Demon

by John Varley

  The Dione Spoke, like all of the six spokes of the great wheel, was oval in cross-section, about a hundred kilometers along one axis and fifty along the other. It joined the rim in a vast, bell-shaped flare of tissue that gradually became the arched rim-roof. At the top of the bell was a sphincter that could be completely closed. At the other end, near the hub, was another sphincter. By opening or closing these valves and by flexing the three-hundred-kilometer-high spoke walls, Gaea pumped air from one region to another, heating or cooling it as needed.

  Except for the Oceanus Spoke, which was barren, the interiors of these towering cylinders supported life in abundance. Huge trees grew horizontally from the vertical walls. Complex eco-systems flourished in the labyrinth branches, in hollows of the trees, and in the walls of the spoke itself.

  There were dozens of species of angel in Gaea, most of them too dissimilar to inter-breed. The Dione Spoke supported three species-or Flights, as they called themselves. At the top, where gravity was almost nonexistent, were the spidery Air Flight: dwarves among angels, with translucent wings and skin, ephemeral, not too bright, more like bats than birds. They seldom landed anywhere except to lay eggs, which they abandoned to fate. They lived on a diet of leaves.

  The middle part of the spoke belonged to the Dione Eagles, related to Eagle Flights in Rhea, Phoebe, and Cronus. Eagles did not form communities. In fact, when two Eagles met there was likely to be a bloody fight. Their young were born live, in mid-air, and had to learn to fly on the long fall to the rim. Many of them did.

  But the Airs and the Eagles were in the minority. Most Gaean angels nested and nurtured their young. There were a lot of different ways to go about it. One species in Thea had three sexes: cocks, hens, and neuters. The hens were flightless and huge, the cocks small and savage. The neuters were the only intelligent ones, and they cared for the young, which were born alive.

  The Dione Supra Flight-badly named, in Cirocco's opinion, as their territory was at the bottom of the spoke-were peaceful, community-oriented beings. They built big beehive-shaped nests in the trees out of branches, mud, and their own dried feces, which contained a bonding agent. As many as a thousand Supras might live in one nest. Their females gave birth to things called placentoids, a sort of mammalian egg containing an embryo which had to be attached to the living flesh of Gaea. In this way the females never grew too pregnant to fly and the young could grow quite large before being detached from the womb. Like humans, Supra infants were helpless for a long time. They learned to fly in six or seven years.

  Cirocco liked the Supras. They were more approachable than most angels, had even been known to come trading in Bellinzona. They used tools more than most angels did. Cirocco knew it was illogical and prejudiced-it was not the fault of the Eagles that they were so heartless, it was simply their biology-but she couldn't help it. Over the years she had had many Supra friends.

  Like most angels, Supras looked like very thin humans with giant chests. Their bodies were black and shiny. Their knees bent in either direction, and their feet were bird-claws. Their wings were mounted low on the back, below the shoulderblades. When folded, the wing "elbow" joints towered over their heads, and the tips of the long primary feathers trailed far below their feet.

  Angels had one thing in common with Titanides. Both were relatively new creations, made by Gaea as variations on the human theme. Even with hollow bones, huge wings, giant muscles, and no fat at all, a flying human had taxed Gaea's design capability to the limit. The larger angels could lift more than their own weight at the rim. They preferred to live in the lower-gravity regions of the spokes.

  In addition to their nesting habits, two other things set the Supras apart. One was their coloration. Females had green wing feathers and males had red. The caudal empennage of both sexes was black, except in mating season, when the females grew peacock fans and put on glorious displays. They had no other external sexual differentiation.

  And they didn't have names. Their language did not contain first-person singular pronouns. "We" was as near as they could come to it, and yet they were not communal minds. They existed as individuals.

  This made communication with them somewhat difficult. But it was worth the effort.

  The Supras did not seem at all startled to see Gaby and Cirocco fly up to the nest and land, light as a feather, near the big opening in the top. It was raining in the spoke, and the smiler-hide cover had been pulled across to keep the water out. Gaby ducked under it and Cirocco followed her into darkness.

