Demon

EPISODE TEN

No one dreamed the war could last for seven years, but it did.

Like any war, it had its ups and downs. There was one five-month period when no bombs fell and some dared hope it was over. Then Dallas was hit, and the exchanges were renewed. Four times huge flights of missiles arced from one area of the globe to another-massive "Sunday Punches" designed to end the conflict once and for all. None of them did so. Combatants fell by the wayside when they reached the point where no one survived capable of directing the attack. But a hard core of about two dozen nations were dug in so securely they could well be fighting for two centuries.

Fully seventy percent of the weapons malfunctioned in one way or another. "Dud" bombs fell in hundreds of cities, spewing plutonium, notifying the residents that another bomb would soon follow. Editorials were written deploring the greed of munitions makers who had cut corners on government contracts, thinking no one would ever know the bombs were defective. Company presidents were lynched; lynching became a world-wide mania, something to take one's mind off the war. Generals were skinned alive, diplomats drawn and quartered, premiers boiled in oil, but nothing seemed to help. The ones who mattered were in bunkers five miles deep.

There were peace efforts. The usual ending to a conference was the vaporization of the host city. Geneva took a beating, and so did Helsinki, and Djakarta, and Sapporo, and Juneau. Eventually, negotiators were shot on sight if they tried to enter a city.

After seven years the war no longer appeared on the evening news. All public news-gathering operations had been destroyed. All satellite time was used for encoded military messages, and no one had a television to receive a broadcast, anyway. About a hundredth of the Earth's nuclear arsenal had been expended, and another twentieth destroyed before it could be used. There was still a lot left.

There were not many people, though.

It had been three years since a crop of any consequence had been brought in. Those few who survived on the surface scrounged for canned food, hunted, and ate each other. But there was little game left, animal or human.

Since the beginning of the war messiahs had been proclaimed at the rate of three or four per hour. Most of them claimed to know how to stop the war, but none of them did. Most of them were dead, now, and soon the Earth would be, too.

For seven years the Outlanders had been walking on eggs. Quick to declare neutrality at the outset of the war, the Lunar and Martian cities and the orbital colonies hoped only to stay out of the way while civilization collapsed down on Earth. Opinion varied as to whether the three Lunar nations could survive without support from Earth. There were almost a million people living on the moon at the outbreak of the war. The Martians figured to hold out twenty years, but no more than that. Outnumbering these planet-bound settlements were the O'Neil colonies. There were hundreds of them, with populations ranging from five to a hundred thousand. Most were located at L4 and L5, points of gravitational stability sixty degrees in front of and behind Luna. There were also sizable clusters of L1 and L2, despite the perturbations that tended to make the structures drift out of the libration points; with a small thruster, even the largest colony could remain stable with minimum energy expenditure.

Those thrusters came in handy for something else as the war dragged on. Quietly, not making a big fuss about it, some of the O'Neils began converting into space vehicles. The newer ones had drives that were more than adequate already. Others needed some time, and took the slowest of orbits, but a migration began of all those who felt they could survive without the Earth.

There were a lot of places to go, none of them very good. One tried to make it in orbit around Mercury, where the free energy was intense. It proved to be too intense. A few took up orbit around Venus, and in Trojan orbit with Venus. Many more went out to the neighborhood of Mars, or to the Earth's Trojan points. The problem was to get far enough away from the Earth to seem not worth shooting at and unlikely to hit, while staying close enough to the sun to survive.

A very few decided to take the big leap. They converted their homes into starships and headed out.

Conal heard about these events from refugees arriving during the seventh year of the war. An inescapable image came to mind: he saw the Earth as a blackened globe, cracking apart, girdled in flame. Tiny mites were scurrying away in droves.

"Rats leaving a sinking ship," he told Cirocco.

"And what would you expect rats to do?" she countered. "Go down bravely? The rat's about the smartest animal there is, and the toughest. The rats don't owe the ship a damn thing, and neither do those ellfivers."

"No need to bite my head off."

"I'll keep doing it as long as you think it's a good idea to trust psychopaths. Anybody who can get away from the Earth right now and doesn't is saying she believes it's okay to lie down with a mad dog. Those ellfivers are the sane escaping the asylum. And maybe the grave."

