Chthon

Ten

It was bright, blindingly bright, even in the heavy shade. Aton had forgotten how much natural incandescence was wasted in the open. The smell of the outdoors was everywhere, rich and ecstatic. It was day and it was warm, not with the arid blast of the caverns, but with sweetness, with splendor.

Freedom! Nightmare was behind him now, his long trial over. The insane evil of the caverns could fade into the past, leaving only the Aton who had won free—the purged Aton, the clean Aton.

There were trees and grasses and open ground. The man who had conquered Chthon and kept his sanity dropped to his knees, not in any prayer of thanks, but to grasp physically at the renewed wonder of it all. His pale fingers dug into the soft turf, pleasure running up his arms; he brought a handful to his mouth, tasting the torn green of it and the fresh decay.

There is no filth in nature, he thought. There is no horror that does not originate in man’s own mind.

He rolled on the ground, transported by the joys of familiarity. He knew this planet—it was as though there had been no dark interlude between his murder of Coquina’s love and the present wonder, as though all of Chthon had not intervened to avenge that crime.

I loved you, pretty shell. But it was my second love, smaller than the first. And so I freed you.

A noise in the afternoon brought him out of his reverie. It had been morning when he emerged. His attention focused: the sound had been the report from the activation of an ancient projectile mechanism. A—shot. As a boy, he had once heard… someone was—hunting.

The associations were promising. A man who could indulge such antique tastes could also afford a private ship. He was likely to be eccentric, a loner.

But if this were a private game preserve, as seemed likely now, Aton himself could be in immediate danger. A number of exotic predators could have been stocked. He had been very foolish to let down his guard merely because he was free.

It would be best to overpower the hunter immediately and take his ship. That would solve his problem of transportation, since he could take off without having to conceal his identity from local officials.

He made his way toward the original sound, moving as quietly as possible. He was used to the rigid rock floor of the caverns, and his feet were calloused and insensitive from the eternal twilight marches. Brittle twigs seemed to project themselves magically under his toes, breaking vociferously. Surely his approach was audible for a mile or more!

He would have to wait for the man instead, hoping that his wanderings brought him within range.

In range of what? Aton had no weapon, and chance would scarcely bring the man within arms’ reach. He was still thinking in cavern terms.

Quietly he felt for fragments of stone, collecting them in a little pile at his ankles. He stood behind a slender red tree, sidewise: it would appear to be too small to conceal a man, and his position for throwing was good. There had been only one shot—the man must have fired for practice, or at a mistaken target. Nervous, perhaps. Good.

Aton threw his largest stone in a high arc that intercepted no branches during its ascent. It came down noisily fifty yards from his tree—away from the hunter. The man should pass very near, on his way to investigate. The first stone would have to be accurate, even so; a projectile weapon, properly used, could be as deadly as a knife.

The quarry began to whistle tunelessly, approaching. Did the fool expect to stalk an animal that way? There would be no point in reasoning with such an idiot. Best simply to kill him and backtrack to the ship. Aton could handle any conventional model.

The whistling grew louder. Aton raised his arm, flexing his wrist comfortably. He would have to expose himself momentarily; it was too risky to aim by the sound alone.

The whistling stopped. “I should advise you,” a scratchy voice said, “that my old-fashioned rifle has an old-fashioned heat perceptor. If you are sapient, act accordingly.”

The tree would protect him somewhat. The hunter would not dare to approach too close, and could not gain anything by circling. But neither could Aton hope to overcome him, since he had lost the advantage of surprise. He would have to parley.

“Sapient,” he called. “Truce.”

“I’ll hold my fire,” the voice agreed, “as long as I think it wise. I’m not a very good shot, anyway—more likely to hit the stomach than the heart.” The warning was plain enough: this man would shoot to maim rather than to kill.

Aton accepted the warning and put down his stones before stepping into view. He had no desire to experience the niceties of “poor” marksmanship. The hunter was less foolish than anticipated.

The hunter was short, slightly built, and middle-aged. Small, very bright eyes peered out from a deeply creased and sallow face. The hands, too, were yellow, the flesh sunken between tendons, the nails coarse and too long. But the vintage rifle those hands held was absolutely steady, and it bore unwaveringly upon Aton’s midsection. This was no pampered sportsman.

