by John Varley
"She's coming!" Gaea shrieked in a voice that shattered the eyes of ten bolexes and an arri, and sent real creepshow horripilations down the spines of everybody within ten kilometers who had a spine worth creeping on.
"She's coming, she's coming, she's coining!" Gaea was jumping up and down now, which was good for seven or eight on anybody's Richter scale. The commissary collapsed and a klieg tree toppled. "It's Cirocco Jones. After twenty years, I've lured her to do combat."
So everyone strained their eyes, and soon a lumpy, ridiculous little transparent plane hissed into view and started to circle about a kilometer over their heads.
"Come down!" Gaea taunted. "Come down and fight, you ball-less wonder! Come down and eat your liver, you stinking traitor, you killer ... you of little faith! Come to me."
The plane just circled.
Gaea drew a deep breath and bellowed.
"He'll learn to love me, Cirocco."
Still nothing. People began to wonder if maybe Gaea hadn't made a mistake. Gaea had been telling them about Cirocco Jones for years. Surely she couldn't be as unimpressive as that.
Gaea began running around Pandemonium, picking up and hurling whatever came to hand: a boulder, an elephant, a popcorn popper, Brigham and five of his Robbers. The plane easily dodged them all.
Then it waggled its wings, dipped one, and dived. It leveled out at a hundred meters or so, and now the crazy thing had a full-throated roar. Hard to believe it could do anything, but still, to a flock of people who had seen at least four war movies a week for years the scene had a certain nervous familiarity. It had some of the flavor of those passes the F-86's took in The Bridges at Toko-Ri, or maybe more like a Jap Zero skittering down toward that big scow the Arizona in Tora! Tora! Tora! Or a hundred other air combat pictures where the plane moves in fast and hot and starts shooting, only in those pictures you mostly saw the action from the air, where everything bloomed up toward you in terrific technicolor, not from the ground, where in a few short seconds things were beyond belief.
The entire row of temples went up almost simultaneously. There would be a hypersonic streak of fire and the smart missiles would go right through the front door and boom, nothing but splinters and a mushroom of flame. The plane was strafing, too, but instead of going ka-chow ka-chow ka-chow and making little fountains of dirt in neat rows, these damn things twisted and turned and chased you, and went off like hand grenades when they hit.
Then Cirocco was turning, a racing turn, all she needed was a pylon, she must have been pulling twelve gees and was so low that if there'd been a field out there, she could not only have dusted the damn thing, she could have plowed it with her wingtip. So here she came again, faster than ever, strafing, firing more missiles, but starting farther back so everybody had time to see the sturm und drang coming at them. And she pulled up, almost vertical, rising higher and higher, and released three fat bombs, one, two, three, that kept rising as she pulled away, that went up until they were almost invisible, hung there, and started falling. There was no way she could have aimed them. It was supernatural, they said, it just couldn't be done, but they plopped right through the roofs of sound stages one, two, and three, just like that. One, two, three, and all of them were history.
The humans and humanoids were understandably terrified by all this action, but the photofauns were ecstatic. What footage! Riots developed at the camera mounts of copters, which would rise with five or six panaflexes clinging to their legs, twisting to find the shot. Most of them got glorious footage of missiles from the target's point of view, shots that had never been done before. It was a shame none of the raw stock survived to reach the projector.
By then Pandemonium was so choked in smoke it was hard to tell where she was going to come from next. They listened to the sound of her engines protesting, heard it grow louder. Then she was on them again. Liquid fire was spilling from the belly of the plane. It twisted in the air ... and, miraculously, fell a hundred meters from the carnage, in a semi-circle with Pandemonium at the center. Later, the survivors would agree it was impossible that had been a mistake. Jones had been too devilishly accurate for that. She had just been showing them she had it, and giving them something to think about for the next time. Most of them would spend a lot of time from then on, thinking about napalm.
Through it all Gaea stood. Solid as an oak. Great brows beetled as she watched the deadly gnat destroy everything around her. On the fourth pass she began to laugh. Somehow, it was more horrible than the sound of the bombs or the crackle of the flames.
