Demon

Virginal held back from the two, at Nova's request. The young witch and former bureaucrat-she had resigned after a shouting match with Cirocco, and been replaced by someone from Trini's faction-wanted to give her mother and her mother's lover all the time together they could get. There was a new, more mature relationship between witch and Titanide. Nova was not yet perfect, according to Virginal, but she was getting there. She had said that many times, and each time they would laugh harder. Virginal, for her part, was ashamed of her own behavior. The lecture from her hindmother when she heard of the scene with Nova still stung.

Every so often Nova would reach down to her waist and finger the spell bag that hung from her belt. It was beautifully embroidered with an ancient Yin-Yang symbol, and contained the Zombie-dust she had inadvertently discovered and which must, by law, be carried at all times by every Bellinzonian. The bags had quickly become general-purpose good luck charms. This one had been given to her by a shy Korean girl named Li, who still had a lot of trouble with English but spoke the universal language of love very well indeed. There had been a steamy send-off. Nova found it hard to believe she had overlooked such beauty and sensitivity for so long. Li had worked in her Statistics Bureau. Could this be love? Nova wondered. Well, maybe. It was too early to tell. But Li was someone to write home to, someone to keep the home fires burning.

At the head of the column, Cirocco Jones sat very straight, aware that the Army could see her out there, and kept her own counsel.

The Generals had warned her the first day's march was too long for unseasoned troops. The camp had been prepared deep in Iapetus a hectorev before, with tents that would be struck and added to the burden of the goods wagons.

Cirocco knew it was too far, and had intended that it be. She was decimating again.

So she marched her troops mercilessly through the increasing heat and unending light of Iapetus. They began passing out. As they did, they were loaded onto the wagons. When they finally reached camp most of the army was in a state of exhaustion. Not a few officers had fallen by the wayside.

"Here's what we do," she told the assembled top brass-before they had a chance at the mess tent. "Those soldiers who fainted or who have a medical problem as a result of today's march will remain here. At this site they will build Pontus Camp with materials at hand. They will keep their weapons and other equipment, but the wagons will go with us. Pontus will be fortified, and be the permanent home of two Cohorts of one Legion. The other three Cohorts will establish similar but smaller outposts to the north, south, and east. The job of these detachments will be to improve the highway and keep it open, and to fight a delaying action should an attack come from Hyperion. They will be under the command of the General of the Third Division, in Bellinzona. Send a messenger to inform him of this. And requisition what wagons are needed to carry back the most serious medical cases, those that go beyond mere exhaustion. All clear?"

No one had the strength to argue with her.

TWO

Four hundred fifty kilometers to the west, and five kilometers beneath the ground, Nasu slithered through the darkness until she came to a long, narrow tu

She knew these places, and hated them, in her cool and ponderous reptilian brain. She did not want to go into the tu

She probed it with her tongue, and tasted hatred. Almost a kilometer away, great coils of her mid-section writhed in indecision and eagerness to go. Her tail actually started to crawl away. It took some time for impulses to get from the gallon of gray matter she used as a brain down to the nethermost extension, which increasingly was not in agreement with headquarters.

The immense bodily conflict caused acids to squirt into her monstrous digestive cavity, which would have been painful enough, but the acid set up a great galumphing uproar that caused her sides to bulge out unpredictably. The reason for this was simple: she had recently devoured seventy-eight of the slow-moving, blind, and elephantine creatures, called Heffalumps, who resided in this darkness, and they did not die easy. Twenty-six of them were still alive, and they didn't like acid any more than Nasu did.

Acid. Hyperion. The Robin-thing. Go to Hyperion. Acid. Robin.

These concepts floated through her mind like disco

Once in motion, Nasu was impossible to stop. She barreled through the tu

She encountered the acid far later than she had expected to. By then there was no question of stopping. She plowed up a great wake of it, shutting her eyes tight. But she could see through the translucent lids as she entered the deep sanctum of Cronus, faithful friend of Gaea.

Cronus howled his rage, humiliation, and pain. It didn't stop the snake. She selected the easternmost of three tu

It hurt like hell. Doing this was what had turned her white. She would be shedding her skin again soon, and that helped, but only a little. It burned her eyelids away. They would grow back, but the pain would be intense.

And it was still hurting, of course, way back there, but the signals were slow to arrive. She burst forth into the cavernous darkness of the East Cronus maze and kept going until she was sure she was out. Then she began to writhe, thumping monstrous coils of herself against the rock. The twenty-six surviving heffalumps were quickly killed. Had anyone been standing directly above, on Gaea's i

But the pain didn't stop for a while. Nasu curled herself into a tight ball with her head somewhere near the center, and waited for healing to come.

Only one more to go, she thought.

THREE

Cronus was royally pissed.

When you are the lord and master of a hundred thousand square kilometers of land area-plus the endless caverns beneath them, and, in a sense, the air above them-and you get maybe one visitor in ten myriarevs and aren't even very enthused about getting that one ... well, it just really narks you to have some frigging nightmare reptile come barreling through your home like a runaway freight train. It just confirmed his bitter opinion. The goddamn wheel was going in the toilet. Nothing worked anymore. Everything sucked.

He'd been faithful to Gaea for mille

When that schizo Mnemosyne slipped off the deep end and started blubbering in her beer, boo hoo-hoo, about what that lousy sandworm was doing to her stinking forests, did he lose faith in Gaea? He did not.

And even when she foisted that back-stabbing Cirocco Jones bitch on him, told him Jones was now the Wizard and he had to make nice to her, did he make trouble? No, not good old Cronus. Served her right when Jones ...