The hunter was giving Aton a similar perusal. “When you return to nature, you certainly go all out,” he said at last. Aton suddenly remembered: they wore clothing outside, and he was naked from being in the caverns. His hair was filthy and inches long on every side; his beard was matted over chin and chest, tangled with bits of grass. His own skin was deathly pale, except where the dirt encrusted it.

“You have the look of a fugitive,” the man continued. “I wondered why it never occurred to you to parley honestly, instead of foolishly trying to ambush an armed man. Perhaps I should immolate you now, before you reverse the opportunity.”

The man was toying with his quarry. He could not suspect Aton’s true situation, since no one outside the prison knew its location. No one except Aton himself. If this man had suspected it, he would have shot Aton immediately.

Or would he? He was watching Aton now, those frighteningly capable hands caressing the polished stock of his rifle. Did he suspect that Chthon had an outlet here? Did he know the nature of the innocent cave that led into the bowels of the planet, but lack the ultimate proof—proof that would kill him long before he could return to the surface? Did he search now not for stocked animals, but for the one creature that could tell him the secret of that unimaginable wealth, and lead him safely into Chthon?

With what interminable patience had he prowled this forest, year after year, searching for—Aton?

This man would have to die.

“Yes, I see you understand,” the hunter said. “You and I will go to the cave, and you will prove your origin there—or die. Will it be necessary to demonstrate my ability to make you perform?”

“You have no ability,” Aton said, not bothering to deny what the man seemed to know. “You cannot trust me, and you would be at my mercy—there.”

The man smiled, and even Aton felt cold. “You do not know me well enough.”

Only once had Aton met defeat in combat, and seldom had he known fear, but he was afraid of this man now. He put a hand to his mouth and spat out a garnet.

The other person’s eyes narrowed appreciatively. “I might reconsider, in the face of your argument. You have more?”

Aton nodded.

“Hidden in the forest?”

Another nod.

“Your stones may bring me down after all, since those are what I came for. Do you know what a coded ship is?”

Aton knew. It meant that no one could handle the ship except the registered owner. All mechanisms locked automatically unless manipulated by the touch of the coded individual. He could not take the ship.

“I want more than the few garnets you may have brought,” the man said. “I want the mines. All I needed immediately was the proof that you can lead me to them, and you have given it. You and I will be partners—rather wealthy ones, in time.”

“What shall I call you, partner?” Aton asked. The little ship was spaceborne, the clouded ball of Chthon’s planet diminishing gently behind. Seeing it in the screen, Aton was reminded of the seeming incongruity of accelerating to escape velocity, only to decelerate to galactic norm once free of the planet. But this was necessary in order to phase in the § drive. Three hours ago they had traveled at a single mile per hour, relative to the normal motion of this portion of the galaxy, and actually appeared to be falling back into the independently orbiting planet. Now their speed was a thousand times that, and soon would surpass anything possible through chemical means. The § drive could not be used on the surface of a planet, of course, since the initial motion was erratic and wrong.

The man’s eyes clouded at Aton’s question, betraying polarized contact lenses. “That will do nicely,” he said.

“ ‘Partner’? As you wish. I am Aton Five. You must understand that no power can send me back to Chthon until my business outside is finished. Show me that you can help me in that, before you trust me to cooperate with your designs.” What a pompous snot I seem—but this principle of mutual distrust is unreliable, he thought.

“Understood. By the time you know what I offer, you will be eager to join me. There is time, and I am at your service.” But the grim mystery of the man remained. Aton had no interest in the wealth of Chthon, and had no intention of returning, but could risk neither killing nor deserting Partner until he learned more of the man’s capabilities. Meanwhile, business should be conducted on an innocuous level.

“I’ll buy a planet from you,” Aton said, meaning that he would turn over another garnet for information about its location, and transportation there.

Partner reached for the Sector Index, a volume about the size and texture of Aton’s lost LOE. This covers most of the human sector—two million stars or so. I never charge for public information.”

Aton took the book but did not open it. “I can’t use this.”

“You don’t know Galactic Coordinates? I thought you were a spaceman. That system is pre-§. Centuries old. But there are always the maps.”

“I know the system. But I don’t think the planet I want is listed here.”

“Of course not. These are stars. You have to use the subsector ephemerides for the planetary orbits. But why bother? They’ll message the information to you when you pull into the system.”

