Chthon

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 on 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 wishing 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?

“But you are sane and free now.” Unlikely.

“Neither one is natural,” Bedside said. “But yes: I have more sanity and more freedom now than ever in my life before, and this is the offer I bring to you.”

“Freedom and sanity—in Chthon? You offer garbage,” Aton said, and positioned himself for action.

“Did you imagine,” Bedside said, curiously quiet, “that you could brave the lungs and the stomach of Chthon, and not be accountable to the brain?”

“I’m not accountable to your god. I won my freedom.”

“Not yet,” Bedside said. “Chthon granted you a reprieve. You did not conquer it.” The words had a familiar ring. How many forces fancied they were manipulating his life? Or were they fancies?

“As you remarked,” Bedside continued, “we are very much alike. By normal standards, I am mad. Only my mission for Chthon preserves my balance. Chthon takes care of me in a way you will soon understand. But you—”

“I was judged to be criminally insane,” Aton admitted. “On Hvee, that term is still in vogue. But that was before the death of the minionette. I am well, now.” The falsity of that statement stung him as he made it. The hvee did not love him any more, which meant that he was totally depraved, whether he comprehended the reason or not. Had Coquina suspected? Was this the reason she had kept her distance? Then why had she cared for his body, all this time? Why had she sent him forth to defeat this “evil one”? Too much was unresolved.

But he would do this one thing, for her, for the sake of the love he thought he felt, though he knew it now to be a shallow, selfish thing, a love unworthy of her. He would make this offering, since she seemed to want it: the lifeless body of Bedside.

“Your particular madness stems from a biological basis,” Bedside said. “There is no cure for it. You cannot undo your parentage. You will go on killing sadistically because the minion in you craves the telepathic pleasure of innocent pain. You will go on forgetting your crimes because the man in you cannot accept the guilty pleasures your other self demands. You will go on vindicating the judgment of those who proscribed Minion, hating yourself far more than any other thing—and not without justice.

“Oh, yes—you know your madness now, don’t you, minion?”

“I did kill,” Aton said, “but not sadistically. There was justice and mercy in my action. I was not the chimera.”

Bedside did not relent. “I am not talking of honest murders, minion. I know there are times in Chthon when killing is necessary. Nor do I mean your failures: your Idyllia girl, your vengeance on the minionette, the cavern woman. You tried to kill them all, but you were so much at war with yourself that you could neither love nor hate effectively.

“No, not these actions. But think back to one specific case: your little friend, Framy. (Yes, my god tells me everything.) You protest your innocence there because you did not technically spill his blood. But you betrayed the nether caverns, and pinned the blame on him, and had him posted for execution. And you were there, listening, when the chimera came. Your minion sensitivity responded to the savage little mind of the chimera as it stalked, and you knew it was coming for Framy. You could have alerted the others, and saved him—but you did not. You were there, savoring his agony, as that chimera struck, and still you gave no alarm. Only his dying scream alerted the others—too late.

“This is what you did in Chthon, not once but many times. You used the chimera to gratify your brutal passion. Was this your justice? Your—sanity?”

Aton remembered. Chthon, where his lust for pain had been intensified by confinement. The men whose dying he had savored, the macabre tortures inflicted upon them by a creature he could have stopped, but didn’t, as their life-blood dwindled. The unholy ecstasy that had thrilled him, the almost religious joy culminating in transported spasms of pleasure as those death agonies came.

He remembered, too, the trial, on Hvee: the experts testifying that his aberration was after all biological, not emotional, and that there could be no cure. That he had not murdered, yet, but could not be set loose again, for the safety of mankind. That even a complete personality-wash would not remove his proscribed urges. He remembered the sentence: Chthon.

The minion traits had come upon him with maturity, but for a time had been wholly directed to the search for his minionette. When her influence diminished, the horror began. His love of Coquina had been the last struggle of the human qualities within him—a losing struggle.

The hvee had known. It had not been with him during his madness. It had loved what he once was; but when, after Chthon, it touched his macabre hand…

“This is the reason,” Bedside said, “that you will return to Chthon. There you will be safe—from your fellow man, since you are an outlaw, and from yourself. Chthon will support your sanity more perfectly than you can ever do yourself. Chthon will be your god, and you and I will be brothers—forever secure, forever free.”

It was tempting. Aton saw that his entire adult life had been a destructive nightmare of passion and pain, contaminating everything it touched. The minionette had been part of it, naturally and knowingly. But Coquina—it would be kindest for her if he had the same courage of the minionette before him, and simply stepped out of her life. She would be better off with her own kind. The love he bore her could achieve its finest expression in deprivation.

But the minionette had died to give him human semblance. She had known him well, known of his link with Chthon, and had cried out against it. Malice and Coquina, minionette and human, his first and second loves—these two had come together not as rivals but as sincere collaborators for his benefit. They had agreed that he had a chance, and both had staked their lives upon it. Could he betray them now?

Perhaps both were mistaken—but they believed in his recovery, and he owed it to both to make the ultimate effort, to resist the easy way. He could not abolish his crimes by running away from life. He had to live, to atone, to make some effort to balance the scales. He had to face what he was and what he had done—and search for a way to make amends. This, perhaps, was the real battle he had come to participate in: that against the capitulation rendered so attractive by Doc Bedside.

“No,” Aton said.

