Demon

Again, Cirocco had not raised her voice. There was scarcely a need to. Nova was lying on her side, stu

"Gaea is behind this. Gaby warned me the child was important. I don't know why Gaea wants him. Possibly just to lure me to do battle with her, which she's been trying to do for years. But Gaea doesn't have him yet. She is in Hyperion, which is as far from here as you can get. There's something I need to know. Chris, when you entered Nova's room, was the zombie already dead?"

"That's right."

"And the one in the hall ... "

"It wasn't there when I went in, and it was dead on the floor when I came out."

"Any of you kill it?" Cirocco swept them with her eyes, and everyone indicated they hadn't.

"The one in the music room. Tell me about that."

"I was getting ready to fight it, and it just keeled over."

"But the one with Adam got away." She turned to Nova. "What did you do to that first one?"

"I shot it," Nova whispered. "I shot it ... three times."

"That wouldn't kill it. What did you do then?"

"I threw the gun at it."

Cirocco waited.

"I threw the bed. Then other things."

Nova shrugged, listlessly. She seemed to be in shock.

"The vase, the lamp, the cr-... " All the blood drained from her face.

"What?" Cirocco kept at her.

"Some-some-something I m-m-made."

"I'm not going to hit you again, Nova, but you are going to tell me what it was you made."

Nova's whisper was almost inaudible.

"... a love potion ... "

"She borrowed some ingredients from the kitchen," Serpent volunteered.

Cirocco turned away from them all and was quiet for several seconds. No one moved. At last she turned back.

"Chris," she said, pointing at him. "Radios. Three. Bring them back here, then meet me at the cave."

Chris hurried off without a word.

"Valiha. You take one radio and go, as fast as you can, to Belinzona. Put out a general call to all Titanides who still have faith in their Wizard. I want live zombies, as many as you can take. Don't risk your life to get them, and stay in radio contact with me."

"Yes, Captain."

"Rocky, you will stay here. We may have further instructions when we find out how they plan to get Adam to Pandemonium."

"Yes, Captain."

"Serpent. As soon as you get your radio, you will head west, conserving your strength. You can't outrun an angel, but we will try to guide you from the air. Take weapons."

"Yes, Captain."

"Conal, you come with me. Robin, Nova, you can come with me or stay here, as you please."

She was already on her way out of the room when she kicked one of the loose Titanide eggs Adam had been playing with. She froze, then walked slowly to the wall where it lay, bent over, and picked it up.

Cirocco held the egg up to the light and stared at it, and for the first time in living memory, the Wizard looked stu

She dropped it and stood for a moment with her shoulders slumped.

"Rocky," she said. "Gather all these eggs. Be sure you get them all. Destroy all the furniture, rip up all the pillows, but don't miss any. I'll have Chris radio back a count after we get away.

"When you're sure you have them all, destroy them."

It took a huge effort, but Cirocco managed to get her mind off the Titanide eggs and back to the problem at hand.

Both Robin and Nova had elected to join her. She did not try to dissuade them, nor did she question their reasons. They followed her into the jungle and up the hill toward the cave.

It was fu

There were a thousand things you could learn, myriad ways of attaining that improbable position whereby men and women were willing to obey your orders. NASA had sponsored leadership courses and Cirocco had taken them all. She had read autobiographies of great leaders.

She knew, secretly, that she had no talent for command. It was all a false front, but if one kept it in place twenty-four hours a day no one was the wiser.

She lost her first command. Afterward, she had never been able to put the survivors back into a functioning team. They all went their own ways-all but Gaby and Bill-and she had lived for many years afterward with a deep feeling of failure.

NASA had been alarmed when only two of the seven people from Ringmaster could be convinced to return to Earth, and infuriated when they learned the Captain was among the five deserters. But NASA was a civilian organization, and after discharging what she saw as her responsibilities, telling everything she knew about what had happened and why, she felt justified in resigning her commission in a place of her own choosing.

NASA couldn't court-martial her, much as they would have liked to, even in absentia. But they did the civilian equivalent, which was to set up a dozen commissions and boards of enquiry.

She had had almost a century to think things over. In that time she had given a lot of thought to leadership. There were different kinds of leaders, she had concluded. Some were good, and some were bad. It was probably true that there were leaders who never suffered the doubts she had experienced, who were absolutely sure of themselves and everything they did. They were the egomaniacs, monomaniacs, megalomaniacs-Atilla, Alexander, Charlemagne, Mussolini, Patton, Suslov-men with obsessions, driven men, often psychotic or paranoid. It was even possible for them to be good leaders, but Cirocco felt that, by and large, the world was a worse place when they were through stamping their designs upon it.

For decades now Cirocco had been relieved of that kind of responsibility. She was most content when she had no one depending on her, and when she had to depend on no one. Her sole responsibility for the last two decades had been to keep herself alive, at almost any cost. Now maybe that was changing.

But when the need arose, it was satisfying to discover how quickly she could change gears.

Chris caught up with the rest of them just as they reached the cave.

It was high, wide, and deep: the perfect place for part of Cirocco's arsenal. The cave seemed to stand open, undefended. Actually, there were guardians so well-concealed that an intruder could walk over one without seeing it. Cirocco had gathered the creatures in Rhea, where they had once guarded an ancient idol, and had learned how to re-program their simple brains to suit her needs. They ignored Titanides. But any human not accompanied by Chris or Cirocco would have been dead before entering the cave.

Inside were the aircraft. There were six of them, but three had been ca