Chthon

Thirteen

The minionette did not ask how he came to be free. It was natural that his methods, like her own, were sufficient. They walked together in the forest of Hvee, ever their meeting place, and the great-barked trees stood over them, accepting so gladly the play of their emotions.

The nymph of the wood moved in splendor, hair flaming against a dress of pastel green. Light feet trod the sere debris of ancient years, and fingers of ecstasy clasped his. She had said, and he had accepted, long ago, that there could be no woman to match her. The echo of the broken song surrounded her, tantalizing, rapturous, the essence, the quintessence—

“And did you have a woman, in Chthon?” she asked him, playful in the knowledge that any mortal woman was a figurine.

Aton tried to think back, tried to imagine another woman, any other; but in the presence of Malice it was not possible. “I don’t remember.”

“You have changed,” she said. “You have changed, Aton, and it is the handiwork of the distaff. Tell me.”

“I had a minionette.”

Her fingers tightened. Never before had he felt her surprise. She did not speak.

“Yes,” he said, “I know. But she did not have the song.” That was all; no explanation, no soliloquy was necessary. Misery had been forgotten, after a single night of strange romance. Neither the appearance nor the nature of the minionette served as the basis of his love—only the person of his childhood vision, bearing the music and the magic of his youth. O joy that…

The forest diminished, laid open by an asphalt highway, hot black waves bouncing into awareness. Above it a distant space-shuttle lifted, intent on some rendezvous with an orbiting visitor. This was the realm of exploration and commerce, of navies and merchant fleets. And beside him the minionette seemed to walk in uniform: handsome, competent, severe, ruthless, female.

“No more for space, Captain?”

“No more, Machinist.”

“You could have returned, when I went to Chthon.”

She shook her head, precisely. “The guileless Xests knew, and word spreads quickly in space. It is death for the minionette to wander openly among men. And…”

“And…?”

She was silent, and it was answer enough. The spotel—

They crossed over the black heat, into a field of hvee, his father’s field, and walked among the young plants reaching for an object for their love, so like himself. Above, the sky retreated before ascending cumuli; a summer storm was in the making.

From the forest to the spaceship: Aton remembered his first journey—he and his hvee, searching for love. He, as with the hvee, had found it to be something horrendous in its full formation—a dragon whose tail, once grasped, could not lightly be relinquished.

Why had she come to him, on that first day of his new year, when all the men of space were within her range? Could it have been coincidence, that artful meeting, wherein she had shown him the melody, given him the hvee, kissed him, and forever bound his heart to hers?

Why had she hidden from him, once his love was captive? Why had she flaunted the image of the Captain, knowing the torture within him? He understood the answer, now, after the experience with Misery. But even that did not wholly account for the incident at the spotel—the incident that had exposed to him the basic evil in her nature and sent him fleeing from her so ruinously. Evil not of the emotion, no.

There had been that silent treatment, then—

Then—

A lock on his memory fell open, and he understood at last what horror had denied him for almost three years. If—if the minionette was evil, so was he.

“You tried to defend that native girl—the one who deserted my father!” he exclaimed, now and in the spotel-past.

Now and in the past, the minionette failed to speak.

“When did you go to space?” he demanded. They had left the hvee behind and were sitting beneath the old garden shed. It was a peaked roof supported by four stout, weathered posts. The breath of the building storm came down and through the absent walls, bringing chill tingles to the skin.

The emotional chill had been closer, then, as Aton advanced by rugged steps toward the truth his intellect rejected. The two of them, in an enclosure very like this, subjectively, struggled for comprehension in the face of peculiar resistance. Aton had never before appreciated the full force of cultural conflict.

“I know the answer,” Aton continued. “I know when you went to space. I read it in the lay roster of the Jocasta. You joined the merchant fleet as an on-deck cleric, early in §375. You transferred to the Jocasta despite many more favorable opportunities on other ships, five years later as a member of the business advisory staff, and arranged to have it dock over Hvee the year following.

“But the vital point is that you went to space just months after I was born. Why you wanted that particular ship and that schedule, long before you rose to command it, is less important than your earlier history. Where were you before §375? What did you call yourself? The roster didn’t say.”

Malice did not move at all, in either shed or spotel.

“You were on Hvee,” Aton said, and she did not deny it. “You knew Aurelius, after his wife of Ten perished. You knew of me. And—you knew the native girl he married. The girl from Minion. You knew her well.”

She sat still, looking intently at him.

“In fact,” he said with the supreme effort, “you were that girl.”

They sat together, in sight of the thing they both had known and never spoken.

“The one who deserted my father. The stepmother I have sworn to kill.”

Oh, Malice, I could have forgiven you that, after I learned your nature. But that is not the evil for which I searched. That is not the horror that drove me from your side.

“The woman of Ten died two years before I was born,” Aton said, admitting the truth for the first—and second—time in his life. “Her baby was stillborn. I had no stepmother.”

“Yes,” she said, breaking her silence at last. “Yes, Aton—I am your mother.”

In the cooling shade of the open shed, they looked across the field of hvee. No person labored there at the moment, but the plants were healthy. Someone with great love was caring for them, as Aurelius could do no longer, and in his heart Aton recognized that touch.

“Why didn’t you tell me, that first time?” Aton asked her. “Before the—spotel.” And knew the answer as he spoke: a single answer then, doubled now. She was his mother. How could she tell the man who thought he was her lover, that—what could she say to him, who had mistaken her love so shockingly? Yet how could she give him up, her son?

But he was dissembling. She could have tried, during the early meeting in the forest—and he, too young to grasp the complexities of it, would have gone to Aurelius and destroyed everything. His father was anxious yet to have her back, and he was not without power. The moment he knew—

And the second time in the forest, Aton had been old enough to see in this miraculous woman some little part of what his father had seen. Aton too was not without power, as events had shown.

Thus had he reasoned, spuriously, at the spotel, driven by forced hiding behind the façade of reason. He had not then really understood, and had suspected that he did not, and been measurelessly discommoded by his seeming satisfaction.

Now he understood the second reason, more basic, and lacking the trappings of social convention. For to the minionette, pleasure was pain, pain was pleasure. She had responded to a visitor of her world who had been torn by sorrow and self-hate—Aurelius—because his child, in living and dying, had murdered his beloved. The minionette had loved Aurelius because she found his tremendous guilt and sense of betrayal irresistible. He was in mourning for the daughter of Ten, yet found Malice attractive, and fiercely condemned himself for this, and thus conquered her and defeated himself, unknowingly.

