Demon

At last they came to a broader passage, and Cirocco stepped into it. About twenty meters in diameter, it seemed to stretch to infinity in either direction.

"Central Park," Cirocco said. And indeed, there were tree-like organisms growing from the walls, pale and skeletal. They shrank from the light. Cirocco pointed forward. "Come on. It's only about a mile."

It was an odd mile. They were on top of a gasbag and the netting was much thicker, almost solid beneath their feet. And they bounced. It was like walking on a sea of pillows.

After a long time the corridor widened and there was light. They came into a vast, shapeless room. The floor sloped down to a transparent membrane cross-hatched with thin cables, bulging out from the internal pressure. It was cool in here, just as it had been everywhere inside the blimp.

"The B-24 Lounge," Cirocco said, and started sca

Her foot hit something solid in a pile of cloth. She looked down, and gasped. It was a human foot: brown, withered, attached to a scrawny leg. The toes wiggled. She looked up and saw the face of an old, old man, completely bald, brown as mahogany, showing strong white teeth in a satisfied smile.

"My name is Calvin, dear," the old man said. "And you're the prettiest thing I've seen in a long time."

She never did get to see much of Calvin. He moved around, but was always so swaddled in windings of cloth that only his head was visible.

"Only real problem with this life," he said at one point, "... only real problem's staying warm. Old Whistlestop, he likes to go where it's cold. So how's August doing, Rocky?"

Cirocco explained that August had been dead for a long, long time. Nova watched him, and wasn't sure the old man understood it. He then went on to ask about others, all of them dead. Each time he shook his head sadly. Only once did Cirocco seem upset, and that was when he asked her about Gaby.

"She's ... she's fine, Calvin. She's doing just fine."

"That's real nice."

Which was crazy, since Nova knew all about Gaby.

She finally realized Calvin was almost as old as Cirocco. He looked every year of it. And yet, he seemed spry enough, and quite happy and alert. It was only the business of inquiring about the dead that hinted of senility.

He bumbled around the chilly cave, rummaging in straw baskets, coming up with wooden bowls and bone knives and a cutting board. Cirocco sat next to Nova and spoke quietly to her.

"He's not crazy, Nova. I don't think he understands death. And I don't think he has any conception of time. He's lived up here for ninety-five years, and he's the happiest man I ever knew."

"Here it is!" Calvin crowed, coming up with a large wooden container. He came back to the flat surface where Cirocco and Nova were sitting cross-legged, and where he had already assembled bowls of salad and raw vegetables, and a huge jug of something he called mead.

"Just getting good," he said, then glanced at Nova. "Better bundle up some, girl. Get cozy."

Nova had been getting chilled, but was suspicious of the piles of rags. She had noticed some of the little blind, hairless mice crawling out of one pile. But the fabric didn't smell dirty.

"The blimp exudes this stuff," Cirocco said, pulling folds around her. "It makes good cold-weather gear. Go ahead, it's clean. Everything in here is clean."

"Always is, in a blimp," Calvin chuckled. He was using a wooden spoon to ladle thick and chunky soup into bowls. "Try this ... Nova you said your name was? Nice name, I like that name. New and bright, and you look shiny as can be. This is my special gazpacho. Made from only the finest grown-in-Gaea ingredients." He chuckled again as he handed Nova a bowl. "Used to be, I'd come down once a year for a hot meal. Then I realized it'd been a while since I'd done it, and I hadn't missed it any."

"I think you came down twice, you old fool," Cirocco said. Calvin had a good laugh at that.

"Oh, now, Rocky. That can't be right. Can it?" He looked thoughtful for a moment, started to count on his fingers, but got lost quickly. Nova was trying not to laugh because she thought he'd be offended. He was quite nice, if befuddled.

"Now don't you be afraid of that, honey," he told her. "You treat it with respect, though. I don't much care for heating my food, but I don't mind it hot, if you catch my meaning."

Nova did not, unfortunately. She sniffed, and liked the smell, so she took a big spoonful. It was based on tomato and celery and was good and spicy and cold. She took another mouthful ... and then the first one hit her. She swallowed, gasped, and felt the stuff searing her nasal passages and burning behind her eyeballs. She lunged for the glass of mead and swallowed a whole beaker. It went down well. It had a honey taste.

Even the gazpacho was good, if taken in cautious sips. They all sat together and ate, and it was a fine meal, if a little noisy. All the raw vegetables crunched. They sounded like rabbits. Nova suspected she'd miss having meat after a while, but Calvin did well with his vegetarian, heatless cuisine.

And the mead was terrific. Not only did it cool down the spicier foods, it made her feel warm, loose, and nicely fuzzy around the edges.

"Time to wake up, Nova."

"Wha ... " She sat up quickly. Her head was hurting and she had a hard time focusing on Cirocco. "What time is it?"

"It's a few hours later." Cirocco smiled at her. "My dear, I think you got a wee bit drunk."

"I did?" She was about to tell Cirocco it was the first time, then realized it would make her sound like a child, so she laughed. Then she thought she was going to be sick, but the feeling passed. "Well, what do we do now?"

"That's it," Cirocco said. "We'll get you sobered up a little, then we go back to the Junction. I'm ready to move."

SEVEN

The Titanides had labored eight revs to produce the feast. There was a whole roasted smiler, and eels and fish cooked, jellied, stuffed back into their skins, and suspended artfully in clear savory aspic. The fruit course was a towering edifice shaped like a Christmas tree, bulging with a hundred varieties of Gaean berries, melons, pommes, and citrines, garnished by leaves of spun green sugar and glowing internally from a myriad of glowbees. There were ten pates, seven kinds of bread, three soup tureens, rickety pagodas of smiler ribs, clever pastries with crusts thin as soap bubbles ... the mind reeled. Cirocco had not seen such a spread since the last Purple Carnival, twenty years ago.

There was enough food for a hundred humans or twenty Titanides. With just nine people to eat it all.

Cirocco took a little of this and a little of that, and sat back, chewing slowly, watching her companions. It was a shame, really, that she was not hungrier. Everything tasted very good.

She knew she was the luckiest of women. Long, long ago, when she might have worried about her weight, it had never been necessary. She could eat as much as she wanted and never put on a gram. Since becoming Wizard her mass had been as low as forty kilograms-after a sixty-day fast-and as high as seventy-five. It was largely a matter of conscious choice. Her body had no fixed metabolic set point.

Just now she was at the high end of that range. Three visits to the fountain of youth in less than a kilorev was an unprecedented frequency. She had an even layer of fat all over her body, and her breasts, buttocks, and thighs had become voluptuous. She smiled inwardly, remembering how the tall and gangly, slat-thin fifteen-year-old Cirocco Jones would have killed for breasts like this. The tredenscenial Cirocco found them a minor but necessary nuisance. They would come in handy in the grueling days ahead. Eventually they would be consumed.In the meantime, Conal was acting even more awe-struck than usual. He was sitting to her left, having a good time. Robin sat next to him. They kept offering things to each other. Since no one could eat much of any one thing, it made sense to point out a special delicacy, but Cirocco suspected it was more than that with these two. She thought if the meal had been stale C-rations, they would still be giggling like kids.