Demon

THIRD FEATURE

You've got to take the bull by the teeth.

-Sam Goldwyn

ONE

Maybe Gaea heard about the parade.

It was a mistake to blame all unpleasant events on Gaea's malign intervention, but the rain that drenched the parade through Bellinzona was the sort of thing she would have loved. It didn't affect the citizens' enthusiasm; it seemed every Bellinzonan stood on a street corner or hung from a window to watch the troops march through. The troops, of course, hated it, just as soldiers have hated parades since the dawn of warfare. Their boots got wet, and a hardened-leather breastplate that hadn't yet been broken in by sweat and oil and use was like an economy-size Iron Maiden,

But the Army slogged through it. They endured the crossing of an unusually rough Moros. A predictable number got seasick. They disembarked on Moros' western shore in a sea of mud, joining up with a thousand massive goods wagons-half of which were already bogged down to the axles.

The Quartermaster Corps-a separate, non-combatant group which had been assembling equipment and training drivers on the Dione Road-had become proficient in the care and handling of Gaea's only draft animal. These were beasts called Jeeps, native to Metis. Until recently they had had no names at all, except in Titanide song. Cirocco had caused fifteen hundred of them to be rounded up and trained to harness. This was not too difficult. Jeeps were amiable, bovine omnivores. They were built along the lines of those early ancestors of the rhinoceros which had once thrived in prehistoric Persia and stood almost twice as tall as modern elephants. Jeeps were not quite that big. They had bear-like claws, heads like camels' heads, and their forelegs were twice as long as their hind legs. This gave them a comical gait. They ate anything that was handy. With Jeeps around, garbage disposal was never a problem. Their worst characteristic was a tendency to stumble over their own feet and overturn the wagon they were carrying. But they were clean, smelled pretty good, and responded to affection. Most of their handlers had learned to appreciate them.

And they could haul monstrous loads long distances, with just a little water. They had big, floppy humps atop their shoulders which could store fat for lean times.

The Jeeps soon had the columns moving.

... and as the army started into Iapetus, the clouds rolled away and a warm breeze began to blow. Soon the air sparkled and the road dried. You could see all the way to Mnemosyne. It seemed a fine day to be setting out on a trip-no matter what might lie at the end of the road.

The wind whipped the brightly colored pennants at the head of each Legion, Cohort, and Company. The banners had numbers or letters on them, but no other symbols. And at the head of the procession, there was no flag. There had been a lot of pressure to adopt a Bellinzona flag, but Cirocco had resisted it to the end. She would accept being Mayor, she would raise, train, and equip an army and lead them out to do battle... but she drew the line at flags. Let Gaea raise her flag, and fight for it.

The sunshine of Iapetus gleamed off the breastplates of the officers. The air was full of the sound of creaking wooden wheels, and the slap of leather boots, and the peculiar honking noises made by the Jeeps, who were about as excited as they ever got.

The human legions marched together. Between them marched contingents of fifty Titanides, pulling their own wagons, which seemed stronger and better-built-and were certainly a lot prettier than the human wagons. The Titanides, though colorful enough in themselves, wore their finest jewels and had festooned their bodies and wagons with the most colorful flowers. They carried no flags. There were a thousand of them formed into battle groups, and it was debatable whether they or the almost thirty thousand humans were the stronger force.

In addition to these regular troops, scout Titanides ranged far ahead of the column, and twenty kilometers on each side. There would be no ambush the Titanides could not detect. The only peril on this day of beginning was from the air. Some of the soldiers spent a lot of time looking at the clear sky, wishing for clouds.

Majors marched at the head of Cohorts. Each Legion was led by a Colonel, also on foot. Three Titanides of an unusually easygoing nature had been persuaded to bear the Generals at the heads of their Division. The Titanides didn't like it-they barely knew the Generals in question, and were not accustomed to allow any human but a dear friend to ride on their backs. They saw to it that the ride was as rough as possible. The Generals seethed in their own discontent. Not from the rough ride-none of them knew the uncanny smoothness of the Titanides' usual gait-but because it was impossible to sit astride the creatures and see around their broad backs. Dignity forbade the practical carriage Cirocco had worked out long ago: to ride facing backwards. The whole purpose of these steeds, after all, was to set the Generals above the common foot soldier. So they endured the bumps and the lack of visibility, and tried to look as dignified as possible.

And at the head of the column, several hundred meters from the One Hundred First Division, were nine individuals. In front was Cirocco Jones, in her unadorned black clothes and hat, astride Hornpipe. Following her in no particular order were Conal astride Rocky, Robin on Serpent ... and Nova riding Virginal. Valiha trotted along without a human burden.

None of them had much to say. There was no festive air. This would be the only day Conal would ride with the army, so Rocky and Serpent saw to it that he was often quite close to Robin. Whatever they had to say to each other had apparently already been said. After the first bivouac, Conal would be heading to the northern highlands to take command of the air force.

Virginal held back from the two, at Nova's request. The young witch and former bureaucrat-she had resigned after a shouting match with Cirocco, and been replaced by someone from Trini's faction-wanted to give her mother and her mother's lover all the time together they could get. There was a new, more mature relationship between witch and Titanide. Nova was not yet perfect, according to Virginal, but she was getting there. She had said that many times, and each time they would laugh harder. Virginal, for her part, was ashamed of her own behavior. The lecture from her hindmother when she heard of the scene with Nova still stung.

Every so often Nova would reach down to her waist and finger the spell bag that hung from her belt. It was beautifully embroidered with an ancient Yin-Yang symbol, and contained the Zombie-dust she had inadvertently discovered and which must, by law, be carried at all times by every Bellinzonian. The bags had quickly become general-purpose good luck charms. This one had been given to her by a shy Korean girl named Li, who still had a lot of trouble with English but spoke the universal language of love very well indeed. There had been a steamy send-off. Nova found it hard to believe she had overlooked such beauty and sensitivity for so long. Li had worked in her Statistics Bureau. Could this be love? Nova wondered. Well, maybe. It was too early to tell. But Li was someone to write home to, someone to keep the home fires burning.

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 south, 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.

So they encamped on the northern shore and hundreds of rafts were built. This was hard and slow work, as that part of Cronus had few trees large enough to provide the lumber.

Cirocco and the Generals scanned the skies nervously throughout this operation. She expected an attack to come in Cronus or Hyperion-possibly in both places, if the first battle was not decisive. And the army, divided by the river and strung out on vulnerable barges, were sitting ducks during the Ophion crossing.

She had explained her reasoning to Conal, his pilots, and the Generals shortly before the beginning of the campaign. Using a clock-face analogy she had mapped the twelve regions of Gaea in a great circle, starting with Crius at twelve o'clock.

"That puts Hyperion, our destination, here, at two o'clock," she had said, writing in the name. "The central Hyperion cable is the base for the Second Fighter/Bomber Wing of the Gaean Air Force. Next door, at three, is Oceanus. There is no Third wing; Gaea has no control in Oceanus." She put a large X by the name of Oceanus.

"The Fourth, based in Mnemosyne, was wiped out by an explosion just over a year ago. My sources tell me it has not been replaced." She made another X. "The Sixth, from Iapetus, attacked Bellinzona and was wiped out. There is no Seventh, in Dione, for the same reasons that apply to Oceanus. The next viable unit is the Eighth, here in Metis." She made the two more Fs, and stepped back to admire her work.

"You can see that Cronus exists in the middle of a large gap in Gaea's air power. From Metis, here at eight o'clock, all the way around to Hyperion, at two, there are seven fully armed bomber wings. Metis is being watched closely. If an attack originates from there, we'll get some warning over the radio. The same with Hyperion. But if the Fifth drops down on us while we're in Cronus, we'll have very little warning.

"I've worked out a couple possible scenarios. Say the Metis Eighth starts its attack. It takes them some time to get here, and we get some warning. The more logical thing for Gaea to do, I would think, is to begin with the Cronus wing to surprise us and pin us down. At the same time, the Eighth or the Second, or both, take off and get here in time to relieve the Fifth.

"The second option is to let us go right through Cronus. Frankly, I'd rather be attacked here. Because if Gaea waits until we get to Hyperion, she can bring in all these groups-Phoebe, Crius, Rhea, Hyperion, Cronus ... maybe even Tethys, pretty much simultaneously and with little or no warning."

Everyone had studied Cirocco's big Gaean clock solemnly. Ideas had been advanced, some of them useful. The consensus was that the smart thing for Gaea to do was wait until they were in Hyperion and bring her full strength to bear.

Cirocco agreed ... and thought glumly that Gaea would probably do just the opposite. All logic aside, Cirocco dreaded an attack in the hostile night of Cronus.

SIX

The Luftmorder in Tethys did not know he was the flugelführer of the Tenth Fighter/Bomber Wing of the Gaean Air Force. It was not a designation given to him by Gaea. He only knew he was the leader of the squadron. He had a vague awareness there were other squadrons, but it was of no importance to him. His mission was well-defined-and he didn't work well with other Luftmorders. It was not in his nature to do so. He was the flugelführer.

Orders had been coming through. They would involve re-fueling at bases under the command of other Luftmorders. The thought was distasteful to him, but Orders were Orders.

He knew there was an army, now marching through Cronus.

He knew that, at some point, Orders would come telling him to attack that army.

He knew there were enemies in the sky. This did not frighten him.

It all made him feel warm and contented.

About the only nuisance in his life were all the angels that had been coming around lately.

They flew quite close, cluttering curiously. Green ones and red ones. He was contemptuous of them. Their jelly-bodies would make amusing targets for his red-eyes and sidewinders... but there were no Orders. He was contemptuous of the angels. They had so little power. They were so inefficient as flying machines.

They had begun building nests that hung, as he did, from the cable. There were three of them below him, great bulging structures that seemed to be made of mud and wattle. He considered them eyesores.

There had been four. He had loosed a red-eye at one, to test its strength. It had come apart like rice paper. The red and green feathers that drifted out of it and the alarmed squawks of the survivors had amused him.

But he had tried no more shots.

He awaited his mission.

SEVEN

Conal had wanted to lead an attack on the base in Cronus. He had argued his point long and well, until all Cirocco could do was let him in on her top secret plan, the one that might or might not work. There was just no other way Conal was going to sit still while Robin-and the rest of his friends, of course-marched helplessly under those bloodthirsty monsters perched on that loathsome cable.

When he heard the plan he agreed, reluctantly. It still put Robin in danger, but there was no way to get completely around that.

"It has to be this way, Conal," Cirocco said. "I suspect an attack on the Cronus base will bring in reinforcements from all around the wheel, before we've had a chance to pull our surprise. If enough of them show up, you and your people could be wiped out. Then we'll be vulnerable to air attack all the way to Hyperion."

So Conal sat at his base now, well-concealed in the northern highlands of Iapetus, and brooded. It seemed an eternity. He didn't sleep well. He never went more than two hundred meters from his plane, which was always fueled and ready.

The other pilots played cards, told jokes, and generally tried to pass the time. These were mostly men and women who had flown military aircraft back on Earth. Conal didn't have much in common with them. College kids, most of them. They looked down on him, resented the fact Cirocco had placed him in command ... but admired his skills in aviation. He was a natural, they said. That was true, but the biggest factor that made them listen to him was that he had more air time in Gaea than all the rest of them put together. He knew the special conditions of Gaea, knew what the tough little planes could endure in the high pressure and low gravity, understood the coriolis storms that so confused many of the other pilots.

They tolerated him, and learned from him.

He sat by the radio every waking hour.

The base itself maintained radio silence. It was their hope that Gaea did not know its location, and their suspicion that the buzz bombs could hear radio communications. So they listened to the forward observers in Metis, and to the terse communications from the advancing army.

At last the alert came.

"Bandits at eight o'clock," said the voice on the radio. "... six, seven ... there's the eighth, nine ... and Big Daddy makes ten."

The crews scrambled. Conal was already in the air when the rest of the message came.

"They're dropping down to the deck. Can't see them anymore. Station one signing off. Come in station two, station three."

Station one was in the southern highlands of Metis. The people there had the biggest telescope in Gaea-requisitioned, as so many other high-tech things had been, from Chris's improbable basements-and it was constantly trained on the Metis central cable.

Two and three were to the east and west of the cable. No matter which direction the Eighth went, Conal would know soon. He expected them to turn east, toward Bellinzona and the army; still, it was always possible this was a diversion or a trick.

But he was pretty sure of one thing. The Fifth Wing was dropping down toward Cronus, and they didn't have far to go.

"Station three reporting. We have all ten bandits in sight. Heading ... due east, within the limits of our radar."

Three squadrons of five planes had scrambled at the initial alarm. Conal didn't like to think of how few planes were in reserve.

"This is the Big Canuck," Conal said. "Squad Leader Three, turn east and execute plan three."

"Roger, Canuck."

"And good luck to you."

"Roger," came the laconic reply. They would need it, Conal knew. The Eighth would head due east for as long as possible before disclosing their final destination by either turning sharp left for Bellinzona, or continuing toward Cronus and the army. Either way, the Third Squadron would take them on, outnumbered two to one.

Conal watched the five planes peel off, neat and sweet as an air show. He wished that was all it was.

They had been heading due south. Now he gave the order to turn to the east. Squads one and two would angle away from each other and then converge over the army from the north and south.

Just as they were completing the turn his radio gave him the message he had been dreading.

"This is Rocky Road. We are under attack from the air. No ground troops reported. Attackers are believed to be the Cronus Fifth, but unable to confirm at this time." There was the sound of an explosion. "Hurry up, you guys! We're getting chewed to pieces out here!"

At the first word from station one, the army executed their defense plan, meager as it was.

They had pushed on into Cronus from Ophion, over gently rolling land that left them hideously exposed from the air. They were moving into a narrowing neck of grassland that would eventually be squeezed out by the jungle to the south, and the sea of Hestia to the north.

There was no offensive action open to them. Nothing in the arsenal had any hope of hitting a buzz bomb. Attempts had been made to convert the Air Force's weaponry to ground-launched control, and they had been dismal failures. Cirocco had given it up, knowing she had already wasted too much of the Air Force's dwindling supplies in her self-indulgent display over Pandemonium. She would pay for it now, and so would everyone around her.

Bellinzona had recently begun the manufacture of gunpowder and nitroglycerine. The army had gunpowder, in the form of big rockets, but almost all the nitroglycerine-in the form of dynamite-had been diverted to a destination Cirocco would not disclose, which infuriated the Generals. But even if they had access to dynamite it would not have made much difference in fighting off an aerial attack. The rockets and their warheads were useful only as diversions. It was hoped the red-eyes and sidewinders would be attracted to their heat.

The bonfires had been constructed with the same principle in mind. Several dozen wagons were filled with dry wood and kerosene. As the attack was announced, these wagons were driven forward, backward, and out to each side as far as they could get before the planes were sighted, then set afire. In the middle of the Cronusian night, it was hoped these bright lights would confuse the attackers as to the size of the army, and provide them with easy and expendable targets.

The main body of the army extinguished all lights, spread out, and set to work with their Personnel Entrenching Tools-shovels, to a civilian-something high-tech had done little to improve. An infantryman from the Argonne would have known how to use them instantly. The ground was hard, but it was amazing how quickly one could dig when the bombs began to fall.

Cirocco found herself doing an amazing thing. As the blue-white dots of the Fifth Fighter/Bomber Wing began circling above them, getting into position for their runs, she ran back down the Highway, shouting and waving her sword.

"Get down! Take cover! Get down, get down! The Air Force is on the way. Keep your goddamn heads down!"

She saw the first deadly orange blossom ahead of her and to one side, still quite far away, and she was grabbed by the arm, lifted, and tossed onto Hornpipe's broad back. She landed on her feet, and held his shoulders, then yelled into his ear.

"Take cover, you crazy bastard!" she told him.

"I will when you do."

So they thundered down the highway, startling the troops, waving their swords, shouting warnings that were entirely unnecessary as the landscape began to thunder and burn beneath the pounding of the Ferocious Fifth. She knew it was insane. She had never understood how commanders could do crazy things like that, and wasn't quite sure how she was managing it herself. She had no illusions about being immune to bombs and bullets, did not think the mad force of her personality could somehow protect her-a theory she had actually seen propounded in some of the more fanciful military texts.