Bedside’s aspect changed. “I will show you what you are,” he said, his voice sharp, his mouth gaping, teeth exposed like those of the cavern salamander. “You rationalize, you delude yourself with hopes of future goodness. But your true wish is still to kill yourself, because you know you are the partner in a crime against your culture. You tried to blame the minionette, but you are the one that forced the act. Yes, you know what I mean, minion.”

Aton’s attitude also changed subtly as he listened. It was coming now, and he could neither stop it nor tolerate it. Bedside’s blade was on guard. His space training had prepared him for action against a knife—but not one wielded by the hand of a mad surgeon. Normal reflexes would not be sufficient.

Bedside continued: “You have so conveniently forgotten your incestuous passions. Careful!” he rapped as Aton moved. “I would not kill you so long as Chthon needs you, but you would not find my surgery entirely painless.”

This was Bedside’s final effort. Could he nullify it? The man was infernally clever.

There in your spotel,” Bedside whispered intently. “That’s when you did it. Chthon knows. That’s when you had the minionette alone, knowing what she was.” The bright eye-lenses glittered in the green glow, just above the pointing blade. “That’s when you raped your moth—”

The knife clattered to the floor as minion struck with the strength and speed of telepathy. Bedside stared at the thing he had loosed, a living chimera. “Pray to your god for help!” it whispered, hot teeth poised, talon fingers barely touching the bulging eyeballs, ready to nudge them redly out of their sockets. “Perhaps it will help you die.”

They remained in frozen tableau, the young warrior and the old. Then the chimera faded. Aton let the man fall, unharmed. “I am not what I was,” he said, “and I was never the physical chimera. I will not kill you for distorting what you do not understand.”

Bedside lay where he had fallen, at Aton’s feet. The menace in him was gone; he was a tired old man. “You have slain your chimera.”

“I have slain it.”

“I return to Chthon in the morning. You are free.”

Aton went to the port and swung out, feet searching for the ladder.

“Let me speak for a moment as a man,” Bedside said, halting Aton’s descent. “Chthon desires your service, not your demise. There is no resentment. Chthon will help you to win your other battle.”

“No.”

“Listen, then. Had I had a woman like your Coquina to love me, I would never have needed Chthon. She broke my arm, eleven months ago—I had not thought she knew your fighting art—but she is a woman you cannot replace. You will lose her, unless—”

Aton dropped down to the ground and began to move away.

“Think, think of the date!” Bedside cried after him. “And of the hvee! Otherwise…” But his voice was lost in the rapid distance.

Eighteen

Aton had defeated the evil one of Chthon, once he recognized it as himself, his sadistic killer instinct. The prison of Chthon was the refuge of those who were dominated by such impulses. Doc Bedside, now the agent of Chthon, had almost proved that Aton had escaped in body only; but the sacrifice of the minionette and the care of the daughter of Four had swung the balance and brought the civilized man in him to victory. He had been roused too soon; with more time he would have come to understand and accept the painful truths he had blinded himself against. Blindness had not solved the problems of Oedipus, nor had the ritualistic physical blinding of victims solved the problems of the men of Minion. Aton had been obsessed with blindness, physical and emotional.

More time, and Bedside could not have roused the dying chimera at all. It had been close—unnecessarily close. Why had he been thrust into battle prematurely? Could Coquina have wanted him to lose?

No, it was not possible to doubt her motives. Coquina was good, and she loved him far more than he had ever deserved. He had been the one to fall short, every time. He had denied their betrothal, even before he had met her. He had thrown her off the mountain. He had killed the hvee.

Think of the hvee, and of the date. What cryptic message had Bedside intended?

How little he knew Coquina, after all. His brief time with her on Idyllia, in retrospect, had been the happiest of his life. If he had only been able to stay with her then, instead of chasing his own obsessions. He had, he knew, a great deal in common with the daughter of Four. Her background was naturally similar to that of a son of Five. She was intellectual, upper-class Hvee, on a planet that made no presumption of democracy; she was a far cry from the low-caste girls of the latter Families. Lovely shell! Why had he never looked inside? How well Aurelius had chosen!

Think of the hvee…

But the hvee had died. All his life had been nightmare, except for Coquina—and the hvee had condemned that too. Had he won the battle of his future, only to endure it alone?

Think of the date…

The date was Second Month, §403: no more distinctive than any other month or year, on the even-tempered, non-seasonal planet of Hvee. This appeared to be an extraneous riddle.

The hvee—there was something meaningful. Bedside could not have known about the recent episode, since it had happened less than an hour prior to their conflict. But he had known that it would happen, whenever Aton actually touched his plant. He had warned that Coquina would be lost, unless—

Aton began to regret his contemptuous sloughing off of Chthon’s emissary. What was there about the hvee that could save Coquina for a man it had deemed unworthy? A quality that a knowledgeable third party could predict?

Think…

Aton thought. His steady jog carried him across the countryside, familiar from his childhood. He could smell the light perfume of the scratched tree barks, of scuffled earth and crushed weeds and wild forest flowers. He could see the black outlines of the taller trees against the starry sky, and hear the nocturnal scufflings of minor foragers. Memories stirred in him, small poignant recollections of detail that became important only because it was unimportant. The feel of a dry leaf, the whiff of an idle breeze—all the wonderful things set aside by adulthood. Soon, now, he would pass near the spot where he had met the minionette, where he had acquired the wild-growing hvee.