She had accepted the ceremony of his culture, which meant little to one who was emotionally telepathic, but without the exchange of the hvee, because his guilt could not permit that honest token. She had gone with him, delighted also by the joy of his alarm over the proscription that he was violating. Neither one of them had known, then, the reason for proscription.

On Hvee she had conceived his child. As they came to know each other more thoroughly, his agony diminished, and gradually he came to love her without guilt. Then she understood their peril—too late. She birthed his child and deserted him, because a longer stay could only have entailed far greater agony for them both. Her continued love would have destroyed him, simply because she was what she was. Because she did love him in her fashion, she could not bring herself to hurt him in the ways her culture demanded. A man of Minion would have understood, but not Aurelius.

Her son had grown up with such hate for the memory of the wayward mother that he had rejected his knowledge of the facts and had chosen to remember only the mother he wished he had had. No one could have told Aton the truth prematurely. He had been blind.

More: the very hurt and rage he nurtured became her own delight, for she was the minionette. She could read the hate in him, even as a child who did not know her, and it was the ideal emotion for her species. Oh, yes, she kissed him, enraptured by his confusion, and sent him home before that wonderful emotion faded. When she met him at fourteen she had done it again; his guilt and frustration at what he suspected was wrong were sufficient.

When he had searched her out aboard the carefully chosen Jocasta—which only now did he comprehend as the signal it was, intended to guide him to her when he was mature enough to understand—her dilemma intensified. He had come too soon; but he had been raging with the compellingly appealing frustrations, and she could not hold herself away. The game had gone on, bringing her further into his orbit: his horror of the Taphid cargo, his cold anger at the leverage her exposure of his lay roster provided her, his grief over the woman he thought he had lost. Until the crafty Xests, themselves semi-telepathic, had penetrated her ruse and left her helpless against the naïve love of her son.

She had gone with him, since he was not to be resisted, and her position with the merchant service was already forfeit. She had gone with him although she still did not know how to handle the coming crisis. She could not tell him the truth, since that would have sent him away forever—but neither could she submit to the passionate embrace he had in mind. She could not stay and she could not leave.

Thus, at the point of no return, the silence. Only in this way could she keep him close yet distant, until some more permanent alternative offered itself.

Thus Aton rationalized, now but not in the past—and found that even this was not enough. His imagination was fighting desperately to protect him from full realization. His mind had blanked the entire episode from memory as long as it could, and now gave ground unwillingly. He had to search out the evil, knowing it was there, knowing that he was not yet mature enough to face it.

The spotel episode had not been concluded. The two of them had to play it out, past and present, until the full reason for his torment lay exposed.

The secret was out: Aton was in love with his mother. Start with that, and go back. Relive it—if you can.

Back—as she had known he would, he reacted to the news with anguished indecision. The thing he had dreamed of could not be. Sweet as his emotion might be to her perception, brightening her lovely hair, it was a hollow luxury. He would go and never meet her again. He would spare her.

How little he understood the minionette!

Nude, as she remained after he had doffed the space suit, she beckoned him. “Aton,” she said. She was absolutely beautiful.

He came to her, as he always had, embarrassed for his thoughts as much as for the situation. It hurt him terribly to lose her, for she had lived—as a woman—in his fond imagination since the first forest encounter.

“Aton,” she repeated. “On Minion”—this, at the spotel, had been the first time he had heard the name of her home planet, and the name alone had stayed with him—“on Minion our culture is not like yours. I was wrong to go away with the outworlder, but I was young then and did not understand.” She took his hands in the familiar gesture. “Aton—on Minion the women live a long time, many times the life span of the men. The minionette outlives her first mate, if he is not soon executed, and then belongs to her closest of kin. By him she will bear another kin, and later yet another, from one generation to the next, until at last she is too old and has to birth a daughter. This is our way.”

Aton kneeled dumbly before her, his two hands prisoners to hers. What was she trying to tell him?

“Aton, you are half minion, and you are my kin.”

The horror of it began to force itself upon him, then. “You are my mother—”

“Yes. That is why this must be. That is the reason I came to you so early in the forest and gave you the melody and the hvee—so that you would know in your spirit what you could not know from your book. That you are minion, born to possess the minionette. You must do this, and your son after you, because it is in your culture and in your blood—your minion nature.”

Fighting what he knew now was the truth, Aton suffered a greater shock. For though the culture he understood forbade this thing utterly, he had, in an inversion that paralleled her emotional one—that he had not known about, then—grown up to believe her to be the most desirable of women. Because she had been, according to his incomplete knowledge, no relation to himself.

Now he knew that she, by beliefs of his own that were fundamental, was forbidden. And he found her—

Found her still the most compellingly desirable woman he could imagine. She had offered herself to him—and he wanted her, physically, more than ever before. That was what upset him most.

“Until this moment,” she said, “you were not ready, Aton. I had to wait a very long time to win you.” She relaxed on the couch, splendid in repose, pulling him with her. The living flame of her hair spread in and out, over face and shoulders and perfect breast, highlighting her body. Black-green eyes, so near to his, opened in deep vistas.

“So long a time,” she said. “So lovely. Kiss me, Aton, and come to me. Now, Aton—now!”

Fourteen

The day was turbulent. They rose together and left the garden shed, walking in the wind.

“Why did you let me discover your identity, at the spotel?” Aton asked her now. “The thing you wanted—it might easily have been, if I had not known.”

“Aton,” she said, shaking her head in gentle reproach, “Have you, have you not been to Minion? Have you not seen what love, your love, will do to the minionette?”

He had allowed himself to forget.

“Your love would have killed me, as that of your father would have killed me, had it been as you imagined when you courted me,” she explained. “Only your knowledge of the truth could make you condemn. Only through that—to you, negative—emotion could you approach me physically. You had to know.”

Aton could not reply immediately. She had waited a long time—but their meeting had been too soon. “Death and love were always linked, for us,” he said, not looking at her. “The death of illusion, the love of pain. I had to think that you were evil, and you had to let me believe that. But my resistance was stronger than desire. I left you, after all.”

“Did you, Aton?”

The path became steep, though the wind had dropped. He helped her climb, though she did not need it. Their discussion died as she seemed to metamorphose again, to fit his lonely parade of memories. Now she wore a pack and her blonde hair fluttered in an idle gust. On her wrist the silver circlet glittered.

Aton felt a qualm, suddenly wondering whether there had ever been an interlude with a pretty slave girl, a second love hoping pitifully to combat the first—a love that would have saved him from Chthon, had he been able to accept it. Had she been a genuine person at all? Or only another translation of his imagination? Had he ever really left the side of the minionette?