She only knew it wasn't right for her to take cover now. Better to chance being killed. The troops had to see her and perceive her as unafraid, even though she was shaking so badly she almost dropped her sword. There was no other way to convince them to risk their own lives when she demanded it of them.

God, she thought. Ain't warfare wonderful?

Most of the Titanides took the course Cirocco and the Generals had agreed was the logical thing for them to do. It would take them forever to dig trenches big enough to protect their huge bulk. Their great advantage was speed.

So they ran away.

They scattered in all directions, got as far from the center of the action as they could, and watched, horror-struck, as the malignant beauty of the battle unfolded in the air and on the ground.

Skyrockets screamed into the air from the pyrotechnics wagons, trailing orange sparks, glowing bright red, then exploded. Red-eyes and sidewinders burst like coveys of incandescent birds from beneath the wings of the buzz bombs, trailing red or blue or green fire, accelerated at a frightening rate, screaming in bloodthirsty joy as they suicidally dived into the bonfire wagons or chased skyrockets or, all too often, were not fooled and raced along a few meters above the ground to spread liquid fire over the pock-marked landscape. The aeromorphs themselves were visible only by their blue-white exhaust. The bombs were not visible at all until they reached the ground, and then they made everything else seem insignificant.

A few Titanides, moved beyond endurance, started back, but were stopped by their more sensible comrades.

Only the Titanide healers did not run. Like the human medics, they did what doctors have always done in war. They gathered the wounded, tended them ... and died beside them.

"Oh Great Mother if you let me live through this I'll never leave my computer again, never again, never again, never again... ."

Nova was not aware she was shouting. She was scrunched up in a trench that seemed about a quarter of an inch deep-and she was sharing it with two foot soldiers she had never seen before.

It was actually quite a bit deeper than that, and when a relative lull came all three of them scrambled out and dug like maniacs. Then the monsters made another pass and they piled in again, a mess of sharp elbows, boots, sheathed swords, askew helmets, and the stink of fear. They held their shields above them and heard dirt clods rattle against the dull bronze.

A bomb hit very close. Nova wondered if she would ever hear again. There was nothing but ringing for a long time. Shards of hot metal fell on them, and steaming soil.

"Never again, never again, never again ... "

Part of Conal's mind knew that the Metis invaders had turned north, were headed for Bellinzona. That part of his mind wept for the outnumbered Third Squad.

The rest of him was concentrated on the dark air ahead that, minute by creeping minute, grew lighter. They could see the battle long before they arrived there.

Then they engaged the enemy, and there was no time to think of anything but flying.

He had to let his computer do a lot. There were too many blips on the screen, too much confusion, too much darkness. He twisted and turned, got lined up on something promising ... and was overruled by the firecontrol computer, who had identified his target as friendly. Then he splashed a buzz bomb. The whole encounter between them was over in less than three seconds. He did not bother to watch the wreckage fall down into the night, but immediately slammed into a ten-gee turn toward the next target of opportunity.

The battle was actually anticlimactic. He knew it hadn't been for those who had sat it out on the ground for the twenty minutes it had taken his squadrons to arrive. But by the time they got there the Fifth Wing had foolishly used up much of its air-to-air capacity. Their guns were running out of the little bullet-creatures. They still had some bombs left, and that was gratifying, as it made a much healthier explosion when Conal's missiles hit them. Each airburst meant one less parcel of death for those in the trenches below.

At last there was only the Luftmorder. Conal and two of his pilots closed in on it from behind. He shot off most of its left wing. A Gnat seemed to be trying to fly right up its tailpipes, then delivered a missile, and they all throttled back and watched it fall. The air was full of smoke, and there were a frightening number of fires on the ground.

"This is Big Canuck, calling Rocky Road."

There was a pause longer than Conal would have liked. Somebody had been separated from his radio, he realized.

"Rocky Road here, Canuck. I don't see any more enemies."

"That's right. They're all dead. The Fifth is no more. I haven't heard from my Third Squadron yet, but I know they engaged the Eighth somewhere over Dione, and you people have at least a half-rev breathing space before any survivors could get here."

"Roger, Canuck. We'll be digging in."

Conal was moving at dead slow, just over stall speed, while the computers formed up the First and Second Squadrons. Glancing around, he saw one hole in the Second, and one in his own, the First. He looked at his screen and saw one emergency beacon, stationary, on the ground, just short of Hestia. He dispatched one of his pilots to fly over and see if it was a survivor.

Two planes lost. One pilot lost, possibly two. Two other planes with minor damage.

Conal realized he was soaking wet. He put his plane on complete automatic, sat back, and shook for a few minutes. Then he wiped the sweat from his face.

"Big Canuck, Big Canuck, this is Squad Three."

Conal recognized the voice. It was Gratiana Gomez, the youngest and least experienced pilot in Third Squadron.

"I read you, Gomez."

"Canuck, Third Squadron engaged the enemy ten klicks south of Peppermint Bay. Ten aircraft were reported, and ten were destroyed. One got through to Bellinzona, and I have just destroyed it. It dropped three, maybe four bombs on the city."

There was something in her voice that disturbed Conal.

"Gomez, where is your squadron leader?"

"Conal... I am the squadron leader. In fact ... I'm the Third Squadron." Her voice broke at the end, and he heard a dead mike.

"Gratiana, go back to Iapetus North and park it."

There was a long pause. When she spoke again her voice was under control.

"I can't, Canuck. The aircraft is pretty shot up. I think it might be salvageable. I'm gonna try to put it down on the football field up by the labor camps. I think I can-"

"Negative, Gomez." Conal knew exactly what she was thinking. Pilots were easy to come by, but airplanes were at a premium. The equation offended him.

"Well ... then I'll ditch it up close to the wharves, where the water isn't too deep. They can pull it out and-"

"Gomez, you head that thing out toward Moros, and when you're right over the biggest, flattest piece of land you can find, you punch out of it."

"Canuck, I think I can-"

"Punch out, Gomez! That's an order."

"Roger, Conal."

Later, when things were sorted out, Conal learned that Gomez had made it safely to the ground. She died an hour later of blood loss from the shrapnel wounds she had not told him about.

Nova slowly realized that things had quieted down.

She lifted her head a little. There were fires in the night. She could hear people moaning not too far away. Some were screaming. She moved cautiously around on her elbows, straightened her helmet, and found herself face to face with one of her trench-mates. He gave her a foolish grin. She heard herself giggling. Great Mother, what a terrible thing to do. But she could not shut it off for a long time. The man laughed with her, glad to be alive. Then they turned to the third person in the trench to let him share in the joy.

But there was a little hole under the man's left arm, and a big one in the center of his chest. Nova held the bloody corpse for a long time, and could not cry, though she wanted to.

Though they never spoke a word to each other, they had shoveled together like mad animals, and huddled together in the dark and the fire, shivering, sharing warmth. And she hadn't known when the warmth leaked out of him in a flood of red.

Cirocco and Hornpipe had been knocked over by the blast wave of a near-miss. Though unhurt, they had decided to stay down. Enough was enough.

Now she strode through the battlefield, limping slightly. Her ears were still ringing. The ends of her hair and her eyebrows on the right side were singed. There was a little blood on her right hand.

She took it all in. There were many dead and injured, but they were being attended to. Sergeants were shouting like it was just another drill on the obstacle course. Dirt was flying everywhere. Many of the trenches were already eight feet deep. Cirocco couldn't find a single slacker. The Fifth Wing had made believers of them all.

The infirmary was a large tent set up as far away from the trenches as Cirocco had dared. She had debated a long time about whether to mark it with a big white cross. In the end, she decided not to. Gaea had cast herself in the role of the bad guy. She might very well have told her buzz bombs to seek out white crosses.

She entered the radio shack and grabbed a hand mike.

"Big Canuck, are you still up there?"

"I'm not going anywhere. Captain, have you seen Robin?"

"I have no information on that, Canuck."

"... Okay. Sorry. I shouldn't have asked."

Cirocco glanced around, saw no one was watching her.

"Conal, I'll let you know as soon as I know anything."

"Right What do I do now?"

They discussed it, using code words Gaea and her troops would not understand if they happened to be listening in. Conal was the only other person who knew about Cirocco's plan for the Gaean Air Force.

"I think," Conal said, "if you're gonna do it, you ought to do it as quickly as possible."

"I agree. Give us ... two more revs to get as solidly dug in here as we can. You and your people go back to Iapetus and re-arm and refuel. I'll take it up with the Generals."

Robin had spent most of the battle half-buried under a dead Titanide.

She and four others had dug a foxhole, the bombs had started to fall ... and the Titanide had fallen right at the edge of it. Its body slipped slowly down, not quite covering Robin. She thought it had probably saved her life. When everything was over and she was able to struggle out, she saw the amount of debris the huge, dead hunk of meat had soaked up. One of her companions in the foxhole had a chunk of metal in her leg, but the others were unharmed.

She managed to locate Cirocco, who had time for a brief embrace before hurrying off toward the Generals' tent.

Robin and Nova were oddities out here, and Robin was acutely aware of it. They were not in the army, as everyone else was. They had no assigned duties. Nova was not even in the city government anymore. In a sane war, one fought entirely by strategy and tactics of masses of soldiers and airplanes, Robin would never have been brought along. But her presence here was necessary.

The trouble was, she couldn't tell anybody why. She didn't even entirely understand it herself.

So now she wandered through the carnage, looking for her daughter. A few other people were wandering as aimlessly as she was, but they had that shell-shocked look. Robin was shaken, but in control of herself. She had come to terms with her fear twenty years ago, when she first allowed herself to feel it. She had been very afraid while the attack was happening, shocked and sorrowful at all the casualties, but now that it was over she felt only disgust at the atrocity of the attack ... and worry for her daughter.

She found her digging a trench. She had to call three times before Nova looked up. Then the girl's lower lip quivered, she climbed out of the hole, and went to Robin's arms.

Robin felt only tears of happiness. And she felt a little silly, as she always did, putting her arms around a daughter almost a foot taller than she was. Nova wept uncontrollably.

"Oh, Mother," she said, "I want to go home."

EIGHT

Cirocco spread her clock-face map on the rickety table. A Captain held a lantern over it as she drew in two more Xs.

"The Cronus and Metis wings of the Gaean Air Force are wiped out. That means this whole half of the wheel, with us right in the middle, no longer contains any enemy air power. The nearest threat to us is all the way over here, in Hyperion. Bellinzona is still threatened by the Thea Wing. Now, if you were Gaea, what would you do?"

General Two studied the layout, and spoke.

"She must know by now that one of our groups outmatches one of hers."

"But I don't think she knows our total strength," Cirocco said.

"Good. That might make her wait. An attack on Bellinzona from Thea is a possibility. But you say her main objective is the army."

"It is."

"Then ... we'll get a good deal of warning if the Hyperion Wing takes flight. You said our spies in Hyperion are excellent."

"They are."

"If I were her," General Eight said, "I would start massing my planes. Shift the Hyperion group into the empty base in Mnemosyne, for instance, if that base is still usable."

"It isn't."

"All right. And the Hyperion couldn't make it to the Cronus base without being attacked by our Air Force. So I'd tell them to sit tight. I'd move the Thea wing to the base in Metis. Iapetus is out of the question, for the same reason as Cronus. How many buzz bombs can use one base?"

"That I don't know."

"Hm. Well, if more than one wing can land at one base, I'd start moving those more remote ones in closer. Phoebe, Crius, Tethys, into Metis and Hyperion. We don't know the range, either, do we?"

"No. I suspect we're at the outer limits of the Hyperion group's range. But we'll get closer. I thought she might launch them at us now, while we're still recovering, and move Rhea up to take their place. But I think what she'll do right now... is nothing. So far, I've been right." She pointed at the map again. "We have to defend the army, the city ... and the base in Mnemosyne. The base in Iapetus is expendable-in fact, I've given orders to blow it up if they try to take it."

"Why would they try that?"

"Because they're going to be hungry. I propose a surprise attack. If it works, it might give us total air superiority."

She watched the effect of that magical phrase. In large army engagements for two centuries, those words had been the key to victory.

Naturally, they wanted to know how she planned to do it. She told them.

NINE

"Begin Operation Hotfoot. Begin Operation Hotfoot."

Perched on central cables from Hyperion to Mnemosyne, those Dione Supras who were gathered around the little radios began to chitter excitedly.

The dream-demon had said the radios would speak, and my, didn't they ever? The Supras had sat entranced as the pristine gibberish issued from the clever machines. Mentioning exotic bafflers like Canuck, poesy like Rocky Road, speaking of metal Squadrons, Luftmorders, and a fellow named Roger, the radios had become a great source of fun to the Supras. They played rhyming games.

"Big Canuck, are you in position?"

"Intromission."

"Inquisition."

"Pig and puck."

"Rig a duck."

It was great fun.

The dream-demon and her insubstantial companion had explained what a hotfoot was. It appealed to the Supras. Not the mission-to which they were already committed-but the code name, and the practical joke. Supras had a rather rough sense of humor.

They had been setting up for it for kilorevs. It was unpleasant. They did not like the stink of kerosene. But they did it, for the Demon.

And now the code word had been spoken by the radio. The plan had to be executed instantly, so it would be simultaneous all over Gaea. Any other way would be perilous to the Supras, Gaby had been quite emphatic about that.

"Oh, such dynamite there will have been," one of them said.

"Bouquets of Chrysanthemums," one gasped, a bit previously.

"Showers of flowers."

"Break out the soothing salves," one worried.

"Casualties are to be expected," another encouraged, referring to the dastardly attack on the nest in Tethys.

"The sword cuts both ways."

"That's a pyrotechnicality."

"Is there film in the camera?"

They dropped away from the cable and plunged toward the nest of vipers clinging below them.

The Luftmorder was only peripherally aware of the angels until they got within fifty meters. They had been around so much, his perceptions had simply edited them out, like smart radar erasing the signatures of birds.

Then they were among the squadron, chittering and chattering, actually coming close enough to touch his vassal aeromorphs. He saw one put something against the side of a buzz bomb. He heard something rattle down the exhaust pipe of another.

With a screech, he launched himself into the air, fell to ignition speed, and lit up all four engines. Behind him his squadron was following ...

One exploded. The limpet mine attached to its side tore a hole down to the combustion chamber, and the buzz bomb lurched to the side and went spinning endlessly down, trailing flame and smoke.

Another never made it away from base. As its engine turned on, the dynamite bomb lodged in its afterburner burst it apart. Only pieces were left to flutter toward the ground.

The Luftmorder banked hard and began to climb. He felt no hatred, only an overpowering urge to explode every angel in Gaea.

He worked at it for a time. He loosed a few sidewinders, managed to score one hit on an angel in flight. He sent a missile into their nest. From the look of the explosion, it was already empty.

And the angels were impossible to hit. He watched as his underlings twisted through the air, trying to get them. Before long there were no angels to be seen. They had flown to the cable and crawled into tiny spaces there. It would be futile to shoot at them, and it might endanger ...

So great had been his concentration that only then did he notice the base was on fire. Great gouts of fuel flowed from the attachments he had so recently abandoned. It spilled down the side of the cable. He knew it would continue to burn until the Source-whatever that might be-ran dry.

His brain clicked this piece of information into place, and he formed his next tactic around it.

He had no fire extinguishing capability. He had not been informed of any other being in Gaea equipped to fight such an inaccessible blaze. Therefore, the base was lost. Therefore, he must defend the upper base. He climbed ...

Soon he could see that it, too, was on fire.

Click. Another bit of information filed.

He called upon his squadron to form up around him. There was a base in Thea. He would take them there, provisionally. He radioed a terse description of the engagement to Gaea, and awaited her Orders, confident that a flight to Thea was the only logical choice.

He was not worried.

In the six remaining regions of Gaea that supported air groups, Luftmorders and buzz bombs fell away from burning bases. The Tethys squadron got off with the lightest losses: only two buzz bombs. Crius lost three buzz bombs and their Luftmorder, and milled aimlessly around the flaming cable, unable to think where to go. Hyperion was hit hardest, with six of the nine buzz bombs crashed or disabled in the initial attack.

