Demon

Completely surrounding the studio grounds was a wall thirty kilometers in circumference, and thirty meters high. Or at least, that was the plan. Most of the wall was finished, but some sections had reached only two or three meters. The wall was made of basaltic stone quarried from the southern highlands, forty kilometers away, and brought to Pandemonium over a second Iron Master railway. It was built along the general lines of the Great Wall of China, but higher and wider. And it was adorned by a monorail track that ran along the i

Outside the wall was a moat filled with sharks.

The wall was pierced by twelve gates, like a clock face. The gates were arched, reached by sturdy causeways that ended in drawbridges, and were twenty meters tall-high enough for Gaea to walk through without lowering her head. Flanking each gate just inside the wall were temples, two at every gate, each presided over by a Priest and his or her troops. Gaea had put a lot of thought into the location of each temple. It was her belief that a certain amount of tension among her disciples made for both better discipline and interesting and unpla

Thus, the Universal Gate, located at twelve o'clock, the northernmost of the New Pandemonium gates, was guarded by Brigham and his Boys to the east of the gate, and Joe Smith and the Gadianton Robbers to the west. Brigham and Joe thoroughly detested each other, as befitted the leaders of rival sects within the same overall belief system.

Over a mile away, in the one o'clock position, was the Goldwyn Gate. Luther's huge unadorned chapel, filled with his twelve disciples and uncounted pastors, faced the Vatican of Pope Joan, teeming with Cardinals, Archbishops, bishops, statues, bleeding hearts, virgins, rosaries, and other popery. Luther seethed when the once-a-hectorev bingo games were held, and spat every time he passed the booth which did a brisk business in indulgences.

Two o'clock was the Paramount Gate, where Kali and her Thugs and Krishna and his Orangemen conducted endless stealthy intrigues against each other.

Three was the RKO Radio Gate. Blessed Foster and Father Brown gave virulent life to their respective fictional characters.

At four was Columbia Gate, where Marybaker had her reading room and Elron his E-meters and engrams.

Near the First National Gate, the Ayatollah and Erasmus X conducted a perpetual jihad from their dissimilar mosques.

The Fox Gate was relatively tranquil, the Gautama and Siddhartha only seldom resorting to violence, and that often directed at themselves. The main diversion at Fox was an interloper Priest named Gandhi, who kept trying to shoulder his way into the temples.

And so it went, around the huge clock of New Pandemonium. The Warner Gate was the arena for Shinto and Sony in their ceaseless battle of new and old. The MGM Gate was raucous with the perpetual revivals of Billy Sunday and Aimee Semple McPherson. Keystone was guarded by Confucius and Tze-Dong, Disney by The Guru Mary and St. Claus, and United Artists by St. Torquemada and St. Valentine.

There were other, disenfranchised Priests, whose holy places were far from the gates. Mumbo Jumbo of the Congo stalked the Studio in a black rage, muttering of discrimination, which was just as Gaea had intended. Wicca, Mensa, Trotsky, and I. C. grumbled about the emphasis on tradition, and the Mahdi and many others complained about the pro-Christian leanings of the entire New Pandemonium myth-system.

None of them voiced their complaints to Gaea, however. And all felt deep and sincere allegiance to the Child.

Leading from each gate was a street paved with gold.

At least that had been in the original specifications. In practice, Gaea did not contain and could not manufacture enough gold for that many streets. So eleven of the streets had been paved for fifty meters with bricks of pure gold, followed by a kilometer of gold-plated bricks, with the remainder of bricks covered with gold paint which was already flaking off.

Only the Universal street was pure gold from end to end. And at the far end was Tara, the Taj Mahal/Plantation-house/palace that housed Adam, the Child. Yellow-brick road, indeed, Gaea thought, as she strode down the Twenty-four Carat Highway.

To her right and her left were the soundstages, barracks, commissaries, prop rooms, dressing rooms, equipment buildings, garages, executive offices, processing departments, cutting rooms, projection rooms, guild enclaves, and photofaun breeding pens of the greatest studio ever seen. And this, Gaea thought in vast satisfaction, is only one of twelve. Beyond the studio proper were the street sets-Manhattan 1930, Manhattan 1980, Paris, Teheran, Tokyo, Clavius, Westwood, London, Dodge City 1870-and beyond them were the back lots with their herds of cattle, sheep, buffalo, elephants, menageries of tropical birds and monkeys, riverboats, warships, Indians, and fog generators, stretching on each side to the next studio complexes: Goldwyn and United Artists. She paused and moved to one side to let a truck laden with cocaine sputter by her. It was zombie-driven. The creature at the wheel probably had never realized the pillar he had driven around was his Goddess; the top of the truck was not much above Gaea's ankle. It turned into the cocaine warehouse, which was almost full now. Gaea frowned. The Iron Masters were good at many things, but had never gotten the hang of the internal combustion engine. They liked steam a lot better.

She reached the Universal Gate. The portcullis was up, the drawbridge down. Brigham stood on one side of the road, and Joe Smith on the other, glowering at each other. But both Priests and all their Mormons and Normans ceased their internecine squabbles when Gaea loomed over them.

Gaea sca

The hapless fellow who had admitted to being a writer stood in golden chains. Gaea took her seat, which creaked alarmingly beneath her, and caused several grips to come close to cardiac arrest. A seat had collapsed once ...

"Begin," she muttered.

Brigham slit the writer's throat. He was hoisted on a boom, and his blood was smeared on the great turning globe above the Universal Gate.

Chris watched the ceremony from a high window of Tara. At that distance it was impossible to tell what was going on. One thing he was sure of: whatever was happening was murderous, and obscene, and demented, and a waste of life... .

He turned away and descended the stairs.

Chris had expected many things when he leaped from the plane, almost two kilorevs ago. None of them had been pleasant.

What had happened to him was not pleasant... but it was nothing like what he had expected.

At first he had wandered freely in the chaos of Pandemonium, avoiding the big fires, hoping against hope that he might locate Adam and flee into the countryside. That had not happened. He had been captured by humans and zombies, and by some things that seemed to be neither. He had killed a few of them, then been roughed up, bound, and knocked unconscious.

There had followed an uncertain time. He was kept in a large, windowless box, fed irregularly, given a pail for urination and defecation ... and plenty of time to get used to the idea that this would be his lot for the rest of his life.

Then he had been freed in this new place, this vast, incredible, bustling insane asylum called New Pandemonium, shown to his quarters in Tara, and been brought in for an audience with Adam. Everyone called him the Child, with the capital letter implicit in their speech. He was unharmed, and seemed to be thriving. Chris was not sure Adam recognized him, but the infant was quite willing to play games with him. Adam had a king's ransom in toys. Wonderful, clever toys, made from the finest materials and all utterly safe, with no sharp edges and nothing that could be swallowed. He also had two nurses, a hundred servants, and, Chris soon realized ... Chris. He was to become part of the household furnishings in Tara.