Demon

by John Varley

  At the head of the column, Cirocco Jones sat very straight, aware that the Army could see her out there, and kept her own counsel.

  The Generals had warned her the first day's march was too long for unseasoned troops. The camp had been prepared deep in Iapetus a hectorev before, with tents that would be struck and added to the burden of the goods wagons.

  Cirocco knew it was too far, and had intended that it be. She was decimating again.

  So she marched her troops mercilessly through the increasing heat and unending light of Iapetus. They began passing out. As they did, they were loaded onto the wagons. When they finally reached camp most of the army was in a state of exhaustion. Not a few officers had fallen by the wayside.

  "Here's what we do," she told the assembled top brass-before they had a chance at the mess tent. "Those soldiers who fainted or who have a medical problem as a result of today's march will remain here. At this site they will build Pontus Camp with materials at hand. They will keep their weapons and other equipment, but the wagons will go with us. Pontus will be fortified, and be the permanent home of two Cohorts of one Legion. The other three Cohorts will establish similar but smaller outposts to the north, south, and east. The job of these detachments will be to improve the highway and keep it open, and to fight a delaying action should an attack come from Hyperion. They will be under the command of the General of the Third Division, in Bellinzona. Send a messenger to inform him of this. And requisition what wagons are needed to carry back the most serious medical cases, those that go beyond mere exhaustion. All clear?"

  No one had the strength to argue with her.

  TWO

  Four hundred fifty kilometers to the west, and five kilometers beneath the ground, Nasu slithered through the darkness until she came to a long, narrow tunnel that smelled very bad.

  She knew these places, and hated them, in her cool and ponderous reptilian brain. She did not want to go into the tunnel. It was a place of hurt. She remembered it dimly, beneath Iapetus only a kilorev ago, and other times in the past.

  She probed it with her tongue, and tasted hatred. Almost a kilometer away, great coils of her mid-section writhed in indecision and eagerness to go. Her tail actually started to crawl away. It took some time for impulses to get from the gallon of gray matter she used as a brain down to the nethermost extension, which increasingly was not in agreement with headquarters.

  The immense bodily conflict caused acids to squirt into her monstrous digestive cavity, which would have been painful enough, but the acid set up a great galumphing uproar that caused her sides to bulge out unpredictably. The reason for this was simple: she had recently devoured seventy-eight of the slow-moving, blind, and elephantine creatures, called Heffalumps, who resided in this darkness, and they did not die easy. Twenty-six of them were still alive, and they didn't like acid any more than Nasu did.

  Acid. Hyperion. The Robin-thing. Go to Hyperion. Acid. Robin.

  These concepts floated through her mind like disconnected wraiths, a hundred times, two hundred, and finally were imprinted again. She must go to Hyperion. She must meet the Robin-warm-protector there. She must go into the tunnel, where there was acid.

  Once in motion, Nasu was impossible to stop. She barreled through the tunnel like history's worst Freudian nightmare.

  She encountered the acid far later than she had expected to. By then there was no question of stopping. She plowed up a great wake of it, shutting her eyes tight. But she could see through the translucent lids as she entered the deep sanctum of Cronus, faithful friend of Gaea.

  Cronus howled his rage, humiliation, and pain. It didn't stop the snake. She selected the easternmost of three tunnels leading out of the chamber, and thrust her head into it. At that moment, the end of her tail was just inside the west end of the tunnel.

  It hurt like hell. Doing this was what had turned her white. She would be shedding her skin again soon, and that helped, but only a little. It burned her eyelids away. They would grow back, but the pain would be intense.

  And it was still hurting, of course, way back there, but the signals were slow to arrive. She burst forth into the cavernous darkness of the East Cronus maze and kept going until she was sure she was out. Then she began to writhe, thumping monstrous coils of herself against the rock. The twenty-six surviving heffalumps were quickly killed. Had anyone been standing directly above, on Gaea's inner rim, it might have felt like an earth tremor.

  But the pain didn't stop for a while. Nasu curled herself into a tight ball with her head somewhere near the center, and waited for healing to come.