Theme of the shell! Were you part of the broken song? Was my dream vain, even then?

Even then…

Nothing dies on Idyllia—except hope.

They were at the top of a hillock representing a mountain. Aton forgot his doubt. Under the massing clouds the view was beautiful, bright with that special color of early dusk. The shell, the song—no use to understand.

“I love you!” he shouted, his voice distant in his own ears. “I love you—” and once again his emotion was honest and strong.

Her hair was red; it was black; it was writhing in pain and she fell, as she had to fall, stricken cruelly. Thunder blasted sky and forest and field and love, and the rain fell, drenching, soiling all of it. And the melody he loved was washing away and soaking its blood into the ground.

He tumbled after, rolling, bumping, down the hillside, shocked with the blow he had dealt unwittingly, grasping at the song and finding only mud and torn weeds. Love was forbidden. He had never taken a woman for love, only for morbid purpose. Always the song had severed love—and now he was beyond the song; he had lost it, broken it forever… and the cold water sheeting into his upturned face was drowning him.

The rain stopped, in an hour or an instant, and Aton was in the swamp at the foot of the hill, beside the foul pond that bred the vicious annual larvae and spawned the deadly blight. On the far side lay the body, naked, lovely, but not dead, not dead. From the dark surface of the pool came a green glow, a Chthon-glow, casting back the slimed shadows and betraying the ominous ripple at the rim.

Suppressed memories stirred in him, intimations of horror and terrible slaughter. He had been here before. He had—

The undead body rose, and the hair was neither blonde nor fire but a soggy in-between. The form of it was not divinity but merely female. She came at him, circling the dark pool, treading on a narrow ledge.

Aton stood on that ledge too, unable to retreat from the noisome brink. There would be no way to avoid her, except to run around that nightmare track in helpless flight, unable to understand his panic. He did not yield to it; he stood and watched her slow march toward him, her small, heavy steps. He watched her second body march in step behind the first, and the third behind that: many bodies, horrible bodies.

Terror triumphed. He spun away from the pool—but the choking rain was up in walls he could not penetrate, arching unbroken into an opaque dome overhead. He could not break out.

He looked into the pool, and it seemed to him that the shapes in it were not tall weeds, but tongues. One was larger than the rest, nearer; it was a gross tubular tongue that came up blindly casting for flesh. It would sense him soon, and slap its way in his direction.

He fled, feet skidding. But from the opposite direction some other thing was coming, something dense and lateral, a massive spike, and there was no escape.

Aton spread himself with his back to the slippery wall, raised his eyes to the arching bowl above, and forced himself to think.

He thought not lucidly and not well, the appetite of his intellect gagging on the sickening stuff before it, but digesting enough to save his waning strength and make his world stand still for just a moment.

This impasse, this horror is somehow of my own making. It cannot be real, in a physical sense. Only in Chthon are such things literal.

My mind has clothed its tumult in some frightening allegory, as it has done before. It has dramatized my mental conflict, forcing me to solve it now, or give up the pretense of sanity. I am standing on the bank of the swamp pond, and there is no monster in it, no wall around it; there is only the incipient blight and the steady rain. There are no reduplicating figures closing in on me, no terrible spike from the other side; only the woman I love and must hate, the alluring minionette.

But the conflict, he knew, was real, and his moment of decision had come—whatever the elements of it might be, and whatever its resolution might mean. He was trapped by a web spun long ago, when he had followed the half-heard melody into the wood and became its slave. Throughout his life he had been unable either to complete it or to escape it. Chthon itself had not resolved that dilemma. Now he had to face the ghastly alternatives himself, and embrace the rigors of that choice.

The marching column of women represented Malice, in all her forms: ubiquitous, but unable to accept direct love. His normal emotion was a sword, wielded against the minionette. Should he slay her with that love?

Or should he wait for the dread spike closing from the other side: the obscene inversion of their relationship? Impaled on it, he would become a creature of perpetual hate, a minion, his self-identity and integrity buried in sadism. She would flourish; her song would be complete. But he—

He stared into the rank water and saw huge movements there, and heard the limber tongue slap nearer. He could escape his choice by flinging himself into the maw of that personified muck. The septic threads of slime would foul his skin and imprint in it the malodorous blight that had taken his father. It would not be merciful.

Did Aurelius still live? Aton did not know.

There had to be some other alternative. Some outlet that would free him, or at least postpone the choice. A drain, an exit from the pool—some rushing aperture leading into the unknown, but an escape, a relief. Could he find it?

When he recognized his need for it, it was there: an opening into the unknown. It might lead to death, or to choices more appalling even than those he fled from. Once taken, this step could never be withdrawn, as a plunge into a waterfall cannot be reversed. He hesitated.

“Aurelius is dead,” the minionette said, very close. She would have felt the old man go, vanquished at last by the genuine pool-monster, the blight. Aton had felt the loss himself, had felt the cessation of an emotional compartment, in that half-telepathy he had never before admitted he possessed. That same sense hinted darkly that he had had some part in the death of his father, however unintentionally. Had the decision he was making been so wide-ranging? Was this the price of his escape?

Committed now, by obscure circumstance, he took the step, refusing to examine whatever hideous price was being exacted. He would skirt the verge of insanity itself. For the sake of the fainting hope it offered. The swirling vortex sucked him in, and the dark smothering wave closed over him, carrying him after all to—

Fifteen

Aton found himself on the surface of the spotel asteroid, naked between its bulk and the immensity of space. Naked because this rock was featureless and night was close; no gravity comforted him with her embrace, no atmosphere caressed his clinging suit. Only the static action of his boots maintained his tenuous contact with the little planet, linking them firmly enough so long as he did not deliberately wrench both feet away at once. So long as he did not jump.

He looked about, awed in his blood by this singular and not unpleasant confrontation with inanimate nature. Behind him was the lock of the spotel, leading to the shuttle he meant to pilot away from here, leading also to the plush interior and an offering he could not accept. No matter what she said, what she was, she was forbidden. He had to get away from her. But first, this walk on the surface, to calm himself.

Ahead was almost total isolation, and he needed that. Easily was the contrast made between the facets of man, with his measurable accomplishment and immeasurable loneliness, who thus traversed a rock on which he could not live.

This asteroid was flat, a fragment from some larger body; it reminded one of the ancient days of the Earth-home and the fearful, foot-loose ancestors who thought their world was flat. The would have been right, had they lived here.

This featureless tableau was as barren as the landscape of his life. The bright stars were all about, this nightside, promising excitement and adventure and comfort in their great numbers, if only it were possible to step to their population. Yet he had been in those far systems already, and had suffered through their evanescent promise and found his heart alone.