Jones made a fifth pass-and for a moment Gaea stopped laughing as the Archives exploded. Twenty thousand film canisters became smoking debris. Ten thousand rare prints, many of them no longer replaceable. With one bomb Jones had wiped out two centuries of film history.
"Don't worry," Gaea shouted. "I have duplicates of most of them." The survivors, crouched under rubble and hearing Jones coming around for another pass, dimly realized that Gaea was reassuring them. She thought they felt the loss as acutely as she did, when in fact all of them would have traded every inch of film ever shot for the chance to get out of this nightmare. And again, Gaea laughed.
The plane was coming around one more time. Some of them sensed this would be the last run, and a few even managed to be curious enough to lift their heads and watch it.
Jones came in straight and level. She fired missiles in pairs, and every one streaked for Gaea-and turned aside at the last moment, missing her by inches. More and more of them came screaming by, to explode a hundred meters behind her. It began to look like a circus knife-throwing act as the projectiles went by her ankles, her arms, her ears, her knees. And still the plane kept coming on, and Gaea kept laughing.
A line of bullet holes appeared along Gaea's chest. She laughed louder. It sounded like Jones had ten heavy guns on that plane, and all of them opened up as she got closer. Gaea was rocked, bloodied, marked from her legs to her massive head.
And anybody could see she was unhurt.
The plane pulled up, climbed ... and kept climbing. At about three kilometers, when it was just a speck, it started circling again.
"I still won't hurt him, Cirocco!" Gaea shouted. Then she looked at herself, frowned, and turned to see a gaffer hanging on the back of her bullet-pocked chair.
"We'd better bring up the second unit," she told him. "And assemble my make-up crew. There's a lot of work to do."
The gaffer didn't move, and Gaea frowned, then tilted the chair and saw it was only half a gaffer.
So she strode off into the flames, shouting orders.
"Well," Cirocco finally said, much subdued. "It seemed like a good idea at the time."
There had been none of the wild jubilation Conal and Nova had felt during their dogfight with the buzz bombs. Cirocco had more or less asked them all if she could do it, and they had all more or less agreed that she should. So she had gone about it with a cold intensity and thoroughness that left them all, including Cirocco, a bit shaken. Only during the last run, when she had fired on the monstrosity that called itself Gaea, had she felt the hatred boiling up inside her. The temptation to give it all she had, to pour firepower into the thing and hope against hope that she could blow it apart, had been tremendous. She wondered if the others understood why, in the end, she had settled for the show of force and the minor injuries.
Gaea would not be killed that way. She could sit on an atom bomb, be vaporized, and sprout again from the killing ground. Gaea was not immortal. She was over the hill, senile, growing madder every day. She couldn't last much longer ... only about another hundred millennia.
And it was Cirocco's job to kill her.
They all looked down at the blazing ruin that had been Pandemonium. Only one structure was left standing. There could be no doubt it was the "palace" the Snitch had spoken of, made of gold and platinum. Adam would be installed there, probably in a solid-gold crib, with goose-egg diamonds for marbles.
"Why didn't you just take her out?" Conal
asked, quietly.
"You still don't understand her," Cirocco said. "If I'd destroyed the palace, or killed Gaea, the deathangel would just have flown on, too low for us to catch Adam. He'd have kept flying until he fell apart, and Adam would die."
"I don't get it," Conal confessed. "She said come down and fight. Well, you gave her a fight. What does she expect? Does she want you to land and arm-wrestle with her?"
"Conal, my old friend... I don't know. That may be exactly what she wants. I have the feeling that ... "
"What?" Conal prompted.
"She wants me to walk up to her with a sword in my hand."
"I don't buy it," Conal said. "I mean... Jesus, this sounds completely crazy. I guess it's because I can't find the right words. 'Fair play' isn't it, but she has ... something. Not all the time, and not in any sane way, but from what you've told me about her I'd think she'd even it out a little more than that. I just don't think that she wouldn't leave you any chance."
Cirocco sighed.