The Dione Supras suffered casualties, as they had known they would. In a few decarevs they would gather to mourn them, after enough time had passed to cherish their memories.

In the meantime, they put their own losses out of their minds.

It had certainly been a delicious joke.

"Big Canuck, all the bases are burning. Repeat, all. Every survivor is in the air. Right now there is a great deal of confusion."

Conal swallowed hard. He knew they'd get it sorted out eventually. Some of them would get here. Perhaps a lot of them.

He listened as Cirocco relayed the reports of damages, added them up in his mind, and matched them mentally against his own forces. Allowing for the unknown variables-maximum range, and the possibility of fueling stations the Supras didn't know about-it came out pretty good.

Rhea and Hyperion squads would head for Cronus, and the army. It was their only possible target. His fliers were waiting for them in Mnemosyne. There was the possibility of an ambush there, though he wasn't counting on it.

Crius could go either way-though if their estimates of maximum range were right, it would do them no good.

The Thean squadron could probably reach Cronus. Tethys might make it, too. Phoebe couldn't, but would have a shot at Bellinzona.

Conal's big advantage, tactically, was that he'd be able to take them on in waves. He thought it highly unlikely that the closer ones would orbit in place, wasting fuel, waiting for the stragglers to catch up. He didn't think Luftmorder minds worked that way, for one thing. They seemed to fixate on a target and then go to suicidal lengths to reach it and destroy it.

He deployed his squads accordingly.

Orders came. The Luftmorder had guessed correctly... up to a point. He had expected to be assigned the city as his target. But the Orders, relayed through the Thea Luftmorder, were short and explicit. He and his squadron were to fly to Cronus and attack the army. He was to fight until there was not an enemy plane in the sky, and not a bomb left to drop on the army. Only then was he to consider his further survival.

This was no surprise, at least the last part wasn't. It hardly needed saying, as it was part of the standing Orders. What failed to click properly into his tactical computer was what had not been said. He had not been told to re-fuel at the Thea base.

He came as close as a Luftmorder could come to disobeying Orders. He decided that, as he neared the base in Thea, he would request permission to re-fuel. This could not in any way be seen as disobedience. All proprieties were satisfied by this decision.

Then he reached the Thea central cable and saw the base was burning. It explained everything.

Once again, he was not worried. He pressed on toward Cronus.

Conal's Fifth and Sixth squads stayed in the radar shadow of the Mnemosyne cable. When the Hyperion Second came streaking by, intent on Cronus and the army four hundred kilometers away, the smaller planes fell on them like hawks swooping from a great height, and tore them to pieces.

The Hyperion Luftmorder, before dying, managed to warn the Rhea squadron about the trap in Mnemosyne. They would arrive in about twenty minutes.

The Second and Fourth squads of the Bellinzona Air Force tried a similar trick in Dione, but had to wait to be sure the enemy was not heading for the city. The Thea squadron had a little more warning, and gave a good account of itself. Conal, back at the base in Iapetus, ready to bring the First Squad up in relief, listened as three of his pilots died and a fourth was forced to eject. One of his squad leaders was among the dead, so he combined the six remaining planes of the Second and Fourth into one squad and ordered them back to lapetus for re-fueling.

He took off for Dione at the head of the First squad-five of his eleven remaining planes in the East.

Tethys was going to make a try for Bellinzona, that seemed certain. It would be insane for them to push on into Cronus.

The First squad, from Rhea, was already getting low on fuel when they met Conal's Sixth and Seventh-the Seventh consisting of only two planes which had been assigned to guard the Mnemosyne base while the Hyperion squadron was being attacked. Now the Fifth was refueling, and would not come to help out. There was still the chance of a last wave arriving from Crius, and the base had to be defended.

Thea began firing missiles from a great distance. Flights of sidewinders came streaking out of the west before the squadron was even in sight.

It turned out to be a good tactic. Three Bellinzona planes were hit and downed. Two pilots managed to bail out over the sands. Then the dogfight began, and within ten minutes the sky was cleared of buzz bombs.

The Mnemosyne detachment didn't know it yet, but the war was over for them.

In Crius, the surviving buzz bombs still orbited the remains of the Luftmorder, burning on the ground. From time to time one would send a red-eye into the wreckage, as if hoping to stir it back to life.

With pitiful keening sounds, they stayed over their fallen leader until, one by one, they ran out of gas and crashed.

The Phoebe Luftmorder and his attendant buzz bombs cruised into Metis. He noted that, like in Tethys and Thea, the base on the central cable was burning.

The Luftmorder had a tactical problem. He had been assigned to attack the Bellinzona Army in Cronus, two thousand kilometers away. He had a range of eighteen hundred kilometers.

He saw now he could have made it had he flown up the Phoebe Spoke, through the hub, and down over Cronus. It would have made a nice surprise, too.

He had counted on re-fueling in Metis. Nobody told him there would be no fuel stops along the way, and standing Orders had been to proceed along the rim for all engagements unless specifically instructed. Something about noise abatement procedures in the hub. Gaea was up there-or part of her was-and perhaps Luftmorders gave her a headache.

But there was no such word as hopeless in the Luftmorder's vocabulary. He cruised on through Metis, into Dione-seeing the burning corpses of the ones who had gone before him, supremely confident that the mission would be accomplished. His buzz bombs, with only one engine each, had a range of twenty-one hundred kilometers. They would live to fight.

Over Iapetus he ran out of fuel-and into a dilemma.

Buzz bombs were not bright. There was a small repertoire of commands he could give them. "Follow me," "Attack," "Set up for bombing run," "Take defensive action," "Engage the enemy" ... things like that. He searched through the list. There was no Order for "Go on without me."

It was an interesting problem. He considered it all the way down to the ground, flying as a big glider, surrounded by the low roars of his troops in echelon behind him.

About two meters above the ground, he entertained the first doubt of his life. Maybe this isn't going to work, he thought, and he hit, and began to roll end over end.

Behind him, the buzz bombs flew into the ground, one after the other.

Above him, Conal's Second squad watched incredulously.

Just about twenty minutes before the death of the Phoebe Eleventh, Conal had watched in horror as the Tethys Tenth ignored Bellinzona and arrowed into the west.

He and the other planes of the First had been hiding near the Dione central cable, in perfect position to ambush the Tenth and demolish them. Now the enemy had a good head start on him-and his other squads were at base re-fueling, with even less chance of getting the jump on them. He gave his orders to his squad, and they quickly went supersonic. It wouldn't leave them much fuel for dogfights when they caught up. Then, his hand trembling, he punched in the code for Cirocco's army.

"Rocky Road, this is Big Canuck."

"Go ahead Canuck."

"Rocky ... Cirocco, the Tenth has gone through Dione. I'm afraid you may be seeing them in a few minutes."

"We're as ready for them as we'll ever be."

"Captain ... I'm sorry. I misjudged them. I thought they'd-"

"Conal, don't flog yourself. We thought we'd get three squads at us, minimum. So far, we haven't even seen a contrail."

"Yeah, but there's still Crius, which I haven't heard from, and Phoebe, which has been spotted twenty minutes behind me."

"Crius is splashed, Conal. As for Phoebe... a little bird told me they're going to run into trouble that has nothing to do with you. Tell your people to hang back, don't engage them, and report on what happens."

"... well, if you're sure ... "

"I'm sure. Now do what you can about Tethys, and let me tell everybody to get their heads down here."

"Roger, Rocky Road."

TEN

The Luftmorder was aware of the enemies closing in behind him. They had come out of nowhere, and they would reach him before he and his squadron could engage the enemy in Cronus.

There had been an overpowering urge to turn north toward the juicy, helpless target of Bellinzona. The city had seemed almost like a magnet. He wanted to turn north...

And then the tiny, contemptible planes had appeared, and he realized they had been in hiding all along. Gaea was great. Gaea was good. Gaea was wise, and had surely known he would be flying into a trap had he turned north.

Supremely confident, he flew on toward Cronus.

When the enemy fleet began to get within missile range, he detached four of his seven buzz bombs to go back and do battle. They peeled off quickly. He flew on, and with his hind-looking radar senses, watched them die, one after the other. He felt as much emotion as a rifleman who sees four bullets miss the target. It was annoying to have missed, but he never gave a thought to the bullets themselves.

Then he saw that one of the five enemy planes was going down. What was even better, three of the others were now far behind him, having wasted time and fuel downing the four buzz bombs. Only one still came on with a chance to overtake his reduced squadron before they spread death over the army.

Hesitating only a moment, he detached another buzz bomb to slow this enemy plane. He had no illusions it would shoot down the enemy.

The buzz bomb made a head-on run at the attacker ... and missed. It was turning, but now would be taken by the three other pursuers. And still the other came on.

Click. So be it. He was almost in Cronus now. This plane behind him would take one, maybe two of the three remaining fliers of the squadron. He would not take three. Even if the Luftmorder himself was shot down, the buzz bombs had their Orders. They would attack until they ran out of fuel, and then kamikaze into the largest target of opportunity.

Just like an air show, Conal told himself, as the buzz bomb grew larger in his windshield, heading straight for him. The planes would fly right at each other and you thought there was just no way they weren't going to hit, and then at the last minute one of them would flip one way and one the other and they'd go by a couple inches apart.

Only at an air show, the planes weren't shooting at each other. Streaks of light came from the approaching buzz bombs, going by on all sides. Conal felt two of them slash through his wings, but he didn't look away.

From the time he saw it until he made his move couldn't have been more than two seconds, at the speeds they were traveling. It seemed like an hour. It grew and grew and he waited and waited, then he turned so hard he blacked out.

It was only momentary. When he lifted his head he was still in the air, and almost behind the remaining three, though they were still distant. Far behind him the attacker was screaming into a turn, but he could forget about that one. It would never catch him.

He tested the controls gingerly. The plane hadn't been hurt badly. The right wing cannon wasn't working, and some of the response was a bit sluggish, but he decided it would bear up. He closed in behind the three attackers.

It began to seem almost too easy. He picked off one buzz bomb, which didn't even try to dodge. He zeroed in on the Luftmorder, but it twisted up and away. That left him with the other buzz bomb, which also took no evasive action. He almost hated to take the time, but he gave the computer its scent, the computer instructed a missile, and it screamed away to bury itself in the buzz bomb's tailpipe.

Conal looked up and saw the Luftmorder. He turned, shot another missile-then was turning even harder as he saw the sidewinder coming at him. He was still turning when it went off, taking a meter from the end of his left wingtip.

The little Dragonfly coughed, and he was pulled forward against his straps. He lost three hundred meters of altitude very quickly as the transparent wings strained and groaned, finding a new shape to compensate for the damage. At last-four, maybe five seconds later-he knew he was still airworthy, though not as fast as he had been.

He spied the Luftmorder. One of its four engines was missing, and black smoke trailed from that spot. But it didn't seem to bother the Luftmorder. It was descending, and Conal knew that was purposeful, as he could see the scattered fires of the army not too far ahead.

He moved in above and behind.

Carefully, he lined it up in his sights and told the computer to blow it to hell.

Nothing happened.

Cursing, he switched to manual control and tried to shoot it down with his remaining wing cannon.

Nothing happened.

The computer was still running, but no messages were getting through to his armaments.

Shouting his outrage, he moved in even closer.

The Luftmorder was not worried.

He couldn't shut off the flow to the missing engine, so the fire would not go out, and that hurt some, but pain would not divert him. A quick check of consumption assured him he was losing no more fuel than if the engine had still been in place. He would make it.

He would make it, so long as that little ...

Where the hell was it? He'd had it on his radar just a second ago. It had been descending. He would have seen it if it crashed. He scanned the skies with radar and visual senses, and found nothing.

Finally, he began to worry.

Conal was ten meters beneath the Luftmorder.

He felt like he could almost reach out and touch its great bulk. Red-eyes and sidewinders hung in clusters, squirming eagerly in the high wind.

He saw the trailing edges of the great wings bend down and bite air, and had to move quickly getting his own flaps down or he would have shot out ahead of the monster.

Slowing down. Getting ready for the bomb run. It would want to make it accurate, drop as many bombs as possible during its one and only pass. It probably knew there were no ground guns that could hurt it.

Guns.

Conal had been thinking about ramming. If the Luftmorder hadn't slowed down, that would have been his only option.

He looked up at the belly. There were sphincter-like puckerings all along it. He had wondered where the bombs came from. Might have known, he thought. That would certainly appeal to Gaea's sense of humor.

He blew his canopy. The wind hit him like a fist. But he and the creature were still slowing, and it got a little better. He dug in his flak jacket and came up with his flare pistol. The wind snatched the first shot and pushed it off to the Luftmorder's left, just missing the fuselage. He had two more. Was the creature starting to turn? Never mind. He took aim again, giving it a lot of windage. He saw the flare embed itself in what was, surprisingly, soft flesh a few inches away from one of the sphincters. It was magnesium, and too bright to look at.

Conal dropped and turned-and so did the Luftmorder. He heard a screaming sound, looked up, got a glimpse of a loathsome, unblinking eye protected behind a hard plastic-like material. The eye glared its hate at him, and the Luftmorder fell helplessly away, its innards on fire.

Conal thought of all those bombs and kerosene fumes and missiles, and turned his plane as hard as he dared.

Then it was like the Chinese New Year. Things were flying by all around him, trailing fire. The Dragonfly was buffeted by shock waves, rattled by shrapnel, for a moment engulfed in flames as a bomb went off close by.

He was in clear air again.

The Dragonfly shifted gears.

It shifted again, and again, trying out one shape after another, slowing, beginning a slow roll to the left. Somewhere among its vast array of possible airframes there must be a configuration that would make further flight possible.

But there wasn't.

Sorry, the brave little plane seemed to say, as it nosed over and dropped like a stone.

Conal pushed himself away from it, popped his chute, and saw the Luftmorder hit the ground a hundred meters short of the army.

And to think, he was the guy who had to be convinced that life never came out as well as it did in comic books.

He looked up, and saw his chute had a big hole in it. In his present state of mind, it didn't worry him in the slightest. This, too, I will survive, he told himself, with a big grin.

And he did survive it.

When he tried to get up he howled in pain. He had broken his ankle.

"Never did get that parachute practice," he told his rescuers.

ELEVEN

It might have gone differently.

Gaea did not have much of a military staff, but she had a few, and when the first reports of the defeat of the Cronus and Metis air forces came in, one of the staff found her and informed her. He recommended moving other units up from the far side of the wheel, getting them in positions more favorable for a massed attack. It was generally agreed that was the best way to defeat the tricky little Bellinzona planes.

Gaea was in a screening of War and Peace, the long, Mosfilm version. She agreed that was probably a good idea, and to ask her again when she got out and had a chance to think it over.

When she came, blinking, out into the light again, she was informed that all her air bases had been destroyed and her air force was in the final stages of being obliterated.

The news had produced a petulant frown on her huge face.

"See if you can scare up that copy of Strategic Air Command." she told her advisors, and went back into the screening room.

TWELVE

The dead were counted, and gathered together. Just over six hundred humans, twenty-two Titanides. Their bodies were stacked with wood and set afire as all the Division stood at attention.

The wounded were treated. There were fifteen hundred human and thirty-five Titanide injuries, many of them serious. Wagons were loaded with the less serious casualties, and moved out toward the city, with three Cohorts to guard them.

So it was one Legion of dead and wounded, and half a Legion who would not go on to Hyperion. Similar numbers applied to the Titanides. It was, in effect, another decimation.

It could have been much worse. Everyone kept telling themselves that. Nobody mentioned it while the pyre was burning, or as blinded, burned, and dismembered survivors were loaded into the wagons.

In the remorseless logic of warfare, Cirocco knew it could not have been better if she had planned every second of it.

The Air Force was much more badly hurt than the army, both in planes and pilots-but the Gaean Air Force no longer existed. The survivors were heroes. The tale of their fight would be told in many a Bellinzona taproom.