When he had the time, Conal liked to hang around the Portal just outside Bellinzona, improving the breed.

The Portal was just what the name implied: the port of entry for all the wretched refuse who flocked to Gaea's shores. On Gaea's outer surface was the catcher that retrieved Gaea's returning eggs or the now-infrequent human ships seeking refuge. From there the people were taken to Gaea's equivalent of Ellis Island, far down in her bowels, where they were processed. The immigration procedure had once been complex and time-consuming. Now it was simplicity itself: holy people to the left, mortals to the right. Messiahs, priests, preachers, pastors, shamen, gurus, juju men, dervishes, monks, rabbis, mullahs, ayatullahs, vicars, necromancers, prelates, and popes all were taken directly to an audience with Gaea. The rest were loaded into capsules with what they could carry on their backs. There was a short ride through Gaea's circulatory system to a sphincter valve that squeezed them out, twenty at a time, into a small cave that Cirocco called "the asshole of the world."

Since all the refugees came out at the same place, the Portal attracted a certain element that hoped to prey on weakness or ignorance. Like pimps standing sentry in a big-city bus station, these people were on the lookout for immigrants who had something that could be sold at a profit. Sometimes it was their meager material goods. Sometimes it was a lot worse than that.

It was a strange game Conal played. He had played it many times, though Cirocco said he was a fool to do so. He would have kept doing it even if he thought she really meant that, but he knew she didn't, and Hornpipe had confirmed it.

"It is a worthwhile foolishness," the Titanide had said. "It is a Titanide thing to do." Titanides didn't care if a cause was lost, and it didn't worry them that they could not stamp out all the evil in the world. If they saw a chance to do some good without getting themselves killed, they did it, and so did Conal.

Which was not to say he went about it rashly. Some of the Portal layabouts ran in gangs, and took a dim view of anyone interfering in their activities. Conal would hang back, out of their way, and look for the chance to stalk the hunter as he led his prey to a dark, private place. When that chance came, when he had come in behind a Portal Rat and taken him by surprise, Conal killed him. Murderer, thief, slaver, or babylegger-it was all the same to Conal. There were no jails in Bellinzona, no middle ground between the quick and the dead.

More often he would have to watch as people got the living shit beat out of them and were stripped naked and left bleeding. Then he would take the victim to one of the jack-leg medicine men who served the function of hospitals in Bellinzona.

Today seemed like a good day. Looking around, he spotted a group of four Vigilantes wielding clubs that bristled with rusty nails. There were also three Free Female archers standing well away on high ground. With any luck at all, he would not have to do anything. The mere presence of these protective societies had driven many of the vermin away.

Increasingly, the pickings had been small at the Portal. More and more people arrived without so much as a stitch of clothing, wearing a vacant look: the walking corpses of Graveyard Earth. Most had been at the edge of death when rescued, some after suffering horribly for years. Gaea healed their bodies, but either could not or would not do anything about their minds.

Today's group was different. Fully half of them were not only clothed, but carried packs and suitcases brimming with booty. Conal could hear the jackals start to murmur. A Free Female bow twanged and an arrow shaft appeared in a man's throat; it qualified as a gentle warning in Bellinzona. The Vigilantes began laying about them with their clubs, but soon were forced onto the defensive. Conal began to edge back. He didn't plan to die in a riot.

He saw a particularly interesting duo just as he was about to leave. A short, thirtyish woman with some kind of painting on her face carried a small bundle in her arms, walking beside a stunningly beautiful young woman who must have been six feet tall. Both women wore brilliant, padded synsilks: spacer's clothes. The tall one carried most of the baggage, but the short one had a large synsilk pack.

Conal groaned. It was like watching a treasure-laden Spanish galleon sail into a nest of pirates. They had no idea what was about to happen.

It came quickly. A small figure darted from the crowd, punched the small one in the face, and grabbed the bundle. Conal realized it was an infant. The mother started to chase the man, but was suddenly hemmed in by the rest of the gang, who would strip the two women clean while the point man made off with the real prize.

There was nothing he could do to help the women. There were at least six men attacking them. So he would follow the man with the baby, because of all the things that could happen in Gaea he felt being sold to the Iron Masters was the worst. He was already after the man when the screaming began. Against his will, he looked back.

