by John Varley
"Does it have a name?"
Cirocco cleared her throat, and Robin looked at her.
"Actually," she said, with a twitch of her lips, "if you look closely, you'll see it's a male."
Robin looked again. Great Mother save us, it was male.
"He claims not to have a name," Cirocco said. "When I want to call him anything but 'you lousy slimebag' I call him Snitch." Cirocco vigorously rubbed her upper lip with one finger, cleared her throat, and in general exhibited all the signs of nervousness Robin would have thought foreign to her nature. You learn something new every day, Robin thought.
"See," Cirocco went on, "... uh, from the position he was in when Rocky found him, uh ... you might say he was sort of, well, fucking with my mind for about ninety years."
There could have been no possible reason for Gaea to make this thing male, since it had been meant to live out its days in Cirocco's head. Thus, its sex was one of Gaea's twisted jokes, and a special and ugly humiliation for Cirocco should it ever be found.
Cirocco twisted the lid off the jar and set it down on the flat surface just above the computer screen-what she had called the dashboard. Snitch jumped up and perched on the rim of the jar, looked around blearily, and yawned. He used one claw to scratch like a dog, then settled down like a tiny vulture with his head almost concealed by his shoulders.
"I could sure use a drink," he said. Robin remembered the voice.
"I'm talking to you, cuntface," he said.
Cirocco reached out and flicked a finger. The demon thumped hard against the windscreen and fell to the dashboard, howling. Cirocco reached out and mashed his head under her thumb. Robin heard crunching noises. Great Mother, she thought. She's killed it.
"Sorry," Cirocco said. "It's the only way to reach him."
"You're apologizing to me?" Robin squeaked. "Skin it alive and feed it to the worms. I was just surprised you kept him five years and killed him now."
"He's all right. I don't even know if he's killable." She removed her thumb, and Snitch rolled back onto his feet. His head was malformed and blood dripped from one eye. As Robin watched, the head returned to its former shape, like some weird plastic.
"Who do I have to blow to get a drink in this stinking place?" He hopped up and perched on the edge of the jar again.
Cirocco again reached into her pack and brought out a metal flask in a leather container. She took the top off and detached an eyedropper from the kit, inserted it in the neck, and drew out some clear fluid. Snitch was hopping from foot to foot in his eagerness, his head thrown back and his mouth open. Cirocco held the eyedropper over his mouth and let one fat drop fall into his mouth. He swallowed hugely, then opened his mouth again.
"That's it for now," Cirocco said. "If you're good, you can have more."
"What is that?" Robin asked. Snitch rolled his eyes toward her.
"It's grain alcohol. Snitch likes his liquor straight." She sighed. "He's an alcoholic, Robin. It's about all he consumes, along with a little blood once a day."
Snitch jerked his head toward Robin.
"Who's the bimbo?"
Cirocco flicked his face again, and he howled, then quickly shut up. "Maybe ... " Robin began, then thought better of it.
"Go ahead," Cirocco said.
"Uh ... maybe he was what was causing your... problem."
"There's no need to walk around it, Robin. Maybe it was him making me into a lush, right?" She sighed, and shook her head. "I tried my best to think that for a long time. But I knew I was just wishing my own weakness off on something else. If anything, I'm the cause of his problem. He sat there on top of an alcoholic brain for so long he got addicted." She straightened her shoulders and then leaned forward a little, staring at the demon.
"Now, Snitch," she said. "We're going to play a game."
"I hate games."
"You'll like this one. Gaea has done a terrible thing."
He cackled. "I knew something good was about to happen."
"But you'd never think of warning me, right? Well, maybe next time you will. What happened, you venomous pestilential cancre, is that somebody has kidnapped a child. Gaea is behind it, as surely as flies breed in shit, and you're going to tell me where the child is."
"Why don't you bite my ass?"
Robin was startled when Chris reached between them and grabbed the ugly little thing in a big fist. Only its head was visible, and its eyes rolled wildly.