The Army was damaged-but was probably stronger now than it had been before. It had been, in that horribly exact word, "blooded." Soldiers had seen comrades die. They blamed Gaea for it, and they hated her. They had learned something about fear. They were veterans now.

Her Generals knew better than to bring up any of these points. They remembered the ex-General who had talked of "acceptable losses." But they all knew it was the truth, and they knew Cirocco realized it.

It could hardly have been any better.

Cirocco was so happy she wanted to throw up.

The only thing that made it even marginally tolerable was that, so far, they had been fighting monsters. She could accept and approve of this hatred, this spirit of bloodthirsty vengeance that would have repulsed her so had it been directed at another group of humans. So far, they had been fighting true evil.

But in Hyperion, at the gates of Pandemonium, it might all change. If Cirocco's plans for Gaea did not work out, these people would soon be fighting other human beings.

A very few of those people had chosen to be there, and were as evil as Gaea herself. But the great majority in Pandemonium had been tossed on its shores as randomly as the Bellinzonans had been washed up in Dione. It was the luck of the draw, and Gaea was using a stacked deck.

Cirocco found herself raising silent prayers to Saint Gaby. Please don't let me fail. Please don't let this army-this army I raised only when you promised me Adam could be saved without human beings ever warring against each other-please don't let them learn to love killing other humans.

One other thing kept her going. If she died, and the army had to fight, it was better to die a bloody death than live in slavery.

The army pressed on.

As the road vanished into the jungle, the Titanide groups moved to the front.

There had been grumbling about the Titanides. It wasn't logical, but those things never are. No matter that the pinned-down humans had nothing to fight back with-had not really fought a battle at all. No matter that, had it been possible, the humans would have run from the field of battle, too. The plain fact was, the Titanides had left and the humans had stayed behind to soak up the bullets.

The jungle changed all that.

Progress was slow through the jungle. As the troops moved through a long, dark tunnel of foliage, they would pass groups of exhausted, bleeding Titanides sitting at the side of the trail. Sitting with them would be the Legion that had been marching in the point position. When the end of the line passed them, the Legion and the Titanides would fall in at the back. This happened about every two revs.

When a Legion got to the front, they saw what was happening. The groups of fifty Titanides were hacking through the jungle with the speed and energy of a large, continuous buzz saw. It was awesome to watch. Little creatures that bit and clawed attacked them. Poisonous plants scored their colorful hides. It didn't take long to see that humans could have moved the army at about a tenth its present speed, and only with heavy casualties.

It was bad enough in the middle of the column, with things jumping out of the underbrush all the time. The troops got very jittery. Some just died, for no reason anyone could see, victims of contact poisons.

When they camped, the jungle closed in. Creatures better suited to drugged nightmare than reality came blundering through the darkness and briefly into the light, fighting off four or five Titanides.

They had to camp twice in the jungle. Nobody slept much.

There was another constant tension. Word had come down that an attack in force might be made against them while they were in Cronus, who was an ally of Gaea. Nobody knew the nature of the possible enemies, but from what they had seen, it would be awful.

But for some reason, Cronus did not attack. The army came out the other end and breathed a sigh of relief-all but fifty-two Titanides and sixteen humans who would never breathe again.

They made a more elaborate camp by the river Ophion, on the verge of the great desert of Mnemosyne, not too far from where the river plunged underground and ran for two hundred kilometers before emerging.

Cirocco let them rest, recover from the jungle, and gather strength for the desert crossing. Football games were organized. Men and women soldiers retired to the conjugal tents and forgot about fear for a while.

Every available water container was topped off. There would be no oasis, no spring, no water of any kind until they reached the snows of Oceanus.

THIRTEEN

There was a universal mystic dread of the sandworm.

Many a tale had been told of it, though of the humans there only Cirocco had ever seen it.

It was ten kilometers long and had a mouth two hundred meters wide, some said. It thirsted for human blood, according to others. It liked to stay under the sand, where it could move faster than a Titanide could run, then come bursting to the surface to devour whole armies.

Well... sort of.

A lot of the tale-tellers were remembering the beast who had first appeared in a movie long ago-one of Gaea's favorites. She had liked it so much she had built the beast, and let it loose in Mnemosyne, which, according to Titanide legend, had once been the Jewel of the Wheel.

The truth was a lot more, and a lot less.

They passed one great loop of the worm midway through their crossing. The worm was three hundred kilometers long and four kilometers in diameter. It preferred to stay below the surface, but where the bedrock was less than four kilometers down it had no choice, so loops of it were visible far into the distance. It was gradually crunching the rock into finer and finer sand, and somehow living on the minerals it ingested.

As to its speed ...

Three hundred kilometers of sand creates a great deal of friction. The sandworm was made of huge ring-segments, each about a hundred meters long. What happened was, one of the visible segments would hitch itself forward six or seven meters, then the next one in line would pull itself back up against the first, then the next, and so on down. Two or three minutes later the segments would hitch along another six or seven meters.

The relief of seeing it, awesome as it was and so utterly harmless, was so great that a fad developed which Cirocco did nothing to stop. The army began covering it with graffiti.

As each Legion passed the two or three kilometers of visible worm, their commanders gave them a short break, and they crowded around to write on the biggest damn living wall any of them had ever seen, and to laugh at the messages left by those who had gone before. Names and hometowns were sentimental favorites. "Marian Pappadapolis, Djakarta." "Carl Kingsley, Buenos Aires." "Fahd Fong, the GREAT Texas Free State!"

You could carve the surprisingly soft hide of the thing with sword or sheath-knife; it didn't give a damn.

There was poetry: "Those who write on a sandworm's balls ... "

Urgent messages: "Sammy, call home!"

Advertising: "For a good time, see George, Fifth Legion, Tent Twelve."

Criticism: "Sonja Kolskaya gives great head!"

Philosophy: "Screw the Army."

Helpful suggestions: "Blow it out your ass!"

And patriotism: "DEATH TO GAEA!!!!!"

That message was repeated up and down the length of the worm. There were touching eulogies to dead friends, homesick laments common to soldiers everywhere. Even a bit of history: "Kilroy Was Here."

It was a good thing the sandworm was there, Cirocco knew. The army was in need of some comic relief. The crossing of Mnemosyne was hellish.

The temperature soared as high as one hundred and forty Fahrenheit, and seldom went below one-ten. The humidity was very low, which helped. Nothing else did. There was no relief of night, no cooling breeze.

The strategies of dealing with Gaean desert were quite different from those useful on the Sahara. The sunshine was weak as diluted tea. You couldn't even tan in it, much less burn. So hats were not worn, nor any sort of protective garment. Many preferred to strip right down to the buff so the sweat could evaporate at the maximum rate. Others wore the lightest possible garments to trap some of the water.

Neither strategy was very good. They had enough water to make it across without rationing, so Cirocco made no decrees. The problem was saving one's feet, and getting some sleep.

Odd devices, carried all the way from Dione, were broken out and passed around. They looked like snowshoes, and were woven of tough reeds. It took some practice to walk in them, but it was worth the effort. All the heat came from below, up through the sand, which in some places was hot enough to cook on. The sand shoes spread the weight so one didn't sink in. And, most of the time, they kept the soles of the boots away from contact with the ground.

Titanides had their own, heavy duty versions. But the jeeps had an awful time of it. They honked almost continuously.

The encampments were nightmares.

People slept standing up, leaning against wagons. It was possible to heap folded tents, clothes, and anything else that came to hand in a pallet that would insulate to some degree. People crowded onto them-and awoke gasping, drenched in sweat, from nightmares of burning.

It was better to sleep during the march. Troops did it in rotation, climbing atop the wagons and grabbing a few hours of sleep until roused by the next shift. Still, many fell asleep while marching, fell down, and jumped up screaming.

There were cases of exhaustion, and dehydration. The Air Force flew in and out constantly, taking the worst cases ahead to the edge of Oceanus. Even so, there were deaths, though not as many as Cirocco had feared. At the twilight zone between Mnemosyne and Oceanus, on the shores of the warm lake where Ophion emerged from his subgaean journey, Cirocco allowed a brief encampment. It was possible to sleep on the ground. Then she hurried them on to the shores of the biggest sea in Gaea, the one that took up sixty percent of the land surface of Oceanus and was called, simply, Oceanus.

The water was cool. Plants grew along the shore. The Legions stripped off what little they had been wearing and plunged into the sea. Jeeps clambered into the water with joyous hoots. Titanides swam out where it was deep, looking like improbable Loch Ness monsters with their human torsos just out of the water.

Cirocco gathered her Generals once more to discuss the arrangements for troops too weakened by Mnemosyne. She tried to conceal her fear from them, and didn't think she succeeded. To Cirocco, Oceanus was the great unknown. She had crossed it many times, but always with a deep fear. It was hard to explain, since nothing really bad had ever happened to her there. But Gaby had refused to talk about it, and that worried her.

It was decided that those soldiers certified by the Medical Corps as too debilitated to stand the Oceanus crossing would stay here at the west shore of the lake. No troops would guard them. They would have to take care of themselves, if it came to fighting.

Cirocco showed them what they could eat and what to stay away from, and, having put it off as long as she could, led her army into Oceanus.

FOURTEEN

The wagons were as light as they would ever be. Gear brought along for the jungle had been left at the west edge of the desert. Desert gear was with the convalescents on the eastern edge. There was no need to carry water into Oceanus, and the cold-weather gear, carried so long and so far, was now on the backs of the troops. If the jeeps appreciated their lighter burdens, they didn't let on.

Their route through Oceanus took them along the southern shore of the sea, past the point where the great ice sheet began forming, and to the edge of one of the three major glaciers that inched their way from the southern highlands. At that point the ice sheet was more than a hundred meters thick, plenty of safety margin to bear the weight of the army.

There was no Circum-Gaea Highway in Oceanus, just as there had not been in Mnemosyne. It would have been silly to try to carve a permanent route. The easiest way was across the frozen sea. While it was not flat-pressure from the glaciers fractured the ice and pushed huge sheets of it up and over other sheets-it was possible to find a reasonably level route. Now that the angels had used all the dynamite they would ever need, regular flights by Conal's remaining planes brought in tons of the stuff, which was used by the scouts to blast passages.

As they moved into the ice-bright night of Oceanus toward their first encampment, a familiar shape grew in the east. It was Whistlestop, once again doing the inexplicable. Blimps always went through Oceanus at high altitude. But here he came, as if he had a down payment on the place.

He stopped short of the army, and what looked like fine dust began to fall from his belly. It kept falling for a long time. At intervals they would hear the eerie foghorn bellow as he valved away excess hydrogen. Even so, he gradually rose higher as the dust kept falling.

When he was done he moved a few kilometers away, turning again toward the east, and dropped a torrent of ballast water that froze to sleet before it reached the surface.

The payload turned out to be firewood. It was scattered all over the site Cirocco had picked for the first encampment, cut to lengths convenient to the burners which could be set up inside the troops' tents. It was dry and almost smokeless.

Cirocco told the officers to pass the word through the ranks that the wood was a present from the Hyperion Titanides. The general opinion of Titanides, already high among the jungle veterans, went up another notch as they wolfed down hot meals and crawled into their bedrolls in the warm tents.

It was during their second encampment in Oceanus that Gaby came to Cirocco again.

She was in her tent. Her feet were stretched out toward the fire, which had been laid in a thing like a big oil drum. There was a cot in the tent. She had thought she might sleep. She hadn't done so since ... when was it? Somewhere in Cronus. But she wasn't having much luck.

Still, she knew she needed it, so she stretched out again, yawned, closed her eyes ... and Gaby came through the tent flap. Cirocco heard her, and sat up. She didn't have time to think. Gaby took her by the hand and hurried her toward the outside.

"Come on," Gaby said. "I've got something important to show you."

They went outside into the swirling snow.

It wasn't a blizzard. It wasn't even really a storm, but any sort of wind was unpleasant when it was ten below. The two guards outside her tent were alert, standing with their backs to their fire so they wouldn't be blinded ... and they didn't see Gaby and Cirocco. They looked right through them.

Which was natural enough in a dream, Cirocco thought.

They plodded through the snow toward another tent, and Gaby led Cirocco inside. There were two bedrolls, both occupied. Robin was asleep in one of them. In the other, Conal sat up, rubbing his eyes.

"Captain? Is that ... "

Conal apparently had no trouble seeing Gaby. He must be dreaming, too.

"Who's that?" he said.

"I'm Gaby Plauget," Gaby said.

Cirocco really had to admire Conal then. He looked at Gaby for a time, saying nothing, apparently fitting the reality to the endless stories he had heard during his time in Gaea. The idea of a ghost didn't seem to give him a lot of trouble. Finally, he nodded.

"Your spy, Captain ... right?"

"That's right, Conal. That's very good."

"It couldn't have been anybody else, I figured." He started to stand up, winced, then swung his legs around so he could lever himself up with his crutch.

Conal should have been sent back to the city with his broken ankle. He had been prepared to put up a fuss if anybody suggested it, but it didn't come up. Cirocco needed him in Hyperion, disabled or not. And since he could ride on Rocky, it wasn't much of a problem.

But it had been a bad break. The Titanide healers thought he would limp for a long time-possibly the rest of his life.

Gaby knelt in front of him. With effortless strength she opened the bulky cast, then put her hands on the bare ankle. She squeezed for half a second. Conal gasped, then looked surprised. He stood up and put his weight on it.

"Miracles, two for a quarter," Gaby said.

"I'll have to owe you the quarter," Conal said. "But thank you ... " And he burst out laughing.

"What's the matter?"

"Thank you just seems a little ... " He shrugged, and his mouth worked in a foolish grin. He seemed unsteady. "What's the second miracle?"

"I'll show you. Take my hands, children."

Flying seemed to upset Conal a lot more than ghosts or magic healing. Cirocco could hear his teeth chattering.

"Buck up, Conal," Gaby said. "After that trick you pulled on the Luftmorder, this ought to be a walk in the park."

He said nothing. Cirocco simply endured. She didn't like things that were out of her control. But during these dreams it never seemed to matter so much.

She found out she was wrong. When she realized where they were headed, she wanted to turn around and go back.

"You've trusted me this far," Gaby said, gently. "Trust me a little longer. There's nothing here for you to be afraid of."

"I know, but-"

"But you've always felt an irrational fear every time you went through Oceanus, and you've never been within a hundred kilometers of the central cable. Oceanus is the enemy, your mind keeps telling you. Oceanus is Evil. Well, for twenty years now you've known it's Gaea that is evil. So what does that make Oceanus?"

"... I don't know. Many times I've started out to come and look the bastard in the eye ... and I keep seeing the Ringmaster coming apart at the seams."

"And hearing that fancy story Gaea told us up in the hub"-Gaby paused, and made her voice sound like a petulant child-"about how poor, misunderstood Gaea tried everything, honest she did. and she only wanted to be friends with humanity, to welcome us with open arms... but that foul conniving rebellious bastard Oceanus reached out and... oh, you poor souls, how terrible it must have been for you, but it wasn't my fault, you see, it was Oceanus, who used to be a part of my titanic brain, but is really his own semi-god now, and I just have no control over the rascal ... "

Gaby fell silent, and Cirocco went over it in her mind again.

"I'm not such an idiot that I haven't thought that out," Cirocco said. "But like I told you, I just couldn't come here."

"Snitch had a lot to do with that," Gaby said. "Even when you got him out of your head, he left some of his garbage behind."

Cirocco shuddered.

"Sorry, it was a pretty bad metaphor, I guess. No more metaphors. Now we get down to the reality."

They landed just outside the verge of the strand-forest of the central cable, and proceeded in on foot.

It grew warmer as they neared the center. What little light there had been failed within the first hundred meters. Neither Conal nor Cirocco carried a lantern, but Gaby had some kind of light source that streamed ahead of her like beams of moonlight, or reflections from a mirrored ballroom globe. It was enough to see by ... and there was nothing to see. Cirocco had been under many cables, and there had always been the flotsam of centuries beneath them. Skeletons of long-dead creatures, fallen nests of blind flying annuals, the crumpled remains of dimpled tapestries that peeled away from the cable strands and hung for hours or millennia ... even old cardboard boxes and plastic sandwich wrappers and crumpled cans from the days of Gaea's tourist program, when thousands of humans had gone rafting on the Ophion or caving in the strand forests. Strand forests supported complex nocturnal ecologies, seldom seen, but indicated by animal droppings and seed-pods fallen from the unseen interstices high above.