It was like a tornado. The women had knives in each hand, and knives in their boots, and they were whirling madly, shrieking at the top of their lungs, slashing and stabbing. One man took seven wounds before he had time to fall down and start to die. Another tried to hold his throat together as a second blade entered his bowels. Four were down, then five, as others moved in with knives drawn.

It was too bad, really. It was the most amazing display of sheer, furious will to fight he had ever seen, but he didn't see how the two could hold off an army. They were going to take a fine honor guard to hell. with them, but they were going to die. The least he could do was save the child of the older warrior.

He had almost waited too long, mesmerized by the carnage. The fleeing kidnapper was approaching the main bridge to Bellinzona when Conal finally got through the crowd and into the open.

He was a hundred meters behind the man when he left the bridge. The fleeing man was small and quick. He darted in and out of the crowd, and then he outsmarted himself. Knowing a running man is conspicuous, he slowed down, glancing over his shoulder to see if anyone was back there. If he had kept running for another minute, Conal might well have lost him, and if Conal had kept running one second longer, he would have been spotted. But this was Conal's game, and when the man looked back, he saw no sign of pursuit.

The man saw nothing the second time he looked back, nor the third. There was nothing to be seen the fourth time, either, and for a very good reason. Conal was in front of him by then.

It wasn't too hard to figure out where the man was going; the location of the Iron Masters' trading post was well-known. There was no sense in keeping a kidnapped human baby any longer than you had to; most humans took a dim view of babylegging. So Conal positioned himself on a narrow pier and waited.

The man came hurrying along, still intent on pursuit from behind. Conal had the feeling the man had heard those screams and they had rattled him. He did what Conal had expected, which was hold the baby up in front of him while he went for Conal with a knife in his right hand, Conal grabbed his wrist and broke it; the man cried out and the knife fell. With his other hand, Conal reached around and stabbed the man in the back. He dropped the baby and Conal caught it, then pulled his knife out and eased the man down onto the wooden dock.

He made sure the baby was all right, then knelt beside the kidnapper.

Man. Okay, in Bellinzona, thirteen or fourteen years was enough to make you a man. It still didn't feel right to Conal. He still looked like a boy. He was Japanese, Conal thought. That wasn't rare, either. The human population of Gaea was roughly proportional to the population of Earth, which meant there were a lot more brown and black and yellow skins than white.

The boy was in a lot of pain, babbling something in his native tongue, and it looked like it was going to take him a while to die. Conal held up the knife and raised his eyebrows in what he hoped was a universal questioning gesture. The boy nodded excitedly. Conal slipped the blade between the ribs and into the heart, and the boy was dead in a moment.

He wiped the blade and put it away.

"The big hero," he muttered. It was a shitty world when you couldn't kill a baby-murdering human carcinoma and feel good about it. As usual, Cirocco had the last word. There were just not a hell of a lot of things you could do in this life that didn't taste bad in one way or another.

There was the problem of what to do with the baby.

He could think of several things. There were religious orders and some other organizations that took in orphans. Of these, the strongest was the Free Females-also, in his opinion, the likeliest to provide proper care for an infant.

The baby was bundled in some sort of spacer's carrying pack; it was not immediately obvious how to unfasten it. But he finally managed. He looked in the pertinent place, and shook his head. Okay, so the Free Females wouldn't want the little guy. Who was the next best?

He had a funny thought. It was impossible, of course, but what if ... ?

So he headed back toward the Portal.

They were still there, still alive. Unless something happened soon, though, they would not be alive much longer.

There was a crowd of about a hundred of the toughest, meanest types Bellinzona had to offer, standing in a semi-circle fifty meters away from the rock wall where the two women were cornered. The area in between was littered with bodies. Conal stopped counting after two dozen. There were many more than that. He stood at the back of the crowd, trying to figure out what had happened.

The clue was in the bodies. Most of the ones close to the two women had died of knife wounds. The more distant ones had wounds seldom seen anymore in Gaea: round wounds about the size of a dime. His guess was confirmed when one of the people in the crowd threw a spear, and one of the women shot him in the stomach. Conal ducked. The crowd moved back, but inexorably began to close in again. The temptation was just too great.