  Only one more to go, she thought.

  THREE

  Cronus was royally pissed.

  When you are the lord and master of a hundred thousand square kilometers of land area-plus the endless caverns beneath them, and, in a sense, the air above them-and you get maybe one visitor in ten myriarevs and aren't even very enthused about getting that one ... well, it just really narks you to have some frigging nightmare reptile come barreling through your home like a runaway freight train. It just confirmed his bitter opinion. The goddamn wheel was going in the toilet. Nothing worked anymore. Everything sucked.

  He'd been faithful to Gaea for millennia-for aeons! When this Oceanus business came up, who was it stood behind Gaea a thousand percent? Cronus, that's who. When the dust had settled and old Iapetus sat over there dry-washing his nonexistent hands like a comic-book commie spy and whispering sweet nothings in Cronus's ears, had he listened? No way. Cronus had a direct line to heaven, and Gaea was on her throne, and all was well with the wheel.

  When that schizo Mnemosyne slipped off the deep end and started blubbering in her beer, boo hoo-hoo, about what that lousy sandworm was doing to her stinking forests, did he lose faith in Gaea? He did not.

  And even when she foisted that back-stabbing Cirocco Jones bitch on him, told him Jones was now the Wizard and he had to make nice to her, did he make trouble? No, not good old Cronus. Served her right when Jones ...

  He backed away from that thought. Gaea was in poor health, anybody could see that, but some thoughts are best left un-thought. No telling who might be listening.

  But this was too much. It really was.

  It's not like he hadn't seen it coming, either. He'd had his requisition in for eleven myriarevs! Three hundred thousand gallons of ninety-nine percent pure hydrochloric, that's all he needed to bring his reservoir up to capacity. There's this thing, he had told her. Snake-like, but awful big. It ain't one of mine; maybe it's one of yours. But it lives down here, and it's been through here twice, and the fucker gets bigger every time. Not only that, but this chronically low acid level is drying out my upper synapses. Gives me a perpetual pain ...

  She hadn't believed him. Not one of hers, she said. Don't worry about it. And it's Iapetus stealing your HCl, and I can't do a bloody thing about it. So shut up and let me get back to my films.

  This time he was damn well going to report it. He called for Gaea. What he got was the new assistant, as had been happening more and more often. Their conversation was not in words, but it had a certain flavor that, if translated, would have been much like this:

  "Hello, Gaean Productions."

  "Let me speak to Gaea, please."

  "I'm sorry, Gaea is on location."

  "Well, put me through to Pandemonium, then. This is important."

  "Who shall I say is calling, sir?"

  "Cronus."

  "Beg pardon? How do you spell that?"

  "Cronus, dammit! The Lord of that region of Gaea-exactly one-twelfth of her total rim land area, by the way-known as Cronus."

  "Oh, of course. That's spelled C-H-R-O-"

  "Cronus! Put me through to Gaea, at once!"

  "I'm sorry, sir, but she is in a screening. Spartacus, I believe. You really ought to see it. One of the best Roman epics ever-"

  "Will you just put me through?"

  "I'm sorry. Listen, if you'll leave your number, I'll have her get right back to you.
"

  "This is an emergency. She should know about it, because it's headed her way. And you have my number."

  "... oh, yes, here it is. It slipped behind the ... are you still at-"

  "I'm going to report this whole conversation to Gaea."

  "Whatever you wish."

  Click.

  Cronus tried again later. Once again he got the smart-ass assistant, who told him Gaea was in a production meeting and couldn't be disturbed.

  Well, screw her, then.

  FOUR

  There had been no beer in Tara most of the time Chris was there. It was available in the commissaries, to those who could prove they had finished their work shifts. Chris had not imbibed. It was not very good stuff.

  Now there was excellent beer in the iceboxes of Tara. The weather was hot. Adam didn't seem to mind it, and it didn't bother Chris a lot, but a cool beer or two was just what he needed after a long day spent trying to keep Adam's attention away from the television sets without being too obvious about it.