The minionette had plucked it from the ground, and he, too knowledgeable at seven, had prevented her from keeping it. “Hvee is only for men!” he had asserted, and so she had made him a present of it, and it had been his until his betrothal. It had been his after that, too, for it would not live in the possession of a woman who did not love him. The hvee loved its master, and tolerated the lover of that master, so long as that love endured, and so long as that person was worthy.

The minionette had plucked it.

The minionette!

The hvee had fixed on her! She was its mistress!

Suddenly it fell into place. He had loved her sufficiently, or perhaps his minion blood had loved her, to preserve the plant. And she had after all been worthy, not evil. The hvee responded to true emotion, and did not notice inversions. The hate Aton had thought he felt for her, later, had been false hate. The hvee had not been misled.

The death of the minionette had taken with it not only the evil chimera, but also the good hvee—except that the hvee, in the possession of the lover of the lover, had not known that its original object of affection was gone. Coquina had seen the dead minionette, but she had not understood that this was the mistress of the hvee—and the hvee had taken her innocent faith for its own. Love, not reason, was its essence. Even its apparent judgment of worthiness was illusory. It loved the man who, basically, loved himself, and rejected the one who genuinely hated himself.

Had the hvee really belonged to Aton, it might have died anyway.

But he had not actually been condemned. It had died because he knew the fate of its mistress, and knew her link with it, though never consciously aware of it. When the hvee came back to him and his knowledge, it had to wither.

He could take a second hvee and offer it to Coquina. This one would not die.

He came into sight of the house. A dim light burned in the window.

Doubt continued to nag him. Why had she sent him out prematurely? Why had she refused to touch him? After she had devoted three years of her life to the care of a dying father and a terribly living son, with the end of torture so near—why had she been crying?

Think of the date…

Yes, the date had been premature. But why? Bedside must have intended something.

He reached the house and pushed open the door without a pause. A man turned to meet him—a stranger. He was husky, perhaps fifty, at the prime of life, with a solemn visage and worksoiled hands. There was power in his bearing, unobtrusive but immovable. This was Benjamin Five, the uncle he had almost forgotten.

“Where have you been, Aton?” Benjamin inquired gravely, his tone disconcertingly like that of Aurelius. Behind him a woman’s form was lying on the couch.

“Coquina!” Aton exclaimed, passing Benjamin with disrespectful haste. She did not stir. Her pale hair fell limply over the edge of the couch and almost touched the floor. “Coquina—I will give you another hvee—”

“Young man, it is too late for that,” Benjamin said.

Aton ignored him. “Coquina, Coquina—I won the battle! The evil one is gone.” Her eyelids flickered, but she did not speak. “Coquina.” He put his hand on hers.

Her hand was cold.

Think of the date…This was the year and the month of the chill. The chill! She was dying, far past the point of return.

“Did you think her love was less, young cousin,” Benjamin murmured, “because it did run smoothly?”

Aton understood at last. The chill had struck Hvee in the first month of §305, and was due again in the second month of §403. Coquina knew this well, as every resident of Hvee knew it, and could have left the planet—if she had not had a virtual invalid to care for. There had been no place off the planet where she could hide Aton—not from the scrutiny that quarantine officials still gave every ship leaving a planet under siege. And so she had stayed, and had risked the chill with him, and had lost. Instead of leaving the moment she contracted it, Coquina had remained, caring for him—and had finally roused him so that he would not wake alone, confused and helpless, or die from neglect under the drugs.

No—her love had not been less.

She had wanted him to win his freedom while she lived, while her support was with him.

The chill. He would have known the moment he touched her, for she had been far gone when she had talked to him. She must have sustained consciousness only with great effort, while trying to prepare him for a contest she only partly understood herself. Now that contest was over, her part was done, and she had stopped fighting.

Unless she had stopped fighting when she had seen the hvee die.

Aton kneeled for interminable moments beside her, his hand on hers, looking upon her quiet face. Was she never to know that he had not betrayed her that third time? The tears came to his own eyes as the cold crept from her hand to his, crept on into his spirit.

My love, he thought to her, my love for you is not less either. All of what you shared with the minionette before, belongs to you alone, now. My second love is greater than the first.

She lay still.

Aton bowed his head, defeated. “The price for freedom is too great,” he said.

There was an imperative knock on the door. “That’s Chthon,” Aton said to Benjamin, no longer caring whether his semi-telepathy showed.

Bedside entered. He went immediately to the dying girl. “Terminal,” he said.

Aton nodded. The last of Bedside’s riddles was becoming clear. It was Aton’s turn to make a sacrifice.

“I will pray to your god,” he said to Bedside, “if only she lives.”

Bedside nodded acceptance. “We must go immediately.”

Aton got up and slid his arms under Coquina’s numb form, lifting her into the air. He carried her to the door.

Benjamin did not move. “I think you have sold your soul,” he said.

Aton stepped into the night. The clear stars shone overhead—stars that he would not see again. “ ‘Hide, hide your golden light!’ ” he quoted softly. “ ‘She sleeps! My lady sleeps! Sleeps…’ ”

16

The caverns were quiet. There was no wind at all, and even the current in the water had disappeared. Some liquid hung in stagnant pools, too shallow to swim in. The rock formations had taken on a peculiar cast, an unnatural gray, and the grotesque shape of diverging passages repelled the eye.

Foreboding grew. This had the smell of a dead end. The once-mighty river had gradually seeped away, and the plentiful game had become scarce. Once more the party traveled hungry. Soon the lots would come into use again, unless someone volunteered by collapsing. The last of Bedside’s markers had been spotted two marches ago. If another were not found by the end of this march, they would have to retrace the trail.