"I want him, Captain," Chris said. His voice was low. "I've been thinking about him for the last hour, and maybe I've come up with some things you haven't thought of yet."
"Wait a minute, wait a minute!" the Snitch shrieked. "You know I do better work if you don't hurt me, you know that, you know that!"
"Hold on, Chris," Cirocco said. The tiny eyes moved from Chris to Cirocco and back again. He gulped, and then spoke in a wheedling tone.
"What do I care what Gaea's cooked up?" he said. "For a couple of drinks, I might be able to help you."
"Four drops is what I'm offering."
"Now be fair," he whined. "And be reasonable. You can't deny that I do my best work when I've had a few under my belt."
Cirocco seemed to consider it.
"All right. But you didn't let me tell you about the game. Put him down, Chris." He did, and Cirocco struck a match. She moved it toward the demon, held it about a foot away.
"I'm going to give you two drops right now. Then you are going to tell me where the child is. We will fly there. When we get there, if you were right, I'll give you three more drops. If you're wrong, I will wire one of these matches along your back and light it. They take about twenty seconds to burn. Then you'll try again. If you're wrong again, you get another match. I've got about ... " she looked down into her pack, "... oh, about fifty matches. So we can play the game a long, long time. Or it can be over very quickly."
"Quick, quick, quickquickquickquick!" Snitch yammered, jumping up and down.
"Okay. Open your mouth."
Cirocco gave him his two drops, which seemed to calm him. And, oddly, to color him. He had been a rather sickly yellowish-white at first. He was turning ruddier.
He jumped down from the edge of the jar and began pacing up and down the dashboard. Robin watched, fascinated.
The demon paced for a few minutes. Eventually he began to stagger as the drinks hit him. But gradually he looked more and more toward one part of the sky. He lurched up to the windshield and pressed his repulsive face against it, as if to see better. At last he belched and pointed with one leg.
"He's up thataway," he said, and fell over.
FOURTEEN
"Conal, turn left twenty degrees and climb to forty kilometers. Increase speed to two zero zero kilometers per hour."
"Twenty degrees left, forty, two hundred; Roger, Captain."
He executed the turn immediately, increased the thrust, and watched to make sure the plane did the rest as it was supposed to.
Like clockwork, he thought, with satisfaction. Outside, the wings were shrinking from their three-quarters deployed position and sweeping back slightly.
"Why do you suppose she decided to do that?" Nova asked.
"I don't know," Conal said. Actually, he had a good idea, but it would be too complicated to explain, and he had been instructed never to speak to anyone about the Snitch unless specifically authorized by Cirocco.
"I can't figure her out," Nova confessed.
"You aren't the first one."
"Conal, are you wearing your flak suits?"
"No, Cirocco. Should we?"
"I think so. We're putting ours on. I don't have any specific reason except my standard one."
"What's the use of having it if you don't use it, right, Captain?"
"That's it."
"Will do." He turned to Nova. "Can you reach them? Those blue outfits."
Nova fumbled with one of the suits until she had it unfolded. It was a light, slightly stiff blue jumpsuit without arms or legs. The carbon-filaments wo
ven through tough plastic would stop any handgun bullet, and give some protection against heavier weapons and bomb fragments.
"What if you get hit in the head?" Nova asked.
"If we get into something, we'll put on those helmets, and the leggings, and the sleeves. Do you need any help with that?"
"I can manage." She lifted herself off the seat, and shoved her pants down around her ankles. The plane lurched to the right, and she looked outside anxiously. "What happened? What's the matter?"
"Nothing," Conal said, and coughed nervously. "Ah, I thought you'd put that on over your pants."
"Does it matter?" She pulled her shirt over her head. The plane only jumped a little that time.
"No, it doesn't matter," he said, and pulled the privacy curtain down from its little niche overhead.
He heard her long-suffering sigh. Then she jerked the bottom of the curtain and let it roll back up. He glanced at her and saw she was holding her clothes over the front of her body. Her eyes were blazing.
