Demon (novel)
Demon is a science fiction novel by American writer John Varley, published in 1984. The third and final book in his Gaea Trilogy, it was nominated to the Locus Award.
Plot summary
Demon takes place in the years 2113 through 2121, thirteen to twenty-one years after the events of Wizard. Cirocco Jones has become a combination fugitive and resistance leader, staying alive in spite of the forces of Gaea by virtue of her unusual abilities, and with the help of friends and allies. These include the race of Titanides, who remain loyal to the Captain, as they call Jones, rather than to Gaea; and the race of Angels, who call her the Wing Commander. The militant creations of Gaea, once limited to the buzz-bombs, have expanded to include horrifying beings called Priests, each one made by Gaea from parts of her human victims. The Priests, named after significant religious figures from the past, carry out her dirty work as a class of undead field commanders, supported by bands of zombies. These are made from the corpses of humans who die in the wheel and — unless cremated — become infested with creatures called deathsnakes and arise to walk again as zombies.Due to the aging process in the body of Gaea, some regions are out of her control as the regional "brain" has died or, according to Gaea herself, become part of a rebellion against her. In the region known as Dione the local brain is dead, allowing Cirocco and her companions some degree of safety from Gaea, if not from her agents. Dione is in permanent twilight due to its position in the wheel. It is also the location of the anarchic human city of Bellinzona. Meanwhile, Gaea has developed advanced versions of the "buzz bombs" from the previous novel, up to and including jet bombers capable of dropping bombs and deploying semi-intelligent heat-seeking missiles. These live in squadrons high up on the support cables of regions loyal to Gaea, ready to drop on any armies below.
Plot
The increasingly demented and film-obsessed Gaea has replaced the Avatar that Jones destroyed at the end of Wizard with a new one, a replica of Marilyn Monroe. She spends her time in a travelling film festival of her own making, called Pandemonium, where she is attended by various humans, zombies, and many bizarre creatures of her own creation, such as living film cameras.Earth meanwhile is in the grip of a slow nuclear war, possibly started by Gaea herself. Some survivors are rescued by mysterious pods called mercy flights that bring them to Gaea. They are cured of all their physical ills, and then, still mentally damaged, dumped in the twilight city of Bellinzona, an anarchic place run by criminals. All this means that humankind's future is now in the wheel, and at the mercy of its senile ruler.
More of Gaea's earlier plotting comes to light when it is revealed that all the captured Ringmaster crew were fitted with a parasitic, worm-like spy right inside their brains, which broadcast their every thought and perception to Gaea. Records of all these experiences and perceptions have been kept in the hub and nerve-center of the habitat — as a result of which Gaby's personality has survived her physical death, and she now exists as a rogue intelligence. She is able to communicate with Cirocco, and together they hatch plans for the future of the wheel. Cirocco's own brain parasite is extracted by a Titanide surgeon and imprisoned in a jar. Nicknamed Snitch, it is both a creature in its own right, which can talk, feel pain, and apparently recover from any injury, and is a part of Gaea's fragmented and disintegrating mind. As such, it becomes a source of information on her schemes, which Cirocco ruthlessly exploits through a mixture of torture and bribery: Snitch has emerged from her alcohol-addled brain with an addiction to liquor.
Chris Major has stayed in Gaea, where he is mutating into a Titanide. Robin of the Coven had returned to her people in the interim, and now returns to Gaea, along with her two children: a 19-year-old daughter named Nova, and an infant son, Adam. Having a son is anathema in her female-only community. It is revealed that the children were not planned, but are offspring of herself and Chris, owing to genetic material somehow planted in her when she last was on Gaea and triggered to implant at later times.
Robin, along with her children, is reunited with Chris and Cirocco, whereupon the distraught Nova immediately develops a crush on Cirocco. They also meet a friend and lieutenant of Cirocco's, Conal Ray, originally a none-too-bright bodybuilder from Canada and a descendant of Ringmaster crew member Gene. Chris asks Robin for custody of Adam, as his last link to humanity when he becomes a Titanide.