Fourteen women and six men had survived the thirty-march journey of the Hard Trek—so far. Accident and fatigue still took their toll, and the chimera still stalked the group, though it seldom had a chance to strike any more. They were farther away from the surface than ever—and between them and final escape still waited the nemesis that had driven Bedside mad.

The march ended. They camped huddled together, trying to protect themselves from the ominous gathering of unknown forces. These caverns were menacing.

“How much more?” a woman demanded, her voice too sharp, addressing herself to the sinister passages. Aton agreed: what other pressures would be brought to bear before Chthon let them go?

A shout. It was the voice of one of the women on scout duty. Teams always went out on prowl, now, while the main group rested. The chimera never attacked an alert formation.

The others gathered around. It was one of Bedside’s cairns, with a message scratched on the floor. The rock was soft, here, and could be decorated readily.

“What does it mean?”

It was the typical skull illustration of danger, but without the crossbones. A single word was underneath.

Aton spelled out the crude letters: MYXO. “Must be a medical term,” he said.

“Myxo,” Bossman muttered. “Don’t mean anything to me. Ain’t like him to leave his picture unfinished.”

“Either something drove him off—” a woman suggested.

“Or there’s a Myxo ’round here that don’t quite kill,” another finished.

They stood in a circle, looking at each other. No one knew. But one thing experience had made plain: Doc Bedside’s humor was scant, and his warnings were not to be ignored.

“We better move on fast,” Bossman decided. They were tired, but there was no dissent. There was danger here.

Fifteen minutes later a woman fell, clutching at her throat and head. No animal had attacked her, and nothing was wrong—visibly.

They halted for a brief consultation. Life was more precious at this juncture. If many more were lost, the party would be too small to win through the remaining challenges. There had to be scouting parties, guards, and reliefs for these, as well as individuals for special assignments for unpleasant work. Once the disciplined system broke down, the demise of the remainder would accelerate. Concern for the laggards was something new—but necessary.

They camped and made the woman comfortable. She was examined closely. What was the matter with her?

Her breathing was labored, rasping. Gradually her skin whitened. A slimy mucus was exuded all along her body, and a stomach-twisting odor arose from it. She had fallen prey to a disease—the first disease known in Chthon.

“We better kill her now,” a woman urged, “before it spreads.”

Bossman considered the matter.

“Why bother?” Aton said. “We’ve all been exposed by this time.”

“How did she catch it?”

“I ain’t seen nothing like this before.”

“Leave her here and get out,” a man cried, the contagious tinge of panic coming out.

A second woman fell. “Too late,” Bossman said. It was always too late by the time they understood the manner of the next danger. “Better stick together and fight.”

“Fight what?” the man wanted to know. But the question was academic: a third woman was toppling.

In quick succession the women fell, to lie with skins smeared white. They did not appear to be in pain, after the initial spasm; but the acrid exudation grew steadily worse. It re-formed the moment the skin was wiped clean, and it was everywhere.

Aton, Bossman, and the other four men stood by helplessly. During the trek the men had taken more risks and died more readily, and the chimera seemed to prefer them. Now the tally was being reversed, as the mysterious malady mummified the females. Bossman did what he could. Taking a woman by the foot, he dragged her to the nearest pool and tried to wash the slime away. This seemed to help; she sat up and began to splash herself, slowly, but with some effectiveness.

They did the same for the others, dumping them into the water and holding up their heads by the hair until they revived. The crisis seemed to be over.

Then it started on the men.

The masculine attacks, as though to make up for lost time, were far more violent. Almost as one, the men went into convulsions. Their skin reacted, sending out the calcifying sweat. It was the women’s turn to play nurse. Soon everyone was in the pool, and the water took on a milky hue. If this were to be a fatal disease, all would die.

But Bedside had omitted the bones.

Aton was the first of the men to recover. He had experienced no pain, aside from the extreme tightness of throat that had restricted breathing. Instead there had been a lassitude, a desire to let go, to drift—a desire shocked away by the cold water. Now, in reaction, he was disgusted. Not at the ludicrous communal bath, but at his failure to resist the disease.

“The Myxo!” he exclaimed. “This must be what Bedside was warning us about. Some kind of virus.”

The nearest woman looked at him. The black-haired one, no longer as pretty as she had been before the trek, but still interesting. She had always steered clear when Garnet was about; but Garnet had fed the creature with the white wake while the others were swimming safely across the river, and now the field was clear.

If things ever eased up enough to permit a relaxed disbursement… “Must be in the air,” she said. “We better get out.” And he had never learned her name.

Bossman revived. “Yeah,” he agreed.

They moved on, trying to escape the malady they knew they carried with them. They did not get far.

The women were first, again. This time it was fever, rising unbelievably. There were no gauges, no thermometers here, but the simple touch of the skin served notice that there were several degrees between the sick and the well. The fever rose to the limit of human endurance. Then it increased.

They no longer tried to march. It was obvious that they could not outrun it, or hide from it. The passage ahead expanded into a bubble-dome, another relic of Chthon’s formation, out of place in this section of the caverns, but welcome. The base was filled with clear, shallow water. This was convenient and relatively safe. They settled down, in and beside the pool, waiting for what might come.

