Demon (GAIA) (54 page)

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.

Well.

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.

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 examination—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.

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.