  Oddest damn dream, she thought. One minute she could fly, but as soon as she set down on the nest she was back to her normally awkward method of blundering through the Supra nest.

  A Supra staircase was a series of rods embedded on the adobe-like nest wall. The angels grasped the rods with their feet; all Cirocco could do was hang on with both hands and try to pretend it was a ladder as she backed down it. In the same way, the Supra equivalent of a comfortable chair was a long horizontal pole. They perched on them effortlessly.

  She and Gaby worked their way toward the back of the nest, which was built against the spoke wall. Dotted along the wall were Supra babies in little pockets of Gaea's flesh. Some were no bigger than ostrich eggs, while others were as big as human infants and needed a lot of tending so they wouldn't break their umbilical cords. Child care was done by all members of the flight, in rotation. Supras didn't imprint on a particular mother or father.

  The base of the placentoid rookery was the only spot in the nest with a spot level and wide enough to be used as a floor. Gaby and Cirocco went there and sat, cross-legged. Cirocco remembered she should have brought a gift. Anything would do-Supras loved bright things. It was a polite way to begin a visit. But she didn't even have clothes.

  Gaby didn't, either, but with a magician's flourish she opened her hand and produced an old plastic bicycle reflector that shifted colors when it was turned. The Supras loved it, passing it back and forth.

  "It is a fabulous gift," one of them said.

  "Most luminiferous," agreed another.

  "Elegant and tricksy," one suggested.

  "We are most brilliantly aghast," a fourth chimed in.

  "It will be enshrined."

  They chattered their appreciation for some time, and when Cirocco and Gaby could get a word in, they praised the beauty, wit, poise, wisdom, and elegant flight characteristics of their hosts in the most extravagant terms. They applauded the rookery, nest, branch, wing, squadron, and Flight of the inestimable Supras. One rutting female was so moved she spread her tail feathers in sexual display. Though Cirocco could barely see it in the dunness, she joined the others in praising the female's fertility and prowess in terms so explicit they might have made a whore blush.

  "Would you take some ... food?" one of them asked. The others looked away and kept a modest silence. It was a new thing for the Supras, something they were cautiously trying out in their dealings with humans. By custom, food was never asked for or offered outside of one's own nest. Food would not be refused a starving Supra from another nest, but most Supras would rather die than ask.

  The invitation had been made by the lowest-status individual of the nest, a male who was old, scrawny, and probably near death.

  "Couldn't possibly," Cirocco said, lightly, to another individual.

  "Stuffed, we're absolutely stuffed," Gaby agreed.

  "Flight would be impossible with another gram," Cirocco pointed out.

  "Fat is perilous."

  "Abstinence is a virtue."

  They never looked at the one who had asked, thus spreading the load of embarrassment as equally as possible, which was the polite thing to do. The Supras clucked approvingly, and praised the prosperity of their guests.

  Suddenly Cirocco remembered encountering that lone Supra in the air over Iapetus, while the deathangel was flying away with Adam.

  "So, why have we come here to this nest?" Cirocco asked, addressing the group of angels, not Gaby, and inverting her question in
a way calculated to cause the least confusion to the Supras.

  "Yes, a most interesting thing," one said.

  "Why have they come, why have they come?"

  "One is of air, one is of dream."

  "Dreams in the nest, how very strange."

  "The one who burns. Why did they come?"

  Gaby cleared her throat, and all looked at her.

  "We have come for the same reason we came in the past," she said.

  "To prosecute the case against Gaea, and to further the preparations for war against her and all her estates and nests."

  "Exactly!" Cirocco, who couldn't have been more confused, chimed in. "That is precisely our intention. To ... engage in most brilliant strategems and tacticalities."

  "Most precise!" one angel said, enthusiastically.

  "Oh, rue the day!"

  "The nest of Gaea will be laid low."

  "Mumble," said one angel, which is what they said when they had nothing to say but didn't want to be left out of the conversation.

