Chthon

  Aton thrashed wildly. He screamed. An explosion of intolerable agony in the throat, an involuntary and useless recoil against the restraining arms, a howling darkness on the world.

  The world came back, oddly unreal except for the light touch of those steely fingertips on a buried nerve center. A voice said softly, “Baby wants to play?”

  Bossman let him up, on guard. “Tell her we fought for her, and you won,” he advised. “I don’t want you to look roughed up, spaceman—yet.” Bossman had made his point.

  And so they played it out, the three of them, setting the scene for Garnet’s sacrifice—

  —while Bossman waited with corded fist, knowing the sounds of love were false, when his compassion would willingly have made them true.

  —while Aton found, obscurely, that the knowledge of death brought the melody, and the melody brought a passion astonishingly real.

  —while Garnet accepted a willing death as the only way to bring that passion, and perhaps a hidden moment of genuine love, to end her misery.

  …And the white wake waited…

  VI. Chthon

  §403

  Sixteen

  Aton recovered slowly. The calendar on the wall across the room opened on the face of Second Month, §403—almost a year after the horror he remembered. He had kissed the minionette, and… almost a year!

  Where have I been? What have I done, in that vanished interim?

  He looked about. The first substantial feature of the comfortable room that his attention fixed upon was the hard-backed wooden chair: the mighty chair of Aurelius, guarding the exit. Across the floor was the plush couch, also too familiar—the couch he had always thought of as his mother’s. Above it still was the framed picture of the daughter of Ten, evoking no guilt now. Beside that—

  Beside that was the webwork of Xest artistry: mother and son.

  He blotted the room from his mind and studied himself. He was wearing a light shirt and clean farming overalls and the soft heavy footwear of the hvee farmer; whoever had dressed him had known how. Could he have done it himself, in some amnesiac state?

  There was a stirring in the adjacent room. Aurelius? No, he was dead, as the nymph of the wood was dead, as everyone who had cared for him was dead. Who occupied this house of Five? The tread was light, familiar.

  “Theme of the shell!” he exclaimed, suddenly glad, very glad. He had thought of her, too, as dead, if she had existed at all outside his dreams. He had killed her—but it had been a symbolic execution, a denial of his second love, and now the symbolism was gone.

  She stepped into view, her hair longer than that of his four-year memory, glowing silver against the green hvee in the afternoon sunlight. Her fair features were set; her wrist was bare.

  There was no physical death on Idyllia, and they both had known it. Yet he had pushed her off the mountain at the moment of rapture. She had no telepathy; she could not have known that his action represented denial, not of her, but of the minionette. To Coquina it was his second rejection… and the vibrant hvee she still wore showed that her love for him had never faltered.

  To be worthy of such a woman.

  “Daughter of Four,” he said, “I love you.”

  She looked up. “Aton?”

  Nonplussed, he stood up. His body felt strong—he had not spent the past year in bed. “Coquina—don’t you know me?”

  She studied him carefully. “Aton,” she repeated, smiling at last.

  He strode toward her. She retreated. “Please do not touch me, Aton.”

  “Coquina—what is it?”

  She stood behind the large-boned chair of Aurelius. “Things may not be as you remember them, Aton.”

  He returned to his own chair and sat down. “Were my dreams mistaken, pretty shell? Did something die on Idyllia?”

  “No, Aton, no—not that. But you have been—gone—a long time. I must be sure.”

  “Sure of what?” he demanded. “The minionette is dead and I love you. I loved you from the first, but until I conquered the minionette—”

  “Aton, please let me talk. Things will be hard for you, and there is not much time.” Her formality amazed him.

  “Coquina!”

  She ignored his cry and began talking, a trifle rapidly, as though reading a lecture. “I went to the forest before you were released from Chthon and I talked with the minionette. I talked with Malice. I showed her the hvee I wore, and she took it and showed me that she loved you, even as I.”

  “She did, in her way,” Aton said.

  “She was lovely. I could see the family resemblance. She told me those things about you that I had to know, so that I could care for you during your recovery, and she warned me about the evil one that would come from Chthon, so that I could protect you from him. She said—she said that she would be gone, soon, and so she left me the song.”

  “The song!”

  “She wanted you to be happy, Aton, and she saw that your minion blood was destroying you, while the evil one waited for the remainder. She gave you to me. You did not conquer her, Aton. Not that magnificent woman.”

  Comprehension appalled him. “All this—before I escaped from Chthon?”

  “We loved you, Aton.”

  “Malice knew she was going to die?”

  “Yes. Her name, by the terms of her culture, means ‘Compassion,’ and she loved your father enough to leave him, and you enough to die for you. When Aurelius saw you pass the fields, with her, he understood, and he gave up his long fight against the swamp blight. She died soon after. The cousin of Five came, and we buried Aurelius beside her in the forest.”

  “The song,” Aton said, unable to concentrate.

  Coquina glanced at him. “I had to wake you… early,” she said. “The song—” She came to a decision. “This is the song.”

  She sang, then, and it was the melody of his childhood. Her voice lacked the splendor of that of the minionette; but no voice, he realized, could compete on such a level. It was the song.