At what point, Aton wondered, did brain damage occur? Surely this fever was already cooking the neural tissues of the present victims. There was no specific limit to the temperature a living body could endure, despite the attitude of the medics—but such fever was dangerous. Was this the actual course of the Bedside madness? If so, was it possible to circumvent it?

Was there some way to hold the fever down until the illness ran its course?

He gazed into the water. It was cold; they were far below the fire cycle. Fully immersed—

The fever came. Aton slipped into the pool and lay down, propping himself in such a way that his face alone was exposed to the air. The relief was a blessed thing. But the juices in him were boiling, the tissues curling. The inferno of the blue garnet itself had hardly been as hot as this.

Vaguely he heard scuffling and splashing around him. Something was going on, but he was afraid to sit up and look, afraid to leave the water because of an irrational fear that he would burst into flame the moment he did so.

But he had to. He was finding it difficult to breathe for some reason. There was an obstruction.

Aton sat up and put his hand to his mouth to find it slimed with a thick layer of putrid paste. Inside, this time, obscuring nasal and glottal passages, instead of external skin. His nose was already entirely blocked. He hooked one finger into his mouth and scraped out a wad of yellow mucus, rank and rotten, which hardened immediately upon exposure to the air. No wonder his breathing was difficult. The stuff clogged the breathing passages by solidifying around them.

He looked around, or tried to, and discovered that a similar pus rimmed his eyes, almost closing them. It was the same for the others, male and female alike; the illness no longer seemed to distinguish between the sexes. Some were already retching, nauseated by the deposits. One man yanked out a huge solid chunk, and there was blood on it from the adhering membrane. No one dared to let it collect, or the choice would be between mutilation and suffocation. And still the fever raged.

Aton buried his face in the water, trying to wash the matter away. This helped; the lumps dissolved. He spat out a thick stew, gagging anew at the stench, and rinsed again. Water had saved him a second time.

The others followed his example. For three it was already too late. Several more were in doubt and would probably suffocate shortly. No one had time to assist his neighbor. There seemed to be no defense against the attack—only a temporary abridgment of the symptoms by continuous rinsing.

The pool had been fouled. “Move on—a little,” Bossman said.

They moved on, just far enough to locate a clear pool. The short walk was immensely tiring. The illness had sapped the strength of all of them drastically.

It continued for an interminable time. Toward the end most were crawling from one pool to the next between sieges, unable to walk upright. Judging by the state of his hunger, Aton estimated that the actual time elapsed since the onset was less than two marches—but subjectively, it was many times that.

The first recoveries came. The women, earliest to succumb, led the way to equilibrium. Gradually the symptoms abated for all of them.

Eleven women and three men survived. Of these, three continued in distress: Aton, Bossman, and the black-haired woman. Aton saw this, realized something, then lost the thought as he fought back another surge of dizziness and nausea.

17

Recovery: but those who had recovered completely, at least so far as the visible symptoms went, were not helping the others. They merely stood there, lethargic, waiting—for something. They did not speak.

At length the remaining three relaxed and sat up, free of the fever. The standing eleven looked on, blank-faced.

“All right,” Bossman called, his voice of command a shadow of its past. “We got to move on nex’ pool.”

He set the example, but the larger group did not follow.

“What’s the matter with them?” the black-haired one asked.

“Aren’t you coming?” Aton called back to them.

No answer.

“You know what?” the woman said. “They act like zombies.”

It was the key. The standing people did not appear to have free will at all. All of them were known to Aton, after the rigors of the trek. While they were not noted individualists, they still should—

His previous thought blossomed. Individualism: only the three most independent members of the remaining party were in motion now. The ones who always spoke for themselves, who acted on their own motivation, who habitually demanded explanations.

Further conjecture was cut off by another onset of the disease. All three staggered to the next pool and tumbled in, battling both fever and mucus with the cool water. And the others watched stolidly and did nothing.

In his fevered imagination it seemed to Aton that he was losing control over his own body. His arms responded slowly. Other muscles were sluggish, uncertain. This was an aspect of the illness that was only now beginning to make perverted sense.

But the thought of Malice buoyed him up. Her song was incomplete. He could not rest until he possessed her. Nothing else mattered. The fire in his blood was not more fierce than that in her hair; the pool no more refreshing than her deep eyes. Her love alone—

The siege passed. Aton felt stronger, now. It had been easier to resist, once he remembered his purpose. But the other two had been less fortunate. They gazed at him alertly, but did not try to rise. It was up to him to penetrate the mystery of the zombies.

Ten women and one man had neither fled the last attack nor been affected by it. Aton advanced on them.

They retreated—as a group. They shuffled away, awkward, stiff, in unison. There could be no further doubt: they were possessed and under common control. This time it was no caterpillar, at least not a physical one, but the effect was similar.

“Kill them,” Bossman rasped from the pool. “They ain’t human no more.”

Aton caught up to the lone man, a medium-built, hardworking, and congenial person, hitherto. “Snap out of it,” he said, yanking him back by the shoulder. But the man fell backwards at the pressure and crashed stiff-bodied against the floor. He did not try to get up.

Aton got down and listened for the heartbeat. There was none. The man was not breathing. He was dead.

The women continued their retreat. He went after them again—and was stopped by a third assault in this intermittent series. This one was more strenuous than before. He could hardly force his legs to cover the distance to the nearest pool. They wanted to jerk to the same rhythm that ruled the marching women. The coagulating slime in his mouth increased his distraction.