“This is a proscribed planet,” Aton said sourly.

Partner looked at him again, pupils momentarily colorless as the lenses shifted. “You do have a problem. You know where we’ll have to go first.”

Aton knew.

Eleven

Earth: home of humanity and of its legends for ten thousand times the time that race had been in space, and more; whose population thrust forth a hundred million human bodies to space in each sidereal year, and did not diminish—until the catastrophic chill imposed de facto quarantine upon the mother world. One month—to wipe out forty per cent of all its inhabitants, to bring the fusion bombs necessary to cremate the mountainous offal in the wake of that brief siege. Even so, Earth retained a population more massive than the rest of its empire combined, and still her lands and seas and atmosphere were crowded with carpets of living flesh.

Not even the chill could solve this problem.

But Earth had power. She was the irrevocable queen of a billion cubic parsecs of space, not through military, economic, or moral force, but through her surpassing knowledge. Here was technology beyond the rustic imagination of the colony worlds. Here was accumulated information of such detail and range that storage and referencing alone usurped the facilities of a small continent. Here was the Sector Library.

Computers organized and sorted the unthinkable complex, delivering any information known to man, to any party, in moments. A man had only to enter a booth and make known his desire.

Unless it was proscribed.

But there were the “stacks”—comprehensive files of printed documentation, of interest to hardly one seeker in a thousand, but sustained by ancient custom in the face of rising opposition. Some year the renewed pressure of population would abolish this monstrous relic. Meanwhile, it endured. Dedicated ancients maintained the archives in leisurely exactitude, and interest was the sole criterion for admission. Earth was after all free, and upheld the right of every person to search for knowledge and to discover as much as determination and ingenuity could provide. And the information was there, all of it—if the seeker could find it. The very awkwardness of the stacks created this advantage: the archives were far too cumbersome to purge selectively. They could not be expurgated.

The stacks occupied cubic miles of space. Never had Aton encountered an enclosure of such dimension: two hundred tiers of long, low hallways, each lined from floor to ceiling on either side with thick volumes, each extending so far into the distance that the walls seemed to meet. At regular intervals right-angled crosswalks cut off segments, making intermittent alternate passages whose staccato lengths also pressed into distant closure. Aton imagined that he could see the ponderous curve of the planet in the level flooring, and that it was the horizon that terminated the halls.

Chthon itself lost its novelty within these passages. Ever did the works of nature, he thought, bow before the works of man.

But how to start? Every volume looked the size of LOE—forty million words of print. Every shelf was tightly packed, with only occasional blanks: three books to the foot, six shelves to the wall, two walls to the hall. A ten-foot section of one hall would contain 360 books—more than fourteen billion words.

Aton was not a rapid reader in either Galactic or English. A solid day of intensive effort would get him through no more than a tiny fraction of a single volume. He would be here for decades, merely finishing what was in sight, no matter how he rushed. If he skimmed, he would run the risk of missing a vital clue.

He began to understand why these files were not restricted. Only by the wildest of blunders could a person come across dangerous information—if he recognized it when he saw it. Only through the computer could the library be used effectively.

Partner, always at his elbow, had been studying him. “You’ve never see a library before?”

“I thought I had.” But there had been librarians who listened to the problem and flounced off to generate a collection of books in some undefined manner. Never—this.

“Accept some advice, then. You do not visit the stacks to read, any more than you go to space to look at a vacuum. You research. You set up coordinates and adjust your course (I’m talking about space at the moment) and ignore what doesn’t concern you. You can’t locate your planet by blind reading here any more than you could do it by looking out the port at sublight to find it in space.

“First you need an index, a library index. You need to locate the specific section of the library you want, then the specific book. Right now you don’t even know where you are, although I thought for a while your wanderings had purpose. Take out a book. Look at it.”

Dumbly, Aton obeyed. “This is an analysis of the Oedipus complex,” he said. “A collection of essays on it.” He paused. “Why, the entire book is filled with alternate interpretations. Forty million—”

“And probably not one of those people really understands it,” Partner said, too sharply. “We certainly don’t. You let your wandering feet lead you to a section and a book that has no possible relevance to the riddle you have to solve. What did you think you were doing?”

“I suppose it was futile,” Aton said absently. He put the book back, his hand seeming somehow reluctant to let it go.