It was a stand-off. No one in the crowd knew how much ammunition the two had left. Had they charged as a group the mob could have overwhelmed them, but there was no organization among these jackals.

He thought about it, and saw the irony. Obviously, the two had a limited number of bullets, or they would simply have shot everyone within range. Nobody in the crowd wanted to soak up a bullet just to enable someone else to grab the treasure. So the outcome, in minutes or hours, would be for the women to run out of bullets, in which case they could be attacked again-but then it wouldn't be worth it.

Conal took another look at the tall one. Seventeen, he thought. Maybe eighteen. Long blonde hair, fierce blue eyes. She was beautiful, as he had already observed. But there was something else about her, something she shared with the older woman-her mother? It was a look that said she would die on her feet, fighting, that she would never be taken alive. He respected that. He had learned what it meant to be taken alive, and it was never going to happen to him again, either.

Another spear was thrown, and the tall one snapped off another shot. This one went through the spear-thrower and into the heart of a man standing behind him. Nice gun, Conal thought.

Where were the Free Females? he wondered, then saw them. They were also backed to the wall, but one was dead, another badly wounded. The third crouched by her sisters, an arrow ready, looking very frightened. The two groups were twenty meters apart, and the newcomers showed no signs of wishing to join up with the archer. Who the hell were these people, anyhow? Apparently they didn't trust anyone. He hadn't seen anybody so suspicious since ... well, since Cirocco Jones. It wasn't going to be easy to rescue them.

Until that moment, he hadn't realized he was going to rescue them. He wasted a few minutes trying to talk himself out of it. Looked at reasonably, it seemed the most foolhardy thing he had tried since the day he swaggered into a bar and told the most dangerous woman alive he planned to kill her.

He looked down at the face of the baby boy.

"What the hell do you have to smile about, mister?" Conal asked him. Then he turned and hurried back over the bridge.

"A hundred, did you say?" the Titanide named Serpent raised a dubious brow.

"Hell, Serpent, you know I can't count to twenty-one without opening my fly. There's about a hundred, maybe a hundred twenty."

"Describe the smaller one to me again?"

"Drawings on her face. A real fright mask. The other one-"

"They are tattoos," Serpent said.

"You mean they don't come off? How do you know?"

"She has a third eye drawn on her forehead, doesn't she."

"Yeah ... yeah, I think so. Her hair was bouncing around a lot. They were pretty busy trying to look six ways at once... How did you know?"

"I know her."

"Then you'll come?"

"Yes, I think I will." He looked around the big warehouse that served the Titanides as a trading post, picked up two other Titanides with his eyes. "In fact, I think we'll make it a troika."

They sounded like the Apocalypse minus one as they thundered over the wooden bridge. Conal, clinging to Serpent's back, wished he had a bugle. It was the friggin' cavalry to the rescue, by God. The people in the back of the mob spent only a moment gaping at the sight, then scurried like hyenas from a carcass. They ran anywhere they could go. Many of them jumped into the putrid waters of the lake.

But a lot didn't have time to flee. The Titanides waded in, weaponless, and began breaking necks.

Conal had worried the women might fire at these apparitions, but apparently their suspicious natures didn't extend to Titanides. They watched, alert for an opportunity to break through and get away from the wall. Then Serpent lifted Conal and tossed him over the heads of the circle of people.

He landed on his feet and just managed to stay on them, stumbling forward, holding the baby out in front so they wouldn't be tempted to shoot him. He had been gone for almost a rev, and during that time the women had been stoned by the crowd. He tripped over a large, loose rock, fell, and crawled around the makeshift barricade of luggage they had been crouching behind.

He looked up into the face of the blonde amazon. Nineteen, he decided. There was a line of drying blood down the left side of her face. He felt a surge of anger; he wanted to kill the bastard who did that. There was more pressing business, however, such as the gun she held to his temple. He held out the baby and put on his most winning smile.

"Hi. I'm Conal, and I think this belongs to you."

Another of Cirocco's favorite aphorisms: Never Expect Gratitude. Her upper lip curled contemptuously, and she jerked her head toward the older woman.

"Not me. It's hers."