He got to the water and toppled in headfirst, not caring for the moment whether or not be drowned, so long as it was at his own direction. Malice appeared again, a lovely vision, and his insatiable yearning for her drove back the other fever, reluctantly. That was the only thing that stiffened his will to resist. The urge of the fever was too strong to endure for long.

It passed, leaving him weak and gasping. Beside him Bossman was rigid and staring, eyeballs caked with blood. Aton was afraid the leader had been overcome, but a voice came out of the twisted mouth, clogged and croaking, but Bossman’s.

“I… can’t fight no more,” Bossman said. His arm struggled in the water and brought up the shining axe. “Take it… kill me if I go…”

Aton took it. He stood up and strode toward the group once more. Again the women shuffled away, some not even facing him, but moving in automatic steps with the others. And again the fever struck.

He realized that the fever was under conscious direction. As he withdrew toward the pool, it eased; as he advanced on the zombies, it clamped down. The message was clear: leave them alone.

Aton made his reply clear. He focused his mind on the dominating picture of his love, his unobtainable minionette, and continued to advance. He struck with his free hand at the nearest woman; the coordination required to wield the axe was beyond him. She fell without a sound, to lie as the man had kin. The strain of transition must have weakened the zombies so much that any added shock was fatal. He could kill with a single blow.

“Kill—” he thought. “But these are human beings, the people I have traveled with and lived with through the most terrible adventures of our lives. How can I kill them?”

But he knew the answer to that, and in the disorientation of the mental attack the reasoning made sense: kill, because these people were no longer human. They had given up their minds and wills to some Chthon influence as insidious as the caterpillar, and death was merciful. He knew this intellectually, and he felt it, somehow, emotionally: there was no personality remaining in the zombies. Kill.

The invisible attack against him intensified. His breath was cut off, his sight wavered, but he fought and advanced and struck out almost blindly, again and again, connecting now and then with solid flesh, and all about him the silent females fell. It was carnage; one blow meant death, and there were many blows.

At last the pressure against him became too great, and he fell. Unable to rise, he tried to roll toward the water. But he had pushed himself too far. He succumbed, not to possession but to oblivion.

To—

“Your dream is futile,” the voice seemed to say. “The minionette is forbidden; only while you are apart from her is your emotion real. You cannot bring these opposite poles together; they can unite only in disaster.”

He brought it into focus: a mass of green. It formed into whorls and petals: the flower of the hvee. Petal lips spoke again.

“There is no magic in your song. Only because it is broken does it fascinate you. Only because your love is incomplete does it endure.”

“No!” But somehow it took hold, fatalism rising like the tide, lapping gently at idealistic castles of sand. For the hvee did not lie to its master.

“You are not my master. You are only—”

Aton blanked the image from his consciousness, afraid of what it might say. The flower wavered and turned gray. It was a hanging structure on the ceiling, a crystalline stalactite, cracked and hollow like a monster shell.

The women were washing his body in the water. Their motions were unpracticed, clumsy.

Aton recoiled. They were zombies!

The axe was on the floor, where he had passed out. He had not achieved the water himself. Was he a zombie, too?

“No!”

Aton jumped up, clambered out of the water, lumbered to the weapon. He slapped a hand on it as though afraid it would wriggle away. He was armed now; he was no zombie.

The women came after him, mechanically. He backed away, hesitant after their kindness to him. He had been destroying them; why had they spared him?

Something touched him. Whirling, Aton saw a man. It was Bossman, standing outside the water. His skin was clear. His eyes were vacant.

Aton knew what he had to do. He lifted the axe.

The attack began. He clenched his mind against it and swung the suddenly heavy axe. The great blade of it strove overhead, ponderous, too massive for his strength. He forced it onward, slowly, guiding it as gravity took leisurely hold and toppled it down. It came to rest at last in Bossman’s skull, and he fell, fell.

I have paid my debt to you, and—I’m sorry.

The force of the attack lay on him like a smothering blanket, but as he staggered back it eased again. The dead women lay all around; only the two who had revived him were animate. He could kill them—

And wander through the endless caverns of Chthon, alone. Was this the way it was to end? And if he succumbed, eventually, to zombi-ism, who would there be to kill him?

What had the love of Malice led him into?

“Truce.” The cracked voice came from the pool behind him. He had forgotten the black-haired woman, the last holdout.

She was rising from the water. He was not alone!

She approached him, moving with the awkward gait of the possessed. Her eyes stared straight ahead.

The last of the zombie conquests was coming to him, easy prey for axe or fist. What did it mean?

“Truce,” it repeated.

It could talk. There was intelligence behind the Myxo half-death! The skull without the crossbones.

Now it was ready to parley.

18

Aton held the axe, unwilling to take the action that would leave him entirely alone and lost in the caverns. Intelligence, even malevolent intelligence, was a more promising opponent than solitude.

“Truce,” he agreed.

The woman-thing stopped before him listlessly. “Do not kill,” it said.

The zombie-master wanted to save its remaining conquests! He had a bargaining point. His mind explored the possibilities.

“Who are you?” he asked, not really concerned, but needing to gain time for further thought. Could he win his freedom through this thing?

The figure’s eyes blinked. She backed away, eyes on the axe. “What happened?” she asked plaintively. “Why are you—”

She had thrown off the possession! “You don’t remember?”

