didn't seem enough. There was so much space above them where it could be, and a vast amount behind them.

  "It's not as bad as it looks," Cirocco said. "I'm going to hang around here for a while and hope it shows up. But if we don't have it in an hour, I'll increase our speed and we'll start criss-crossing. We'll cover just about all the airspace."

  "What if he's headed back toward Metis?"

  "It's unlikely. B
ut if we don't get results in four or five hours, I'll send Conal back in that direction."

  "And the spoke?" Chris asked.

  "That would be such a logistical nightmare I'm ruling it out."

  Robin looked out at vast expanses of forest far below them.

  "What if it just ... settles down there in the bush?"

  "Robin, if it does that, there's not much we can do."

  She wished she hadn't asked.

  "But," Cirocco went on, "it isn't going to do that."

  Robin thought about asking Cirocco how she could be so sure, and found she didn't have the nerve to. She wanted the Wizard to be sure. Having somebody around who seemed to know what she was doing helped a little.

  "Hand me my pack, Chris. It's time for the nasty part."

  The pack had the unmistakable stamp of Titanide manufacture, and looked like an old friend. Robin watched as Cirocco set it on the transparent floor between her feet, opened it, and pulled out a small glass jar with a metal lid. Something white and slimy was curled up in the bottom. It lifted its head and blinked.

  "What in the nine billion perversions of Christendom is that?" Robin asked.

  Cirocco looked at her apologetically.

  "It's what I didn't want to tell you about at the fountain. Things have gone a little far for us to keep secrets, though. It's a piece of the mind of Gaea. It's something Rocky took out of my head about five years ago. In a word, it's my own personal Demon."

  Robin looked at it. The thing was uncoiling itself.

  It was like a snake with two legs. When it stood up it balanced on those legs with its tail providing the third point of support. The legs were actually more like arms, with clawed hands. Its neck was an inch long, and its tail about three inches, with a stubby tip. There were two round, lizard-like eyes, and a surprisingly expressive mouth.

  Robin leaned over and stared at it. The thing seemed to be shouting. She could almost distinguish words. Could it possibly speak English?