In Oceanus, there was nothing. A cleaning team might have swept through only hours before, dusting and polishing. The ground had the texture of linoleum.

Cirocco's fears were now vaguely remembered. When she thought about it, she was amazed that she had been afraid. Her times with Gaby had always been spent in a pleasant, half-drugged dream state. She knew nothing could go wrong. Even in retrospect, the dreams did not seem frightening. Now she walked in her usual state of placid expectancy. In a way, she felt like a small child walking with her mother on a winding, wooded path. It was interesting, without being exciting. There would be new things around each curve, but they would not be scary. She had a sweet what-comes-next expectancy, but no sense of urgency.

She felt some of Conal's emotion, in a way difficult to describe. He was not afraid, either, but he was very curious. Gaby had to keep calling him back or he would have bounded ahead of them. Continuing her analogy, he was like a boy from the city who had never seen the forest; every curve held a new marvel.

At a point Cirocco knew-without understanding how she knew-to be the exact center of the cable, they saw a light. As they got nearer they saw a man sitting beside the light. They approached him, and stopped. He looked up at them.

He looked like Robinson Crusoe, or Rip Van Winkle. His hair and beard were long and gray. There were foreign objects, twigs and little bits of fishbone, matted in it, and a long brown stain in his beard below his mouth. He was crusted with dirt. He was wearing the same clothes Cirocco had last seen him in, twenty years ago, writhing in the sawdust on the floor of The Enchanted Cat taproom, in Titantown. To say the clothes were tatters did them an injustice; they were the most decrepit articles of apparel she had ever seen. Great gaps in them showed a lot of skin-taut, stretched tightly over the bones-and every inch of that skin had scars great and small. His face was old, but not the same way Calvin's was old. He might have been a sixty-year-old beachcomber. One of his eye sockets was empty. "Hello, Gene," Gaby said, quietly.

"How are you, Gaby?" Gene asked, in a surprisingly strong voice.

"I'm well." She turned to Conal. "Conal, let me introduce to you Gene Springfield, formerly of the D.S.V. Ringmaster. Gene, this is your great-great grandson, Conal Ray. He came a long way to see you."

"Sit down," Gene said, apparently to all of them. "I'm not going anywhere."

They did. Conal was staring at his ancient relative, the man he had thought dead when he came to Gaea.

The first thing Cirocco noticed upon taking a closer look at Gene was that he had a bulge on his balding forehead. The skin there was unmarked. The shape of the skull was distorted like half a grapefruit had bulged up under his skin.

The location of the bulge was suggestive. She wondered at the pressure the thing was putting on his frontal lobes.

She saw a little more of his surroundings. There wasn't much. The fire came from a crack in the ground. It was bright and steady in the windless dark.

There was a heap of straw, apparently Gene's bed. In the distance the light reflected off a still pool of water, twenty meters across. Close to Gene was a big, galvanized pail with water in it.

That was all. A short distance away was the entrance to the stairs that would lead down to Oceanus.

"Have you been in here all this time, Gene?" Cirocco asked him.

"All this time," he confirmed. "Ever since that time in Tethys when Gaby cut my balls off." He looked at Gaby, and cackled. No, Cirocco decided, that wasn't quite the right word. There was no laughter in it. It was just a sound made by an old man. He made it again as he looked at Cirocco, Conal, then back to Gaby. "Didn't come by to apologize for that, did you?"

"No," Gaby said.

"Didn't expect you would. No matter. They grew back, just like they did the first time you cut 'em off." He cackled again.

"What do you eat?" Conal asked.

Gene eyed him with suspicion, then plunged a gnarled hand into the pail. He came up with something gray and blind that wiggled.

"You cook them on that fire?" Gaby asked.

"Cook 'em?" Gene asked, startled. He looked from the ugly thing in his hand, to the fire, then back again, and a wild surmise grew beneath the beetled brow. He grinned, showing the brown stumps of teeth. "Say, that's an idea. They's pretty tough. Like to wear your teeth down, they do. Catch 'em in that pool yonder. Slippery devils." He looked at the eel again, frowned, as if unable to remember how it had come to be there. He tossed it back in the pail.

"What do you do down here?" Conal asked.

Gene glanced up, but didn't seem to see Conal. He scratched his head-Cirocco winced when she saw how deeply his fingers went into the bulge of skin-and muttered into his beard. He didn't seem to be aware of them.

"Gaby," Cirocco whispered. "What's with ... the way he talks, it's-"

"Backwoods? Quaint? Colloquial?" One side of her lip curled in a bitter smile. "Interesting, for a Harvard graduate, NASA-type New Yorker, wouldn't you say? Rocky, Gene is the sorriest son of a bitch that ever lived. He's had tricks played on him that make what she did to us seem like playful pranks. Look at his head. Just look at it."

Cirocco had hardly been able to take her eyes away.

Now she was seized by a compulsion to touch it. She fought it as long as she could, then she got up, knelt in front of him, and placed her palm against his forehead. It was soft. Something moved sluggishly under the skin.

She thought she should be revolted, but she was not. She stared at her hand as if it belonged to someone else, and felt a power building in her. Gene's hands came up slowly, and he put them around her forearm, making no attempt to push her away. She felt him frown. She had an absurd impulse-very close to hysteria-to shout Heal!

Then she was holding something wet and squirmy and vile-smelling. She looked at it dispassionately. It was covered with blood, and so was her hand. It was built along the same lines as Snitch, but bloated, grotesquely fat, with rolling eyes like peeled grapes. It made a croaking noise.

"Son of a bitch," Gene muttered. "Son of a bitch. Son of a bitch."

Cirocco heard Conal stumbling away, heard him vomiting. Somehow she knew it was important to keep staring at the creature, which continued to croak. Gaby was moving, holding something out... .

It was a jar made of thick, black glass. Cirocco popped the monstrosity into it, and screwed the lid on tight.

Only then did Cirocco look at Gene. He was fingering his forehead, which had bloody fingermarks on it, but was not broken. The skin hung loosely on his head, but there was no sign of damage.

"Son of a bitch," he said.

"Like Snitch?" Cirocco asked. Now that it was over, she felt faint.

"No," Gaby said. "They're related. But Snitch only listened, and reported." She tapped her own forehead. "The one in my head only listened." She held up the black jar. "This one was like what spies call a mole. He burrowed deep, and he shuffled things around. When he could, without revealing himself, he made things happen. Things like rape, and war, and sabotage... He ran Gene's life after a while. Gene was like a puppet on Gaea's strings."

"Up there... on the cable?"

They had had their doubts about him, so many years ago, shortly after the wreck of the Ringmaster. He had tried to show the Titanides how to use new weapons in their war with the angels, in direct violation of First Contact procedures and United Nations regulations. But they had written that off as a simple desire to help the Titanides.

So they had taken him on their climb up the cable to the hub. And he had clubbed Gaby unconscious, left her for dead after raping her. Then he had raped Cirocco, and would have killed them both but for some luck and some fast footwork.

Gaby had wanted to castrate him then and there. Cirocco had not permitted it. She still didn't regret the decision, even though he had been endless trouble in the next seventy-five years, and had set events in motion that led to Gaby's death. She had regretted not killing him many times.

They had found he was very hard to kill. Gaby had once slit his throat and left him for dead. He had survived it.

So he had become like Snitch. When Cirocco wanted something from Snitch, she had to torture it out of him. And, over the years, whenever Gaby had encountered Gene she had left him a little less than he was-an ear, a few fingers, a testicle. He healed, but unlike Cirocco and Gaby, he scarred.

"No, not on the cable," Gaby said. "Not directly, I mean. That thing didn't jerk him around. But it whispered things to him. Gene was like a schizophrenic. I ... think he had to have some tendency to rape, for the thing to egg him on to doing it. Later, it didn't matter what Gene thought about anything. In a sense, Gene was gone. In a sense, he died years ago."

Gaby sighed, and shook her head.

"It makes me feel ashamed. Because, see, if there's a miracle here, it's in how much he resisted, and for how long. Even to coming here ... the one place in the wheel where Gaea doesn't ever look. She still gets reports from the mole, but she pretends they're coming from somewhere else."

"Why?"

"Why? Because she's crazy. And ... something else you'll see in a minute."

Conal had rejoined them now. He still looked green.

"What did she do to him?" he said, with a quiet intensity.

For a moment Cirocco thought he was asking about what she had done. But he was looking at Gaby, and Gaby explained what Gaea had done, and how long ago, and what it had meant. Conal took it all in silence.

"What about Calvin?" Cirocco asked.

"He got one, too. But Whistlestop knew about it, and killed it almost immediately. I don't know how. Whistlestop didn't bother to tell us ... which I blame him for, a little, even though I know he isn't wrapped up in human concerns." She shrugged. "Killing the thing in Calvin's head is the reason he's dying now."

"Who's Calvin?" Conal wanted to know.

"Remember your comic book?" Cirocco asked. "He was the black one."

"He's still alive, too?"

"Yes." Cirocco turned to Gaby again. "What about Bill?"

"When he went back to Earth, he resigned from NASA and went to work as an agent for Gaea. All quite openly, but he had clandestine activities. I think he got one like Gene did, but I don't know. Don't ask me about April or August; I don't know what Gaea did with them."

"How much do you know? Can you tell me more now?"

"Knew he was up there," Gene said. They all looked at him.

"He liked fish," Gene clarified, and gestured to the bucket. "Got hisself real fat on fish, he did. Didn't do much for me, fish." He thumped his scrawny chest. "But I knew he was up there. Pissin' on my head, he was." He cackled.

"Do you know who put him there, Gene?" Gaby asked.

"Gaea."

"What do you think of that?"

"Mean thing to do." He cackled again, and shook his head. "Been doing some thinking, down here. Been doing me some thinking."

Gaby spoke to Cirocco as if Gene could not hear. And perhaps he couldn't.

"The cornpone dialect is a parting gift from Gaea. Remember the movie analogy I told you about? She wanted him to be a character actor. A buffoon, a sidekick... I don't know. Folksy humor."

"Real funny," Conal seethed.

"Tons of fun," Gaby agreed. "Gaea always had been about as funny as cancer of the rectum."

"Poked m'own eye out," Gene said, and cackled. "Thinking real hard, I was. Like to bust a gut, thinking. It just popped right out. Hurt like the dickens. Tried to put 'er back in." He cackled again. "She'll grow back in, though. Always happens that way. Like to sawed my hand off, once, trying to stop thinking. She grew back, too." He pondered this. "Thinking hurts," he concluded.

"Did you think of something, Gene?" Gaby asked.

He squinted his one eye.

"Sure did," he said, at last. "Thought something oughta be done. Somebody oughta ... whale the daylights out of her, that's what!" He looked at them defiantly.

"There may be a way, Gene," Gaby said.

He narrowed his eye suspiciously.

"Don't kid with Gene, Gaby." He looked puzzled, then cackled, then shrugged, and regarded her in the same way a dog would if the dog had just made a mess where he knew he shouldn't.

"Are you really Gaby? Been meaning to look you up. Wanted to tell you ... gosh, I'm really sorry for ... " He looked even more puzzled. "... for killing you."

"That's all in the past, Gene," Gaby said.

Gene's laugh sounded genuine for the first time.

"All in the past. That's a good one. I'll have to tell ... " He looked around vaguely in the darkness. Then, with difficulty, he brought himself back to his tenuous connection with the present.

"There's maybe something you can do," Gaby said. "To Gaea."

"To Gaea?"

"But it will be dangerous. I'll be honest. You might get killed."

Gene studied her. Cirocco wondered if he had understood. Then she saw a tear fall from his eye.

"You mean... I may be able to stop thinking?"

FIFTEEN

Gaby brought them to Oceanus by the same sort of dizzy-making teleportation she had used in the previous dream. When Cirocco got her bearings, she looked around and felt she had been here before.

But she had not. It simply looked so much like Dione. The big difference was a big, greenish tube running from the ruins of the brain that had once been Oceanus straight up into the darkness overhead. Before the tube reached floor level it split in two parts, going east and west. Cirocco tried to find the image it reminded her of, and finally got it. Old tenement buildings with bare light bulbs hanging from the ceiling-extension cords to power the toaster and the television.

The moat was deep and dry. Nothing had been alive in here for a long time. Cirocco turned to Gaby.

"What happened?"

"We'll probably never know all of it. Parts of it are still in Gaea's mind. Parts are lost. It was thousands of years ago, like she told us. But the brains were never separate. I think Oceanus just ... died. Gaea couldn't accept it.

"The human analogy can only be pushed so far before it breaks down, but I don't have a better way of explaining it to you.

"Gaea felt betrayed. She refused to believe in something so fantastic as Oceanus's death. So her mind did split up, and she grew this nerve down to here-that part goes to the Hyperion brain, and the other one to Mnemosyne-and ... became Oceanus. And that part of her was a bastard. Some sort of physical struggle did occur, but I don't think it was as dramatic as Gaea described it to you. It was always Gaea talking to herself. When you talk to any of the regional brains, you're really talking to a fragment of Gaea's personality.

"She's splitting up more and more. She... I still can't tell you all of it, but she evolved a ... system to keep things running. That fifty-foot woman you're going to do battle with is part of the system. You are, too. So am I, though that was an accident. And that's all I can tell you."

Gaby turned to Gene.

"If I tell you some things to do, will you do them? Will you remember? If you know these things will hurt Gaea?" Gene's eye gleamed.

"Oh, yes. Gene will remember. Gene will hurt Gaea." Gaby sighed. "Then the last piece is in place," she said.

Gaby left them on the outskirts of the camp, but inside the outer perimeter of guards so there would be no misunderstanding. They started walking toward the light.

Conal stumbled. Cirocco reached out for him-and realized he was crying. She hesitated just a moment, wondering what would be best for him, then put her arms around him. He wept helplessly, got it under control quickly, and pulled away, embarrassed.

"Feel better?"

"I was just remembering ... what I came here to do to you."

"Don't be a horse's ass. I didn't know most of what we just heard."

"That poor man. That poor, sorry son of a bitch."

"You'll feel better when you wake up."

He looked at her strangely, then squeezed her hand and went off toward his own tent.

Cirocco went to hers. The guard challenged her, then recognized her, and saluted. He didn't seem to have any trouble with the idea that she could sneak out of her tent, despite his surveillance.

If only he could see inside the tent, Cirocco thought. She sighed, and pulled back the tent flap, preparing herself for an evolution she had performed twice before but which still made her uneasy.

But there was no other Cirocco in the bunk.

After standing there for a while, pondering it, she sat on the cot and pondered some more. She eventually decided there was no point in trying to wake up if she wasn't asleep.

She glanced at the time, saw it was approaching the rev when they should move on, and went back outside to get things started.

The army moved into Hyperion.

Their objective had been in sight, in clear weather, since the middle of Mnemosyne. One could hardly miss the south vertical cable, which pointed directly at the heart of Pandemonium. Now, as they marched across the gently rolling hills of southwest Hyperion, they could sometimes see the circular wall that surrounded the Studio.

The bridge over the Urania River was one of the few still intact on the Circum-Gaea. Cirocco had her engineers check it out, first for booby-traps, then for structural strength. She was told it was sound, but took the precaution of spacing the wagons widely and making the troops march out of step. The bridge held.

Gaea had provided the bridge over the Calliope. The dam she had caused to be built there was earth-fill. The turbines were small, by human hydro-electric standards.

The Air Force flew in more dynamite, and after the army had crossed the dam, Cirocco had it blown. Everyone watched as a good-sized hole was punched in it, and cheered as the lake swiftly eroded it into a ruin. Cirocco destroyed the turbines, too. The dam was completely unguarded except for six Iron Master technicians, who were apparently unconcerned to see their handiwork destroyed.

Cirocco didn't know if that was a good or bad sign. She kept her patrols out, looking for Gaea troop movements, but there were none.