  She followed it through to its conclusion, but the magic was gone. “It isn’t broken any more,” he said, understanding only now that the true appeal of it had not been the melody itself, but the fact that it was incomplete—as had been his whole relationship with the minionette. Not the song, but the break had been his compulsion. Why had he never seen this before?

  Coquina watched him closely. “It means nothing to you, now, Aton?”

  “I’m sorry,” he said, finding the expression inept. “You might as well have spared yourself the trouble.”

  “No, no,” she said, smiling more warmly. “That is good. It means that the minion in you is gone. You will be well again, if only—”

  The repeated references to mysterious things irritated him. “If only what? What is all this about my ‘recovery,’ and the ‘evil one’? Where have I been; what have I been doing, this past year? Why won’t you let me near you? Why did you have to ‘wake’ me at all, early or not? Have I been asleep?”

  “I can tell you now.” She came around the chair and sat down, keeping her distance from him. “Half minion, half man, you could not live on either world. She warned me about the terrible consequences, if you went free before that conflict was resolved. But after she sacrificed herself you were a madman, roaming the forest in a terrible, blind rage. Your cousin of Five—Benjamin—roped you from the aircar and brought you to me. We put you on drugs. We could not notify the authorities because they would have extradited you to Chthon. We kept your mind blank while it healed. The minionette warned me that it might take two years before the shock of her death purged your mind and set you free, a normal man. We knew we would have to keep you passive all that time. But—”

  “Drugs! A whole year?”

  “It was the only way. In your food. Benjamin ran the farm, and I helped him with the hvee and took care of you. You have been a vegetable, Aton—that is why I’m not used to you now. I took you for walks outside, for exercise—”

  “An animal o
n a leash.”

  “The dog-walking detail!” she snapped. “Please let me finish. We kept your presence a secret, but there was one who seemed to know: the evil one of Chthon. His god is telepathic, more even than the minionette. This man came for you, claiming that you belonged to Chthon, now. He knew—a great deal. He said that only in Chthon could you live safely, that only that god of Chthon could make your mind whole. He tried to take you away from me.”

  “An emissary from Chthon?” Aton was perplexed.

  “The hvee did not like him,” she said, as though that finished the matter—as perhaps it did. “I—I hurt him, and he went away. Now he sits in his spaceship, waiting for you to wake. He says you will come to him, when you have the choice. I’m afraid of him. And now you must face him before you are ready, because I had to stop the drugs too soon.”

  “Your supply ran out?” Aton was not wholly pleased with any part of this strange situation.

  “No.” She would not say more, but instead led him to the door. He obeyed her gesture.

  Night was falling, and the floating clouds were carded across the dim horizon, embers in the sky. He had never seen his home more beautiful.

  “O joy!” he thought, “that in our—”

  “You must go to him,” she said, her voice urgent. “You have to do battle tonight, while there is time. Please go.”

  Aton stared, absently noting her lovely pallor. “Do battle? Why? I don’t know anything about this, this ‘Evil one.’ What’s the hurry? Why won’t you explain?”

  “Please,” she said, and there were tiny tears on her cheeks.

  “Let me touch my hvee,” he said, bargaining for time to comprehend the mystery. Coquina stood still, a frozen doll, while he lifted the little plant from her hair: the token of love that he would reclaim permanently when they married. She loved him, strange as her actions might be; the hvee attested to that. Now she was acting as inexplicably as had the minionette, so long ago at the spotel. Were her reasons as valid?

  In his cupped hands, the hvee withered and died.

  “The hour of the waning of love has beset us,” he thought, astounded. But lost LOE was no comfort now.

  Whom the hvee cannot love—

  He stared at the limp green strand. It had condemned him as unfit to be loved, and there could be no appeal. Had all his aspirations come to no more than this?

  The clouds were dull and gray in the fading light: ashes in the sky.

  Seventeen

  Cold Coquina had not told him where to find the evil foe, but Aton strode over the fields in a familiar and purposeful direction. Three miles into the dusk he came across the black silhouette: the ship from Chthon.

  For almost a year this man had waited for him, not as an arm of the law, but as the emissary of a god. Coquina’s vigor had repulsed him. She had not been bluffing when she had spoken—so long ago, when love was rising—of her ability to subdue aggressive men. But she had not been able to defeat the power of Chthon which backed this man. That was for Aton himself to do.

  He did not mean to return to prison on any basis.

  The lock was open. Foolish man, to forget your defenses! Aton found the inset rungs and climbed.

  His head came level with the port, reminding him of a prior climb and a prior hope. Something pricked his nose. He held himself rigid while his eyes probed the shadows.

  It was a tiny, thin-bladed knife, held with a surgeon’s precision. The squatting figure’s slightly luminescent eyes bore intently on him, and Aton knew that the potent contact lenses rendered the gloom—vincible. The lips below were pursed in a silent whistle, part of a tuneless distraction. “Hello, Partner,” he said.

  “Partners we shall be,” the man replied. “But not as we have been. You know me now.” The knife did not waver.