She saw the standing zombies. “I—I lost, didn’t I?” she said, hesitantly. “I went under. All the hurt and terror were gone—but not quite all the way. I wasn’t quite a…” she paused, gesturing toward the others.

An incomplete take-over? He did not like the smell of it. Whose agent was she now?

She straightened, becoming rigid again. “I am—Chthon.”

Chthon—this time a title, not a place. The Myxo intellect.

It had learned moderation. The true zombies were useless to it, because it could not control their bodies effectively. But by leaving a part of the human will intact it was able to draw on the speech center, and perhaps much of the memory and mind. But what was it?

He asked it.

It did not know. But, in halting interchange, a gradual picture of sorts grew. The geologic forces in the subterranean Chthon-planet had carved caverns, hundreds and thousands of cubic miles of them: hot lava tubes, winding waterways, smooth wind tunnels. The subsequent whims of nature heaved and overturned the elaborate structure, crushing the passages, kneading them down, and beginning the process over. Lava flowed again, and again; water cut across the honeycombed strata, riverbeds melted, cool lakes were crushed between molten layers. Crystals formed in the interstices, all types, growing enormously, only to be reburied. New pressures on them generated restless currents, for some were semiconductors, and diodes were formed and destroyed, while electrons ran along and through the metallic strands left as residue from prior furnaces, and discharged into the flowing waters, jumped across broken networks, and accelerated through natural coils. The sparks ignited accumulated gas, exploded the volatile bubbles. A perpetual recirculation formed, heating and cracking the cold rock and vaporizing the percolating waters as the fires settled, changing tolerances. And the crystals continued to grow and change in the new environment, and some metamorphosed into forms that were scarcely natural, and the current in them developed circulations and feedback analogous to the fire cycle nearby. At last, in whatever indefinable manner the transition from slime to living slime is made, the transition from current to consciousness was also made, without the interposition of life, and the Chthon-intellect was created.

“What do you want with us,” Aton asked it, “with human beings? What good are we to you?”

The woman faltered, lapsed into zombie status, then back to human. “It wants me to explain to you that it has no—no moving parts. It is all—electronic, a computer. It can think, but it can’t do anything, unless it controls mobile units. The local animals aren’t very good. They can’t follow complex instructions, and Chthon can’t adapt readily to their animate nervous systems. It needs units with—intelligence.”

“It has two zombies,” Aton pointed out. Three.”

“They are not—strong. They have no—it takes great concentration to make their bodies move, because the—circuits are even less familiar than those of the animals. Foreign. It needs—willing units.”

Aton’s sympathy was small. “What’s the going rate for a ‘willing unit’?”

“Security. Sanity,” she said.

Aton’s laugh was harsh. “I’ll make it this deal: I’ll refrain from killing what’s left of these ‘sane’, ‘secure’ people, if it guides me to the surface safely.”

“Yes,” she said.

“Yes?” Aton did not believe it could be so easy. “Chthon agrees?”

“Yes.”

“Now?” He was looking for the catch. Was it planning to spirit away the zombies when his attention wandered, then renew the siege for him? “We travel together—the four of us,” he amended, “or I’ll kill them now.”

“It will take—six marches,” she said. The—others cannot travel that far. They will die.”

“Uh-huh. I can shorten their misery.”

“You will die—if Chthon summons an—animal—and releases its mind.”

Power politics. The thing was learning rapidly. Could it bring the chimera, or was this a bluff? But this gave him an idea.

“If Chthon can summon animals, our problem is solved. Have it bring something to ride.”

There were further negotiations; but before long Aton found himself mounted on the back of an enormous rock-eater, knees braced against the soft scales of its sides, hands gripping the great loose folds of its neck. His weight required it to travel on all fours, but the creature was sturdy enough to carry him easily. The others were similarly steeded. The long trip began, calculated at only two marches this way.

This was the Easy Trek.

The pace was swift. The huge pseudoreptiles, released from Chthon’s direct control after being given the message, hunkered along at a good ten miles per hour. The gray caverns passed as they picked their way through the maze. Aton saw that he could never have found his way out alone. He became drowsy, but did not dare to sleep. He might wake to discover the zombies gone. A strange twist of fate that made such onerous half-people valuable!

Yet common sense told him that there would be no practical way for him to catch the zombies if their animals deviated from the course his own steed was taking. They would be lost in seconds, and Chthon could stun his own mount and prevent any pursuit. With hostages gone, he would have no bargaining leverage. He was really much more at the mercy of the cavern god than it seemed to realize.

He looked around him, aware of the passage of time, his legs cramped by the constant strain. The surrounding caverns had changed, and he knew that he had either slept or been very close to it. But the zombies still paced him. Apparently Chthon was holding to its word. A surprising, unrealistic development. Chthon was hardly that stupid. Why was it humoring him?

Obviously it had rather special plans for him. The agreement had been a ruse to obtain his temporary cooperation. There was nothing he could do now but play along and wait for it to show its—hand.

They were traveling along a tunnel, similar to the prelude to the jelly-whale’s parlor, but with a dry stream bed. The gently ascending path led on and on, meandering but unending. He was reminded of the trans-system of a spaceship, and wondered fleetingly whether they were likely to encounter any cross traffic.

But of course Chthon would warn away any other animals, particularly caterpillars.

More time passed as the tireless creatures proceeded. Aton’s whole body ached. But his demand for freedom overrode any bodily discomfort, and he refused to plead for a halt. He wondered just how hard he would have to fight to obtain that freedom, when the moment of decision came. It would not be granted easily.