SIXTEEN

Gaea had been watching war movies almost exclusively for a long time.

When the power went out, it couldn't have picked a worse moment. It was during the last reel of The Bridge on the River Kwai. The tension was building in one of the all-time great big-budget final scenes. You could hear the little Jap choo-choo coming around the bend and it looked like the guy had gone bananas, because he was helping the Japs find the bombs wired to the bridge, and ...

Alec Guinness, she thought sourly. It was almost like an omen. She didn't believe in omens, of course ...

So then the power goes out. Some distant, vague part of her mind knew what had caused it, but she didn't want to think about that. This had all started out as a lot of fun, but she was getting more and more bored with it every day.

She was getting tired of movies, if the truth were told. She was tired of that little brat Adam, and that stinking drunk Chris. Most of all she was tired of waiting for Cirocco Jones to show up. She didn't think it was going to be the charge she had hoped it would be when she mashed the bitch under her foot.

She fumed about that while they scurried around getting the emergency generator turned on, bringing in a transformer so the projector could run off it ... all the dreary little things the dreary little technical people do. Didn't they know she was a star?

Then they finally got it running again. It clattered along for maybe fifteen seconds, then it stopped, and the lamp burnt a hole in the film.

Enough was enough.

She killed the projectionist and stomped out into daylight to see if Cirocco's army was here yet.

SEVENTEEN

The final encampment was only ten kilometers away from Pandemonium. An easy march. And in Gaea, of course, a General didn't have to worry about what time of day to attack.

There were two things to be done.

She called Nova, Virginal, Conal, Rocky, Robin, Serpent, Valiha, and Hornpipe together in the big command tent. No one else was present. Even the guards outside had been told to stay fifty meters away.

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.

So Chris went to him and picked him up and zoomed him through the air like an airplane. Adam got a great case of the giggles. Then he put the child on his hip and carried him to a second-floor balcony. They looked out toward the north.

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.

It was hard to tell what effect these movies had on Adam. They were usually flagrant morality plays, with Cirocco always cast as the evil one, usually being killed in the end to the cheers of onlookers. Still, Chris remembered that both Dracula and Frankenstein, ancient cinematic bad-guys, were viewed with a certain fascination by children. Adam seemed to react in the same way. He grew excited when Cirocco appeared on the television screen.

Maybe that was part of Gaea's plan. Maybe she wanted Adam to identify with the bad guy, even if it was Cirocco.

On the other hand, there was the computer-altered version of King Kong.

Chris had never seen any of these old films, but long ago Cirocco had told him the plot of that one, as he had been thinking of going into northern Phoebe to attempt the heroic slaughter of Gaea's re-creation.

The version on Pandemonium television was different. Gaea had been cast as Kong, and Cirocco as Carl Denham. Fay Wray was hardly in the movie. Kong/Gaea never threatened her in any way; everything he/she did was to protect innocent bystanders from Denham's blundering attempts to kill Kong. At last, hounded to the top of a tall building, horribly wounded by little biplanes, Gaea had fallen. Chris remembered the classic last line: "It was beauty killed the beast." In this version, Cirocco/Denham said "Now the world is mine!"

It was impossible to think of Kong without a queasy glance down the Twenty-four Carat Highway. Not too far from where it ended at the gates of Tara was a big black ball with protruding ears. It was the head of Kong. Every time Chris passed it, the mournful eyes followed him.

"What's gonna happen, Daddy?"

Chris was brought back to the present. It was Adam's favorite question. When watching a movie on television, as the tension built Adam would look back at Chris with anticipation and fright, and ask what's gonna happen.

What happens next?

It's what we all ask ourselves, Chris thought.

"I think there's going to be a war, Adam."

"Wow!" Adam said, and looked back to his telescope.

NINETEEN

The attack on Pandemonium commenced two decarevs after the last encampment had been made. It started with a rendition, by the three hundred members of the Titanide Brass Band of the Army of Bellinzona, of The Liberty Bell, by John Philip Sousa.

Gaea, atop her wall of stone, had watched the band assembling, seen the polished instruments appear and gleam in the beautiful Hyperion light, listened to the two-bar opening phrase. Then she jumped up in delight.

"It's ... Monty Python!" she shouted.

She stared in astonishment. Somehow, Cirocco had taught or persuaded or convinced the Titanides to march. They had always adored march music, but had little talent for marching in step. Their usual habit was to caper about randomly-while still keeping that steady and invariable march tempo, as if metered by a metronome. But now they were in step, in formation, and belting it out as only Titanides could. And it was glorious. One of Sousa's earliest marches, The Liberty Bell had been adopted by a comedy group as their theme song, and was familiar to Gaea from many movies and television tapes.

Soon she was quite caught up in it. She marched back and forth along her stone wall, and shouted imprecations at her own troops inside until they wearily formed up and marched back and forth with her.

The Titanides stayed a reasonable distance from the moat that encircled the walls, and began marching counterclockwise around Pandemonium, heading for the United Artists gate. They finished The Liberty Bell and, without a pause, swung in to Colonel Bogey. Gaea frowned for a moment, remembering the bad scene with the movie not so very long ago, but quickly brightened, especially when half the Titanides put down their instruments and whistled the refrain.

After that came Seventy-six Trombones. Many of the subsequent numbers seemed to be identified with movies in one way or another.

As the sound faded with distance, Gaea looked back to the north, where a single black-clad figure was approaching, a good fifty meters in front of another group of three hundred Titanides. Behind them, in perfect formations, were the Legions. Only the commanding officers, at the head of each group of soldiers, wore brass brightwork, which Gaea thought was rather cheap of Cirocco. But what brass there was was polished to a high gloss, and she had to admit the common footsoldiers looked rested, alert, competent, and dedicated.

Also approaching from the northwest was a blimp. Even at twenty kilometers it was easy to see that it was Whistlestop.

The group on the ground continued to march forward, and the blimp came in closer, stopping at about five kilometers distance and three kilometers altitude. Slowly, the great mass turned until its side faced Gaea and Pandemonium.

Some humans were hurrying up beside Cirocco. These didn't look like soldiers. They set something up in front of her. Then Whistlestop's side flickered, and built up a pattern of lights that became Cirocco's face. Gaea thought it was a good trick. She hadn't known blimps could do that.

"Gaea," Cirocco's voice boomed out from the blimp.

"I hear you, Demon," Gaea shouted back. There was no need for technical tricks to amplify her voice. She could be heard in Titantown.

"Gaean I am here with a mighty army, dedicated to the overthrow of your evil regime. We do not want to fight you. We ask you to surrender peacefully. You will not be harmed. Spare yourself the humiliation of final and total defeat. Lower the bridges to Pandemonium. We will be victorious."

For a fleeting moment Gaea wondered what the stupid bitch would do if she did surrender. She wondered if Cirocco had brought a pair of handcuffs that big. But the thought passed. This must be fought out to the end.

"Of course you don't want to fight," she taunted. "You will be killed, to the last soldier. My troops will march to Bellinzona and overwhelm the few who remain loyal to you. Give up, Cirocco."

The reply certainly did not seem to surprise Cirocco. There was a long pause, then a rapid-fire series of explosions that caused a lot of unrest inside the walls of Pandemonium. People looked up, and saw the Bellinzona Air Force, all twelve operable planes, pulling out of their powerdives. All they had dropped on Pandemonium were sonic booms, however.

The planes had been traveling from east to west. Now they pulled up sharply, performed a very spiffy roll-over maneuver that left them traveling in a straight line, wingtips almost touching. They began emitting pulsed dots of smoke at high speed. As they passed over again, the sonic booms were heard. And the dots were forming words.

"People of Pandemonium," Cirocco's massive image on the side of Whistlestop bellowed ... and the planes printed PEOPLE OF PANDEMONIUM across Gaea's pristine sky.

Gaea's jaw dropped. It was impressive as hell, she had to admit that. The planes went up and over, and very quickly were in position for another run.

"Throw off your chains," Cirocco boomed. THROW OFF YOUR CHAINS. Then up, and over, and straightening out... .

It was done with computers, obviously. Human reflexes couldn't be fast enough, at supersonic speeds, to drop all those little dots of smoke in the precise pattern. All the pilots had to do was stay in a perfectly straight line. Almost as soon as the line was written, the words were whipped away by the high winds caused by the planes' passage, leaving the sky clear for the next line.

"Reject Gaea's bondage ... lower the drawbridges... flee to the hills ... you will be protected... "

That was about enough of that, Gaea decided. She gave the orders for her own display. In a few moments the sky was filled with bursting fireworks. It served to take the people's minds off the skywriting. She saw to it that a lot of the pyrotechnics were directed at the big blimp. There was no hope of reaching him, of course, but it wouldn't hurt to rattle him a bit.

It was an odd thing about Whistlestop, Gaea thought. She'd had the reports of his activities over Bellinzona. Hearing it and seeing it were two different things. A normally cautious blimp wouldn't want to be in the same airspace as those dangerous little fire-breathing planes. And a bottle rocket fired in his direction ought to be enough to send him fleeing into Rhea as fast as his massive back fins could take him, much less the huge airbursts Gaea was sending into the sky. But Whistlestop didn't seem to care.

Before long both the fireworks and the skywriting were over. They had both been symbolic, Gaea presumed. Cirocco was doing well in that direction. She wondered if she would do as well when the fighting started.

That was when the ground began to move under her feet.

Only one of her Generals had known what Cirocco was talking about when she mentioned a bullfight. Even he hadn't seen one.

She thought she was the last living human to have witnessed a real live bullfight. Her mother had taken her to one when she was quite young, shortly before they had been outlawed in Spain, the last country to permit them.

Cirocco's mother had felt it was wrong to shield a child from all the world's ugliness and brutality. She had not approved of bullfighting-which was a political issue on the order of the Save the Whales movement a few decades earlier-but thought it would be an educational experience. Cirocco was a child of war, a rape-child, and her mother, a tough, self-reliant woman, had always been a little strange after her time in the Arab prison camp.

It was one of Cirocco's most vivid childhood memories.

Few spectacles are as colorful. The matador's costume was not called a suit of lights for nothing.

She had watched in fascination as the men on horseback rode up to the mighty bull and drove their lances into his back. She remembered the bright red blood dripping down the sides of the bull. By the time the matador made his appearance, the bull was a pitiful sight: dazed, confused, and angry enough to charge at anything that moved.

So then the little pissant matador moved in. With stunning machismo he toyed with the animal, faking it out time after time with his magical cape, turning his back on it as it stood in stupefied pain, unable to understand why the world had turned against it in such a grotesque manner. Cirocco had wanted to divorce herself from the crowd. She hated the crowd. She wanted to see the bull rip the matador from his balls to his chin, and she would cheer as his guts steamed in the hot Spanish sun.

But it didn't turn out that way. The bad guy won. The stinking little prick faced the half-dead bull and plunged his sword into its heart. Then he strutted away to deafening applause, and if Cirocco had possessed a rifle and the know-how to use it, he would have been a dead little prick. Instead, she threw up.

And now, she proposed to be the matador.

There were a couple of things to keep in mind, before she drowned in self-disgust. For one, Gaea was not some dumb toro. She was not helpless, not innocent, and not stupid. For another, Cirocco was not fighting for sport. In any sane appraisal, Gaea had most of the advantages.

To the person who knew nothing about bullfighting, it would seem at first glance that the bull had all the advantages, too. Analyzing it, watching the preparations and comparing the minds of the bull and the matador, one soon realized that only the most idiotic matador was in any danger at all. He had his moment of sport with the tired beast, killed it ... and fooled everyone into thinking he had done something glorious instead of craven and cowardly.

But the principle was the same. Cirocco intended to keep her distracted, in pain, always watching the bright red cape, never understanding why her horns failed to do any good ... and slipping the sword in when Gaea was mentally and emotionally exhausted.

So. The first part of the show was done. The words in the sky, the loud music. Gaea had helped out with fireworks.

"Remember," Gaby had said, when last they met. "In many ways, Gaea has regressed mentally to about the age of five. She loves spectacle. It's what attracted her to movies in the first place. It's the basic reason she started the war, god help us all. Give her a good one, Rocky, and I'll take care of the rest. But don't forget, even for a moment, that it's only part of her that's child-like. The rest of her will be alert for a trick. She doesn't know where it will come from. She doesn't suspect we know as much as we do. Both times, when you go for her, it should look like you really mean it."

Bearing all that in mind, Cirocco gestured the camera crew out of her way, stepped forward a little ways, folded her arms across her chest, and summoned Nasu.

The ground buckled under Gaea. She fell a few feet, her arms waving, then turned and watched in amazement as the Twenty-four Carat Highway exploded.

It was a rippling explosion, working its way from a point halfway to Tara to a point just under her feet. Solid gold bricks and clods of dirt flew in every direction-and a mammoth loop of something coiled around her ankle.

She was jerked off her feet and stared up as Nasu, pearly white and scaled, reared three hundred meters above her.

Monty Anaconda, she thought, and rolled away.

Chris and Adam watched from the balcony of Tara.

"King Kong!" Adam screeched.

Chris glanced nervously at him. He seemed to be enjoying it.

The snake quickly looped its massive coils around Gaea. Gaea rolled. She rolled so hard and so fast that she had demolished three soundstages before she was able to struggle to her feet. She killed hundreds of extras during the roll. Those who saw her get up could barely believe their eyes. All that could be seen of Gaea was her feet, and part of one leg.

Then an arm struggled free.

There was the sound of breaking bones. Nobody figured it was the snake that was getting crushed. High above her, the snake looked down impassively on her victim. It had been a long time since she had attacked prey as satisfying as this. Heffalumps were boring. They didn't even run.

Then the other arm was free. The hands groped, found a loop, and started to pull at it.

Snakes don't have any facial expression. About all they can do is open their mouths, blink, and flick their tongues. Nasu's tail began to thrash.

Gaea, still blinded, staggered toward the wall. She hit it, seemed to think that was a good idea, and backed off to hit it again. The top three meters of the wall crumpled. She hit it again.

Some of Nasu's coils loosened. The top of Gaea's head was now visible. There were more crunching sounds. Gaea's bones had sounded like redwoods snapping off at ground level. Nasu's bones were more flexible, and sounded like two-by-fours breaking.

Gaea started groping for the snake's head. Nasu bobbed and weaved, and squeezed even harder. A forest of redwoods cracked beneath the terrible pressure.

Then Gaea was on top of the wall. And she was peeling the snake away from her, ten meters at a time. Those parts she pulled away didn't move.

Nasu opened her mouth. It was all she could do.

Gaea fell backwards, and the Universal globe was knocked from its turntable and went rolling down the far side of the wall. She struggled up again ... and finally she had the snake's head. She opened its mouth, kept opening it and opening it.

Nasu's head cracked. Gaea pounded it against the wall over and over, until it was a limp mass. She stood, winded and confused, holding the head of the dead snake. Then she tossed it and a hundred meters of coils over the side of the wall, down into the moat. Sharks quickly converged on it and began a feeding frenzy.

Gaea was ... bent. None of her joints looked right. Her head was a squashed melon, her back took a series of horrible turns, like a Swiss mountain road.

Then she started to squirm. She threw one hand up high, and something snapped into place. She moved her hips, and there was another loud cracking sound. She pressed her palms to her face, setting bones back into place. Step by step, she put herself back together until she stood, whole, unmarked, and glaring out at Cirocco, who still stood impassively, arms folded.

"That was a stinking trick, you bitch!" she shouted. Then she turned, leaped down on the inside of the wall, and shouted to the gatekeeper.

"Open this door! Lower that bridge. I'm going out to get her."

One of her military advisors tried to say something. It earned him a kick that dropped his broken body ten miles away, in Warner territory. And the man in charge of the gate was already frantically cranking it open.

Gaea put her foot on the drawbridge as it started to lower. Her weight caused the pulley to turn so fast the rope smoked and caught fire. Then she strode over the bridge and onto the Universal causeway.

She was out of the magic circle.