  “Yes,” Aton said, bracing his legs more comfortably beneath him. “The minion of Chthon, come to take me back. It was no coincidence that brought you to the hinterland of Idyllia, Chthon-planet, to find me and shepherd me through discoveries that betrayed my fitness for your master. How well it has been said: no one escapes.”

  “No one,” the man agreed, unimpressed by Aton’s rhetoric. The blade did not retreat.

  Aton knew better than to back down, either verbally or physically. If he had not been obsessed with other matters, he would have seen through Partner’s façade long ago. The man had been too patient, giving him time on Earth, on Minion, on Hvee, fading into the background while Aton explored his own nature. Partner had not been interested in garnets or the mines from which they came; that had been a convenient pretext to lull suspicion. Partner already had the key to the mines, to all of Chthon.

  Aton paused before making his next statement, not certain whether it would cause the knife to withdraw or to slice forward. He plunged. “No coincidence. Indeed, we are very much alike—Doc Bedside!”

  The blade disappeared. “Come in,” Doc said.

  Aton clambered into the chamber. The tight residential compartment was much as he remembered it from their several journeys together: water and food-supply vents along one short wall, descending bunks along the other. This was a sport ship, intended for wilderness camping and/or private parties. The space that should ordinarily have been allocated to cargo was retained simply as space. The floor area was a generous eight feet square.

  Bedside gestured, and soft green light radiated from the walls: the light of the caverns of Chthon. Aton made no comment. ‘Partner’ had suffered through conventional illumination, to conceal his identity, but now the mask was off. What was the real connection between this man and Chthon, and why had he chosen to hide his history before?

  “What is ‘Myxo’?” Aton asked him.

  “Mucus. That wasn’t obvious?”

  “Not at the time,” Aton said, thinking of Chthon and the horrors therein. The Hard Trek had saved its worst until last. What sort of man could like it well enough to post academic riddles for those who might follow? “Do you know how many died, trying to make the escape? How did you manage it, alone?”

  Bedside settled back against the wall, squatting as though he were in the bare caverns he evidently longed for. His scalpel was out of sight, but ready, Aton was certain. No careless man survived the perils of the trek. No normal man. No sane man.

  “Insanity, of course, is a legal fiction these days,” Bedside said, choosing to tackle the implied question first. “Biopsychic techniques have eradicated the problem, officially. Just as other medicine has conquered physical illness, with a chilling exception or two.” Aton could not miss the ironic reference to the worst illness of all, the chill. “Nevertheless, it becomes necessary for society to incarcerate certain, ah, nonconformists. When I found myself in Chthon as a prisoner, my—oh, let’s call it my escape complex—my escape complex was activated. I had purpose. In that circumstance I became in effect sane. Do you follow me?”

  “No.”

  Bedside frowned. “A man who is adjusted to an abnormal situation, while living in a ‘normal’ society, has a tendency toward nonsurvival. But place that man in a situation conforming to his particular bias, and his traits become those necessary for survival, while the normal man perishes. This is the reason it is said that no sane man may escape from Chthon. Chthon is not oriented toward sanity. Of course, the odds against a compatible juxtaposition of anamorphoses—”

  Aton was shaking his head. He was not paying much attention to the words; he knew that this was only a conversational prelude to the desperate contest to come. He was confronted with as deadly a foe, here, as he had ever met in his life—one that he had to kill. On this battle hinged his future, though the issues were devious. A loss would mean a return to Chthon and neo-sanity; victory, a return to the blasted prospects of a dead hvee.

  Perhaps, after all, he was only fighting to preserve his right to blot himself in suicide.

  “Put a fish in water and it swims,” Bedside rapped. “Put that fish on land—”

  Aton nodded, not wish
ing to carry the subject farther.

  “Chthon was my element,” Bedside continued remorselessly. “I made my way out. I swam. The monsters there were as nothing to the monsters in my mind. But once I returned to society, I found myself drowning in air, as I had drowned before. My aberration quickly signaled my position, and I was arrested again. They could not ship me to Chthon a second time, because they thought I might lead the entire complement out. They could neither ignore me nor let me go. They preferred to apply a little medicinal insanity to their own intellects, and assume that there was no escape from Chthon, and that I was therefore merely a demented creature who identified with the notorious Dr. Bedecker. All of which was true enough, in its way.

  “At any rate, they put me in a ‘hospital’ for ‘observation.’ This imprisonment reactivated my escape syndrome, and I was able to function effectively again. Their walls and guards were child’s play, after the Hard Trek.”

  Aton watched him cynically. “If you knew that freedom would cost you your sanity, why did you strive for it?”

  Bedside smiled with his teeth. “Another romantic lunacy. We assume that a personality problem can be liquidated merely through an understanding of it—as though a man could lift a mountain once he admitted it was heavy. No: recognition is not synonymous with solution. I fly toward freedom as a moth toward the candle, and nothing so insubstantial as Reason will turn me aside.”

  Aton thought of his own headlong drive to unite with the minionette, her hair red for passion, black for death. Reason—how could it hope to bridge the cold, bleak void gaping open, the loss of a song that was healed, a shell that was broken? The moth hurt because its wings were ashes, but had not yet grasped the fact that it could no longer fly. With what mixture of metaphor could he analyze himself? Caterpillar to the inferno?