Demon

"You really should have something there," he said. "There's a bad glare."

"Have what there?"

"Make-up."

"Is that really necessary?"

"Ms. Jones, you said you wanted a media consultant. I'm just telling you how I'd do this if I were ru

Cirocco sighed, and nodded. One of the Titanides had some cream that the man seemed satisfied with. He smeared her face with the greasy stuff.

"Picture's pretty good," the other man a

"Then we'd best get to it," said the director. He picked up the mike and spoke into it. "Citizens of Bellinzona," he said, and was drowned out by a high feedback whine. The other man adjusted some knobs, and the man spoke again. This time it was clear. Cirocco could hear the words echoing off the hills outside.

"Citizens of Bellinzona," the director said again. "We have an important a

A Free Female was at the window, looking up.

"The picture's there!" she shouted.

Cirocco cleared her throat nervously, fought an impulse to smile brightly that had to have come from her NASA press conference days, a million years ago, and spoke.

"Citizens of Bellinzona. My name is Cirocco Jones. Many of you have heard of me; I was one of the first humans in Gaea, and for a time I was designated by Gaea to be her Wizard. Twenty years ago, I was fired from that job.

"It is important that you understand that, while Gaea fired me, the Titanides never accepted it. Every one of them will follow my orders. I have never taken full advantage of this fact. I am doing so now, and the results will change all your lives.

"As of this moment, you are all, as I said, 'Citizens of Bellinzona'.You'll be wondering what that entails. Essentially, it means you'll all take my orders. I have plans for democracy later, but as of now, you'd better do what I tell you.

"There are now some thousands of Titanides in your city. Each of them has been briefed on the new rules. Think of them as police. To underestimate their strength or their quickness would be a bad mistake.

"Since you are going to be living by rules, I'll give you some now. More will follow, after we have this thing going.

"Murder is not going to be tolerated.

"Slavery is prohibited. All human beings now in a state of slavery are freed. All humans who believe they own other humans had better free them at once. This includes any practice which may, through custom, deprive any other human of liberty. If you're in doubt-if, for instance, you are muslim and believe you own your wife-you had better ask a Titanide. There is a ten-hour amnesty for this purpose.

"Human meat will no longer be sold. Any human consorting with an Iron Master will be shot on sight.

"There is no private property. You may continue to sleep where you have been sleeping, but do not think you own anything but the clothes you wear.

"There shall be no edged weapons allowed in human hands for at least four decarevs. Surrender those weapons to any Titanide during the amnesty. As quickly as possible, I shall be returning the police function to humans. In the meantime, possession of a sword or a knife is a capital offense. I recognize the hardship this will pose to you who use knives for other purposes, but, I emphasize, you will be shot dead if you keep your knives.

"I ... have little good to offer you in the short term. I believe that in the long term, most of you will appreciate what I am doing today. Only the exploiters, the slavers, the killers, will never regain their present positions. The rest of you will reap security and the benefits of an organized human society.

"I demand to see the following persons at the building known as the Loop within ten hours. Any who do not come will be shot in the eleventh hour."

Cirocco read a list of twenty-five names, compiled with Conal's help, of the most influential mafia, tong, and gang leaders.

When she had finished, she read the statement in French, and once more in her halting Russian. Then she relinquished her chair to a woman from the Free Females who read it in Chinese. There were a dozen other translators waiting, human and Titanide. Cirocco hoped to reach every new citizen of Bellinzona.

She felt drained when she was finally able to sit by herself. She had worked on the speech endlessly, it seemed, and was never able to make it sound good. It seemed to her there ought to be ringing declarations in there someplace. Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness, maybe. But after a lot of thought, she realized there wasn't anything she believed in as a capital R "Right." Could any mortal claim a Right to Life?

So she had fallen back on pragmatism. It had served her fairly well through a long and pragmatic life. "This is the way it is, you poor silly suckers. Get in my way and you will be obliterated."

Even starting from the best of motives, that didn't taste so good in her mouth-and she was far from sure of her motives.

Life in Bellinzona was not what you could call dull. Violent death was all around and could happen at a moment's notice. For the well-co

There were always the needs of survival, of course. That kept people busy. But it was not like having a job. It was not like farming one's own fields-or even the fields of a landlord. In most neighborhoods people owed allegiance to a Boss, a Shogun, a Landlord, a Capo ... some local Mr. Big. For a woman it was even worse, unless she happened to have been taken in by the Free Females. Female slavery was rampant. It was more than the labor-slavery experienced by the men. It was old-fashioned sexual slavery. Women were bought and sold ten times as frequently as men.

And at the end of one's usefulness, there was the butcher's block.

Actually, there was relatively little killing for food. It happened, but with the ma

Boredom was a big problem. It bred crime-senseless random crime-as if Bellinzona needed any more reasons for violence.

It would be fair to say Bellinzona was ripe for a change. Any change.

So when the blimp drifted over the city, things ground to a halt.

Bellinzonans had seen blimps, from afar. They knew they were large. Many had no idea they were intelligent. Most knew the blimps never came near the city because of all the fires.

Whistlestop apparently didn't care. He mooched up to the city as if he did it every day, and spread his gargantuan shadow from the Slough of Despond clear out to the Terminal Wharves. He was almost as big as Peppermint Bay itself. Then he just hung there, by far the largest object anyone in town had ever seen. His titanic hind fins moved languidly, just enough to keep him positioned over the center of town.

That in itself would have been enough to stop traffic. Then a face appeared on his side, and began to say the most amazing things.

TWELVE

Twenty revs after usurping power, Cirocco was wishing she had left Bellinzona alone. She had anticipated the squabbles, but it didn't alter the fact that squabbles bored her. She sighed, and kept listening. It was best, at this point, if those she hoped would be her allies accepted the fact without the sort of demonstration that had been so useful with Maleski.