  Two or three beers were just what he needed.

  The hard thing was to never admit that the games he structured were mostly to keep Adam from looking at the television programs. Without the TV he certainly would have spent a lot of time with Adam, but would have been content to let him play alone more often. As it was, he feared he was spending too much time with the child. It got more difficult to interest him. Adam often tired of the games, and playing with the toys. Sometimes, when he was at his lowest, Chris thought Adam was humoring him.

  Very paranoid thought, Chris. Three or four beers might soothe it.

  But the worst thing, the most awful thing ...

  He sometimes caught himself about to strike the child.

  He spent every waking hour near Adam, and as many as he could manage actively engaged with him. An adult human being can take only so much of childish things, of baby-talk and games and silly laughter. Chris could take a lot, but there was a limit. He ached for intelligent company... no, no, no- that wasn't the right word at all, that was completely wrong. He ached for adult company.

  So when Adam was asleep and he felt so horribly alone, four or five beers was just the ticket to calm his shattered nerves.

  He needed adults around. What he had was a sharp, intelligent, delightful two-year-old ... and Amparo, and Sushi. Other household help came and went, and never talked to Chris. He assumed they were under orders from Gaea to treat him as the man-who-isn't-there. Only Amparo and Sushi were constant.

  Both had been wet-nurses when Chris arrived. Amparo seemed to be an intelligent woman, but she had no English, and no urge to learn any. Chris had picked up enough rag-tag Spanish to communicate with her, but it would never be very satisfactory.

  As for Sushi ...

  He didn't know if that was really her name. She was an idiot. She might have been a super-genius before coming to Gaea, but Gaea had done something to her. The mark was on her forehead. It was a swelling below the skin in the shape of an inverted cross. When Chris had finally realized that Sushi's mind was really as blank as her eyes, he had touched the swelling one day, and been astonished to see her fall on the floor and writhe as if in the throes of a seizure. Upon more careful examinationm-and queasy experimentation-he had learned it was not a seizure. It was the old pleasure principle. Gaea had put something like Snitch in Sushi's head, and wired it into her pleasure center. Now she would do anything for a jolt. Touching it herself did no good. Someone else had to. She seemed to need it about three times a day. If she didn't get it from Chris, she would nuzzle up to Adam, who thought it was very funny when Sushi writhed on the floor and moaned and masturbated.

  So Chris had to keep Sushi content several times a day.

  Luckily, he could drink five or six beers to settle down afterward.

  They called her Sushi for a very simple reason. She subsisted on a diet of raw fish. The fish didn't have to be fresh. They didn't even have to be scaled, and the heads didn't bother her.

  Her breath was horrible.

  It took Chris some time to put it together. Eating the fish was a conditioned reflex. Eat a fish, get a jolt. Before long, she wouldn't eat anything else.

  The television was fifty percent interactive these days. And now he was appearing in it, though he had never gone before Gaea's cameras. At first, like many things in Tara, it had seemed harmless. He had first appeared in an Abbott and Costello feature. He had been substituted for Costello. Subtle changes had been made in him. He was short and dumpy, but it was definitely him. His voice was a blend of his real voice and the voice of Costello. Adam had loved it. Even Chris found himself grinning from time to time. Costello was a dunce, no question, but he was an amiable one. It could have been worse.

  It got worse.

  Next it was Laurel and Hardy. Gaea was Ollie, and Chris was Stan. Chris studied the movies carefully, weighing the pro's and con's. The two comedians had an affection for each other. That worried him. At first glance Stan seemed an idiot, but it was actually more complex than that. And Ollie was a blowhard, took a great many of the pratfalls ... but in the end was the dominant personality. Again, Gaea was working up to something.

  Lately he had begun to appear in some questionable roles. Not the villain per se, but someone rather unsavory. In one role, from a movie whose title he couldn't remember, he saw himself beating Gaea. And he saw that it disturbed Adam, though he wouldn't talk about it. Adam drew a line between fantasy and reality... but it was a fuzzy line. Gaea was that amazing, funny, huge, and harmless lady who came to the third floor window of Tara and handed him pretty toys. Why would Chris be beating her up? The plot wasn't important, nor was the fact that Chris, at just over seven feet tall, was hardly a worthy opponent for the fifty-foot Monroe.

