by John Varley
She stood before them, looking at each one in turn. She was more than pleased at what she saw, disgusted at what she had to say.
"Robin," she began. "I haven't lied to you. But I haven't told you the whole truth. Nasu has maybe a one in a thousand chance of beating Gaea."
Robin looked away, then nodded slowly.
"I guess I knew that."
"Even if she did kill this Gaea ... and I'm talking about this giant monstrosity in Pandemonium now, not the real Gaea, who Nasu could never beat-it wouldn't do any good. In fact, I'm counting on Gaea killing her."
"Nasu's not my demon anymore, Captain," Robin said. She looked back at Cirocco, and there were tears in her eyes. "I mean, I really can't carry her around in a gunny sack, can I?"
"No. But I can still call her back. We might get along without her."
Robin shook her head, and stood straighter.
"You do what you think is right, Cirocco."
It was Cirocco's turn to look away.
"I wish I could. But I don't always know." She looked at the rest of them. "I've told you people more than anyone else. I'm telling you more now. I'm not telling you all, even this late-and I don't even know all of it myself. But there is only one chance, and I'm taking it. Nova."
The young witch inhaled quickly, surprised. Cirocco smiled tiredly at her.
"No, I don't have any big surprises for you. But I'm leveling with everyone, and you're the only one who saw Calvin. Remember him?"
Nova nodded.
"He's dying. What he has might be curable by Titanide healers-we don't really know, because he won't let us examine him. He used to be a doctor, so maybe he knows it's incurable. At any rate, he wants to do something for us, and it will kill him. That's why I took you to visit him that day, to see if he was willing. He was."
"The day I got drunk," Nova said, with a wistful smile.
"Conal. You saw Gene. You must have some idea of what he's capable of. What Gaby told him to do... he probably won't do it right. He probably won't survive it. Gaby and I knew that."
Conal looked at his boots for a moment, then met Cirocco's eyes.
"I never saw anybody more ready to die than he is. I think it would be a blessing if he died ... and I think he knows exactly what he's doing."
Cirocco was grateful. Conal always seemed to come through. She took a deep breath, fought off her own tears.
"Virginal. Valiha. Serpent. Horn-"
Hornpipe stepped forward and put his hand gently on Cirocco's shoulder.
"Captain, since it is the time for truth-telling, I should tell you that we have already figured out that-"
"No," Cirocco said, pushing his hand away. "I have to say this. You all knew Chris might die in this encounter. I told you that saving Adam was my number one objective. That was a lie. Saving him is my second objective. It is more important to me than I can say ... but if this ends with me, Adam, and Gaea dead, I'll count it a victory."
Hornpipe said nothing. Valiha stepped forward.
"We have discussed this," she said. "We obeyed your security rules and did not spread it through the race, so we four are making this decision, and will bear the weight of it. We feel the race would agree with us. There comes a time when all must be risked that a great evil be eliminated."
Cirocco shook her head.
"I hope you're right. There... is the strong possibility that even if Gaea and Adam and I are killed, the wonderful Titanide race-who, I swear to you, I love more than my own race-will survive. But if Adam and I are killed, and Gaea survives, you are doomed. And this is my first priority: that the thing called Gaea be erased from the universe."
"We are with you in this endeavor," Hornpipe said. "The responsibility for saving Adam will rest with us... ." He gestured to include the whole group. "... with us seven, from two races, but bound by love. This is as it should be."
"This is as it should be," the Titanides sang.
"Adam's life is in our hands now. You should put it from your mind. You have told us what we must do, and we will do these things to the best of our ability. You should now forget about it, trust us ... and do what you must do."
"You will always be our Wizard," Serpent said, and then sang it, ringing and defiant. The other Titanides joined him.
Cirocco felt she must cry, but managed to hold it back. She faced them again.
"This may be the last time we meet," she said.
"Then those who survive will always cherish those who fall," Virginal said.
Cirocco moved among them, kissing each one. Then she sent them on their way. She had thought she had all the crying done, back at the Junction, but found, when they were gone, there were some tears left.