Long strides carried his body across the plateau as he ran, one foot always touching, throwing himself toward the edge of a plain that the vacuum’s clarity claimed was miles away. Its end was precipice, the brink of the tiny planet limned against the starlight in a thin vice-versa silhouette. He would throw himself off, into oblivion, to fall forever through the open reaches of his wasted intellect, inchoate at last.

Too soon he reached that fringe. His mind balked at the attempt. My flesh, he thought with bitter humor, is willing; it is my spirit that is weak.

Momentum, deceptive in the absence of gravity, carried him on. He spun around the broken edge, boots clinging as tenaciously to land as his spirit clung to a barren life. The asteroid was thin, this far side, scarcely a hundred feet in depth. Mountainously jagged strata exposed the wound that had torn it from its mother-lode and flung it into limbo an eternity ago. With what terrible pain had it begun its journey, alone, so much alone?

He bent and found a fossil: a great leaf-shape imprinted in the stone, larger than his hand. It was the skeletal remnant of a living thing, more lovely in its demise than ever it had been in life. For never would its beauty fade; never would its essence die.

His gloved fingers caressed the fixed serrations in honor of a lingering camaraderie. Would the fossil of Aton ride through space with such indifferent éclat?

Death, where is now thy—

He tried to shake off the mood by climbing toward the bright sunside of the asteroid. The leaf must have grown in sunshine, once. If one could only enter the heaven of the fossil’s past, see the waving foliage, touch the mighty tree. Turn back the metronome of matter, allow all doubts to be resolved in the soft embrace of life’s origins.

The sharp horizon brightened as he approached sun-side. One heave, around the second corner—

He was bathed in the warm brilliance of that sun; light, light everywhere, banishing all dark and all doubt.

The mechanism of the suit compensated immediately, protecting him, allowing him to look out upon the land, to see the air on it, the shining mists in the air, the growing things in the soil, the great green leaves.

To me this land is lush and lovely, convex hills so high and fine, matching mounds so softly rounded, waiting for—

Aton shook himself, the sealed suit shifting with him like a second skin. What was happening to him? Why was he thinking in metric feet? There was no atmosphere; there could be no trees, no poetry. This was a bare slab of rock hurtling in orbit around a numbered star. There could be no security in hallucination. If he ever really forgot where he was, death would be a blunt reminder.

Yet down beyond those yearning mountains, where the passive waters shine, the source of life is waiting for me, waiting while I—

Shocked, Aton turned again, resuming his progress toward the fossil at the planet’s edge. Somehow, unconsciously, he had traveled farther down the valley, lulled by the hint of some fierce ecstasy—to which he dared not yield. Something was speaking to him, luring him, drawing him onward to some unimaginable rendezvous.

Beyond the mountains are the waters, thick and warm as fresh-let blood.

“Jill!” he cried. “Stay out of my fantasy.” I fled from your cruelty ten years ago; I hardly remember you; you don’t belong here; I am afraid of the thing you stand for: the feel of blood upon my hand, the sound of laughter at my ear. Not blood, you say—not blood, but bliss, offered to my fourteenth year.

Aton turned once more, breathing hard, trying to achieve the objectivity of the stone leaf. That had been the turning point. Until then he had been in control of himself.

Reality came back, showing the conical outcroppings he had walked between, the glaring shadows they cast in the beam of the distant sun. As he watched, those shadows softened, became misty. The hills turned green and more than green, breathing with luxury.

Before him was a curving field leading down to a valley sheltered between gently rolling bluffs. The secret lake was there, more exciting, more inviting than any isolated mirage. The bliss it offered within its depths no longer wholly repelled him. His blood sang with the need to enjoy that liquid, to plunge himself totally into it. He had come from it; he would return to it.

No! But the vision reached inside his resistance and turned it off, leaving a faint muted protest tingling far behind. Fourteen steps he took to reach that lake, and hesitated, afraid to pass beyond the nameless barrier within himself. The water called, it called, but that tiny castrate conscience, damned somewhere behind the frozen leaf, pleaded with him not to sacrifice the thing he had been for the thing he would become. The shaking sweat mottled his face as he fought, knowing that the outcome had already been determined, but fighting still to preserve the forms of a bygone innocence.

Slowly a hand came up to unfasten the helmet of his suit. Could it be his own? The clasps came open, the seals were broken, the helmet came away from his head. He did not die. The air of the valley came to him then, musky and sweet, exhilarating in its freshness. He tasted the bloom of it and felt strong. Soon the remainder of his impeding suit was off; naked, he ran on to the water.

Once more the fading doubt held him back, a doubt permitted now because the usurper felt secure. Resistance had become mere titillation, adding luster to the act. The dominant emotion toyed felinely with his timorous conscience and gave it the freedom of thinking it was free.

He was suffused with the sense of impending accomplishment. The touch of the water at his bare toes electrified his body. He could not see the liquid any more. Only his flesh was aware of it sliding voluptuously over his ankles enfolding them in a closure of incipient pleasure, tantalizing at its commencement, luxurious in its completion.

A fundamental meaning was rising in him, a meaning whose only expression had to be calamitously powerful, a thrusting-forth of such magnitude as to remove mountains and impregnate the entire lake with animation.

The warm pressure ascended, circling calves, knees, thighs. It washed against him rhythmically, drawing forth the deepest force in him with delicate strokes. The tide of it increased, suddenly, compellingly, throwing him into a second vision of a young hand traveling up younger skirts, touching the forbidden junction. But this time the stickiness did not alarm; it drew him on and in with tempestuous passion.

The two scales of flesh and liquid merged under a superimposed image of the vernier, jumping into focus before his closed eyes. Unable to hold back full expression any longer, he plunged in all the way.

The water, the landscape, the universe rang with the tumescence of his urge, and from the depths of his most intimate ambition the fluid essence surged, climbing, swirling, subject to enormous pressure, bursting into a hurricane of force, exploding at last in a tortured pleasuration rending flesh and dissolving bone and satiating spirit beyond endurance. In Heaven you have heard… Love has pitched his… O joy! O joy! O joy!

Some power outside himself buoyed him up, lifted him through surging currents of excruciation far, far to a light above. It was her hand, warm on his arm, bringing him away from the obliteration his equivocal passion had led him to. A dark god waited at the terminus, a thing to whom passion and guilt were simple tools, a god whom a sane man could not serve.

A god that Aton would serve when the full implication of the asteroid allegory reached his conscious mind.

The rain had stopped, though he was soaking; monsters and confining walls were gone. Sunlight played down, not on the broken column he half expected, but on a glistening countryside, high and green in the dusk and wondrously attractive.

