Demon

Tambura was alive and aware and in communication with Rocky at all times. It was not verbal-though Tambura had words-nor was it musical-though Tambura spent much time singing the strange songs of the womb. As her outer brain grew into something quite similar to a human brain, but with a cybernetic egg at its core, Rocky filled the developing layers with his love, his song... his soul.

In many ways, for a Titanide, pregnancy was the best part of life.

Rocky broke off his communication with his daughter when he smelled violence. There was a change in the way the air felt. He had felt that change often lately.

Looking ahead along the causeway he saw the source. He felt tired, and wondered how human cops had handled their jobs. The situations were so predictable, and yet each one was dangerously different.

He took his hand-weapon out of his pouch and checked the magazine. It was a totally different type of weapon from the one he had carried, reluctantly, that day so many revs ago when he had come to Bellinzona to operate on his Captain. This was a twenty-second century weapon, and had been designed and ordered with Gaean conditions in mind. Most of the principles were the same, but the materials were different. Rocky's gun contained no metal. It looked like a long, narrow cardboard roll attached to a grip. There were short fins around the middle of the carbon-ceramic barrel; these glowed bright red for a second when the gun was fired.

The grip-which was too small for Rocky's hand-contained forty tiny rockets tipped with lead. The projectile was eased through the barrel at a relative snail's pace, then accelerated fiercely, cracking the sound barrier within one meter of the muzzle.

It was a marvelous weapon. Rocky hated it. From the way it felt in his pouch to the ugly results of its terrible accuracy, it was an evil thing through and through. He hoped the day would come when all such things could be erased from the land of Gaea.

In the meantime, he approached the shouting people.

A man had taken a woman by the upper arm and was pulling her along behind him as she shouted obscenities at him. He returned them, insult for insult. A crying child was following the two. A small group had formed to watch, but not to interfere. Rocky had seen the same events a dozen times, it seemed.

As he approached, the man-who must not have seen Rocky-finally stopped and hit the woman with his fist. He hit her again, and a third time ... and then both of them noticed there was a Titanide standing very close with a gun pointed at them.

"Release her at once," Rocky said.

"Look, I didn't mean-"

Rocky tapped him lightly on the head in the place he had been taught would produce the fewest side-effects later, and the man crumpled. The woman, as Rocky had half-expected, quickly knelt beside the fallen man and began to cry as she held his head.

"Don't take him in!" she sobbed. "It was my fault."

"Stand up," Rocky ordered her. When she did not, he pulled her up. She wasn't wearing enough to conceal a weapon. He reached behind him, into his saddlebag, and came up with a short steel knife of the type already labeled "nutcutters" by the Bellinzonans.

"You are advised to carry this at all times," he told her.

"I won't! I don't need a knife."

"As you please." Rocky returned it to its place. "Today you're okay. In another hectorev you will be in violation of the law if you do not go armed. The penalty will be one kilorev in a labor camp for the first offense. Check the community bulletin boards for specifics, as ignorance is not acceptable as an excuse. If you ca

She came at him, fists flying awkwardly. He had expected it. He wanted witnesses, and he wanted her to hit him, mostly because he didn't like the idea of leaving the crying child with her. He let her land a few blows, then made her unconscious.

"Assault on a police officer," he informed the crowd, and no one had any objection. The child cried louder. He was about eight, Rocky thought, but he could have been wrong. Ages of human children were tough for Titanides.

"Is this woman your mother?" he asked the child, who was too upset to even hear the question. Rocky looked at the crowd again.

"Does anyone know if this is the child's mother?"

One man stepped forward.

"Yeah, he's hers, or that's what she says."

It was possible that she was his natural mother. Rocky suspected she was, because she didn't seem to him the sort of woman who would adopt one of Bellinzona's endless foundlings.

"Is there anyone who is willing to take responsibility for him in this community?" That was a laugh, Rocky thought. Community. Still, it was the prescribed procedure, and Cirocco maintained that communities would develop. "If not, I will take him to the community creche, where he will be cared for until his mother returns from the labor camp."

Surprisingly, a man stepped forward.

"I'll take him," he said.

"Sir," Rocky began. "Your responsibilities in this situation are-"

"I know what they are. I read the goddamn bulletin boards. Very carefully. You just run along with those two, and I'll see this fellow has a place to sleep."

There was some anger in the man's words, some defiance. Humans will take care of their own, was the implication. But there was a grudging respect. Either way was fine with Rocky. He had the authority to make field decisions of this nature, and judged the boy would be all right in the man's care.

So he bound the prisoners and slung them over his back and headed for the jail. On the way there Tambura intruded into his mind again.

*Mother, what hurts?* Tambura's question was both much simpler and much more complex than the English translation. "Mother," for instance, was a gross oversimplification for the Titanide noun Tambura used. The question itself was more in the form of a wave of emotion.

*Events. Interpersonal and interspecies relations. Life.*

*Mother, do I have to be born?*

*You will love life, my child. Most of the time.*

FOURTEEN

Since the take-over, Nova had been busy as a witch with three holes in her spacesuit and only two patches.

Cirocco didn't seem to sleep at all. Nova had almost reached that state herself. It was now almost half a kilorev since the invasion. Nova had had little to do at first except record numbers of dead and wounded. But as laws were put into effect and the census got under way, her work load had increased. They were counting not only people, but dwellings, and an inventory of all formerly private property was contemplated.

Nova was in charge of the computers.

Can't run a revolution without computers, she thought.

Her title was Chief Bureaucrat. She didn't even know what it meant, except that it precluded her being out on the streets with a sword. That was okay with her. Now she fought only if it was unavoidable, and she was getting very good at avoiding it.

In that, she and Conal had a lot in common.

The thought of Conal irritated her for a moment. She looked away from her computer screen and went through some calming exercises.

There had been a fight upon their return from Pandemonium.

Nova had demanded to know if Gaea's assertions were merely propaganda. Robin, reluctantly, had told the truth. Nova had informed her that from that day forward, she no longer considered herself Robin's daughter.

She sighed, and pushed her hair out of her eyes.

Cirocco, in the endless meetings at the Junction before the invasion, had found out that Nova had a knack for ru