TWENTY

Chris reached into the cooler beside his chair-Gaea had been quite kind in providing all the coolers and all the beer he needed; an ice-cold bottle was never more than a few steps away-pulled out a bottle, and uncapped it. The encounter with the monster snake had been frightening at first. But as it went on, it became more and more like the hundreds of monster movies he had seen in the last year. It was unreal. It was preordained. One knew the woman was going to kill the snake, and she had done so.

He was beginning to feel a pleasant buzz from the beer. Adam still sat on the floor and stared, spellbound, through the posts of the balcony. He had never seen a movie quite like this one. From time to time he would jump up and run to the telescope for a better view.

Chris had never felt so helpless. But Cirocco had been quite explicit in her orders. He was to stay put until she came to get them out. Well, she was out there, all right-just a black speck at the head of an improbable army. Was he supposed to march out the Universal gate, side-stepping Gaea as she battled the snake? It didn't make a lot of sense, and he had felt no impulse to do it.

Someone will come for you, Cirocco had said.

He wished that someone would get here.

Gaby tapped him on the shoulder.

He dropped his beer bottle, which shattered on the marble terrace. Adam laughed when he saw the broken glass. It was just like the Three Stooges.

"Chris, are you sober?" she asked. as her eyes narrowed.

"Sober enough."

"Then here's what you have to do."

She told him. It didn't take long. It was not too complicated, but it was frightening. One year I sat here, he thought. One year with nothing to do but talk baby-talk. Now I have to be a super-hero.

He knew he would start to whine in a moment, so he nodded his head.

And Gaby was gone.

He hurried to Adam, picked him up, and smiled as well as he could.

"We're going to take a walk," he said.

"Don't wanna. I wanna watch Gaea fightin' some more."

"We'll do that later. This is going to be even better."

Adam looked doubtful, but said nothing as Chris hurried down the stairs, past the sleeping forms of Amparo and Sushi and all the other household servants. He went out the back door of Tara, and into the strand-forest behind it.

Gaea paused in the middle of the causeway. Something didn't feel right.

Her mind was a fragmented thing, but she was used to that, knew how to deal with it. A growing percentage of her had come to be concentrated in this body. While fighting the snake, she had been able to think of almost nothing else. It was the same way when she concentrated her energies on healing herself.

But now something else was happening. She'd have it in a minute. The great brow furrowed in thought.

Then there were shouts. At the same time, the other group of Titanides, who were organized into a drum and bugle corps, began an exceptionally loud number, and started marching toward the east. It left Cirocco out there alone, almost a kilometer in front of her army.

Let's see now. The first group of Titanides must almost be to the Disney gate by now. This new group was headed the other way, toward Goldwyn. Was Cirocco dispersing her forces, getting ready for an attack?

There were twelve explosions, Gaea looked up, saw the tiny planes passing by again, moving west to east. Another factor to consider. The planes passed Whistlestop ... who seemed shorter, somehow. And the blimp seemed to be smoking or steaming...

She figured it out. Whistlestop looked shorter because he was coming at her. As she watched he straightened his course even more, until he was almost nose-down. Tons of ballast water spilled from his rear end, and it rose and rose, until he was a huge circle in the air, getting bigger.

The "steam" was cherubs flying away from his upper vent holes, and a million creatures, some no larger than a mouse, leaping out the sides at the ends of tiny parachutes. An evacuation was under way. It was an awesome sight, accompanied by an awesome sound: a high, mournful wail that loosened her teeth.

It was a blimp's death-cry.

Luther stood alone, atop the wall near his chapel beside the Goldwyn Gate. It looked as if he would be left out of the action.

He knew he didn't have long to live. He had endured wounds at the hands of Pope Joan's Kollege of Kardinals, he had been ignored by Gaea for too long following Kali's triumph. He was out of the inner circle, and it pained him, as all he wished to do was serve Gaea.

He watched the battle with the snake. Gaea won, and he felt neither pleasure nor pain.

He saw the blimp moving into position ...

And that tiny part of his mind still attuned to Gaea's thoughts picked up her moment of doubt before she looked up into the sky.

He fell to his knees. He tore at his flesh, and he prayed.

Luther's mind was like a truck with square wheels. It was possible to move it, but only with great effort. He strained, lifting his mind up onto the edge, and then it thumped solidly down on a new thought. Then once again he strained.

Where is the Child? he thought.

Strain, lift ... thump.

The devil's army is all here, in the north. Thump.

What if this is all a distraction? Thump. What if the real attack is coming from somewhere else?

A voice whispered very close to his ear. It sounded like his wife ... but he didn't have a wife. It was Gaea... of course, it was Gaea.

"The Fox Gate is due south," the voice said.

"Fox Gate, Fox Gate," Luther muttered. Well, not actually. His mouth was such a ruin now that all he could say was "Aah gay, aah gay."

There was a train waiting in the Goldwyn station. Luther climbed aboard, out onto the narrow monorail track that ran around the top of the wall.

For once there was a good head of steam in the thing. He got into the engineer's cab and pulled the big iron lever all the way back. The train started to move, and quickly gathered speed.

Chris ran through the strand-forest. Adam seemed to love it.

"Faster, Daddy, faster!" he shouted.

It would have been pitch dark, but for a mysterious blue light that floated on ahead of them. He had to hope it was leading the way, because without it, and even with a flashlight, he would soon have been hopelessly lost.

"Catch it, Daddy!"

I hope not, he thought. If I caught it, I wouldn't know what to do with it. I hope it just keeps floating on out there, fifty meters ahead, and I hope I don't stumble over anything in here.

Far away, he heard a deep, sustained, rumbling explosion.

He wondered what it was.

Calvin sat in the bombardier's seat, just under the very tip of Whistlestop's great airframe. He was swathed in rich fabrics, but he shivered. He didn't feel so good. He couldn't get rid of the chill. Everything he ate seemed to come right back up. And his head hurt most of the time.

He didn't know what he had. It could probably be diagnosed, but he doubted it could be cured. What he did know was that there came a time for a man to pack it in.

For Calvin, one hundred and twenty-six years was plenty. Old and sick, he had seen the great wheel turn just over a million times in his life, and it was enough.

"Why don't you just drop me off here?" Calvin said, to Whistlestop. "I can walk it. You're good for another twenty, thirty centuries, I guess."

He heard the gentle whistling. It did not come to him as words. It told of a relationship he knew he could never explain to a human. He and Whistlestop had grown together, shared something neither of them could tell another blimp or another human, and were ready to die together.

"Well, I figured I had to offer," he chuckled. He leaned back, and took out the cigar and lighter Gaby had left with him, and he chuckled again. This time it turned to a laugh.

"She remembered," he said. Calvin had smoked cigars so long ago he had almost forgotten it himself.

This one was fresh and aromatic. He sniffed it, bit off the end, and snapped the lighter. He got it going, took a drag. It tasted good.

Then he snapped the lighter once more, and held it to the cloth at his right side. Behind him, he heard the deep whoosh as valves opened, as air mixed with hydrogen and came rushing at him.

He did not hear the explosion.

TWENTY-ONE

All blimps die in fire. It is their destiny. Nothing else can kill them.

Cirocco watched as Whistlestop descended toward Gaea, who stood transfixed on the broad wooden bridge.

It was voluntary, she told herself. They chose to do this.

Somehow, it didn't help.

"Everyone down!" she shouted over her shoulder. "Protect yourselves behind your shields." She turned back, and Whistlestop's nose was a hundred meters above Gaea and still descending.

She had wondered if Gaea would run. She did not. She stood her ground, and as the mammoth gasbag bore down on her, she drew her fist back and would have punched it, but she was enveloped in fire.

The flame started at Whistlestop's nose, and licked up his sides faster than the eye could follow. The sound was beyond imagining. A bloom of flames fifteen kilometers high roared into the air, and the blimp's body crunched down on the spot where Gaea had been standing. It seemed to hesitate a moment, still held by internal gases not yet burning, then began a stately collapse. It took a long, long time.

Being lighter than air does not mean a blimp is not heavy. It simply means it masses less than the volume of air it displaces. The volume of Whistlestop's gasbags alone was half a billion cubic feet; that amount of air at two atmospheres of pressure had tremendous mass.

The first half of Whistlestop seemed to accordion pretty much at the spot where Gaea had been. The rest of him tumbled, no longer held up by the hydrogen. It fell, burning, into the Universal studio and along the western wall. Everything but the rock itself began to burn.

The heat of the fire was intense at first, when it was a billowing plume that seemed to touch the sky. Cirocco did not move away, but had to hold her hand up to shield her face. She heard the ends of her hair sizzling, and thought her clothes were smoldering. Behind her, the army found their shields growing too hot to touch, and they were a kilometer away.

But that towering pyre of hydrogen died away quickly. Universal burned hot, but it was not unbearable.

The huge heap of dry canvas-like skin that had been Whistlestop was going to burn for some time. Everyone watched it Gaea was under there. She was probably in the moat. No one knew how deep it might be.

After ten minutes of no movement, some of the troops behind her began to shout. Cirocco glanced around. They were throwing things in the air. They were daring to believe Gaea was dead. They gradually quieted when they saw that Cirocco was not moving.

She turned around, and watched the fire burn.

Two hundred panaflexes, over a thousand arrflexes, and uncounted bolexes died in the conflagration, taking with them priceless footage of the battle with the Giant Snake.

The Chief Cinematographer began ordering up battalions of photofauns from other studios ... but it was hardly necessary. Most had stayed at their posts, morosely shooting a few feet when the Titanide bands went by their gate, but quite a few had started hurrying toward Universal when they heard the sounds of the snake tearing itself from the earth.

Then the great column of flame had erupted to the north.

They had their orders, but it was too damn much. It was like asking a hungry child to sit still and touch nothing in a room made of chocolate. It was like telling a horde of savage papparazzi that, just a block away, the Queen of England was balling the biggest television star in the world right in the middle of the road... but c'mon, fellas, please, respect their dignity, okay? They don't want any pictures.

Almost as one, every bolex, arrflex, and panaflex in Pandemonium headed toward the fire, by the shortest possible route.

Chris emerged from the strand-forest into a strange quiet.

He looked cautiously around, and didn't see anyone. They must all be at the wall, at defensive posts, he decided.

Not far from him was the northern end of the Fox Main Street. There was not much of the studio this close to the cable. There were trees, and lawns, and some shrubs. It was called Producers' Park. Twice-life-size statues of past greats faced each other on each side of the road, standing on high pedestals listing their film credits. At the head of the road, with its back to Chris, was the even larger image of Irving Thalberg, presiding over the others: Goldwyn, Louis B. Mayer, Jack Warner, Zanuck, De Laurentiis, Ponti, Foreman, Lucas, Zamyatin, Fong, Conn, Lasker-there were over a hundred of them, dwindling in the distance. They were in thoughtful poses, most of them looking downward so visitors to the park would look up and see themselves being regarded by the greats of cinema history.

All the statues regarded just then was a roadway covered with gold paint. It didn't seem to upset them.

Chris no longer had his guiding light. He wondered what it had been, feeling sure Gaby had something to do with it.

Apparently she felt his course from here was clear. She had said hurry, and there was no one in sight. So he dodged around the statue of Thalberg and ran down the road.

The producers watched him in silence.

Far away to his left, he noticed the little plume of white smoke that meant a train was heading south on the monorail. He and Adam had been on it many times. It was one of the nicer things in Pandemonium.

He wondered if the people on it were aware the track was out at Universal.

A safe distance from the Paramount Gate, the Titanide Drum and Bugle Corps stopped playing, carefully put their instruments aside, and started off at a full gallop, continuing in their clockwise direction.

On the other side of Pandemonium, the Brass Band did the same.

Both actions were observed from the walls, of course. But the Titanides made no move toward the gates. They stayed a careful distance away from the wall, just out of cannon range.

Orders were specific. Stand and fight. Defend your gate. So while small detachments ran along the walls, vainly trying to keep up with the thundering herd and to report if they attempted to cross the moat and attack between gates, the actions had little effect on the defense of the Studio.

The forest came relatively close to the Fox Gate. That had been one consideration in Gaby's mind.

It was defended by Gautama and Siddhartha, possibly the two least able military Priests. That had been important, too. That it was one hundred and eighty degrees away from Universal, as far away as one could get and still be in Pandemonium, had been a bit of luck. She felt she was due a little. She'd need some more to pull this off and not lose any of her friends.

On the bad side, Gautama had two companies of Minutemen with functional flintlock rifles. Siddhartha had a couple of cannons.

And Luther had a long way to go to reach Fox.

Gaby had been working on Luther's deteriorating mind for some time. She used the discontent she found there and built on it. There was no way to sway him in his loyalty to Gaea, but he resented her just enough that he would not be as cautious as usual. She had managed to whisper in his ear back at his post at Goldwyn, and he was on his way. And she had a few more tricks in store.

Luther was a weak reed. She hated to rely on him so much. But she could not take direct actions within the walls of Pandemonium. Putting the staff of Tara to sleep was about as far as she could go.

Gene was a weak reed, too. But what could you do? He had to have his part to play, she owed him that much. And ... there was no one else who could do what Gene had to do.

She was waiting on the verge of the forest when the four Titanides and three humans showed up. She greeted each of them by name. She noted the shocked surprise on Robin's face, wished she had more time to talk to the little witch, who she loved dearly, but there was so much to do.

So she gave them their instruction. They had brought their weapons.

The rest was going to be up to them.

Conal sat astride Rocky and watched as the little plume of steam crawled around the rim of Pandemonium. He didn't know what it was. All he knew was that Gaby said that when it reached a certain mark on the wall, they were to go.

He was surprised to discover that he was not afraid for himself. But he was absolutely terrified Robin would die.

They had their weapons. Each Titanide had a long sword and a rifle with interchangeable magazines. The humans carried handguns. They had practiced with both rifles and handguns, and found it was practically impossible to hit anything with either, even from the relatively steady moving platform of a Titanide's back. But they were fractionally better with the smaller weapons. They also carried short swords, and hoped they didn't have to use them, because it was hard to see what use they would be unless they were dismounted. To be thrown from a Titanide generally meant the Titanide was badly hurt.

The puff of steam was at the proper mark. Conal felt his hand being squeezed tightly. It was Robin, and her hand was very cold. He leaned over and kissed her. There didn't seem to be anything to say.

The Titanides moved out into the open and began their charge.

The body of Whistlestop had almost burned out before the remains began to stir.

Behind it, Universal was still burning madly. The waters of the moat were full of floating debris. The corpses of a hundred parboiled eight-meter Great White sharks floated belly-up all around the crumpled ruin of the blimp.

As with Nasu, it was a hand that appeared first. Then, slowly, struggling, Gaea pulled herself out of the black mess and stood, looking dazed, on the outer shore of the moat.

Cirocco sternly repressed an impulse to laugh. Once it started, it would never stop, it would quickly become hysteria. But Gaea...

She looked like some cartoon character in one of the oldest gags in the trade. Hapless cartoon animal is handed a round black bomb with a sizzling fuse, looks at it, does a double-take-eyes bug out and BLAM! Smoke clears to reveal character standing in exactly the same position, holding nothing, but completely black, hair standing on end, wisps of smoke curling away ... character blinks twice-only the eyes are visible-and falls over.

Completely black but for the eyes. That was Gaea. But she didn't fall over.

She began to writhe. It was awful to watch. She stretched this way and that, and her skin began to crack. She reached down to her belly, to her legs, her feet, and scrubbed herself vigorously with her hands. And the skin began to peel away.

It came off in one big chunk, like a child's bunny-suit pajamas. Beneath was glistening white skin, blonde hair... a new Gaea, unhurt. She stood for a moment, having lost perhaps two feet in height, then began to walk toward Cirocco.

TWENTY-TWO

"It's time, Gene."

"I know it's time," he said. "Tarnation, didn't you tell me ... "

He stopped his work and looked around. Gaby wasn't there. He thought he had heard her, but he couldn't be sure. He shrugged, and returned to the device in his lap.

He was sitting on a big crate labeled DYNAMITE: PRODUCT OF BELLINZONA. It sat, in turn, on the great green nerve nexus down in the dead heart of Oceanus. Stacked all around him were similar crates.

