Demon

FADE OUT

Include me out.

-Sam Goldwyn

Cirocco found herself on the Stairway to Paradise without remembering how she had come there.

She and Gaby had first seen it almost a century earlier, when they had reached the hub after their long climb up the cable and through the inside of the Rhea Spoke. Then, it had been riddled with special effects right out of The Wizard of Oz-the film, not the books, which Cirocco doubted Gaea had ever read. At the top had been a massive, pantheistic thing that had tried to convince them it was Gaea.

The stairs were not in very good shape. But looking closely, Cirocco saw that someone had been at work on them. Some dust had been swept to the side. There was the smell of disinfectant-the strong sort that is used in subway restrooms.

She climbed to the top and saw the door to Gaea's old room was ajar.

Inside was Gaby. Just Gaby. No supernatural rigamarole, no hocus-pocus.

She was down on her hands and knees, dressed in faded jeans and a blue work shirt, with a tool belt around her waist. Several of the translucent floor panels in the 2001 lounge had been removed and stacked against one wall. They were filthy, but sitting beside them were stacks of rags and bottles of blue cleanser. The furniture had been stacked against another wall.

Gaby was reaching down through the floor, working on a plain, ordinary fluorescent light fixture which was nailed to a wooden beam. The two light tubes were flickering.

She looked up at Cirocco, then sat back on her heels and wiped her forehead with the back of her hand. The hand held a wrench, and was dirty.

"Lot of work to do up here," Gaby said.

"Sure looks like it."

Gaby got up, fitted the wrench into a loop on her belt, and stood with her hands on her hips, smiling up at Cirocco.

"Can I get you anything? I've got beer, and wine."

"Just a glass of water would be fine."

"Pull up a chair."

Gaby went through a doorway. Cirocco heard water ru

The silence was not so good. It threatened to get awkward.

"So," Gaby said. "You pulled it off. I was proud of you."

Cirocco shrugged.

"I didn't have as much to do with it as all those people down there think I did. But you know that better than anyone."

"You're the one who had to stand there and face Gaea. Not many people could have done that."

"I guess not." She looked around the room once more. There wasn't anything new to see. She gestured with her glass. "Fixing this place up, are you?"

Gaby looked embarrassed.

"Well, I have to live somewhere. This isn't just what I had in mind, but it'll do temporarily."

"Gaby ... what are you?"

Gaby nodded rapidly, and swallowed hard, not looking at Cirocco. She took a deep breath, and let it out slowly. She looked at the ceiling.

"I was watching, you know. When you came up here and demanded some answers from Gaea. She didn't lie to you. She didn't feel like she needed to. She was pretty sure you were going to kill her, but that didn't matter. She was tired of that lousy little body, anyway. But she still wanted your loyalty. I'll tell you why in a minute. But you remember... she offered to bring me back to life, just as I was-but without that compulsion I had to make war against her. You said no. So she made another offer. She'd bring me back unchanged. She'd resurrect me. You remember what you said?"

"Pretty well."

Gaby's eyes got a faraway look.

"You said it was tempting." She focused on Cirocco again. "Thanks for that, by the way. Then you said, 'But then I wondered what Gaby would have thought of it, and knew just what a stinking, corrupt, foul deviltry it would be. She would have been horrified to think she would be survived by a little Gaby doll made by you out of your own festering flesh. She would have wanted me to kill it immediately.' "

"Maybe I overstated the case a little."

Gaby laughed, and shook her head.

"No. You were completely right. You had no way of knowing that some part of me still was alive, and listening in ... but you were right. If Gaea had put me back together then, I don't think I'd have been my own person. And you were certainly right not to trust her about anything.

"She thought she got rid of me." She gestured at the ceiling. "That red line up there ... this is going to be difficult. You want all the answers, and I'm more than ready to tell them, but I'll warn you that some of it will be hard to understand ... and you'll just have to take my word for it. Because I can't explain to you what that red line is like. There aren't any human concepts for so much of it.

"She threw me in there, and thought she'd made an end.

"I fooled her. I stayed sane. I survived ... and I had to be careful. She'd been in there a lot longer than I had and she knew her way around. I had to learn to crawl, then walk, then run, and I had to do it all without her noticing me. That's why I was so mysterious so much of the time. When I was learning to materialize my body ... when I did anything at all, the chances of her discovering me were much greater. When I told you things she didn't want you to know... it was like a security leak. She started becoming aware there was a leak, but didn't know where it was. She might have found me in spite of my best efforts, but she wasn't really looking that hard. It's all that saved me. Her other obsessions took up too much of her time. Too much of her life-force, for want of a better word.

"But you asked me what I am. I'm not a creation of Gaea. I created myself. I'm real, and I'm alive... I'm me."

Cirocco kept looking at her, and Gaby had to look away again. Then she reached out and took Cirocco's hand. She squeezed it.

"See? Feel me, Rocky. I'm real. I have a body. This body is completely human. I live in it, just like you live in yours."

Again Cirocco said nothing. Then she rubbed her forehead with her hand.

"But Gaby ... you still haven't told me what you are."

Gaby released her hand and sat back in her chair.

"I'm what you were supposed to be. Gaea's successor. But you knew that, didn't you."

Cirocco nodded slowly.

"Gaea ... " Gaby looked around the room, and laughed bitterly.

"Gaea! What a joke. By the time we met her, she was so crazy ... she took that name out of Greek mythology. She took all her best ideas out of crappy motion pictures. I don't know what her real name might have been.

"She came up here one day, a very long time ago. She wasn't a human being. I don't think her race even exists in the wheel anymore. The being who occupied the seat I'm in right now talked to Gaea. Told her he needed a Wizard. It sounded fine to Gaea, and she was a good Wizard for a thousand years. Then, when her predecessor was all washed up, she overthrew him, and came to live up here.

"We're not talking now about the being that is the Wheel. That thing is up there in the red line. It takes care of most of the day-to-day functioning of all the complex systems that keep the wheel ru

Cirocco looked at Gaby for a long time. She was very tired.

"Gaby ... I'm so sorry."

Gaby hurled her glass of water across the room.

"Dammit, Rocky ... damn you! Don't be sorry. It's not too late. When you had Snitch taken out of your head Gaea gave up on you. She had to have a complete and continuous set of memories from you before you could move up to take her place. That set is broken now ... but it can be fixed. I can record you. I can move you up here with me. It isn't death. It isn't anything like death. I thought I was dead when I first got here, but I learned what life is really all about up there in the red line. We can... we can rule together, you and I. We can make this into a good place."