  "Mumble," another agreed.

  It was easy to see the Dione Supras as amiable nitwits, idiot savants with large and fractured vocabularies. They were nothing of the kind. The English language was a delight to them, so illogical and fertile and well-suited to their natural desire to confuse, obfuscate, and generally side-step clear meaning whenever possible.

  "Quite violent," Gaby suggested.

  "Oh, so very violent. Much torment."

  "And cautious, extremely cautious."

  "The tactics," one said. "Such a lexicon of tactics." The way he said it, Cirocco knew it was a question that might translate as How do we fight her?

  Gaby made that same tricky pass with her hands. Nothing up her sleeve, Cirocco decided. For a moment she knew how others must feel when she worked her own meager magics.

  She produced a red stick that was unmistakably dynamite-that was, in fact, labeled DYNAMITE: PRODUCT OF BELLINZONA. The angels fell silent when they looked at it. Cirocco took it and turned it around in her hands. The angels sighed in unison.

  "Where did you get this?" Cirocco asked, momentarily forgetting the others. "There's nothing like this in Bellinzona."

  "That's because you won't make it for another kilorev," Gaby said.

  "Ephemera!" a Supra crowed. "It's ephemera!"

  "An insubstantial nullity," another opined.

  "Not made yet? How farcical! We are keenly misinformed."

  "It doesn't exist," one summarized. "Like this Cirocco one."

  "Don't quibble," came an adjuration.

  "Did you forget it's a dream?" one reminded Cirocco.

  "Dynamite! Dynamite! Dynamite!"

  "There will be dynamite," Gaby agreed. "When it comes time to fight Gaea, there will have been dynamite for some time."

  "Will have been! A truly stratospheric verb."

  "Most sincerely."

  "An ... illusion?" a younger Supra said, with wrinkled brow, still staring at the dynamite in Gaby's hand.

  "A will-o-the-wisp," one explained.

  "A figurehead! A moonshine of farragos, a pre-pentimentoized, infra-extinct, fleeting mockery! A vacuity!" shouted another, effectively shutting off debate.

  They stared at it again, in a feather-rustling quiet. Gaby made it vanish back to where it had come from-the future, Cirocco presumed.

  "Ah," one of them sighed, at last.

  "Indeed," affirmed another. "My goodness, the things we will do with such a lump of power!" he asked.

  "Yes, you will," Gaby agreed. "And right now, you're going to tell us all about it."

  Which Gaby did, at great length.

  When she was through, there was the customary offer of sex. Both Cirocco and Gaby accepted, which was the polite thing to do.

  They went through the courting ritual, which had always reminded Cirocco of a square dance, while the others sang and clapped in rhythm. Cirocco's partner was a sterling speciman of the species. His bright red wings enfolded her warmly as the act was "consummated."

  And that was another thing she found attractive about the Supras. They didn't have an ounce of xenophobia. A tribal people, their culture was laced with ritual, custom, and tradition-but they had flexibility. With visiting Supras the offer of sex would have been in complete earnest, and the act would not have been simulated. They had formalized this ritual solely for the purpose of dealing with human visitors. Real sex with the Supra would have been grotesque for both of them. As it was, the male simply gave her the lightest possible touch with his tiny penis, never seen, and everybody was happy. It made Cirocco feel good. In a way, it made her feel loved.

  She had almost forgotten it was a dream until they landed lightly on the black sandy beach and she saw her sleeping body. Nearby was Hornpipe, resting on folded legs, making a carving during his own dream-time. He looked up and nodded at them both.

  Cirocco kissed Gaby good-by and watched her fly away. Then she yawned, stretched, and looked down at herself. Time to wake up, she thought, wryly.

  Once more she was impressed with how easily the fantastic could become commonplace. She knelt beside her sleeping body, remembering how it had been the last time, and rolled over onto it.

