Demon

"Yeah, but see, the women at the birth centers know who came in to have it done. When I started to swell up ... " She sighed, and shook her head. "The awful thing is, if it had happened to someone else, she might have been burned. We haven't burned anyone for Christianity for... oh, fifty years. But it looked like there were just two possibilities. Either I'd had carnal relations with a Christian demon, or ... it was the Gynorum Sanctum, the union of a mortal woman with the Holy Mother, perfect and blameless."

Cirocco studied her as she lowered her head into her hands.

"Did they really buy that?" she asked.

"Oh, they did and they didn't. There's a conservative faction that holds all the teachings to be literally true. Anyway, it sealed my fate. I'm not saying I didn't help it along. For a while there I think I did believe the Great Mother had come to me. But every time I looked at Nova's face, something told me it was someone else."

Cirocco shook her head wearily. So much could have been avoided if she had not been busy while Robin was getting ready to leave.

Stop it, she told herself. You were busy for a while, sure, but then you were drunk for almost a kilorev.

"Did you ever suspect where the baby came from?"

"Not for a long time. Like I said, it was a lot easier to take it as it came. It wasn't till later I consciously questioned it."

"I could have told you Gaea would leave you with a parting practical joke. She did the same thing to me, and Gaby and August, right after we first got here. We were all pregnant. We had abortions." She paused, and looked at Robin again. "Do you ... did you have any feeling about ... who the child's father might be?"

Robin laughed.

"Go look at her. Isn't it obvious?"

"Nova's got your mouth."

"Right. And she's got Chris's eyes."

Chris was in the basement, looking for a film projector.

It was perhaps a semantic fallacy to have a "basement" in a treehouse, where all levels were above the ground, but Chris had managed it. A trapdoor in the floor of the main building led to a hollowed-out area in the trunk of the great tree. This room eventually received everything Chris had never managed to find a use for. There was a lot of it.

Conal, standing on the ladder and holding the lamp high as Chris threw objects from one pile to another, surveyed the miscellany with dismay.

"Aside from being a compulsive architect," he observed, "you've also got a bad case of packratitis."

"I think it's terminal," Chris agreed. "Still, you could say the same thing about the Smithsonian."

"What's that?"

"It's nothing, now that you mention it. Blown up many years ago. But it was a museum. And there aren't any museums in Gaea." He straightened, wiped a mixture of dust and sweat from his face. "It's a dirty job, but somebody ought to do it."

"The Titanides have a museum."

"Point taken. But the oldest thing in it is not much older than Cirocco. They haven't been around that long. We don't have any human museums in Gaea. If there are any left on Earth, they won't be around much longer. So why not start here?"

Conal took another dubious look at the piles of junk.

"Confess, Chris. You just can't throw anything away."

"Guilty." He reached deep into a stack of oddments, and came up with an ancient Kodak Brownie. "But you never know when you'll need something."

"Yeah, but where do you get it all?"

Chris shooed Conal up the ladder, followed him out, and shut the trapdoor behind him. Conal followed him through the maze of doors and rooms until they reached the space Chris had set aside as his workshop. It was actually several rooms, and in them Chris was able to do everything from glassblowing to repairing computers.

He set the projector on a workbench and began taking it apart.

"I just pick things up here and there," he said. "That's how it started. Nowadays, all the Titanides who come calling bring a gift. They do a lot of trading. No telling what they'll pick up. Not much stuff gets here from Earth anymore, but in the old days just about anything might come in. Settlers brought most of their possessions. This was back before the War."

He got the side panel off and peered in, blowing away clumps of dust. He poked a finger into the mechanism, made a wheel turn. He pulled a long glass bulb out of the projector and flipped it toward Conal, who snagged it. "Test that out, would you? I doubt it's any good. I'll probably have to blow another one."

Conal turned toward the electrical bench. He clamped the bulb and took two insulated wires with bare ends, touched one to the brass casing and the other to the dull metal tip. He flipped a switch, and the filament glowed brightly.

Chris brought the projector over and set it near the bulb.

"So it does work, huh? That'll save some time." He took it and screwed it back in place, then co

"Cirocco," Chris said, "I can go find a new motor for this thing and rig up a way to make it run the film drive. Or ... " He gestured to her, then to the projector. "Do you think you can heal it?"

She gave him an odd look, then shrugged and walked to the workbench. She looked at the projector, put her hands on it, and frowned. Sparks crackled; Robin gasped, but Cirocco merely blinked. Something clattered briefly and then stopped. Cirocco leaned closer, oblivious to the blue Jacob's ladders that arced in the gaps between her fingers. Just for a second Conal saw a dreamy blurring of her eyes, then she straightened and put the tip of her thumb in her mouth.

"Bastard burned me," she muttered, sucking on it.

Chris raised an eyebrow, then punched the projector's power button. It stuttered, then ran as smoothly as such an old machine ever would. No one said anything. Conal fetched chairs as Chris threaded Cirocco's film through the projector. He had no take-up reel, but it hardly mattered, as he assumed no one would want to see this more than once.

Cirocco and Robin tacked a sheet over the far wall.

"Shouldn't we invite the Titanides?" Robin asked.

"Motion pictures upset them," Cirocco said.

"We're not sure what it is," Chris added, answering the question in Robin's eyes. "Their brains don't seem equipped to handle it. They get nauseous, like they were seasick."

He started the projector.

In a moment there was a retching sound from the doorway. Conal turned and saw Nova fleeing the images on the screen. He thought about going after her, but knew it was a silly notion. He turned back to the film.

Gaea bit the head off a second man. This one was dressed in an orange robe. The first had been in a traditional priest's collar and black vestments.

It was a warm-up for the match with Kong. The giant ape could be seen hovering in the background of some of the shots. The bolex who shot them had been more concerned with the eating of the holy men. Each shot was rock-steady and carefully framed.

The fight began. Gaea and Kong grappled. Kong went sailing over Gaea's head to land on his back. He seemed stu

She seemed to be doing more than just pi