Demon

TWENTY-EIGHT

Cirocco found Conal sitting on a hillside, overlooking Boot Camp.

It was located on a big, long island in the middle of Moros. Tents had been set up. There was a big mess hall and a parade ground. The air was filled with the shouts of sergeants, and the tiny figures of new recruits marched in lines or scrambled over obstacle courses. He looked up as she sat beside him.

"Some place, huh?" she said.

"Not my favorite," Conal confessed. "But you're sure getting the recruits."

"Thirty thousand, last time I checked. I thought I'd have to offer bonuses in pay and food rations to get so many, but they keep coming. Isn't patriotism a wonderful thing?"

"I never thought about it much."

"You been thinking about it now?"

"Sure have." He gestured out over the fledgling Bellinzona Army. "You say they aren't going to have to fight. But I wonder. They look like they want to. Even..."

"After all they've seen on Earth," Cirocco finished. "I know. I thought it would be hard to raise a volunteer army here. But I don't think some ... deep, basic taste for warfare will ever be gone from the human race. One of these days Bellinzona will grow too big. We'll establish another city somewhere nearby, maybe in Iapetus. Not too long after that they'll start trading back and forth. And pretty soon they'll be fighting each other."

"Do they like ru

Cirocco shrugged.

"A few. The rest ... lots would go back home if they could. We didn't tell 'em enlistment's for the duration, and a medical discharge is the only way out. Half the people down there are thinking they made a mistake." She pointed to a fenced area. "That's the stockade. It's a lot worse than the work camps. When they get out, they soldier very hard."

Conal knew that; he knew a lot of the things she had just said. He had spent some time here, trying to understand it. He had been born much too late for the days of large armies. Military discipline was foreign and frightening to him. The soldiers he talked to seemed ... different.

"They're sure getting ready to fight," Conal observed. It was true. The drilling below was in earnest. Sword production was way up. Each soldier was to be provided with a short sword, a hardened-leather chest-plate or-for the officers-one of bronze, an iron helmet, good boots and trousers ... the basic infantry equipment. They were organized into legions and cohorts, and had learned Roman tactics. There were legions of archers. There were combat engineers learning how to construct siege towers and catapults, which would be built on the site from native materials. Some units had already departed, and were busy in Iapetus and Cronus repairing the bridges of the old Circum-Gaea Highway.

"They have to be ready," Cirocco said. "If the big fight, the one between me and Gaea... if I lose that, the war won't be over for those soldiers. They'll be stuck a long way from home, and Gaea won't call it off. She's got maybe a hundred thousand people in Pandemonium, and they'll all fight. They won't be trained-Gaea's too slipshod. But our people will be outnumbered four to one. I owe it to them to see they're ready to fight."

Conal took a moment to add this up in his head.

"But we've already got thirty thousand, and more coming ... "

"Some will die along the way, Conal." He turned to look at her, and saw she was watching for his reaction.

"That many?"

"No. I intend to do some weeding out. But there will be casualties. How many is up to you, in part."

He understood that, too. These "Roman" legions would march under the constant threat of air attack. It would be his job to fight off the Gaean Air Force.

"How many planes? Do you know that yet?"

"Buzz bombs? I'm pretty sure there are eight combat groups left. That's eighty planes. How's the training going, by the way?"

"Very well. I've got more good pilots now than I have planes."

"Well, in planes, what you've got is all you'll ever have. Don't waste any."

Conal was momentarily a

"Conal ... maybe this is a bad time to bring this up. I just got back from a trip with Robin, and I detected a ... nervousness about her."

"What do you mean? What kind of nervousness?"

"Oh... I got the feeling that ... maybe she was afraid I was enjoying all this too much." She gestured with her head out toward the camp, but the gesture implied a lot more.

Conal had had the same thought.

"It did occur to me," he said, "that nobody's going to take your job away from you. Not even if you stood for election."

"You're right."

"It's a great deal of power."

"It is, indeed. I told you something of what it would be like when we all first discussed this. But hearing about it and seeing it are two different things."

Conal felt a coldness creeping over him. It hadn't happened in a long time. The hub of his universe was this enigma called Cirocco Jones. Their relationship had begun in blood and agony. It had moved slowly through the politics of terror and submission, into acceptance, to something close to worship ... and finally to friendship.

But there was always a tiny chip of dry ice down there in his soul.

There had been a time, up in that cave, when he thought he was going to die. Cirocco and Hornpipe had not been back in over a kilorev. What little food had been stored for him was long gone. He existed in a half-waking state appropriate to the unchanging light. He watched the meat melt off his bones, and knew they had abandoned him.

That didn't seem right. He hadn't expected Cirocco to do that.

But it made him feel oddly superior. He had learned some lessons about himself, and the fellow who starved to death in a few more weeks would be a better man than the one who walked up to the black-clad stranger in the Titanide bar. If she let him die, it would be her loss.

Then Hornpipe had clambered into the cave one "day," and Conal's new-built world crashed around him. They were testing me, he thought. Let him get hungry, see what he thinks about that. So what if he goes a little crazy? It'll make him more manageable.

It lasted only a fraction of a second. Then he saw that Hornpipe was badly injured, bleeding from a dozen wounds, one arm in a sling. How he had made it up here in such a state ...

"I am deeply shamed," Hornpipe had said, in a weary voice. "Had it been within the realm of possibility, I would have been here long since. But we have been unable to move. Cirocco bade me bring you her word that, should she survive, she will apologize to you personally. But live or die, she now grants you your freedom from this place. You should never have been left here."

Conal had been filled with a thousand questions, none of which seemed important when he saw the food. Hornpipe prepared a meal of broth, and stayed with him a short time to be sure he was going to be all right. He would not answer any questions, when Conal got around to asking them, except to say Cirocco had been badly injured but was in a moderately safe place.

Then the Titanide had left again, leaving a cache of food in glass jars, a stove and some fuel, and a parachute. He explained its operation, assuring him his chances of survival were excellent if he were forced to use it-at least until he was on the ground. But Hornpipe emphasized that the cave was, at that moment, the safest place in Gaea, and that he was going to bring Cirocco there for that very reason. Terrible things were abroad in the land, Hornpipe told him, and he would do well to stay until the food ran out. Hornpipe swore that nothing but his own death would prevent him from returning to the cave. If Hornpipe didn't show up before the food was gone, Conal was to jump.