  She gasped when she hit warm, muscular flesh instead of the sand she had expected. For a moment she lay sprawled across the sleeping body, then she leaped into the air as if she had landed on an ant-hill. She stood, horrified, as the other Cirocco stirred, raised a hand to her face ... then turned slightly on her side and went back to sleep.

  She turned her head and saw Hornpipe looking at her. What is he seeing? She wondered if she would ever ask him that.

  "I'm not ready for this," she said aloud. But she sighed, knelt on the sand, and hesitantly touched the body. Again, it was other. It was a big, strong-looking, brown-skinned, and not very pretty woman.

  She took the other Cirocco's hand. The other stirred slightly, muttering something. Then she opened her eyes and sat up quickly.

  There was a moment of vertigo, and then there was just Cirocco. She looked around quickly, saw no one else.

  "Just you and me, kid," she said to herself, and went to join Hornpipe.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  Historians, when Bellinzona eventually produced some, were never quite sure when the change happened. The city had been born in chaos, had grown in confusion, been conquered in disarray. There was a brief time when there were almost as many inmates in the work camps as free citizens walking the streets.

  Conal, with his informal polls of the citizens, detected no dramatic jump in morale, or in the approval rating of Cirocco Jones, not even after the aerial attack. He suspected it was the result of a combination of things.

  But for whatever reason, at some point between the sixth and the ninth kilorev after Cirocco's invasion, Bellinzona stopped being a brawling collection of fractious individuals and became a community-within the human-defined limits of that term. It was nothing so dramatic as all men suddenly deciding they were brothers. Deep and persistent differences still existed, nowhere more strongly than in the Council. But at the end of the ninth kilorev Bellinzona was a city with an identity, and a purpose.

  Football had a surprising amount to do with it.

  Serpent's obsession, combined with strong help from Robin's organizational abilities and the willing work of the parks commissioner, soon had two leagues formed, ten teams to a league, and that was just for the adults. There were intermediate and junior teams, too. A second stadium had to be built to accommodate the number of games, which were strongly contested and heavily attended. It was something to cheer for. Local heroes were born, intra-city rivalries established. It was something to talk about in the taprooms after a long hard shift. For some, it was something to fight about. Titanide police were instructed not to interfere as long as only fists were used. When word spread about this unprecedented instance of the law looking the other way, some mad brawls developed, some people were hurt ... and the Mayor did nothing. Even this seemed to improv
e the community spirit. Cooler heads began to move in and stop the fights as the emerging citizens learned how better to tolerate each other.

  Which is not to say no more noses got broken.

  Whistlestop's departure played a part. One day he simply drifted away and did not come back. People seemed to breathe easier. He was too visible a symbol of oppression. He was just an old bag of wind, completely harmless, but the people didn't like him up there and were glad to see him go.

  Titanides became less numerous, and less visible. The occupying force was in fact halved on the day of Cirocco's return from the fountain, and halved again a kilorev later. Human police took up the slack, and Titanides intervened in only the worst violence. They were monumentally uninterested in civil crime.

  Both the quality and quantity of food deliveries improved as more acreage was put under cultivation, and as the ones who grew it learned better methods. Smiler meat began to appear in markets, at gradually reducing prices. Independent farmers were created under land-grant schemes, and proved, to no one's surprise, more efficient than forced laborers.

  Inflation remained a problem, but-in the immortal words of one of Nova's economic reports-"The rate of increase of the rate of increase is slowing."

  Most people thought the biggest reason for the lift in morale was the most obvious one: the cowardly and unprovoked attack by what was later learned to be the Sixth Fighter/Bomber Wing of the Gaean Air Force, based in Iapetus. The Sixth was composed of one Luftmorder and nine buzz bombs, which came screaming in from the east on the first bright day following many decarevs of rain, catching people out of doors enjoying the unaccustomed warmth.

  The "cowardly and unprovoked" line was used by Trini in a speech twenty revs later, as the pieces were still being picked up. She had been even more intemperate than that; in an illogical but heart-felt rage, she had called the attack a day that would live in infamy.