Demon

"You can wait outside, Conal," Rocky said, without looking up.

"What are you talking about? I'm staying right here. Somebody's got to be sure you do it right."

"I really think you ought to leave," Rocky said, looking at him.

"Nuts. I can take it."

"Very well."

Rocky took a scalpel, and quickly, neatly, cut a large backward "C" from the crown of Cirocco's head to just over her eyebrows. With his purple-tinted fingers, he drew the flap of skin to the right, exposing the bloody skull below.

"Take him outside," Rocky said. "He'll be all right in a few minutes."

He heard Celesta trotting outside with Conal's limp body, just as he had earlier heard Conal hitting the floor, but Rocky never took his eyes from his work. He had known Conal would faint. The man had been practically screaming the fact for ten minutes. Any Titanide healer would have heard the symptoms, though they were inaudible to the human ear.

If there was one area of unqualified Titanide superiority, it was the ear. It had been a Titanide ear that had first heard the odd sounds coming from Cirocco's head. They were not sounds that would register on a tape recorder-may not have been sounds at all, in the human sense of the word. But successive Titanide healers had heard it: a whisper of evil, the muttering of betrayal. Something was in there that shouldn't be. No one had any idea what it was.

Rocky had studied human anatomy. There had been talk of finding a human doctor to do the operation, but in the end Cirocco had rejected it, preferring to be in the hands of a friend.

So now here he was, preparing to open the skull of the being who stood in his world much as Jesus Christ stood to the human sect known as Christians.

He hoped no one realized how terrified he was.

"How's it look so far?" Cirocco asked. She sounded better to Rocky: much more relaxed. He took it as a good sign.

"I can't figure it out. There's this big black numeral eight in a white circle ... "

Cirocco chuckled. "I thought it'd be inscribed 'Abandon hope, all ye who enter here.'" She closed her eyes for a moment, breathed deeply. "I thought I could feel that for a minute," she said, her voice shaking.

"Impossible," Rocky said.

"If you say so. Can I have a drink?"

Valiha held a straw to her lips, and she took a swallow of water.

"It's as I thought," Rocky said, after listening carefully. "The trouble lies deeper."

"Not much deeper, I hope."

Rocky shrugged as he reached for the drill. "If it is, it is beyond my powers." He co

"Tell me about rock and roll," she said.

Rocky put the point of the drill to Cirocco's skull and turned it on.

"Rock and roll was the fusion of several musical elements present in human culture in the early 1950s," Rocky began. "Rhythm and blues, jazz, gospel music, some country influence ... it all began to come together under various names and in various styles around 1954. Most of our chord agree it achieved its first synthesis in Chuck Berry, with a song called 'Maybellene.'"

" 'Why cancha' be true?'" Cirocco sang.

Rocky moved the drill point to a new site, and looked at Cirocco suspiciously.

"You've been doing some research," he accused.

"I was just curious about your chord name."

"It was a grace note in musical history," Rocky admitted. "For a while it possessed an attractive energy, but its potential was soon mined out. This was not rare in those days, of course; a new musical form seldom lasted two years, much less a decade."

"Rock and roll lasted five decades, didn't it?"

"Depends on who you talk to." He finished the second hole and began on the third. "A species of music known as 'rock' persisted for a long time, but it had abandoned the Zeitgeist."

"Don't use them big words on me. I'm just a dumb human."

"Sorry. The creative energy was expended in increasingly byzantine production, overwhelmed by technological possibilities it did not have the balls to exploit or the wit to understand. It became a hollow thing with a glitter exterior, more concerned with process than thesis. Craftsmanship was never its strong point, and soon was forgotten entirely. An artist's worth came to be measured in decibels and megabucks. For lack of a replacement it stumbled along, dead but not buried, until somewhere in the mid-90s, then was ignored as serious music."

"Harsh words from a guy whose last name is Rock'n'Roll."

Rocky had finished the fifth hole now. He started another.

"Not at all. I merely do not wish to deify a corpse, as some scholars do. Baroque music is still alive so long as there are those who play and enjoy it. In that sense, rock and roll lives, too. But the possibilities of baroque were depleted hundreds of years ago. The same with rock."

"When did it die?"

"There's some debate. Many say 1970, when McCartney sued the Beatles. Others put it as late as 1976. Some prefer 1964, for various reasons."

"What do you prefer?"

"Between '64 and '70. Closer to '64."

He now had a series of eight holes drilled. He began using a saw to cut between them. He worked in silence, and for a while Cirocco had nothing to say. There was just the sound of the bone saw and, outside, the quiet lapping of the water against the side of the boat.

"I've read critics who speak highly of Elton John," Cirocco said.

Rocky just snorted.

"What about a rock revival in the 80s?"

"Rubbish. Are you going to mention disco next?"

"No, I won't mention it."

"Good. You wouldn't want my fingers to slip."

Cirocco screamed.

Rocky's hand almost slipped on the rotary saw. He had never heard such agony in a human voice. The scream was still rising in pitch and volume, and Rocky wanted to die. What had he done? How could he be causing so much pain to his Captain?

She would have ripped the skin from her face but for Valiha's strong arms. As it was, every muscle in Cirocco's body stood out like cables. She fought, the scream dying for lack of air. Its very silence was more painful to Rocky's ears. She began to bite her tongue; Serpent moved in and jammed a piece of wood between her teeth, but it was only in one side. The tension was uneven. Rocky heard her jawbone crack.

Then it was over. Cirocco's eyes opened, and moved cautiously back and forth, as if looking for something about to spring on her. The stick of wood was bitten nearly in two.

"What was that?" she said, slurring the words. Rocky gently felt her jaw, found the fracture, and decided to fix it later.

"I was hoping you'd tell me." He leaned over to let Serpent mop the sweat from his face.

"It was ... like all the headaches in the world, all at once." She looked puzzled. "But I can hardly remember it. Like it's not there, or never was there."

"I guess you can be thankful for that. Do you want me to go on?"

"What do you mean? We can't stop now."

Rocky looked down at his hand, which had stopped shaking. He wondered why he'd ever studied human anatomy. If he hadn't been so damn curious someone else could have been handling this.

"It just seemed like a warning," was all he would say. Though he had told no one, he actually had a pretty good idea what he would find under Cirocco's skull.

"Open it up," Cirocco said, and let her eyes close again.

Rocky did as he was told. He finished his last cut, and lifted the section of bone away. Beneath was the dura mater, just as Gray's had said it would be. He could see the outlines of the cerebrum beneath the membrane. In the middle, in the great longitudinal fissure between the two frontal lobes, there was a swelling that should not have been there. Cruciform, inverted, like some unholy devil's mark ...

The mark of the Demon, Rocky thought.