Demon

There were only two things about the scene that really interested her, aside from the good news of his demise. Who had killed him? And why did the Iron Masters have his one remaining arm strapped down with heavy cables?

Meet, meet, meet, meeeeeet!

Cirocco turned slowly at the sound, spotted the little bolex perched ten meters above her in a rocky niche. It goggled down at her, quiet now.

Ah ha! she thought.

"C'mere critter," she crooned, climbing up after it. "Here boy, c'mon, I won't hurt you." She made all the whistling and tongue-clicking sounds appropriate to summoning a puppy, but the bolex squealed and backed into its niche, which was deeper than Cirocco had supposed. She tried reaching in for it, but it just retreated farther. She pulled back, stymied for a moment.

She considered asking the Iron Masters for help. They'd quickly blow the little bugger out. Then she had a better idea. She went back down to her ledge and began to dance and sing.

Cirocco was an excellent singer but Isadora Duncan would have had nothing to fear from her. Nevertheless, she worked at it, making enough noise so some of the Iron Masters looked up from their work for a moment-only to look back, doubtless filing away one more example of indecipherable human behavior in their cool, tin-foil brains.

Soon the bolex peered out. Cirocco danced faster. Its glassy eye glistened. She saw it stick out for a zoom shot, and soon it was scampering down, its eye held rock-steady. No bolex had ever been able to resist action.

When it got close enough she grabbed it. The bolex squealed, but it was defenseless. It kept shooting. Cirocco knew it must have run out of film long ago if it had come here with the Pandemonium Festival. And sure enough, the associateproducer attached to its back was dead. She peeled it off-they held on like leeches, long after they had become nothing but film canisters-and let the bolex go. It continued to shoot as it backed away, backed away, obviously ecstatic at the shots it was getting until it fell off the ledge and crashed on the rocks below. Cirocco got out a knife and slit the assosh up the middle. Inside it was quite dry, and sixteen hundred feet of super-eight film was coiled on a reel delicate as a seashell.

She pulled out several feet of the film, held it up to the light, and squinted at it. Not much detail could be seen, of course, but it was quite clear there were two figures wrestling. One was brown and one was white. The white one was naked, and female. There could be little doubt who it was.

It must have been spectacular, but that was no surprise. Gaea had few budget restrictions. Cirocco could imagine the scene: Kong, master of all he surveyed, standing in dumb puzzlement as the obscene circus encamped, perhaps giving the fifteen-meter woman a wary eye. Kong was programmed to kill Titanides and human males, and to imprison human females. But Gaea would not have smelled right. None of the other mad creatures associated with Pandemonium would have looked like food or likely captives, either. And without that, Kong was essentially a pussycat. He was lazy, and he was stupid. Gaea's big problem had most likely been getting him to put up a fight.

Cirocco almost felt sorry for Kong.

"Gaea deeded the corpse to us."

She turned to face the Iron Master who had joined her on the ledge.

"Fine," she said. "You can have him."

"She said you were welcome to a percentage, should you happen by."

She studied the Master. From the amount of gleaming brightwork on his body she knew him to be a Tycoon, high in the hive hierarchy. She could see herself reflected in his carapace. It was chrome plating. Chromium was rare in Gaea. The Iron Masters worked hard to scrape what they could find from deep shafts in the Black Forest of Phoebe. For a while there had been a thriving trade in antique automobile bumpers, but the war had interrupted that.

Cirocco was deeply ambivalent about the Masters. It was impossible to like creatures who incubated their young in human infants. On the other hand, she did not hate them as so many humans did. Perhaps they were "monsters," but only if you concede that eating veal or baby lamb chops made humans into monsters. They were not nearly the threat to human children that the children's own parents and neighbors were. Baby stealing was a cottage industry in Bellinzona. The Iron Masters never stole anything; they paid for what they got, and they paid top dollar, and they bought only a few. Compared to any general, from Caesar to the ones currently rearranging the Earth, the Iron Masters were saints.

Still, they were creepy, the most alien of Gaea's sentient races. The best thing about them was their utter reliability.

"Why should I be entitled to a percentage?" Cirocco asked the Tycoon.

"One never asks Gaea why."

"You ought to try it sometime." But that was no use; Cirocco was never going to get a rebellion going among the Masters. This one still regarded her impassively-if something with no obvious eyes can be said to regard. It reminded her of a picture in an old book, something from her childhood. Owl, from Wi

"For my percentage, I'll take a ride back to Ophion."

"Done." The thing turned and started to waddle off, penguin-like.

"What will you do with him?"

The Iron Master stopped, and turned again.

"We will find uses." Which was the creature's way of saying "none of your business," Cirocco realized. In a century of dealing with the engineering, trading Masters, she had learned very little about them. She didn't even know if there really was something like living matter anywhere inside their metal bodies. For a while she had entertained the notion that the ones she saw were all robots, that the real masters never left their carefully guarded island in the Phoebe Sea. She did know that when an Iron Master lost an arm, it did not grow it back; it built a new one, and bolted it on.

"Why do you have him tied down?"

There was a pause. The Tycoon turned slowly to look at Kong, then back to Cirocco. Was it amused? She didn't see how, but that was what she felt.

"He is still lively."

Cirocco looked, and felt hair prickle all up and down her neck. Kong's eyes had opened. He was looking at her, his great brow furrowed. His only remaining arm, which ended at the elbow, had lifted and drawn the cables taut. His eyes rolled and he seemed to be trying to turn his head, but he was too weak. He returned his gaze to her again, forgetting about the problem of the pi

His lip curled in a tentative, chimp smile that seemed almost wistful.

Later, sitting on the back of the train and watching Kong Mountain dwindle in the distance, Cirocco wondered about it.

When would he die? She had watched them take out what must have been his heart, and it was not beating. Reflexes? Like twitching, severed frog's legs? She doubted it. There had been awareness in those eyes.

Gaea built to last. She had not designed him to get old, to reproduce... or to die. So maybe when the gangs finally chopped his brain up, he could rest.

And maybe not.

She found that she did feel sorry for him.

Cirocco reached the main east-west line just north of the Phoebe Sea. She hopped an eastbound freight, thinking it would take her as far as the Arges River, but found the industrious Iron Masters had extended it over fifty kilometers since her last visit to Phoebe, no more than six kilorevs ago. And they were at work at the railhead. They'd be in Tethys soon, she realized. She wondered how they would cope with the sand.