A melodious chord sounded, surprising him, A colored bulb set between shelves began to flash intermittently. “Pay attention to what you’re doing!” Partner snapped. “That’s the wrong place.”

Aton quickly withdrew the book and found the correct slot. The alarms subsided, but already footsteps beat their heavy tread nearby. Labored breathing paced that sound.

“What’s the matter with you now?”

Aton brought himself under control. “Something—something terrible, just then. A memory.” His face regained its color. “I don’t… seem to be myself, right now.” His whole body was shaking.

A fat, bearded man turned the corner. He wore the emblematic cap of the Sector Library, numbered 14. “Having a little trouble, gentlemen?” There was a curious quality about his accent. Then Aton realized what it was: native Earth English spoken by a man born to it.

“A mistake,” Partner replied. “Sorry to bother you.”

The attendant stayed, obviously not intending to trust any more books to their unsupervised carelessness. He was old, the wrinkles showing through the corpulent mounds of his cheeks, and the backs of his pallid hands were landscapes. “I may help you?”

“Yes,” Aton said. “I’m looking for a planet.”

“In a library?”

Aton smiled dutifully. “Its name is Minion.” Would the man react?

Caretaker 14 lifted his smooth beard thoughtfully. “Mignon. That would be one of the flower planets.”

“I don’t think so,” Aton said, but he looked upon the man with a certain dawning respect. There was a planet of Mignon; he had seen it in the ephemerides when he searched for the other. All the planets of that system had been named for flowers.

“Ah—I knew the term was familiar. Did you know that our standard typeface is Minion? Seven point print, about ten lines to the inch—”

Aton shook his head in negation. “This is a planet. An inhabited one. But I don’t know the name of its primary.”

“We’ll find it. The index, the Cyclopaedia, the ephemerides—oh, never fear, we’ll find it!” Number 14 spoke with subdued excitement and confidence, as though he had forgotten the origin of the request. It had become his own problem, and he would not be satisfied until he ran it down. Aton smiled at the man’s simplicity. “Proscribed, of course?” Aton frowned at the man’s insight.

“It may be. Frankly, I had heard about it, but didn’t seem to find it in the regular lists—”

“Yes. And you could not afford to use the computer, because it records all dubious requests. We get a number of similar cases. But don’t be concerned. Stack personnel are harmless and confidential. Generally.”

Was the man requesting a bribe for silence? Or trying to pry additional information to sate his curiosity? What were his terms? They followed him down interminable passages, ill at ease.

They arrived at somewhat wider halls. Lining one wall was a series of booths, each with a central table and bench. Number 14 settled them in one and began rounding up references.

Aton looked at Partner. “Can we trust him?” his glance inquired. “We have to,” Partner’s expression replied.

Number 14 returned with an armful of books and a small box. He piled them all on the table. “You have to approach a proscribed planet—don’t be alarmed, these booths are sealed private—deviously,” he said cheerfully. The primary has to be listed, of course, since you can hardly hide a star by ignoring it, but there may not be much evidence to link it to the planet you want. Now here we have the index of all the stars in the Earth Sector. If the sun we want is in it—and we’ll have to assume that it is, because there are a hundred thousand sectors in the galaxy, most of them impossibly alien—we can be certain that it is listed here. This reference does not indicate whether there are habitable planets, but they are not hard to spot: the early explorers named the habitables and let numbers do for the others. Unless they had a special interest in the system, in which case they named them all. But the point is that all inhabited planets are named, even though not all named planets are habitable. Are you with me so far?”

Aton and Partner nodded. Had this man ever appeared ignorant or naïve?

“Comes from a lifetime of spot researching,” 14 said in answer to the unspoken comment. “A good library assistant can locate things even the computer balks at.” He smiled, to show that this was a slight exaggeration, and fiddled with the box. It glowed, and the end wall lighted. “I’m going to project a sector map,” he said. “You are familiar with the type, of course—white for the front stars, red shift for the distant ones? And you’ve heard the joke about the color-blind navigator? Too bad. And you understand that only the established navigational beacons can be shown in such a comprehensive illustration. We’ll get on to the detail maps in a moment.” He touched a plate, and intricate networks appeared, linking the stars in curious patterns. Aton was reminded painfully of the Xest painting. Perhaps that was the origin of Xest art.