“You have—won,” she said, selecting an imprecise word. She was the woman of the forest, the nymph of love. “I cannot, I cannot let you go that way. Not to so great an evil.” She spoke of evil: not the thing they had done at the spotel, but the god he was to serve. The god who had offered him sanctuary.

The phantasmagoria was over. The specters were gone, whatever they had been, and Malice was once again the unspoiled luster of his dreams. The lovely lady of his childhood had returned, the object of all his love, never to be distorted again.

His pure emotion encompassed her. He kissed her, savoring the completion of the melody at last. Never had his love been so strong.

Under his, her lips grew cold. She was dead.

13

Downriver: once more it tapered into a slender, hard-running chute, and the walls on either side closed in until there was little more than a narrow tunnel. But the walk-way continued just above the level of the water, wide enough for men to travel single-file.

Bossman led the way, alert for the markers of the man who had scouted and not returned. “If this gets much tighter,” he said, “we’ll have to swim for it.”

No one commented. A swim in that water could be dangerous. Any mistake in judgment would send the bodies helplessly down its current, through possible rapids, and into the jaws of river predators, or whatever else stood ready to defend the reputation of the Hard Trek. On foot, they felt at least a partial security, and every bend that brought a continuance of the path into view was greeted with an easing of tension.

The passage held, high enough for a tall man to stand upright, but narrow. The walkway took up a quarter of the base, the swift river the rest, and the wall threatened to nudge the unwary traveler into the water. It continued, mile after mile, a hallway leading—down.

Aton had returned, reluctantly, to make his report: there was no exit above, only an impassable waterfall. He had not told them of the other tunnel, beyond the falls. He had peered down it, heard the distant beating, and sensed a menace than no man could face. How he knew, he could not say; but he was certain.

Few believed that the chances downriver were good—but Bossman allowed them their hysterical hope. There might be an intersection with another stream, one whose channel could be traced to the surface. After all, the pit creatures must have entered somewhere… and Bedside had escaped. Where else could he have passed, but here? If only he had left a sign.

Miraculously, it ended. A final stricture, an almost perfect doorway, followed by release. They filed into a beautiful dome-shaped cavern with a large pool in the middle.

The pool was about a hundred feet across, and the dome arched to an apex fifty feet above it. The mysterious path circled the edge, a ledge eighteen inches deep and three feet above the waterline. The walls above and below that ledge were vertical or slanting inward; no pocks marred them, no crevices. A naked man could not climb away from the path. On the side of the pool opposite the entrance, the ledge dropped gradually down almost to the water level, where the top of a hole less than two feet in diameter could be seen. The water sucked greedily through this hole.

The pool itself was deep. The green luminescence came through for several feet, but was finally lost in the black reaches. The water was cool; the lots would determine the first volunteers for washing and swimming.

The entire party managed to fit around the pool. Bossman posted a guard at the entrance and allowed the others to relax. Men and women sat like children around the edge, dangling their feet and joking. The atmosphere, for the first time on the Trek, was carefree. The lots proved to be unnecessary, as people who had almost forgotten what it was like to swim disported themselves with open glee.

But Aton was uneasy. He sensed, as the others did not, the massive danger behind them. It had emerged from its tunnel behind the falls and sent its heartbeat after him, following Aton down the river. His mind somehow felt its hunger, its huge appetite, not entirely for food. It moved slowly, miles behind, but it was coming. It was coming.

Where was the exit? This cavern must have been formed by some enormous rising gas bubble, back during the molten days of Chthon’s being, caught here by the gradual cooling and hardening of the surrounding rock. Then the river had found it and cut through, filling it and carving its own exit. That meant that there could be no passage deep beneath the water, or the cavern would not have filled. And the flow through the visible hole seemed to match that entering exactly.

It would be a risky thing to plunge through the outlet. Here there would be no question of mastering the swirling current. A man would be helpless—as the advance scout must have been, since he had disappeared entirely.

Perhaps a length of their rope, salvaged from the entrance to the upper caverns, so long ago, could be dangled in the water, and held while a man climbed along it—if such a man were able to breathe at all, down there. And on the other side: how could they be certain that there was air, beyond the seal that the water made?

Yet the hours passed, and if any others shared Aton’s doubts, they did not show it. Even Bossman camped with over-all serenity, watching Garnet as she swam. Men dived deep into the water, searching for fish or other marine life, and coming up empty-handed. Some slept, propped against the wall; now and then a neighbor would playfully hoist a sleeper into the drink for a rude surprise.

This dome, it appeared, was as close as Chthon could come to a natural paradise.

Aton did not believe in paradise. He plunged down, ten feet, twenty, as deep as he could go, but found no bottom. He cut to the side as he came up, and was taken and spun about by an eddy in the water. In a moment he was out of it, unharmed, but it bothered him. The sense of impending menace was stronger. Was there after all a drainage from below?

He swam to the opposite shore, keeping clear of the turbulence near the visible exit. Here the little current was repeated. There was an undertow around the entire circumference of the pool. This was sinister: why should there be such an effect in still water?

Unless something massive were rising from below, sucking water in around the sides.

Bossman was watching him. Aton pointed to the edge and the man nodded. He had noticed.

Nothing was said to the others. There was no point in giving alarm until the danger was known—if there really were danger. But immediate steps should be taken to investigate the exit. It might be needed in a hurry.

There was a cry from the guard at the gate. Something was attacking!

So it was not my imagination, Aton thought. My mind was not losing touch with reality.

A scuffle, a hoarse scream; then two bodies tumbled into the pool. One was the guard; unhurt, he swam to the edge and mounted the path again. The other was one of the scaled stone-eaters, wounded and dying.

These creatures were not carnivorous, as far as he could tell. Too slow to be the chimera, they had never advanced on man, and were easy prey to him. What had affected this one?

Another animal came, and a third. Soon the pool was littered with corpses, as the clumsy creatures charged upon the men’s stone knives. What was driving them?

Bossman joined Aton near the entrance. “Listen,” he said.

There was a new noise in the distance, far up the tunnel—one unlike anything heard in the caverns before. It was the sound of marching—of many feet tramping in unison.

They looked at each other, and a general hush fell upon the group. A disciplined army—here? It made no sense at all. The upper caverns would not have organized any search party, and could not have kept one supplied this far. If the exit to the long trek were near, there might be human beings, and they might indeed march, but not from the direction the prison party had come.

The sound persisted, coming down the tunnel toward their dome, a measured beat increasing in volume. This, whatever it might be, was the thing that had driven the other animals before it.

