“Yes,” Torment translated. “It is not normal procedure, but in emergency—”
“We shall soon pass the major gas crevasse of the planet,” Arlo said. “The gas from this section funnels through to the fires near the prison region. If you can ignite the crevasse itself, Chthon’s thermal ecology will be disrupted. The animals will panic, perhaps throwing off Chthon’s control, and the mineral intellect’s own circuits will suffer.”
“I shall make the attempt,” the Lfa signaled.
“Here,” Arlo said. And the Lfa tumbled off, breaking up into scattered parts of junk as it struck the stone.
“Now the Xest. We are approaching the probable site of ambush. We shall try to avoid it narrowly, distracting Chthon so that the activity of the EeoO and Lfa is not noted. You brought the Taphid?”
“Yes,” the Xest signaled. It was now almost blindingly orange.
“Thaw it in a hurry. Even Chthon will require some time to establish control over hungry Turlingian Aphids, and meanwhile they will provide excellent distraction for us. We shall drop them in the path of our pursuers.”
“But then we cannot—”
“Have no concern. In this situation, your personal debt limit is off. You may—and may have to!—replicate as copiously as possible. I presume your fragments reform into sentient entities rapidly?”
“Virtually instantaneously. That is why we require the Taphid, for it acts rapidly without separating any individuals. One is loath to dispense with it. Are you sure—?”
“What is the debt limit for saving the existence of all life in the galaxy?”
“That is not our mode of appraisal,” the Xest replied. And Torment added on her own: “Their whole philosophy is to restrict the spread of life, so that their resources will not be squandered.”
“So that the restricted population can live comfortably,” Arlo said. “But there have to be some survivors. Wouldn’t the debt you incur by unrestricted fissioning be theirs to expunge? Wouldn’t they be ready to assume that debt, as the price of life itself?”
“You make it wonderfully clear,” the Xest responded.
Had he—or was the creature merely being polite to a savage? Well, he had its acquiescence, and that sufficed. “Our shock troops have already been launched. It is the job of those of us who remain to make as impressive a distraction as possible. Chthon must believe that we are the shock troops. It will watch us most closely, uncertain whether I have been fooled by the dreams. That uncertainty is our asset.”
“A return to your home cave would not distract Chthon,” Torment said. Arlo was not clear whether she spoke for the Xest or for herself. “Better that we make a direct attack that cannot be ignored.”
“Yes,” Arlo said. “Since I had not planned on that, it is good.” He realized that this probably meant he would not see Vex or his parents again. But this was war, and he had a job to do. “There are regions of the caverns I have been barred from. So has my father. He spoke of a blocked passage beyond ice caverns... With these gloves and this hammer I can break through. That should really alarm Chthon—and we’ll have one hell of a fight.”
“That is our purpose.”
“I sense the ambush, between us and my home cave. It is the wolf-thing.”
“From your mental image, it is not a thing we can readily conquer,” Torment said for the Xest. “Best to avoid it.”
“My inclination is to bash it on the skull with the Hammer,” Arlo said. “Therefore, in the interests of unpredictability, I shall not. Like cowards, we shall flee it.”
Torment put her hand on his arm. “Your sentiment becomes you.”
“No doubt!” he said, half-angry. He guided the sledge down the tunnels he knew, fearing and enjoying their forbidden nature. One was an almost vertical ice shaft, where the moving air was forced down into an opening funnel where it expanded and cooled rapidly. This was not the river of ice where he and Vex had played, but an entirely separate region. The walls and ceilings became coated with crystals, patterns of faceted ice, and the floor was a narrow glacier.
“We shall never thaw the Taphid here,” the Xest complained.
“Just wait,” Arlo said. Soon they debouched into a veritable snowstorm—then, suddenly, into a warm side tunnel and a dead end. The chippers had to stop.
“I christen this the Cave of Odin’s Eye,” Arlo said with a flourish. “Only recently did I learn its significance, though I have been here before.” He got out, hefting his hammer. “You’re both telepathic. If Chthon-creatures come—and it’s likely they will—warn me.”