After a short period of peace, Gaea's agents kidnap Adam. Cirocco becomes aware that the infant boy shares her ability to activate Titanide eggs, and therefore represents the race's future, as well as a means of controlling them. Gaea has apparently arranged his birth so he can be Cirocco's successor, and his kidnapping to force her into a confrontation. After a failed rescue attempt by the group, Chris decides to take his chances by surrendering to Pandemonium, now permanently located in the region of Hyperion, so that he can be near Adam. The new Pandemonium is a fortified area dedicated to classic Hollywood themes, including a Yellow Brick Road and a replica of the house "Tara" from Gone with the Wind. Returning to base, Cirocco finds that all the zombies used in the kidnapping have mysteriously died. The cause appears to be a "love potion" that Nova concocted from kitchen spices along with her own blood and pubic hair. This appears to be yet another latent prank on Gaea's part, but it is used to exterminate the "death snakes" that create the zombies. This leaves Gaea with a labor shortage in the new Pandemonium. Her senility has advanced to the point that she can no longer create new hazards for the human and Titanide populations.
Some months pass while Cirocco's forces regroup and make a new plan. Now desperate to recover Adam, who is beginning to see Gaea as a mother figure, Cirocco uses her influence among the Titanides to conquer Bellinzona, imposing law and order with the intent of eventually raising an army to attack Pandemonium. In time, through her unusual mixture of charisma and ruthlessness, she manages to transform the inhabitants' disorganized chaos into a genuine community. She co-opts groups such as the "Free Females" and "Vigilantes", who used force to protect their enclaves, while killing off the gangster leaders who ruled much of the city.
When Cirocco finally launches her attack, she has to guide nearly 40,000 human soldiers and several thousand Titanides some 600 kilometers around the wheel, while dealing with the various horrors living in the regions of the wheel, and fending off attacks from the Gaean Air Force, the successors to the old buzz-bombs. These new creatures are armed with rocket bullets, smart missiles, and bombs. On Cirocco's side are a set of highly advanced airplanes that she imported from Earth to destroy the first set of buzz-bombs. The pilots are a hastily assembled collection of people trained by Conal. With help from Gaby Plauget, Cirocco enlists the help of some of the Angels in a preemptive strike to destroy the Air Force's refueling bases. This prevents most of the attackers from reaching her army. Conal's own air force destroy the rest at the cost of several planes, including Conal's own. He parachutes down to join Cirocco's army.
When the army finally reaches Pandemonium, Cirocco's attack is a mixture of display and deadly force. Robin's former familiar Nasu, an anaconda lost in the previous novel, has become gigantic living in the Wheel. She attacks Gaea, who proves to be able to restore her body from any injury after killing Nasu. Whistlestop the blimp, with the aged and dying Calvin inside, attempts to immolate Gaea in a Hindenburg-like blaze. Eventually Gaea is lured out of the city, enabling part of the army to rescue Adam while Cirocco and Gaea face off. At that moment Gene, old and addled, and living next to the dead remnant of one of the former regional brains, sets off the final blow by destroying with dynamite one of Gaea's major nerve-centers in full view of his own mind-parasite, which Gaby has removed from his head. Gaea is disoriented enough for Gaby to force her out of the hub, leading to the destruction of the giant Marilyn Monroe avatar in a scene reminiscent of the climactic battle in King Kong. The last fragment of Gaea's mind, in the shape of Snitch, dies in Cirocco's hand. Gaea's final act is to paraphrase last words from a classic movie, Little Caesar. Cirocco is then lifted bodily into the air to join Gaby in the hub of the Wheel.
Gaby, now the new divinity of the wheel, reveals to Cirocco that Gaea was in fact an entity distinct from it and that those changes of 'management' are a regular occurrence in the enormously long life-cycle of those entities. All the plotting perpetrated by Gaea throughout the trilogy was aimed at securing her demise and replacement in a manner entertaining and flamboyant enough to suit her. Gaby invites Cirocco to share the position with her, but the former Wizard declines, choosing instead to simply live free for the first time in nearly a century. As she ponders her new and free future, she wonders what she will do next. She leans over, falling from the top of the spoke toward the ground 600 kilometers below, leaving her fate to chance — she is now finally free to live only for herself.