Everyone in the dome heard it now. Sleeping people were nudged awake, to listen apprehensively for a sound they could not understand.

“Great Chthon!” the guard exclaimed, drawing back in terror. The marching beat loudened. The source had rounded the last bend, though it was not yet in sight of the people in the dome.

Then it appeared. A gigantic, grotesque head poked through the entrance. It had enormous faceted eyes and antennae as thick as a finger and a foot long. It rotated slowly, mechanically, to gaze upon the assemblage; the tramping died away. Then it came forward—into their refuge.

The back of the head compressed into a neck scarcely two inches thick. The body emerged: a squat, irregular hump, supported by two thick legs that lifted and fell jerkily. The people nearest fell back, appalled, giving ground to the creature.

The body tapered down again to a two-inch-diameter tail. Then, astonishingly, a second body followed, similar to the first. A third, and a fourth. The thing was segmented!

Now the people before the head were crowding back in unabashed horror, desperate to get away from it, but finding no room to retreat. Some jumped into the water as the creature advanced relentlessly.

There was a general shuffle as those who could not swim, or who were afraid to, pushed roughly around the ledge to make way for the caterpillar. Aton and Bossman were now nearest to the great head. Bossman’s axe was ready, but he chose so far to retreat rather than to attack. Not enough was known about this thing, yet.

The ledge had become quite crowded. There had been little surplus room to begin with, and a considerable length of the monster had appeared. Ten, fifteen bodies; and more segments appearing endlessly, until it took up almost a quarter of the circumference. When would it end?

Aton noticed that the latter parts were misshapen, grotesque even to one familiar with the standards of a creature such as this. They were no longer uniform, except in the synchronized motion of the legs. Some of the segments had extra limbs hanging uselessly by their sides, withered. Some segments appeared to have shrunken heads. It was as though they actually belonged to different species.

One segment even looked human.

Ridiculous! Aton backed away from the gross head.

How did the thing feed itself? There was no discernible mouth on the forepart, and the segments were not in a position to feed effectively. Yet more and more of them appeared, each neatly taking up the full width of the ledge. It was apparent now for whose use the convenient path had been cut.

People scrambled over each other and fell into the water in their mad effort to escape. Those still standing were crowded into less than half the circle—and still the thing advanced. The segments most distant from the ugly head were oddly shriveled, sucked dry of juices; if the thing went hungry, Aton thought, it did so from the rear forward.

At last the end appeared. There was a concerted sigh of relief. The thing would not force them all into the water.

The final segment finished in a needle-like stinger projecting some four feet.

There was a scream above the prevailing bedlam. All heads turned involuntarily. Almost every person’s whole attention had been absorbed by the caterpillar, so that another development in the pool had gone unnoticed.

A shape had risen from below, coming up slowly under the water. Whalelike, it filled the pool from side to side, an immense mass of turgid black blubber a hundred feet across. The last covering of water dribbled from its convex and waxy surface to expose a large circular orifice: a mouth.

Aton recognized it now. It was one of the jellyfish, grown to a shocking magnitude. It was, he strongly suspected, carnivorous. The animal bodies had disappeared down the river drain, so the evidence was not immediate.

Proof was not long in coming. The mouth gaped wider, disclosing a whitish internal runnel that frothed and gurgled and belched a noxious yellow stomach vapor. A tubular tongue snaked out. It cast about blindly, then slapped over the body of a woman in the water and hauled her shrieking into the maw.

Meanwhile the caterpillar was busy, too. The head commanded the water-exit, and the tail had projected itself across the entrance and was moving backwards along the opposite ledge, preventing any escape that way. Its mighty prong was, if anything, more frightening than the head itself.

The tail suddenly shot out, extending its length a good four feet. It neatly impaled the nearest man, who had been foolishly threatening it with a fragment of stone, stabbing through his middle and emerging behind his back. He brayed horribly and collapsed; but his body was held upright by the spike. This contracted, pulling him up against the concluding segment of the caterpillar.

What awful power! Aton thought. To ram through gut and muscle and backbone and come out cleanly.

Then, hideously, part of the corpse returned to life. The man’s head and arms hung slackly—but his legs picked up the same measured tempo of the segments. The other segments.

The tail shot out again, catching a woman as she tried to run. The force of it punched through her back and out her stomach.

She, like the first, sank into unconsciousness or death; like the first, she gave up her lower limbs to the marching rhythm, undead.

Aton understood at last the dreadful nature of this trap. What had appeared to be an innocent haven was in fact the mutual feeding ground of two of Chthon’s most predatory inhabitants. The victim could take his choice—but he could not escape.

And the entire party had walked into this parlor and made itself at home. Now there was no time to think, to plan, to explore. The caterpillar was incorporating new segments at will, backward, forward, sidewise, or doubled over—however they happened to meet the piercing tail. The jelly-whale clumsily sucked in all those who fell or dived or were pushed into the water. It could afford to be clumsy. The consumption would take time—but it was certain.

14

Bossman sprang into leadership, grasping his axe in both hands and using the handle to beat people back and out of the way. He cleared a space and stepped up to challenge the head of the caterpillar. Aton followed, suspecting his intent.

Bossman took his stance and swung, the muscles rippling beautifully across his back. The blade of his axe sliced into the rubber hide of the caterpillar-snout. Green goo welled out of the gash. The creature emitted an anguished hiss from a valve behind its flopping antenna and retreated, the motion of the front legs rippling backward into the rear pairs. He struck again, aiming for the bulging eyes, but the caterpillar blinked.

Blinked: shining bars of metallic bone arched over its eyes in a protective mask. It could not use its head to fight, but it could nevertheless protect itself from that prey that elected to stand and fight. An instrument as crude as the axe could only harass, not kill.

Bossman struck again and again, stinging the exposed fringes of the painted face, and it retreated farther. But as it did so, the tail advanced, and that was worse. The circle was nearly closed, as the long body expanded inexorably and limitlessly.

“We’ve got to kill it or drive it away,” Aton shouted. “Or push it into the water.”

That would be a fitting end to it. The caterpillar drowning and threshing the water with all its marching feet; the jelly-whale choking on an interminable morsel, one that it could never swallow entirely. Both might die.

It was unlikely. A concerted attack by the entire human group might dislodge the caterpillar. Men and women could skirt the jelly-whale and grasp the myriad legs from below, prying them off the ledge; or climb onto its back and wedge it away from the wall. Yes—it could be conquered. But not by a terrified mob. The necessary organization, in the face of the immediate panic, would be impossible. Direct, obvious escape—only this would mobilize the screaming people.