"Can I talk to you a minute? Is this okay? Am I decent?"
He gulped. "It's ... Nova, it's not enough."
She ran her fingers through her hair, then tugged at it in frustration.
"Okay. My mother told me about this but I just couldn't understand it, so maybe you can explain it. It's not that you don't like to look at me, is it."
"No, it's not that at all."
"That's what I can't understand. You make me feel ugly."
"I'm sorry." Jesus, where to start, how to explain? He wasn't even sure he could explain it to himself, much less to her. "Dammit, I get upset because I want you, and I can't have you. Seeing you gets me turned on, okay?"
"Okay! Okay! Great Mother, I don't know why you're so worried about getting turned on, but I'll go along with you. I'll cover up the places Robin told me to cover up. But I thought I was doing that now. So tell me, mister male man, what do I have to cover up?"
"You can throw all your clothes out the fucking window for all I care," Conal said, through clenched teeth. "It's your business, not mine."
"Oh, no, I wouldn't want to upset you. I wouldn't want to make you lose your precarious control of yourself. Mother, preserve me." She slammed the curtain back in place, then, a few seconds later, pulled it back up enough to look under it.
"There's one more thing. I didn't have a chance to pee before we took off. Do I have to wait till we land?"
Conal opened a compartment in the dash and handed her the oddly-shaped cup, pulled the vacuum hose from its slot.
"You hook the hose to this thing, then ... hold it to-"
"I can figure it out! I guess you'll want privacy for this, too."
"If you please."
Her reply was more growl than word, and she pulled the curtain down. Conal flew on, simmering, trying to ignore the sounds coming from the other side.
Seven years ago he might simply have gone mad. No telling what he might have done-what a temper he'd had! He'd learned a lot since then. The temper was still there. But it was tightly and permanently under control.
He went through the hard-learned routines to calm himself. When he was done, he felt foolish, as he usually did, for letting himself get so angry. She operated from her own logic, and by her lights he was being very silly.
Hell, he thought. By my own, too. He wished he hadn't allowed himself to get in a shouting match with her. She was right. Her nudity was no kind of assault on him.
He wished he could say those things as clearly as he could think them. But he knew from bitter experience that the words never quite came out right.
When she let the curtain back up she had her pants on over the flak suit. She had folded her shirt and stuffed it in back. She sat with her back straight and looked rigidly forward.
He made very sure he didn't laugh, though he wanted to. He felt a lot better. Now she was the foolish one. She didn't know how to turn off her anger, and that made him feel superior to her, which was a nice feeling. She was still so young.
So he solemnly pulled the curtain back down and quickly got into his own flak suit, and pulled his clothes on over it.
"You watch the radar while I take care of this stuff," he told her, as he opened the curtain again. She nodded and he turned and secured the netting over the loose cargo in back. When he turned back there was still nothing in the empty sky. They flew on, in silence.
In the next hour Cirocco got two signals from the radar. They were all excited the first time, though she had warned them not to be. And they quickly saw it was a solitary blimp. Cirocco veered away. Blimps hated anything to do with fire, and had been quite cool toward her for years after she imported the jets. Which was unfair, as her reason for doing so was to destroy the buzz bombs that had made the skies unsafe for lighter-than-air beings. But you couldn't argue with a blimp.
The second blip proved to be a solitary angel. Spirits rose for a moment, until it was clearly established that this one's wings were the wrong color. She turned off her engine and glided beside him for a few minutes. He was of the Dione Supra Flight. He seemed genuinely shocked that an angel was working for Pandemonium, and swore that his flight, section, and wing remained loyal to the Wizard.
So she attached a match to Snitch and it inspired him wonderfully. After another drop of grain alcohol he was able to talk again, and said the angel was below them now, and slightly behind. She radioed the new heading to Conal.
"Can I ask you something?" Nova said.
"Go right ahead."