  He was now sure he would lose, in the long run. It was all very well to be set up as Adam's conscience, but television had always had a louder voice than a child's conscience-which didn't even exist until someone nurtured it. Chris wasn't being given a chance.

  A year had gone by. Cirocco had said it might be as long as two years before she came again.

  He was pretty sure it would be too late by then.

  It would have cheered him considerably to know Cirocco and her army were already on the march to Hyperion. But Gaea had not seen fit to tell him, and he had no other way of knowing. He might have gotten a clue from Gaean television. Adam was asleep, and Chris was sitting slumped in front of a set. The movie was the 1995 version of Napoleon, un-altered, and on the screen vast armies marched toward Waterloo.

  But by then Chris was too drunk to notice.

  FIVE

  The second day's march saw even more soldiers pass out than on the previous trek, though this one was shorter.

  Cirocco had expected that, too. It probably looked like an easy discharge. She told her medics to examine everyone carefully and send back only the most serious cases. Those turned out to be sixteen in number. Everyone else shouldered packs when camp was broken and marched on into Iapetus.

  They crossed the two small, nameless rivers that flowed south from the Tyche Mountains into the great sea of Pontus that dominated Iapetus. The bridges were in good repair. The terrain was easy. Iapetus, an enemy of Gaea, would not hinder their progress through his domain, Cirocco knew. Their problems would begin in Cronus.

  For several "days" the army camped by the lovely sea. The weather held clear and warm. Cirocco gradually picked up the pace as the soldiers grew more accustomed to the rhythm of the march. But she did not push it too hard. She wanted them tough, not exhausted, when they reached the hard parts.

  At the confluence of Pluto and Ophion, very near the border of Cronus, Cirocco had her Generals pick the garrison of her extreme eastern line of defense. This time she did not go for the weak ones. She wanted veterans, the toughest men and women she could find. They would set up a fort just west of the Pluto ford, and north of Ophion. She left them Titanide canoes for crossing the big river. They were to patrol north and sout
h, traveling light and fast. Their position was not defensible against a determined attack, but that was not the point. It was her hope that, if attacked, the troops could send messengers back to Bellinzona and fight a delaying, guerilla action, giving the city as much time as possible to prepare for the assault.

  All this depressed her. Almost everything she had done in Iapetus was preparation for defeat. If the Bellinzona Air Force still existed, this outpost of its swift messengers would be superfluous. Even the slowest Dragonfly could get to Bellinzona from here in twenty minutes and sound the alarm.

  But the Air Force might not make it through Cronus.

  And of course, if her army was victorious in the coming fight, no one would be returning from Hyperion but her own soldiers and the refugees and prisoners of war from Pandemonium.

  But she owed the city every precaution she could think of. She had conned it into producing not just a bunch of foot soldiers, but a dedicated and motivated fighting force.

  She knew that, if it came to it, these troops would fight.

  The Circum-Gaea had crossed the Ophion at a point just within the invisible boundary between Iapetus and Cronus.

  Back when Gaby was building the Highway, Ophion crossings were her biggest challenges. The river was very broad and fairly deep in the flatlands, and in those places where it ran swift, it did so through unforgiving mountains. So she had kept the crossings to a minimum.

  But some had been necessary. Cronus was a good example. There was no really easy way through Cronus, but the northern route was five times as hard as the southern. So a big bridge had been necessary.

  Cirocco's engineers, who had scouted the route as far as Mnemosyne and done what repairs were feasible to the roadway and bridges in Iapetus and, to a lesser extent, in Cronus, had reported that the Ophion Bridge was hopeless. The entire south end had collapsed. It had taken Gaby's crews five years to build it, almost seventy years ago. There was no way it could be repaired in time for the march to Pandemonium.