“The river!” Aton shouted, gesturing toward the swirling hole, Bossman heard him above the clamor and glanced about. Catching on, he backed up to that area and stood guard, ready to prevent the caterpillar’s advance.

“Through!” Bossman yelled, pointing down. “THROUGH!” A man in the crowd saw the sign and dived into the shallow water between the central hump of the jelly-whale and the rim of the pool. Half-swimming, half-walking on the spongy flesh, he splashed his way to that exit and plunged headfirst into it. The flowing water gathered behind him and helped him on.

A pause; then another man followed, popping out of sight before the water monster could find him. Then a woman, and the others queued up, gladly choosing the unknown avenue in preference to the visible horrors.

The sixth man into the hole was Hastings. He weighed two hundred and seventy pounds, by his own estimate. Too late, they discovered that his girth was too great for the exit. His head and shoulders disappeared; his kicking legs and feet did not.

“Get that bastard out of there!” the crazed creatures behind shouted. Both head and tail of the caterpillar were advancing, as it stretched out its body. The water monster was sliding its terrible tongue within range of the hole. If the obstruction was not cleared away quickly, the rest of them would perish.

Aton jumped into the water and grabbed the kicking feet. He braced his own feet against the stone fronting the hole and strained, but the water had backed up against the plump body and sealed it tight. He changed his tactic and tried to heave it through, but the size was prohibitive. It would not budge either way. The two legs continued to kick violently, hampering his efforts. There seemed to be no way to free the man.

Bossman looked down, his expression grim. The head of the caterpillar was almost back to the hole, now that it was not under siege. “Can’t take the time,” Bossman grunted. “Move out.”

Aton cleared out, keeping wary attention on the casting tongue behind him. Bossman was right—they had no time to spare.

Standing astride the hole, Bossman swung his axe down hard. It struck the exposed rear just above the bifurcation, cutting deeply into the spine. The fat legs ceased their motion. He swung again, chopping farther into the wound as though felling a tree. Blood sprang copiously, staining the water.

Is that your death I feel, old friend?

The thick tongue came at them, sensing the blood. Aton swam desperately to avoid it; the slimy cold length of it slapped against his leg, circled his thigh, but it was not after him. Locating the source of the flavor, it slipped over the lacerated body, coiled about it. Bossman, spying it, aimed a blow to sever the tongue itself.

“No!” Aton cried. “Hold up!”

Perplexed, Bossman hesitated. It had been his obvious intent to break the body into small chunks of meat that could squeeze through the exit individually, and thus reopen the passage. But if there were an alternative—

The great tongue tightened. The monster heaved. With a slushing noise the bloated red mass came out of the hole and splashed across the water toward the orifice. The dragging head flopped limply, openmouthed in the waves, seeming to nod to Aton.

The loosened water rushed through in a fierce whirlpool. The way was clear again. The jelly-whale had unwittingly saved them.

Aton was one of the last to go through. His turn came, and suddenly, irrationally, he was afraid. Where did this escape lead to? How could he be certain that this step was not more terrible than the awful alternatives behind? But Hastings had died to free this passage; it had to be taken.

He slipped into it with his eyes open, watching the passage as it sucked him down. The water pushed at his legs, urging him on as his breath ran low. The moment the walls began to spread, he stroked powerfully for the surface.

Too soon—for his head crashed against the low ceiling, and he drifted half-conscious in the turbulent stream. A moment later a strong hand gripped his hair and hauled his head into air so that he could breathe again. As his head cleared he understood how welcome that assistance was—for there was the roar of a waterfall ahead.

He struggled onto land, coughing to discharge the pink water from his throat. Only then did he recognize his savior: Garnet.

More were saved in like manner. Many of the others had already gone over the falls. When it was apparent that no more were coming through, they rose and climbed down the twisted formations leading to a larger pool twenty feet below the brink of the falls.

The pool was full of people. Some, undamaged, were already climbing out around the sides. Others, unable to swim, were thrashing wildly and uselessly. Some no longer thrashed.

Garnet pitched in first. She hooked a foot of the nearest flounderer and guided the woman to shallow water. Then she went after another. She was an excellent swimmer.

Those who were able followed her example. Soon all of the bodies had been recovered. But a terrible toll had been taken.

A hundred and sixty persons had entered the jelly-whale’s quiet dome; thirty-eight stood here now. Seven more were too badly injured to travel, and had to be euthanized—by the axe.

There was a cry from downstream. Weary heads turned to see what new danger threatened. But it was a cry of discovery.

On a flat section of rock a crude cairn had been erected—the work of intelligence. Beside it was scratched the letter B with an arrow pointing downstream.

Doc Bedside’s trail.

15

After that it was easier. Nineteen men and nineteen women survived, the fittest, by nature’s definition, of all the nether caverns. The size of the party was manageable and efficient, and game was increasingly plentiful and less vicious. The air was sweet, the water clear, the temperature cool.

Bedside’s signs appeared at regular intervals, always pointing down. How he had come this far alone they never expected to know; but he obviously had, with his wits still about him, and that was enough.

“What was he like?” Aton asked Garnet, as they climbed over damp stone sculptures.

“Highbrow,” she said. “Small and smart. Weak eyes, but underneath, a mind like a scalpel. He had this thing for escape—”

“But if he got this far, what could have driven him mad?”

“Maybe he saw the chimera.” Men were still disappearing—not women—without a trace. It was assumed that the chimera still stalked the party (how had it gotten past the dome?) and brought down the unwary. The steady sound of the river would drown out a distant scream.

The days of marching continued. The river grew, fed by tributaries that no longer interested them, and with it grew the surrounding caverns. The wind tunnels ceased. Instead the party traveled through carved formations, water deposits and erosions, treelike stalagmites, and caves of white crystal. At times the river split into several branches, winding through linked vaults with obscure ceilings and indefinite boundaries, only to regroup below.

At last it widened into a mighty, slow-moving lake. They paced the left bank. Fifty feet across, the water was terminated by a sheer cliff, arching into a three-dimensional labyrinth overhead. Their side was level, however, and by the shore was a beach of white sand. The lake itself was clear and cool, a swimmer’s delight—but one of Bedside’s signs labeled it with skull and crossbones. They took his word for it.

Once again the caverns of Chthon were showing their beauty and peace. But this time no one believed in paradise.

The open walkway gradually narrowed, as the wall closed in against the lake. The wall on the far side withdrew equivalently, making space for the beach on that side. The shores were exchanging characteristics—or, more properly, the river was simply shifting its channel to the near side.

At last they came to the sign that pointed to the water. It was time to cross.