"I don't either. And Gaby says-" she cut herself off quickly when she saw Robin giving her an odd look. "Anyway, Gaea won't tell me what she wants, except to come and fight. I'm supposed to figure it out."
It got quiet again and they all looked out over the carnage. Human beings had died down there, and innocent animals. The humans were in the service of evil, if not evil themselves, and Cirocco did not regret killing them. But she took no pleasure in it and did not feel proud of herself.
"I think I'm gonna be sick," Nova said.
"I'm sorry, kid," Cirocco said. "The head's all the way in back."
"Don't be sorry," Nova shouted, close to tears. "I wanted you to kill them, every last one! I loved it when you were killing them. I just... I just have a weak stomach, that's all." She sobbed, and looked imploringly at Cirocco.
"And don't call me kid," she whispered, and fled to the back of the plane.
There was a short, uncomfortable silence, which Chris broke.
"If you want my opinion," he said, "I sort of wish you hadn't done it." He got up and followed Nova.
"Well, I'm glad you did it," Robin said, hotly. "I only wish you'd spent more time shooting at Gaea. Great Mother, what a disgusting thing."
Cirocco barely heard her. Something was nagging at her, something that didn't feel right. Chris wasn't usually critical of her actions. He had a perfect right to be, of course, but he just usually wasn't.
Then, when she thought about it, he hadn't actually been critical... .
"Chris," she began, turning in her seat. "What did you-"
"It's probably going to make things rough," he said. He waved a hand at them and shrugged apologetically. "Somebody's got to look after him," he said, and pulled the door open.
"No!" Cirocco shouted, and lunged at him. It was too late. He was out, and the door slammed shut. She could only watch in horrified fascination as his chute opened and he glided toward Pandemonium.
Chris and Adam touched the ground within a minute of each other.
SECOND FEATURE
I was always an independent, even when I had partners.
-Sam Goldwyn
ONE
The zombies were in separate pens, in a row, each about twenty meters from its nearest neighbor.
Cirocco didn't want to ask, but she knew she had to.
"Were these ... already dead?"
"No, Captain," Valiha said.
"What were they doing?"
Valiha told her. It made her feel a little better. Slavery was an ancient evil from which the human race might never be free, in one form or another.
Still, Valiha's remark about reading them their rights and giving them fair trials hurt. It hurt because there were no such things in Gaea, and without some kind of rules the human animal seemed capable of anything-including killing eleven men at random. Cirocco was not so foolish as to mourn them. But she was very tired of killing, or of ordering men to be killed. She felt it could become too easy. She did not wish to play God.
She only wanted to be left alone. She wanted to be accountable to herself, and no one else. She longed for total privacy, for about twenty years all by herself to drag out her scarred soul and try to wash the sin from it. She no longer liked the smell of this being called Cirocco Jones.
The urge to jump out of the plane and follow Chris to what would be certain death had been overwhelming. Nova, Robin, and Conal had barely been able to restrain her.
She still didn't know if the urge had been toward suicide, or if she had been so consumed with rage she felt able to fight Gaea toe-to-toe. She had felt rage and despair in about equal portions. It would be so nice to be done.
But now she had another battle to fight.
Maybe it would be the last.
The zombies shuffled aimlessly. She fought the sickness that came over her, and conquered it, but not before Valiha noticed.
"You shouldn't feel responsible," the Titanide sang. "This was not your deed."
"I know it."
"It is not your world. It is not ours, either, but we feel no compunction in ridding it of animals like these."
"I know, Valiha. I know. Say no more of this to me," she sang.
It was true these men had deserved death. But with a primitive and illogical certainty, Cirocco felt that no one deserved this, She had thought the buzz bombs the worst things ever created, until Gaea conceived the zombies. Suddenly, buzz bombs were like high-spirited kittens.
"What are you saying?" Nova asked. Cirocco glanced at her. The child looked a little green, but was holding up well. Cirocco didn't fault her; zombies were hard to take.
"Just discussing ... capital punishment. Never mind. You don't have to be here, you know."
"I want to see them die."