It was some time before she could summon the Generals.
When they were seated around the command table, Cirocco looked from one to the other, and felt ashamed at her conceit in always thinking of them by the numbers of the divisions they commanded. The impulse had sprung from her distaste for things military. But these were comrades now. They had stood beside her, and she had an odd surprise to give them, and she knew she must end, now and forever, this number game.
She looked at each in turn, fixing them in memory.
Park Suk Chee: a small, fiftyish Korean, in command of the Second Division.
Nadaba Shalom: in her forties, light-skinned, impassive, and the backbone of the Eighth.
Daegal Kurosawa: a racial mix of Japanese, Swedish, and Swazi, who commanded the One Hundred First.
All had been in the military on Earth, but none had advanced beyond the rank of Lieutenant. There were troops under their command who had ranked higher ... but no former Generals. There had been a time, in Bellinzona, when the discovery of an ex-General had been the occasion for a rare celebration. People would get together and burn the fellow at the stake. General-burning had been Bellinzona's only indigenous sport.
There had been no lynchings for some time before Cirocco took power. Nevertheless, it had been difficult at first to get anyone to accept the title, and for a time the Generals had been called "Caesars." But common usage gradually took over, as people grew used to the fact that these Generals had no nuclear weapons to play with.
"Park. Shalom. Kurosawa." She nodded at each of them, and they nodded back, warily.
"First... we won't be building siege towers."
They were surprised, but did their best not to show it. Not long ago, one of them would have asked if she planned a frontal assault over the bridges, and another would have asked about starving them out. Not now. They simply listened.
"What is going to happen here will be a little like a big parade. It'll be something like a carnival, and something like a wide-screen spectacular. It'll be a monster movie. It'll be like one of those big outdoor performances of the 1812 Overture, complete with cannons. It'll be the Fourth of July and Cinco de Mayo. What it won't be, my friends, is a war."
There was a silence for a while. At last Kurosawa spoke.
"Then what will it be?"
"I'll tell you in a minute. First ... if what I'm going to describe to you goes wrong, I will be dead. You'll have to carry on without me. I won't be so stupid as to try to give you orders from beyond the grave. You'll have to make the decisions." She pointed to Park. "You'll be in command, overall. I can do that much, and hereby promote you to Two-Star General. According to the Bellinzona laws, that makes you answerable to the Mayor, when a new one is elected, but it gives you almost total authority in field decisions."
She looked from one to the other. Their thoughts were veiled, but she had a pretty good idea how they were going. Three divisions in the field, one in Bellinzona. If Park wanted to march home and take over, nobody was likely to stop him. She had chosen him as the least likely to have ambitions toward martial law. But she knew she had created a potential monster in the army itself. If there had only been another way ...
But Gaea had wanted a war, and she had to have at least the illusion of one. She had to have her
attention diverted, and nothing short of an army would be enough.
"Before we get to the orders of the day, I'll give you the benefit of my thinking about the situation you'll face if I am killed. You can do with it what you will.
"I advise you to retreat."
She waited for a comment, and got none.
"You might successfully breach the wall. I think you could. Inside, you're more than a match for her people. But you're outnumbered. You'd take heavy losses ... and you'd lose in the end. If Gaea decides to pursue you ... it'll be a nightmare such as you've never imagined. She would rampage through your troops. She never sleeps, never gets tired. She might only kill a few of you at first. But as your troops get tired she'll kill more. Maybe a Legion a day, until you're wiped out. That's why, if I'm killed, you should start your pull-out immediately. Once you get to Oceanus, you'll be safe, for a while, because I don't think she'll go in there."
She saw she had managed to frighten at least two of them. Park had merely narrowed his eyes, and Cirocco had no idea what was going on behind them.
"If she lives ... " Park began. His eyes got even narrower. "She will eventually come to Bellinzona."
"I think it's inevitable."
"What do we do then?" Shalom asked.
Cirocco shrugged.