But in the center they could see the white wake of a large marine creature. A wake that had paced them for several marches.

Bedside, with his ingenuity, might have prepared chemicals to repulse the thing. This party had to find other means.

Bossman did not take long to make up his mind. “The lots.”

Garnet approached. “I know what you want,” she said dully. “I’ll do it. I can swim good.”

Bossman brushed her aside. “I didn’t tell you to do nothing! The lots.”

She refused to move. “You can’t spare any more men. I can swim good. I want it.”

Bossman studied her for a long time. He turned away. “You stay here,” he told her over his shoulder. “Five—come with me.”

Aton accompanied him to a place away from the group, where the wall curved back briefly to make an open room bounded on one side by the river.

“I been meaning to talk to you, Five,” Bossman said, laying his axe down near the water and divesting himself of all other armament. Aton, knowing what was coming, discarded his own stone weapons.

“We’re all of us down here for our own reasons,” Bossman continued. “Ain’t none of us good enough to talk about none of the others. But we got to have a settlement, now.” He stood with hands on hips. The muscles, firmer now than they had been before the trek, shone with light sweat. “I don’t know what you done to get shipped down here, and I ain’t asking.” This was standard courtesy only; the word about Aton’s minionette had long since circulated. “But you been more trouble than any ten men since the mines were started. You’re slick, you’re tough—but I know you. I saw the sign long time ago.

“If I’d had my way, you’d’ve been tied decoy to that stone for the chimera, ’stead of that scared little man who never had the guts to make real trouble. You’d’ve been the one stuck in that hole, waiting for the axe, ’stead of the only man with brains enough to get us through. You’d be the one to take that lonely swim coming up.”

Bossman was not quite as ignorant as Aton had thought. How much did he suspect? “Are you accusing me of Framy’s crime?”

“I ain’t smart,” Bossman said. “I don’t know what goes on in people’s minds, and I take a long time to figure things out. But I know that Framy wouldn’t’ve fingered his only friend. He didn’t work that way. He’d’ve named his worst enemy, to save a guilty friend.

“But he didn’t know who got the other half of that garnet. He figured you were innocent, because he was. He expected you to alibi him. But you didn’t, and that was the end of him. You only had one reason to frame him like that, and that was because you knew we wouldn’t get no one else to confess, because no one else had done it—because you were the one who picked up the other half-garnet and slipped it into the basket for Tally. You were the traitor.”

And Bossman, slow to catch on, had executed Framy before figuring out the truth—and now had to stand by that mistake.

“Too bad,” Aton said sympathetically. “You also hold me responsible for Hastings’ death?”

“You’re smart.” Bossman had missed the ironic note. “You knew we’d wind up on the Hard Trek, and that’s what you wanted all the time. So other people would die instead of you. You couldn’t chance it alone. Everyone that’s died here, is dead because of you.”

“Even the victims of the chimera?”

“I looked when we heard Framy scream, and I didn’t see you. That’s when I began thinking. You came up from the other side of the tunnel. The chimera had to go right past you to get away. But you said nothing. You wanted Framy dead, so he couldn’t talk any more and maybe have someone believe him—”

“Sure. I have the hysterical strength vested in me by the sorcery of the minionette. I can kill instantly with my bare hands. I can take hold of the mass of cords in the front of a man’s neck and rip it out, or jab my fingertips in under his ribs and tear loose the entire rib cage. I can use my unkempt human nails in the feline trick of hooking the nose of my prey and breaking its neck by pulling the head around. I can neatly duplicate the cut and tear marks, the parallel lines left by animal claws, and the distinctive half-chewed, half-slashed look of the fang attack. I can do this because I have a secret cache of specialized appliances designed for the specific purpose of imitating the marks of the phantom chimera, and accomplishing this in a matter of seconds. I made these tools, since I forgot to smuggle them in, in my hidden laboratory in Chthon, where I have a serviceable metal press and a small blast furnace to smelt my crude iron. Stone is too awkward, you see. I had to cut a hole to the surface of the planet for the smoke and fumes to escape through unnoticed. Every so often I have to go up there and shoo the tourists away from my chimney, because this is very private business and I don’t want any interference. My lab is soundproofed so that no one can overhear the noise of its operation, and I have a private railway paralleling our course on the Hard Trek, so that I can fetch my implements every time I feel the need for another execution. I have special equipment to erase my bloody tracks, and of course I wear an all-enveloping covering, a form-fitting suit similar to those used in space, that takes the brunt of the spattering blood, and that I can peel out of and hide immediately so that my person retains no more than its natural grime, and no one can tell what I’ve been doing. For, you see, I have to be ready to rejoin the group at once, so that no one realizes that I’m missing when the sound of the first scream comes. I was a little slow with Framy, I must admit; but I’ve been practicing diligently. Oh, it takes the finest split-second timing. A real challenge. I can’t tell you how much fun it has been—”

Bossman continued, unmoved by Aton’s too-elaborate sarcasm. “I seen what you done to Garnet, too. She’s a rough gal—but she don’t deserve what you give her. I can’t do nothing about the rest of it. But I’m telling you now, you’re going to make it up to her.”

Yes—the time for a settlement had come. “You quite sure of that?”

“I’m sure,” Bossman asserted. “That’s one thing this farmer can do. She’s got to die, but she’ll die happy. You’re going to ask her real nice, and bring her in here where nobody can see you, and tell her those lies you know the gals go for, and make up to her like you meant it. She deserves that much, and she’s going to get it. The rest of them’ll take a break and get ready for the crossing.”

Aton studied him. The man was serious. “You expect her to believe it?” He shifted position slightly.

“She’ll believe what she wants to believe. I know her well enough for that. And you’re going to make it easy for her. You’re a good enough talker when you want to be.” Here Bossman permitted himself a slight smile. “Why she fixed on you I can’t figure. But she’s ready for anything you put on the line. You make it good, and you carry it all the way through—or you’ll be decoy this time, not here. If you don’t believe that—”

Aton didn’t. Trained to give no warning, he twisted over, a bare foot lashing out with all the deadly skill of his fighting art. The krell farmer was overdue for a lesson.

The edge of an iron hand brushed the kick aside. So fast he hardly seemed to move, Bossman was inside the thrust of the leg. His calloused foot kicked Aton’s other leg from under him. The bruising slam of his body against the stone floor was doubled by that of Bossman’s weight on top of him. Under what little fat was left, the farmer was hard as a cavern wall. An unyielding arm clamped Aton’s head; a powerful hand locked his own arm in an unbreakable grip. Fingers probed under his jawline.

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…