Abruptly, it was raining.

We’re on the surface! he thought. We’ve come out of the caverns! Stop the march—I want to get off right here!

But the time had not been sufficient. It was the first march, and they were still deep in the planet. In a few minutes they were out of the weather, under an overhang, and Aton understood that this was simply another wonder of Chthon: an opening so great in size that it had a separate meterology of its own. Or, more likely, there was a steady precipitation from a cold ceiling far above, or a leak from some high river. It had been, nevertheless, a surprise.

The animals ducked into it again, and Aton clung soggily. There was something about exposure to the rain that bothered him. He had a premonition of death, of terror, and of the end of love. Strange—he had never feared the rain before.

Brief flashes of strange vegetation could be seen as they passed. Luminescent gardens, glowing in green and blue, steamed steadily under the precipitation.

Aton was sorry to leave that section behind.

At length the first march was over. They dismounted stiffly and tried to relax. Aton realized that he was hungry; he had been hungry before the weird ride had begun, and now he reeled from it. The Myxo sieges had not strengthened him, either.

The half-woman spoke: “Build a fire, if you wish, for comfort; an animal will come.” And in this manner they were provided for. Aton discovered that there was nothing inferior about zombie-animal meat.

They were camped in wind tunnels, but unfamiliar ones. These might be part of a system opposite the one they had known as prisoners—across the mighty gas-crevasse. He would have been inclined toward exploration, if he had not long since become aware of the futility of it. What could he hope to find, except more caverns?

They slept, Aton with his arm over the half-woman, not from any personal desire for her, but to ensure her security as hostage—for what that was worth. He reasoned that she was the most valuable of the conquests, because her mind was largely intact. Some part of the supposed bargain would be binding as long as he retained power over her. Had there been any other way, he would not have touched her at all; the concept of such alien possession was repulsive to him.

Fresh mounts waited in the “morning,” and the four resumed their journey. The wind tunnels were left behind, and they threaded their way through a forest of stalagmites, brown and discolored with concentric rings marking gradations on the outside. Again the surroundings upset him, vaguely; the sight of such treelike columns rising from the floor reminded him of the childhood forests of Hvee, always friendly—now filled with nameless foreboding. Almost, at this point, he hesitated to leave the protective caverns, with their all-seeing god-figure. He was afraid of what he might find Outside.

He brushed the feeling away. Probably Chthon was trying to tamper with his mind. But nothing could stand in the way of his love for the minionette.

The mounts slowed early in the second march, moving on their equivalent of tiptoe. Aton, more alert than he had been on the previous march, looked around suspiciously. He saw the heaving hide of some gargantuan creature, sleeping. This was some dragon of the underworld, with the bulk of an elephant, lying astride their path. They were in its burrow—passages hewn recently out of the rock, ten feet in diameter, bore the scars of giant claws. But its sleep was sound, assisted, no doubt, by the influence of Chthon.

There was so much to the cavern system, so much more than Aton had ever imagined. Surely this was the greatest of underworld domains anywhere in the galaxy. An independent man could live here in comfort, with challenge.

The mount’s pounding thighs accelerated. Resume safe speed, Aton thought, and smiled. The wonders continued, more than the mind could assimilate in one swift trip. Some day he would have to return, to explore and exploit. There was sheer wealth here beyond calculation, and, more important, knowledge. A life spent here, recording for posterity the endless treasures of nature so much in evidence, would be well spent indeed.

Do not try to distract me from the minionette. She is my life, not this.

Would it ever be possible to map it all? This was a three-dimensional world, level upon level, climate upon climate, teeming with variety. A lifetime would hardly suffice.

Hour after hour. Progress slowed as the ascent became steep. The glow from the walls faded and was gone, leaving him blind. Round rocks clattered away and down, dislodged by feet now blind and clumsy. This was the strangest section of all—too remote for illumination. It frightened him. He was helpless.

“The animals cannot stand the light of day,” the half-woman’s voice came from ahead. “We must stop—”

The light of day!

“On foot. Another turn,” she said. Aton could hear her dismounting, along with the zombies. He joined them. The animals, released, decamped, eager to get away from this area. “We shall not go beyond this point,” she said. “You must go alone.”

Alone! To the fate Chthon planned for him.

The loose boulders banged his bare feet. Aton maneuvered around them painfully, groped his way along the ragged wall, found the dread corner. He turned.

Light came down, not green but white. It was bright and beautiful, the bleak cave ugly. Freedom!

As he stared upward, he saw a silhouette. It was an animal of some sort passing between him and the light—an odd birdlike creature with a very long, cutting bill, hooked slightly at the tip. It had terrible talons on the wings, as they spread momentarily, and solid, pincer-like feet.

The chimera.

Was this the freedom Chthon had promised?

He could turn back, rejoin the zombies, give up his dream. Give up the minionette. Worship Chthon.

Or he could advance upon the chimera, a creature he could not hope to overcome, and die the death it offered. Eyeless and gutless, he would live for a few moments in freedom, on the surface of Chthon-planet: lovely Idyllia.

“I forgot LOE!” Aton exclaimed. “I left my book in the caverns, where the sieges of Myxo began.” Yes, he would have to go back for it…

Some other time. Behind the chimera he saw the minionette, beckoning. He went to her.

The great wings fluttered silently. The creature disappeared, and with it the other image, and the way was clear. Chthon had let him go.