“There is a creature beyond that wall,” said Torment. “I feel it: large, very large, loving. The Xest says it is the most powerful animal in the planet, and semi-telepathic. Unsafe to approach.”
“Now I am even more curious,” Arlo said. He had picked up the same emanations. “This must be one of Chthon’s secret weapons.”
“It may destroy us.”
“Our first line of defense is the Taphid.”
“Still too cold,” Torment translated for the Xest. “It takes time for the grubs to thaw. And once they do—”
“I know. I’ve seen them operate.”
Torment lifted an eyebrow. “You have been to space?”
“In a vision. I have seen the future—when Chthon wins. I mean to see that that future never comes to pass.” He clenched a fist, not in violence but in concentration, noting how the scales of the glove slid smoothly by each other no matter how tightly compressed. “We’ll wait on the Taphid, then. Torment, stand guard with the chippers. We don’t know what we’ll find, other than large and dangerous. But no doubt an excellent distraction.”
The Xest came to stand beside him. Arlo bashed the wall with the hammer—and it powdered out beautifully. In moments he had broken open a hole large enough for them to step through conveniently.
They entered a round tunnel, fifty feet in diameter. There was a rank odor, as of the dung-region of a dragon’s lair. Arlo had an uncanny sensation of familiarity.
“Let’s fish for it,” Arlo said. “I’d like to see this thing.”
He formed a mental picture of a huge fat chipper stumbling about uncertainly: ideal prey for a large predator. Suddenly the picture intensified, so that the chipper became almost tangible. The Xest was adding to his picture!
Somewhere, a hugeness took note. The telepathic monster of this tunnel perceived the image, and there was a hunger. Arlo felt the massive motion begin.
It frightened him. The presence was too large, too menacing. Yet it was a weapon of Chthon, and he had to understand it, learn its weaknesses, so that the forces of Life could eliminate it. And he wanted to make a really formidable distraction, to hold Chthon’s attention. So he waited, projecting the fat chipper image as augmented by the Xest, making it so bumbling and fat and real that his own mouth watered.
The rock began to vibrate. Abruptly Arlo realized: this was a huge maze-dragon, dwarfing the one he had encountered while carrying Vex. Its network of passages—how far did they extend?
He saw a pattern of threads extending through and around a globe, and realized that the Xest had put this picture in his mind. The Xest’s telepathy was superior to that of the minionette; it could make direct informational perceptions and projections. And the picture told him—that the dragon’s maze encircled the very planet.
What a monster! It had to be killed, for it alone could consume the entire army of minionettes. Being telepathic, it would be able to locate every sentient entity in the caverns—if it were loosed in them. And Chthon had provided Arlo no hint of this before; it was a weapon held in reserve.
Yet why should he be surprised? Chthon could make the unique hvee grow, crossbreed and mutate successfully here in the caverns; the simple increase in size of an already formidable breed of monster was well within the mineral intellect’s power.
Of course the creature would not be able to squeeze through the majority of tunnels—but still, it was too terrible a threat t
o ignore.
Would his hammer kill it? Could he strike hard enough, in a vital spot? Surely the monster had a brain somewhere, and if that were crushed...
The chipper-prey wavered. The Xest was getting tired. Its telepathy was superior, but could not be maintained long. Arlo, on the other hand, could continue the effort indefinitely.
A new picture came to his mind: an elaborate belt, or girdle, radiating power.
Thor’s belt of strength! The Xest was telling Arlo he had it. Yet he did not. What did this mean?
But as the Xest projected new, fleeting images, Arlo understood. It was the caterpillar venom! Not a poison, but a channelizer, to make newly incorporated segments durable enough so as not to be a liability to the whole. The stuff had affected his system, giving it that special reinforcement intended to make him an indefatigable marcher. But now it made him stronger in other ways, extending his mental endurance. He did, indeed, possess the belt of strength, the last of Thor’s gifts.