Again, Cirocco was not surprised. Nova had demonstrated a talent for fighting, but little taste for blood. Cirocco approved of that. But zombies were something else entirely. She didn't know Nova's motives, though she suspected they had something to do with a creature that wouldn't die clumping inexorably toward her. As for Cirocco, she felt killing a zombie was a genuinely humane act.
"Let's get to it," she said. "Move the first one into the chamber."
Rocky and Hornpipe attached a rope to the cage and dragged it down a primitive road to a garage-like structure about a kilometer away. It had a few windows, a ladder leading to the roof and a trapdoor up there, and had been made reasonably air-tight. They loaded the cage into the structure and sealed the doors behind it. Hornpipe checked the wind and pronounced it to be within acceptable limits.
The problem was to find out what had killed the zombies with such startling efficiency. It seemed unlikely that all the ingredients of Nova's love potion were necessary.
There were a lot of questions. She hoped some of them never had to be answered, but knew from bitter experience that Gaea often had practical jokes built into things that, at first, looked wonderful.
There was blood in the recipe. Did it have to be of a particular type? There was pubic hair in it. Would Nova's scalp hair have worked as well? Would only blonde pubic hair work, or any pubic hair?
It might be worse than that. Gaea planned ahead in some things. Nova was planned. She was the daughter of Chris and Robin, but not in the conventional way. Gaea could have planned even more finely. It might turn out that only Nova's blood and Nova's pubic hair would do the trick.
She hadn't gotten around to telling Nova that yet.
The first part was easy. Cirocco climbed the ladder, opened the hatch on top, and dumped in a measured amount of benzoin-what Nova had called "benjamin." She went back down and everyone clustered around the windows.
The zombie took no notice.
"Okay," Cirocco said. "Air it out, and then let's try the cubeb."
TWO
Conal stood in water up to his chest and watched Robin churning by with a lot more enthusiasm than grace. He grinned. Lord, but she was a worker. If she'd only relax a little, ease into it, forget about trying
to set speed records and just let her powerful little body take over... .
The lessons had started soon after their return. Robin had said she would never again find herself in a tight spot because she couldn't swim, and Conal had found himself elected to teach.
It was okay with him. He was only an adequate swimmer himself, and no kind of teacher at all, but he could stand in the water and show her, and catch her when she started to sink, and that seemed to be enough. He looked beyond Robin, out where the water was deep and swift, and saw Nova moving along with about as much effort as a seal. He wished he could take some pride in that, but the fact was that there are people born to the water, and she was one of them. It was funny it had taken her eighteen years to discover that. Now she was twice the swimmer he would ever be.
But she couldn't seem to impart any of it to her mother. Conal saw Robin floundering again, and pushed off. He was beside her in a few strokes. She was floating on her back, gasping.
"I'm okay," she said. "At least I've got this part down."
"You're getting better."
"No need to lie about it, Conal. I'm never going to be good at this."
He brought her in closer and they got their feet on the ground. Nova zipped by them and clambered across the narrow beach to stand, dripping, sleek and shiny, shaking the water from her short blonde hair. She bent to grab a towel and rubbed it vigorously over her head.
"I'll meet you back at the house," she said, and walked down the beach.
Conal looked away from her, to Robin, and saw she was looking at him.
"She's a hunk, isn't she," Robin said, quietly.
"I guess I was staring ... "
"Don't be bashful. I may be her mother, but I can appreciate a hunk when I see it."
"The funny thing is," Conal admitted, "I wasn't really looking at her as a girl. I mean, not sexually. I've been swimming with you two almost every day, you know, so I'm used to looking at her. She's just such an incredibly healthy animal. She sort of glows."
Robin was giving him a skeptical eye, so he played the role she expected, acting abashed and shaking his head as if caught in a lie. But it was a funny thing, and it was true. He could be around a naked Nova all day long and never have a sexual thought about her. There were attainable dreams and there were impossible dreams, and Nova was always and forever the latter. It was too bad, but there it was. So now they were working cautiously toward a mutual respect that was still just shy of true friendship, and he liked that just fine.