What he had in his lap was a timing device. He had thought he understood how to use it. Hook this here dingus to that there whatchamacallit over there, wind up the little hammenframis on the back of that doohickey...

Nothing. It wasn't ticking or nothing.

He was supposed to hook it up and get the hell out of there. He didn't plan to get out, so when Gaby gave him the go-on-ahead, he'd waited it out here what he figured was a goodly chunk of time, and then set to work. Now it didn't look like it was gonna work no-how, on account he'd hooked it up ever whichway, and nothing was happening.

He sobbed his frustration.

It'd be nice to have him a nice hunk of fish right about now. It was a wonderment, it surely was, how much better the stinking things tasted if you charred them a bit over the fire. Now why hadn't he thought of that?

He was about to get up and get him some fish, when he remembered how long it would take to get up there and back. Phooey! That's why he'd waited so long before setting to work on this dingus anyway, figuring in the time it would have took him to of clumb up to the top of them stairs ...

He was woolgathering again, and he knew it. He rearranged the parts of the detonator, wondering if he'd ever get it right.

And he kept thinking that he was forgetting something.

And it was the most important part.

The brakes on the frigging little train didn't work.

Luther cursed it mightily, then, as the station came by, he leaped, and he rolled.

He got up shakily. There were little bits of Luther scattered here and there on the platform. Luckily, they weren't important bits. An ear, a fragment of skull, part of a foot.

He didn't have much time left, and he knew it.

Luther watched the little train puff away around the broad curve of the track. It would keep going forever, round and round the great wheel of Pandemonium, round and round the Great Gaea...

No it wouldn't. The track was broken, because ... thump ... Gaea had fought the snake because ... thump, thump ... Cirocco was attacking! And Gaea had sent him here on an important mission!

His brain was thumping along pretty good by now, actually. A square wheel, if it rolls long enough, wears off some of the corners. He felt as alert as he'd been since the day he ... died. What was left of his brow furrowed, then he shrugged it off and hurried down the stairs-

He was met by Gautama. Little fat-ass gold-painted pissant Gautama, yammering something in some godless language. Luther drew his cross-the mighty Sword of the Lord-and lopped off his head.

Which didn't kill Gautama, of course, but when Luther kicked the head a hundred yards down the road it sure inconvenienced him some.

Gautama blundered around, senseless, his hands held out in front of him. Luther didn't give him another thought. He was humming, trying to mouth the words, though there wasn't enough mouth left to form many of them.

"But now a champion comes to fight, Whom God Herself elected! No strength of ours can match Her might! We would be lost, rejected!"

Up on the walls, people were shooting their guns. He heard a cannon go off. And he marched up to the gate and threw it open. People were shouting at him. He couldn't understand the words. He went to the drawbridge mechanism, located the proper lever to pull ...

Thump.

I'm lowering the drawbridge, he told himself. Thump.

Why am I lowering the drawbridge?

Ah ... why, to help Gaea, of course. To help Gaea to ...

Get in? Thump thump thump.

Maybe this was some sort of trick. His hand moved away from the lever.

"This is not a trick, my darling Luther," said a voice close to his ear.

He turned his head and saw her.

It was Gaea, it was his wife, his mother, all motherhood and womanhood and the virginmary god-help-me, with thorns wrapped around her heart and that saintly expression on her face (and it was a little brown woman) and the dazzling white robes and the halo - halo! Why, it was a searing, screaming light that burst from her, the burning light of goodness/pain/death-and millions of angels were hovering above her, blowing their trumpets (and he didn't even know the little brown woman)... thump-trick? How could it be a trick?!

People were hacking at him with swords now. Absently, he saw one of his arms fall to the stone floor. But, O Lord, I have another to do Thy bidding.

He lunged at the lever, thrust it forward, and fell into the rattling clattering chewing mechanism as the tons of drawbridge fell forward and rended him limb from limb... .

Arthur Lundquist's first death had been horrible. His second was glorious.

Some photofauns had somehow managed to swim the moat. There were a dozen of them clustered around Cirocco as she stood her ground and watched Gaea striding confidently forward.

The giant Monroe-thing had its arms wide, as if to cut Cirocco off no matter which way she ran. She came on like a dreadful professional wrestler, her face contorted with hate.

She was five hundred meters away. Four hundred. Three hundred.

And she stopped, listening, as Luther died.

Where is the Child?

As they neared the end of the bridge, a cannon shell burst over their heads. Conal heard something rattle off his helmet, felt something sting his arm, and heard Robin cry out.

He saw she was holding her hand to her forehead, and there was blood under it. He started to jump-

"No!" Robin shouted. "I'm all right."

There was no time, anyway. They were on the bridge now, the Titanides' hooves pounding on the thick timbers. They charged toward the big gap. The drawbridge was up. We'd better turn back, Conal thought.

Then it fell, and not a moment too soon. With part of his mind Conal noticed that Rocky was bleeding from many wounds. Up on the wall, something was making odd little barking sounds. Smoke was drifting around them. He looked up and saw people pointing rifles at them. He hoped they couldn't shoot any better than he could.

They entered the arched gate, passed quickly through it. Conal didn't have time to fire at anything. The Titanide swords were at work, and the humans that fell beneath them were probably dead before they hit the ground. Still they came charging up. Conal began to shoot at anything that moved.

There had been no time to see who he was fighting, no sense of them as individuals. Finally, he started to notice they were dressed oddly. They wore long coats, some of them, or suits of white armor, or multi-colored green-gray-brown pants and helmets like his own.

A man came shrieking up to him, getting under Rocky's sword thrust. He was carrying an impossibly long sword. How could he even lift it, much less swing it?

But swing it he did, and it hit Conal on the leg, and Conal started saying his prayers, certain his leg was off and it would be a few seconds before the shock hit him.

He looked down. Part of the sword was clutched in his hand. He saw broken wood. He saw silver paint. The paint came off on his hand as he threw it away.

It was too much for his confused mind to deal with. My god, did they think this was a game? Then he heard Valiha's shout. She was far ahead of the rest, unencumbered, and she had found Chris.

"Turn around!" she screamed. "I've got them! Turn around!"

"Chicken!" Cirocco screamed.

Gaea paused.

"Gaea's a stinking, gutless, yellow COWARD! Gaea is CHICKEN!!"

The naked, sweating giant turned slowly. She had been on her way to Fox, on her way to stop the theft of Adam. But ... Cirocco was right here. Adam was miles away.

"Come on back here and fight, you yellow bitch! What are you ... afraid? Gaea's afraid, Gaea's a coward, Gaea's a stinking whore!"

Gaea hung there, swaying back and forth, torn between going for Adam and taking care of this insect once and for all. She knew it was a trick. She knew Cirocco wanted her to come and silence her filthy mouth. She knew it ... and more than anything in this stinking, dreary universe she wanted to go back and crush this horrible upstart.

Cirocco spat in Gaea's direction. She picked up a rock and threw it as hard as she could. It bounced off Gaea's head, leaving a bloody mark. She drew her sword and held it high in the sweet light of Hyperion. It flashed as Cirocco brandished it.

"God? You make me laugh, Gaea. You are a pig. Your mother was a pig, your grandmother was a pig, and her mother fucked dead pigs. I spit on you. I piss on you. I dare you to come out and fight. If you run away, everyone will know you for the coward you are!"

Tears of rage were streaming from Cirocco's eyes.

Gaea might still have turned away and gone after Adam, but Cirocco gave a bloodcurdling shriek ... and charged at her.

Which was simply too much. Gaea began to move.

Toward Cirocco.

"It's time, Gene."

"I know it's time, Gaby. I'm sorry I ra ... r-r-r-raped you. I'm sorry I killed you. I didn't mean to do it."

His bands rumbled with the detonator on his lap. It was a simple mechanism, he knew it was simple. It was just so horrible. He couldn't remember.

Eugene Springfield had been a flyer. He had piloted jet fighter aircraft, rocket-powered moon tenders. He had been picked over a thousand others to fly the exploration vehicles Ringmaster brought to Saturn, and there was only one reason for it. He was the best.

And now he couldn't sort out this jumble of wires any slack-brained terrorist could have put together in his sleep.

He wiped away tears. Start from the beginning. What did Gaby say?

Take out the ... .

His eyes opened wide. The most important part, and he had almost forgotten it. By golly, his brains must be turning to mush.

There it was, at his feet. The black glass jar with the metal lid.

He picked it up, opened it, tossed the lid into the clattering darkness.

The fat, toad-like parasite which had sucked his brains for ninety years hopped out and perched on the edge of the jar. Its eyes took in the scene, then bulged out. It made incoherent sounds: croaks, sobs, strangling gasps. It didn't mean jackass to Gene, but Gaby had said it was important.

Gaea must see it, Gaby had said.

"Think you're smarter'n me, do you?" Gene whispered, staring the thing in its ugly bloodshot eyes. "Well, ol' Gene'll show you a thing or two."

He looked again at the detonator.

Battery. That's this dingus right here.

Wires. Well, there's a couple of them. This one goes to here, and this one goes to here. So it ought to logically follow that if a fella touched this wire to this one over here, he ought to get one hell of a

Gaea froze as her eyes in Oceanus were uncapped, as they looked up out of the bottle, hopped up on the edge of it, and stared down at the spectacle of a brain-damaged child playing with matches and gasoline.

"Gene!" she screamed. "Don't do it!"

Cirocco charged, filled with a blood-red rage she hadn't known was in her. She ran at the monster and sank her sword in its foot.

Then Gaea screamed, and Cirocco was filled with an incredible sense of triumph ... which lasted about two seconds. Gaea wheeled around, tossing Cirocco off like a pesky ant. Gaea had forgotten Cirocco existed.

Cirocco got to her feet, saw Gaea stop dead in her tracks. Gaea put her hands to her head, then she looked slowly up at the sky.

"Gaby!" she shouted. "Gaby, wait! Listen, I'm ... I'm not ready! Gaby, we've got to talk!"

Then the ground was shaking as Gaea ran at top speed toward the cable.

Cirocco sank to her knees and sobbed helplessly. She felt a hand on her shoulder, looked up, and saw all three of her Generals at her side. My god, she thought. They came to me. They didn't run.

All around her was the army. Swords were drawn, arrows were fitted into bowstrings ... and nobody had anything to shoot at. They all watched, terrified and dumbfounded, as Gaea floundered through the moat, still shrieking at the top of her lungs.

The wall didn't stop her. She lowered one shoulder and plowed right through it. She ran through the flames of the Universal studio complex, thundered along the rutted remains of the Twenty-four Carat Highway.

At last she came to the cable.

She leaped, her fingers dug into the incredibly hard material of one cable strand. Gaea began to climb it, agile as any monkey.

Later, people speculated that she had been seeking the fastest way to the hub. Gaby was there, Gaby was taking control, and it was imperative that Gaea/Monroe, which now held over ninety percent of the thing that was called Gaea, get up there at once and begin negotiations.

Gaea was five hundred meters up the strand when it broke off at ground level.

The strand snapped up, quick as a mousetrap. Incalculable tons of cable strand curled, twisted ... and smashed the Gaea-thing against the unyielding bulk of the cable.

"Hang on!" Cirocco shouted. "Get down, and hang on!"

The ground below them dropped thirty meters.

TWENTY-THREE

Far above them, as these events were played out, a far less dramatic but far more important drama unfolded in the region known as the red line.

The entity known as Gaea was dispersed. It was dealing with many things at once. The entity known as Gaby was pulled close in, in a defensive posture. One after another, horrible blows landed on the Gaea-mind. The important nerve being severed in Oceanus was the last blow. Gaby erupted from her place of concealment.

There was no way to explain what happened to a human, or a Titanide, or a blimp, or anything with timebound senses.

The end result was simple. The mind of Gaea was destroyed. The mind of Gaby Plauget, of New Orleans, Louisiana, flew through the non-Einsteinian space of the red line, unchallenged.

TWENTY-FOUR

They waited for Valiha, Chris, and Adam to catch up with them. They waited, while hundreds of Pandemonium extras charged at them with swords of wood, cardboard ... and, occasionally, steel. "They're props!" Nova shouted to Virginal. "I see that," Virginal shouted back. "But not all of them are." It was horrible. Try as you might, it was hard to tell which weapon was real and which was an imposter. And the people of Pandemonium didn't seem to know the difference.

They charged out the Fox Gate. Chris was badly hurt. Valiha had a deep gash in her left hind leg. Robin was being held in place by Serpent, who had several injuries himself.

Conal felt an awful detachment. He shot at the people who came at him, but it didn't seem as if he were shooting at real things.

They went through the gate, heading straight out toward the forest. The hordes of Pandemonium followed.

They stopped, turned, and watched as the Brass Band arrived on schedule and began to slay the enemy by the hundreds.

"Stop!" they shouted. "Wait, back off! They're not armed!"

Gradually, with expressions of stunned horror, the three hundred Titanides slowed, saw what was happening ... and moved away. The Pandemonium troops milled around aimlessly. It seemed that most of them had been fleeing what they thought was an invasion from the inside.

Conal remembered how so many of them had run. The gate to the outside must have seemed like a safe place.

He jumped down from Rocky's back and went to his knees. He swayed there, not knowing if he would throw up. He felt an arm go around his shoulders, and turned to hug her tightly to him.

But it was Nova, not Robin, and she was crying too. He hugged her, then they both hurried to Robin.

They had just enough time to learn that no one had an injury that was surely fatal-though everyone was bleeding-when the ground dropped out from under them.

The great wheel of Gaea vibrated for twenty revs.

The first three or four were the worst. Many people died in the first wave, when the strand broke. Most of them were in Pandemonium, where structures toppled. But a few of Cirocco's army were badly hurt in the pounding.

Then, on the fourth resonation, a strand in Tethys broke, and the next three bounces were bad, but not as bad as the first series.

Eventually, it all settled down. The interior of the rim was full of suspended dust motes for kilorevs, but the wheel had found a new equilibrium. Ophion rushed a little faster in some places, a little slower in others. A few lakes grew and a few shrunk. Two swamps claimed several thousand acres, and the desert of Tethys-which had always been desert, unlike Mnemosyne-advanced a few meters in each direction.

Rocky was kept busy for a while, treating the major and minor wounds of the band of seven-which had grown to nine with Chris and Adam. None of the wounds were life-threatening.

The Brass Band rounded up two thousand prisoners. It was expected that, after a short period of blockade, the holdouts in Pandemonium would surrender when they got hungry.

Adam seemed to have enjoyed the whole thing. He was unmarked. It had been just like the movies, and a little bit like flying ... and he was looking forward to the sequel.

Cirocco stood at the head of her cheering army and watched the remains of the thing that had been Gaea drip wetly down the side of the cable.

She was the only one who understood why the cable had killed her, after Nasu and Whistlestop had failed-and she knew there were some questions still unanswered.

She heard a plaintive howling from her backpack. She reached into it, and came up with the bottle that held Snitch.

He was dying. She shook him out into her hand.

"Can I have a drink?" he asked her, between wheezes. Cirocco found the bottle. She didn't bother with the eyedropper. She poured a generous dollop over Snitch's body, and he lapped up several swallows.

She knew he was the last dying fragment of Gaea.

Gaea had known she might lose when she started the game. She hadn't expected to ... but there it was. Gaby had outwitted her.

So she lay in Cirocco's palm. Poetic justice, she thought. You spend twenty years of your life plotting how to wipe out a traitor, and what does it get you? You get to cough out your last seconds literally in the fist of your greatest enemy.

She had devoted some thought to the matter of last words.

If you were going to go out, you ought to do it with some style. So she had thought it over, on the off chance.

There were the classic Looney Tunes cartoon words. A little too light-hearted.

There was "Rosebud." Too arty, too obscure.

In the end, she reverted to the "B" movies she loved so well.

"Mother of mercy," Snitch coughed. "Is this the end of Gaea?"

And she died.

Long before the vibrations of the final cataclysm had died, a ray of light angled down from the Hyperion roof. It centered on Cirocco Jones.

Cirocco stood up, facing into the light. Her feet left the ground. She was lifted, bodily, into Heaven.