"I haven't the faintest idea. Maybe you can whip up a weapon that can kill her. I hope you can." She jerked a thumb in the direction of the unseen walls of Pandemonium. "Maybe your best course is to knuckle down to her like those poor souls in there. Bow down to her and tell her how great she is, and how much you liked her last picture. Go to her movies three times a day like a dutiful slave, and be thankful you're alive. I don't know if it's better to die on your feet than live on your knees."
"I, personally," Park said, quietly, "would rather die. But this is beside the point. I appreciate your evaluation of this hypothetical situation. Could you tell us now, what we do today?"
That extra star sure emboldens one, Cirocco thought. She leaned forward, putting her elbows on the table, earnest as could be. She felt like a three-card-Monte dealer about to go into her spiel.
"Have any of you ever heard of a bullfight?"
EIGHTEEN
Chris climbed down the ladder from the top of the wall to the ground. He had been standing up there for several revs, just to the west of the Universal Gate, watching Cirocco's troops in the distance.
At first he had been impressed. It seemed like a lot of people. Through an observation telescope he had been able to make out the size and shape of the wagons, the type of uniforms the soldiers wore, and the business-like way they moved.
The longer he looked, the less sure he was. So he did his best to make an estimate of just how many soldiers were out there. He did it again and again, and even the largest number he came up with was smaller than he had hoped. There were fewer Titanides than he had expected, too.
Chris had not been completely idle. As the news of the approaching army whispered through the nervous Pandemonium grapevines, he had gone about assessing Pandemonium's strength. He had tried not to be obvious about it-though he doubted Gaea really cared. She made no attempt to conceal anything from him or anyone else in Pandemonium. In fact, she often bragged openly that she had a hundred thousand fighters.
That was true, Chris had decided ... and deceptive. There were that many people inside the wall, and they would all fight. But he assumed Cirocco's army would know how to fight. What Gaea's troops had been trained to do, it seemed to Chris, was wait for the cameras to get into position, wear fierce expressions when charging, shout, and pose in attitudes of stalwart determination.
But there were some things he wished he could get to Cirocco. A spy wasn't worth much if he couldn't get his information out of the country. That thought made him want a beer. ...
He shook his head, violently. He was determined to stay dry until the fighting was over. He had to be ready, if the chance came ... though he didn't know if he would recognize it, if and when. He was too much in the dark. And that made him want a beer-
Damn it.
Gaea came striding along the wall. She had been going around and around, checking the deployment of her troops, ordering units back and forth, wearing them out before the fighting even started.
"Hey, Chris!" she called out. He turned and looked up at her. She gestured out to the north, where the army was assembling. "What do you think? They're real pretty, aren't they?"
"They're going to whip your ass, Gaea," he said.
She roared with laughter, stepped over the Universal globe, and continued on her rounds. Increasingly, Chris found himself in the role of court jester, able to say the outrageous things permitted a comic figure. It didn't do anything to improve his morale, and it hardly even amused him anymore.
Damn it, if there was only some way to get word to Cirocco.
She should know Gaea had cannons.
Maybe she did know, and Chris was worrying for nothing. And it was true they weren't very good cannons. Chris had watched the testing-from a safe distance, after one of the early models had blown up, killing sixteen.
The range of the cannons was not good, and their accuracy was low. But the Iron Masters had recently come up with some new, exploding cannonballs. They sprayed thousands of nails over a wide area. They would be a problem if Cirocco planned to storm the walls.
There were the vats of boiling oil, too, but he figured Cirocco expected that. And she knew Gaea would have archers...
There was other bad news. Gaea had guns. The good news was there weren't many of them, and they were primitive flintlocks that took forever to re-load, and they blew up even more often than the cannons. The men who had to carry them were scared to fire the damn things.
Chris wondered which would be worse: to carry a weapon that might blow your hands off... or to go into battle with a prop.