Now the rock shook so violently that Arlo had difficulty keeping his feet. He braced himself on the scant ledge formed by the intersection of the feeder-tunnel with the main one, lifted the hammer, and waited. The dragon couldn’t possibly brake in time; it would shoot right by the first pass.
There had to be many prey-animals here to feed such bulk. Yet the entrance was blocked. How did they get through? Probably they didn’t; Chthon had arranged to close off this section only recently, within the past couple of decades, and had trapped a sufficient pyramid of lesser animals to serve. At least until Ragnarok.
Did the monster know that the moment the war between Death and Life was over, the monster itself would be expendable?
Fool! Arlo fired at it.
Now the dragon hove in sight, far down the endless passage. Its huge eyes glowed, spearing out their light to augment the lichen glow. Like a mighty LOE express, it steamed down upon them, traveling so fast that the air compressed ahead of it, making Arlo’s ears crackle.
LOE express, he thought fleetingly. “‘There isn’t train I wouldn’t take, No matter where it’s going.’” That long-defunct female poet wouldn’t take this train!
Arlo held his position. His gaze seemed to meet the awful stare of the dragon. He drew upon his reserves, physical and mental, knowing that he would have only one chance. He braced so hard it was as though his feet were crushing down through the rock to embed themselves in the heart of the planet. If he could strike it cleanly—
The bait-image vanished. The onrushing monster faltered, no longer able to orient on its prey. The eye-beams switched back and forth, trying to pick up what the mind had lost. In a moment that questing light would bathe Arlo and the Xest, exposing them, dooming them without chance of resistance. Only by passing on course, intent on something else, could the dragon be vulnerable to Arlo’s surprise blow. On guard, it would come teeth-first.
The Xest, frightened, had erased the chipper-picture.
Arlo tumbled back, getting out of sight as the blast of the dragon’s frustrated passage pushed air out of the hole they had made. Furious at his companion’s act of cowardice, Arlo swung his hammer at the Xest with all his force.
The blow scored. The Xest shattered explosively. Its eight legs flew out in all directions; its body puffed apart as if it were no more than an inflated bladder, punctured.
As the dragon disappeared down the tunnel, suction jerked Arlo after it. He reached out instinctively and clutched an outcropping of stone. The air howled through the gap in the wall behind him, carrying the fragments of the Xest like so many dried leaves.
Now there was remorse. “I’m sorry!” Arlo cried into the gale. But of course it was too late.
A piece of Xest banged into his back and dropped down. Arlo swept it up—and lo, it was already forming into a miniature Xest. He held it to his face—and its little telepathic image entered his mind.
It was a picture of thousands of Xests overrunning the caverns, looking for Chthon’s secrets, unstoppable because they were so small, so alien to the cavern entity’s experience. Some even clung to the dragon, hitching a ride right around the planet. But mixed with the image was a burgeoning concern. Debt!
“Don’t worry,” Arlo said to it. “Do your job. Harass Chthon. If there is any life-debt, the responsibility is mine. It shall be so recorded.” He paused, unsatisfied. He had guilt of his own to expiate somehow. “If we win, I will give you a hvee. If it lives, I will know you have forgiven me for my crime against you—against all you thousand Xests. The debt is mine.”
With a projection of gratitude, the little Xest moved on.
Arlo made his way back to the chippers and cart as the wind abated. Torment waited, as directed. “So you have relived mythology again,” she said.
“Oh?” Arlo glanced at her, surprised.
“Did you know that Thor and the giant Hymir went fishing?” she asked. Then, seeing that he did not, she continued: “Thor put the head of an ox on his hook, and it was the great Midgard serpent itself that took the bait. But as Thor drew it up and met the monster’s gaze, Hymir in terror cut the line, letting the serpent escape. Thor in rage smashed the giant with his hammer, but the damage had been done.”
The Midgard serpent—the creature so big its coils encircled the world under the ocean! Indeed he had relived the myth, though he had not read that particular story. And now the world-snake knew its enemy and would be alert.