It had taken her a long time to get that much out. Now that she had, she found it hard to go on.
Somehow, she had to make sense of this insane world, because she was stuck here for the rest of her life with Titanides and males. She could still feel the impact of Cirocco's palm on her cheek. She loved Cirocco, and Cirocco had hit her, and those two things had to be reconciled somehow, had to be worked out so that Cirocco would never find reason to hit her again. For that to be possible, she had to understand some things.
"What do you think Cirocco Jones meant when she told me I had to join the human race?" Having asked it, she relaxed a little. His answer wasn't going to mean much, she realized. It had been a silly idea to ask him in the first place. Perhaps her mother could explain it, when they had some time alone.
But he surprised her.
"I've been wondering the same thing," he said. "I guess she just didn't have time to say what she meant, so she said something to get your attention."
"So you don't know what she meant, either?"
"Oh, no, I didn't say that. I know what she meant." He frowned, and gave her a wry smile. "I just don't think I can explain it to you."
"Would you try?"
He looked at her for a long time. The look disturbed her.
"Why should I?" he finally said.
She sighed, and turned away. "I don't know," she said.
He shrugged. "I was asking myself. Why should I try to explain something to you, when every time I give you a friendly smile you look at me like I was a cootie bug? Don't you think I have feelings?"
It was just the sort of question Nova didn't want to think about. But not thinking about it had gotten her a slap in the face.
"You weren't thinking about my feelings a while ago."
"I admit I had an unfortunate lapse," he said. "You want to know what I'm going to do about that?" He looked at her again, and grinned. "I'm going to say I'm sorry, I apologize, and I'm going to do better from now on. How's that for a kick in the pants?"
She tried to meet his stare, but finally had to look away.
"It makes me feel uneasy," she admitted. "I don't know why."
"I do. Want to know?"
"Yes."
"Say please?"
What an infuriating person. But she took a deep, long-suffering breath, crossed her arms, and glared at him.
"Please."
"Jesus, that must have hurt."
"Not at all. It's just a word."
"It did hurt,
and it's not just a word. It hurt for the same reason you didn't like me apologizing. Twice now you've had to look at me as a human being."
She thought that over for several minutes, and he didn't say anything.
"You're saying that's what Cirocco meant? That I have to become a heterosexual, make love to men?"
"Nothing so drastic, and nothing so simple." He rubbed his hand over his face and shook his head slowly. "Listen, I'm not the guy for this. I wish to hell Cirocco was here. Why don't you wait till you can talk it over with her?"
"No," she said, becoming more interested. "I'd like to hear it from you."
"I sure don't know why," he muttered. Then he took a deep breath.
"Look. With you, there's lines drawn all over the place. There's us, and there's them. Us seems to be a pretty small group. Okay, I can understand, I feel the same way. I don't like all human beings. And I know Cirocco ain't the biggest groupie the human race ever had, either. And she didn't even mean human, because Titanides aren't human but they're part of what she wants you to join. Are you with me so far?"
"I don't know. But go on."
"Shit. Grow up!" he thundered. "That's what she said. Stop making your decisions about people based on what they look like." He stopped, and shook his head sadly. "Nova. I could rattle on for half an hour, like a CBC public service spot, about how you're supposed to love the Qubeheads and the Normans and the Beeeees and the Eeks and the niggers and the poor and little fuzzy animals and rattlesnakes. I hated some of those people when I was a kid, too. These days I keep my hate for slavers and babyleggers ... and like that. Every person I meet is on probation, because it's a no-kidding dangerous world out there, and you're right to be suspicious of new faces. But if they don't prove themselves to be villains, why, then you treat them as you'd like to be treated, like the old golden rule. If a friend of mine has a friend, then he's my friend, too, until he proves otherwise. I don't care if he's black, brown, yellow or white, male or female, young or old, two-legged or four-legged or sixteen-legged. And I'm a good friend to have, too. I'm loyal as hell, and I wash my own dishes."