Demon

"I think I'm go

"I'm sorry, kid," Cirocco said. "The head's all the way in back."

"Don't be sorry," Nova shouted, close to tears. "I wanted you to kill them, every last one! I loved it when you were killing them. I just... I just have a weak stomach, that's all." She sobbed, and looked imploringly at Cirocco.

"And don't call me kid," she whispered, and fled to the back of the plane.

There was a short, uncomfortable silence, which Chris broke.

"If you want my opinion," he said, "I sort of wish you hadn't done it." He got up and followed Nova.

"Well, I'm glad you did it," Robin said, hotly. "I only wish you'd spent more time shooting at Gaea. Great Mother, what a disgusting thing."

Cirocco barely heard her. Something was nagging at her, something that didn't feel right. Chris wasn't usually critical of her actions. He had a perfect right to be, of course, but he just usually wasn't.

Then, when she thought about it, he hadn't actually been critical... .

"Chris," she began, turning in her seat. "What did you-"

"It's probably going to make things rough," he said. He waved a hand at them and shrugged apologetically. "Somebody's got to look after him," he said, and pulled the door open.

"No!" Cirocco shouted, and lunged at him. It was too late. He was out, and the door slammed shut. She could only watch in horrified fascination as his chute opened and he glided toward Pandemonium.

Chris and Adam touched the ground within a minute of each other.

SECOND FEATURE

I was always an independent, even when I had partners.

-Sam Goldwyn

ONE

The zombies were in separate pens, in a row, each about twenty meters from its nearest neighbor.

Cirocco didn't want to ask, but she knew she had to.

"Were these ... already dead?"

"No, Captain," Valiha said.

"What were they doing?"

Valiha told her. It made her feel a little better. Slavery was an ancient evil from which the human race might never be free, in one form or another.

Still, Valiha's remark about reading them their rights and giving them fair trials hurt. It hurt because there were no such things in Gaea, and without some kind of rules the human animal seemed capable of anything-including killing eleven men at random. Cirocco was not so foolish as to mourn them. But she was very tired of killing, or of ordering men to be killed. She felt it could become too easy. She did not wish to play God.

She only wanted to be left alone. She wanted to be accountable to herself, and no one else. She longed for total privacy, for about twenty years all by herself to drag out her scarred soul and try to wash the sin from it. She no longer liked the smell of this being called Cirocco Jones.

The urge to jump out of the plane and follow Chris to what would be certain death had been overwhelming. Nova, Robin, and Conal had barely been able to restrain her.

She still didn't know if the urge had been toward suicide, or if she had been so consumed with rage she felt able to fight Gaea toe-to-toe. She had felt rage and despair in about equal portions. It would be so nice to be done.

But now she had another battle to fight.

Maybe it would be the last.

The zombies shuffled aimlessly. She fought the sickness that came over her, and conquered it, but not before Valiha noticed.

"You shouldn't feel responsible," the Titanide sang. "This was not your deed."

"I know it."

"It is not your world. It is not ours, either, but we feel no compunction in ridding it of animals like these."

"I know, Valiha. I know. Say no more of this to me," she sang.

It was true these men had deserved death. But with a primitive and illogical certainty, Cirocco felt that no one deserved this, She had thought the buzz bombs the worst things ever created, until Gaea conceived the zombies. Suddenly, buzz bombs were like high-spirited kittens.

"What are you saying?" Nova asked. Cirocco glanced at her. The child looked a little green, but was holding up well. Cirocco didn't fault her; zombies were hard to take.

"Just discussing ... capital punishment. Never mind. You don't have to be here, you know."

"I want to see them die."

Again, Cirocco was not surprised. Nova had demonstrated a talent for fighting, but little taste for blood. Cirocco approved of that. But zombies were something else entirely. She didn't know Nova's motives, though she suspected they had something to do with a creature that wouldn't die clumping inexorably toward her. As for Cirocco, she felt killing a zombie was a genuinely humane act.

"Let's get to it," she said. "Move the first one into the chamber."

Rocky and Hornpipe attached a rope to the cage and dragged it down a primitive road to a garage-like structure about a kilometer away. It had a few windows, a ladder leading to the roof and a trapdoor up there, and had been made reasonably air-tight. They loaded the cage into the structure and sealed the doors behind it. Hornpipe checked the wind and pronounced it to be within acceptable limits.

The problem was to find out what had killed the zombies with such startling efficiency. It seemed unlikely that all the ingredients of Nova's love potion were necessary.

There were a lot of questions. She hoped some of them never had to be answered, but knew from bitter experience that Gaea often had practical jokes built into things that, at first, looked wonderful.

There was blood in the recipe. Did it have to be of a particular type? There was pubic hair in it. Would Nova's scalp hair have worked as well? Would only blonde pubic hair work, or any pubic hair?

It might be worse than that. Gaea pla

She hadn't gotten around to telling Nova that yet.

The first part was easy. Cirocco climbed the ladder, opened the hatch on top, and dumped in a measured amount of benzoin-what Nova had called "benjamin." She went back down and everyone clustered around the windows.

The zombie took no notice.

"Okay," Cirocco said. "Air it out, and then let's try the cubeb."

TWO

Conal stood in water up to his chest and watched Robin churning by with a lot more enthusiasm than grace. He gri

The lessons had started soon after their return. Robin had said she would never again find herself in a tight spot because she couldn't swim, and Conal had found himself elected to teach.

It was okay with him. He was only an adequate swimmer himself, and no kind of teacher at all, but he could stand in the water and show her, and catch her when she started to sink, and that seemed to be enough. He looked beyond Robin, out where the water was deep and swift, and saw Nova moving along with about as much effort as a seal. He wished he could take some pride in that, but the fact was that there are people born to the water, and she was one of them. It was fu

But she couldn't seem to impart any of it to her mother. Conal saw Robin floundering again, and pushed off. He was beside her in a few strokes. She was floating on her back, gasping.