Demon

Of course, the sand would be a problem for her, too, but she knew how she would deal with it.

She left the Masters and all their works behind, began ru

She ran all the time except when the forage was very good. Cirocco knew ten thousand edible plants in Gaea, over a thousand animals, and even some places where the soil itself could be eaten. There were an equal number of poisonous plants, some of them very similar to the safe ones.

Phoebe was not friendly territory-if such a thing existed any longer. As she began to tire she gave some thought to resting before crossing Tethys. She had been awake for about ninety revs, and ru

She found a deep pool in the Phoebe-Tethys twilight zone. The land there was mountainous and rocky, full of springs and blue lakes. The water in them was not cold. Casting about, she found a deposit of blue clay.

She sat down and removed her boots, then her shirt, which she stuffed into one boot, and her pants, which she put in the other. She removed a slender coil of rope from her pack, then put her boots in the pack and sealed it, along with ten kilos of rocks. She knelt in the clay and began twisting and crushing some broad leaves. When the leaves bled a sticky sap, she worked it into the clay.

Soon the clay was pliable. She rolled in it, rubbed it over every inch of her body and into her hair. When she got up, she was a blue demon with white eyes. The layer of mud was an eighth of an inch thick, but did not crack or flake as she moved.

She dipped the rope in the pool. It began to swell. She fastened one end to a bush at the edge of the water. Then she stepped into the water and submerged, paying the rope out behind her-the rope which had now become a strong breathing tube.

At two fathoms the weak light of the twilight zone was gone. She groped her way onto a silted ledge and settled onto her back with the weighted pack on her stomach. She put the other end of the tube in her mouth and slowed her breathing.

After one minute of self-hypnosis she was deeply asleep.

Three hours was as long as she could sleep anymore. She opened her eyes in the cool darkness.

Something slithered by her; she grabbed it and twisted, then pushed off for the surface. Just short of it, she paused and looked for danger above the water, then cautiously put her face into the air. Nothing. Satisfied, she climbed out and looked at her catch. A highlands rock eel, far south of its normal range. She thought about a fire, rejected it, and tossed the creature back into the pool. Highland eels cooked up fine, but were stringy and bitter raw.

The blue mud peeled off like rubber. It was a wonderful insulator.

She had learned many things in her long life. One was to be as comfortable as you can be all the time. And that meant dry boots, even if one had to sleep underwater. With satisfaction, she opened her pack and retrieved them. It was a wonderful pack, and they were wonderful boots. In her ranking of important things, dry boots came far ahead of food, and slightly before water.

She dressed, pulled on the boots, and started to run again.

Whenever possible, Cirocco avoided Tethys altogether. This time she would have to cross it. She holed up in the last patch of scrub brush, took out her tiny spyglass, and sca

The habit of traveling light had been ingrained for twenty years. Camouflage was an art she had studied at least that long. When God really is looking down from the sky-looking for you, and ready to kill-it pays to be both quick on your feet and hard to see. Her pack held ten kilos of the barest essentials. With the things in it, and the knowledge in her head, she could blend in anywhere.

Cirocco estimated it would be thirty-nine degrees on the sands.

No matter; she knew what to do.

She stripped once more, stuffed her clothing in her pack, and began digging at the base of one of the bushes that seemed dead. But the parched branches were only the top of the plant, and the least interesting part. They radiated away waste moisture.

When she reached the swollen roots a spurt of water washed over her bare feet. She knelt, cupped her hands, and drank. It was alkaline, but bracing.

With her knife she severed a nodule on one of the roots, then cut it open. A slippery yellow sap oozed out, which she squeezed into her hands and began rubbing over her body. Her skin was the color travel brochures referred to as "bronzed." It was a nice color, but several shades too dark for the sands of Tethys. She kept rubbing until she was the proper yellow-brown. The sap smelled like juniper. It was also a cure for acne, a property wasted on Cirocco.

There were a dozen scarves in her pack. She selected two of the proper hue, closed up the pack, then wrapped one scarf around her dark hair and the other around the pack itself. When she was done she was almost invisible.

Barefoot, she scrambled down the last rocky outcrop of Phoebe and down to the rolling dunes. She began to run.

Two hundred kilometers later, more than halfway across Tethys, she saw someone.

She did what seemed prudent: dived into the sand, wriggled until she was almost totally covered, like a stingray on the ocean floor, and waited.

She was pretty sure who it must be. She felt goosebumps, as she always did, then the feeling faded. It was possible she was going insane. Gaby had died here, a hundred kilometers to the south, twenty years before.

Cirocco didn't care. She stood up. She was coated in sand. The sweat which had been cooling her so efficiently as she ran now drenched her, began ru

Gaby shimmered in the merciless heat haze, coming down the near side of a dune four hundred meters away. She was nude, as she always was when she came to Cirocco. And why not? Why should a ghost take clothing to the spirit world? She was milk-pale. At first that had made Cirocco uneasy, as if Gaby had been drained of blood. Then she remembered that Gaby had always been pale, before Gaea. She and Cirocco had been the only ta

"You're safe!" Gaby shouted, still coming toward her.

"Thank you! For how long?"

"All through Tethys."

Cirocco waited while Gaby vanished behind the last dune, then marched up the far side. Gaby paused for a moment at the top, then started down. Her feet left deep prints in the sand. She was terribly beautiful. Cirocco heard herself sob. She went to her knees, then sat back on her ankles. Her shoulders slumped wearily.

Gaby stopped fifty meters away. Cirocco could not speak, her throat was too thick, and she could not draw a proper breath.

"Are they all right?" she finally managed to say.

"Yes," Gaby said. "Conal found them. Saved their lives."

"I knew that boy would turn out useful. Where is he taking them?"

"Where you're going. You'll get there ahead of them."

"Good." She ransacked her brain. There were forbidden topics. "Uh... is it ... are they..."

"Yes, they're still part of the key. Not all of it."

"The key to what?"

"I can't tell you that now. Do you still trust me?"

"Yes." Unhesitatingly. There had been bad moments, but ...

"Yes. I trust you."

"Good. I wanted to-"

"I love you, Gaby."