In Ragnarok, Arlo knew, Thor had in the end fallen prey to that monster. Had he only been able to kill it in the first encounter...
“So stay away from it!” Torment cried. “I think our diversionary ploy has been successful. Life is going to win!”
“Not by reenacting Norse myth,” Arlo said.
“We have copied that enough. Now we can diverge and wipe out Chthon.”
“I hope so,” Arlo said, thinking of Vex. Life might win—but would he survive to hold her again?
They moved out, the chippers eager to leave these depths.
Then Arlo felt a sharp pain in his foot. He reached down—and his glove brought up a salamander.
He had been bitten by the caverns’ most poisonous creature.
“Arlo!” Torment cried. Then she saw the salamander. Her horror was like the breath of new love to his mind. “Oh, no!”
“The wind must have sucked it in,” Arlo said bemused by the knowledge that he was finished.
She grabbed him, drawing her knife. “I’ll have to cut, draw out the venom—”
But it was too late. Arlo fell into her arms, unconscious.
Mythology was not to be reenacted, after all. Not in this detail.
CHAPTER VI
Life
Two men sat in the passenger lounge of the FTL ship. They watched the simulated stellar view.
“Shall we celebrate my birthday with wine?” the old man inquired, showing his bottle. “Today I am one hundred and eight years old.”
“By all means, Benjamin—if your health permits.”
“Hell with my health, Morning Haze! What use is life without pleasure?”
“In that case, let’s make it a party,” the minion said. “Let’s bring in my brother and the minionettes and really celebrate!”
“And our Xest pilot too,” Benjamin added. “Actually, it has been just about thirty-four years since we won Ragnarok, and the Xests deserve full credit.”
Morning Haze departed while Benjamin poured out the fine old wine. In a moment the minion returned with the other: the Xest, Misery, Vex, and Arlo.
The Xest wore a fine blue-green glowing hvee, symbol of its decades-long friendship with Arlo.
The two minionettes were like twin sisters in the prime of youth, stunningly beautiful—yet one was sixty Earth-years old, the other perhaps a century more. The men, in contrast, showed their ages. Morning Haze was fifty-eight and Arlo fifty; both evinced the waning of the powers of their youth.
“How grand it is,” Benjamin said, passing out the drinks, “to have my nephew’s
three children with me on this occasion! I am only sorry Aton himself could not be here.”
“That is unkind,” the Xest signaled.
“Oh, I am sorry,” Benjamin said. “In my age I forget. You, Morning Haze, would be constrained to kill your father in the minion fashion, were he present, so that your wife/mother Misery would not go to him. And you, Arlo, would also have to kill him, so that your sister Vex would not go to him. And you two minionettes would have to kill each other to possess him. While all the time Aton loves only his legitimate wife Coquina, who will not leave the caverns though the technology now exists to abate her chill. So this separation represents the only solution; the elements of our wider family, like oxygen and fluorine, must not be allowed to combine.” Benjamin sighed. “Forgive me if I seem insensitive; I have never had any great sympathy for the minion code, though I value each and every one of you as though you were my own. So let us be happy together, for the duration of this little family reunion, and—” He paused. “Where is Afar?”
“I am here,” a young man said from the doorway. He was tall and powerful, with a piercing glance and a touch of cruelty about the set of his mouth.
“Ah, you so strongly resemble your grandfather!” Benjamin said. “My nephew Aton—he had that look in his youth.”
“The look of madness,” Morning Haze said without rancor.
“Yes, isn’t my son lovely,” Vex agreed.
Arlo’s lips twitched. “Lovely!” he said with heavy irony.
“I suspect my father has outlived his humor,” Afar said. “Yet that can be remedied.”
Vex smiled at Afar. “So sweet,” she said.
Arlo’s muscles bunched, but he said nothing.
“This is what I don’t like about Minion,” Benjamin said.
“Why must it be incestuous, with Oedipus and Electra pursuing each other so determinedly, son killing father down the generations? If only you married outside your line, as you are now free to do, owing to the lifting of the planetary proscription, none of this would be necessary!”