He had had a very bad moment not long ago when he saw a regiment of soldiers dressed in modern, lightweight body armor, carrying laser rifles and the big backpacks to power them. One company of such troops could massacre an entire Roman legion, Chris was sure.
Then he had encountered one of the soldiers in a commissary. From ten feet away, the deception was obvious. The laser rifles were just wood and glass. The backpacks were hollow shells. The armor was some kind of plastic.
He started back toward Tara. On his way there he had to move aside frequently for dog-trotting formations of soldiers.
There was a troop of cavalry, mounted on the horses Gaea used in her western epics. Their sabers were real, but their six-shooters were carved out of wood. And he happened to know that, at the right signal, most of those horses would fall over, pretending to be shot, as they had been trained to do. Wouldn't it be great if he could get that signal out to Cirocco?
Later, a Roman legion marched by, resplendent in brass shields and breastplates and crimson skirts. They were followed by a goose-stepping regiment of Nazi storm troopers, and they were followed by a shambling bunch of Star Wars storm troopers. Before he got back to Tara he saw Ghurkas from Gunga Din, doughboys from All Quiet on the Western Front, Johnny Rebs from Gone With the Wind, Huns, Mongols, Boers, Federales, Redcoats, Apaches, Zulus, and Trojans.
Whatever else he thought about Pandemonium, the costume department was terrific.
He mounted the broad plantation-house steps and found Adam in one of the huge rooms, sitting on the marble floor playing with his train set. It was a wonder, made of silver and embellished with jewels too big for him to swallow if he were to pry them loose-and Adam was always prying things loose, though he no longer tried to eat things that weren't food. He hooked cars to the engine, then he scooted around on his knees, jerking the train forward, cars flying off the end as he went, shouting choo-choo-choo-choo-choo.
He saw Chris, and joyously threw his priceless engine against a wall badly denting the soft metal (which would be repaired during his next sleep, Chris knew).
"Wanna fly, Daddy!" he crowed.
Gaea was still striding the wall. She had reached the Goldwyn Gate, and was returning to Universal, which was closest to Cirocco's concentration of troops. It was one of Adam's top three gates: he liked Mick ey Mouse atop the Disney Gate, the big stone lion at MGM, and the turning globe at Universal, in that order. Adam pointed.
"There's Gaea!" he crowed. He was always proud and pleased when he spotted her vast bulk from a great distance. "Want down, Daddy," he ordered, and Chris set him down.
Adam hurried to the telescope. Tara had about a hundred very good telescopes, just for this purpose. Adam was rough with them, as he was with all his toys. And every time he woke up, the broken lenses had been repaired, the finger smudges had been wiped away, and the brass barrels gleamed.
He was skilled with them by now. He swung the scope back and forth and quickly located Gaea. Chris went to another, so he could see what Adam saw.
She was shouting orders to troops inside the wall, pointing this way and that. Then she turned to face outward, her fists on her hips. Chris glanced at Adam, and saw him move the scope slightly to focus on the beautiful fields of Hyperion, where the army was swarming like a mass of ants. He pointed.
"What's that, Daddy?"
"That, my bright boy, is Cirocco Jones and her army."
Adam looked back into the scope, obviously impressed. Maybe he thought he would get a glimpse of Jones herself. Lately, he had been seeing a lot of her, in movies like The Brain Eaters, Cirocco Jones Meets Dracula, and The Creature from the Black Lagoon. A few of the movies were genuine Earth product, with Cirocco substituting for the monster, and additional scenes showing her transforming from a rather sinister but recognizable Captain Jones into whatever latex calamity was devouring Tokyo this week. But most were new product, stamped Made in Pandemonium, with production credit given to "Gaea, the Great and Powerful." Gaea had a convincing double for Cirocco in some of the scenes, and used computer-enhancement for others. The quality was not great, but the budgets were lavish. Chris knew from commissary gossip that a lot of the eviscerations, amputations, decapitations, and defenestrations in these monster adventures were not special effects and had nothing to do with stunt men. Often, to get the effect she wanted, Gaea found it easier to bury the extras.