Characters
- Cirocco Jones, former Captain of the ship Ringmaster, former Wizard serving Gaea, now the Demon and enemy of Gaea. Thanks to treatments she received as Wizard, and with continued visits to a location known as the Fountain of Youth, she has unusual abilities, endurance, strength and wisdom.
- Gaea, a being who represents herself as the embodiment and god of the rotating space habitat known as the wheel. In this novel she manifests as a 50-foot tall replica of Marilyn Monroe, living on the rim of the habitat instead of, as before, in the hub.
- Chris Major, a former pilgrim to Gaea who remained in the wheel after his cure. He formed an emotional relationship with the Titanide known as Valiha and is slowly mutating into a Titanide himself.
- Robin the Nine-Fingered, another pilgrim who was cured by Gaea and returned to her home, known as the Coven, in an O'Neill habitat in orbit. The Coven see themselves as witches and practice lesbianism, regarding males as evil. After her return Robin rose to the top of their ruling hierarchy, until her son Adam was born, ruining her life and forcing her to migrate back to Gaea with Adam and her teenage daughter Nova. Both children were fathered by Chris thanks to Gaea's interference in their lives. Robin finds herself attracted to men, to Chris in the previous novel, and to Conal in this one.
- Nova, Robin's tall athletic daughter. She is attracted to Cirocco, accidentally finds a way to kill off the zombies that Gaea has created, and becomes part of the ruling council in Bellinzona, with her mother.
- Gaby Plauget, formerly assistant to the Wizard before her death, now a rogue intelligence inhabiting the same AI matrix as Gaea. Over the course of the novel she becomes more and more powerful and able to manifest herself to her allies.
- Conal Ray, great-great-grandson of Ringmaster's Gene Springfield, who became an avid bodybuilder in his native Canada before going to Gaea to kill Cirocco, blaming her for his grandfather's death. After being captured and tortured by Cirocco to determine if he was a creature of Gaea, he swore allegiance to her. He also discovered that Gene was still alive.
- Rocky, a Titanide and Conal's close friend. Originally named "Phase-shifter Rock'n'Roll" according to Titanide custom, he was renamed by Cirocco so that nobody would use that name for her. Rocky is both a healer and a fighter. During the course of the story he decides to become a "hindmother", birthing a new Titanide from an egg conceived by himself and Valiha, with Valiha's son Serpent as the "hindfather", who implants and quickens the egg. The new Titanide, already able to communicate with Rocky from within the womb, is called Tambura.
- Trini, introduced in the previous novel as a freelance sex worker, now the leader of the Free Females organization in anarchic Bellinzona.
- Stuart, leader of the Vigilante organization in Bellinzona. Cirocco suspects him of having wielded political power in the past, and having the will to do it again.
- "Luther", one of Gaea's "Priests". Originally the mild-mannered Pastor Lundquist, he was killed and reassembled as Luther. His body is slowly decaying, making it difficult for him to walk and talk, though he has a charisma that can beguile the unwary. He travels with a collection of zombies whom he names for the Apostles. He remembers enough of who he was for Gaby to use him as part of her plan. He dies while opening a gate into Pandemonium so that Cirocco's army can enter to rescue Adam and Chris.
- Calvin, one of Ringmaster's crew who went to live in the giant blimp known as Whistlestop, and who is slowly dying of old age. Whistlestop has become enormous over time, being almost two kilometers long and the largest being in Gaea, after Gaea herself.
- Gene Springfield, one of Ringmaster's crew who became an agent of Gaea, raping both Gaby and Cirocco and eventually killing Gaby. Like the others he has become unnaturally long-lived, but he retains scars from all his injuries, mostly inflicted by Cirocco in their encounters. He takes refuge in the cavern once occupied by the brain controlling the region known as Oceanus, which Gaea pretends is her enemy. The brain died long ago, driving Gaea partly mad in the process, and has been replaced by a giant nerve nexus linking the adjoining regions. When Gaby manifests herself to Cirocco and Conal, taking them to Gene, he behaves like a stereotypical corn-pone comedy character from a western, rather than the intelligent pilot he used to be.