“This is an overlay showing the routes of exploration,” 14 said. “It does not occur to most people that all inhabited planets have to be discovered by someone, in order to get that way. We have records of all the early explorations. Now we can get a fair idea of the placement of your planet if you will answer a few questions. Is it settled?”

“Yes,” Aton said, fascinated by the dispatch with which the search was moving at last. “For several centuries, I think.”

“Good. That eliminates the recent colonies, which far outnumber the established ones.” The overlay changed and the majority of the threaded patterns disappeared. “This sets the limit at §100—much less complicated, as you see. By using this outline, we can reduce our list of prospects to several thousand. Do you have any navigational data at all?”

“No. It could be anywhere.”

“It can only be where it is. Are the natives modified?”

“They must be. At least, the women have a reputation—”

“Ah. This reduces the number again. Do you happen to know why it is proscribed?”

“Only the legend. The women are reported to be sirens that live forever. It is said to be—to be death to love one.”

“Ah,” 14 said, uncomfortably alert. “You love one of these sirens. I hope for your sake that the legend is not true. Even a normal woman is bad enough. But we shall assume that genetic engineering has granted the inhabitants longevity. Which certainly could be grounds for proscription. Earth is overpopulated, even now, and she long since decreed that colonization should be by export from the home planet; she deplores natural increase in population through longevity.”

“Earth can’t dictate—” Partner began. He had been quietly studying the projection.

Number 14 shrugged. “Have it your way. But the planet is out of circulation nevertheless. And this narrows the range further, because longevity is post-§ by about fifty years. It took a score more before it became commercially feasible—bad side effects, you know—and ten years after that the law cracked down. Or whatever unofficial euphemism did, since as you point out. Earth cannot dictate.”

“Ten years,” Partner said. “§70 to §80.”

The overlay changed again, and now the map enlarged and the routes were replaced by bright colony indicators. “Modified colonies for that period are few. A mere hundred or so, as you can see. We could look each of them up in the index now, if we could be certain that it listed all the planets. But planets, unfortunately, are not the navigational hazards that stars are. I think our time would be wasted.”

“There is no colony record?”

“Not for proscribed efforts. They simply aren’t mentioned, at least not by name, and not in the up-to-date volumes. We simply haven’t the space to preserve annual publications; the old books that predate proscription would list your planet, but they were thrown out centuries ago. We could run it down by elimination—but if there is more than one proscribed planet hidden in the list, we could not be certain which one is yours.”

Partner was busy with the index. “Get me the sector Cyclopaedia volume covering ‘Point’,” he said.

“ ‘Point?’ As you say,” 14 agreed. “But the Cyclop’ doesn’t list stars.”

In a moment they were poring over the text. “ ‘Point, Jonathan R., stellar scout, §41–154,’ ” Partner read. “That should be our man.”

“The discoverer of Point, one of the stars on our list,” 14 said. “Probably his first ‘habitable,’ since he named it after himself. But what makes you think—”

“I followed your advice,” Partner said. “I approached the problem deviously. Your conventional approach can only take you a certain distance, since, as you point out, they could simply number a proscribed planet, as though it were uninhabited, or skip it entirely, leaving you without proof of its identity. But the clue lies in a homonym.” He found his place and read aloud again: “ ‘Point: an ancient unit of type measurement… seventy-two points to the inch…’ ”

“I don’t follow—”

“Get your index and read off the named planets of Point.”

Baffled, 14 opened the book. “The first two are unnamed fireballs; then Excelsior, Diamond, Pearl—why, I recognize these! They’re type sizes!”

“Go on.”

“Pearl, Nonpareil, Brevier, Bourgeois, Elite. That’s all.”

Partner’s gaze was bright. “Sure you aren’t missing one?”

“Why, the type we use here—”

“Minion!” Anton exclaimed. “Seven point! ”

“The seventh planet,” Partner whispered.

“One has to allow for an explorer’s sense of identity,” Partner said. “And his humor. Jonathan R. Point probably had a private contract signed for settlement of the first few good worlds he found, and anticipated trouble when Earth caught on. He had no intention of letting a little thing like a proscription obliterate one of his planets.”

Twelve

Minion reminded him of Hvee, with its gentle green mountains, its absence of industry, its innocence. The ship, nestled in an isolated clearing, seemed an imposition on the virginity of the planet.

Aton cut cross-country until he struck a dusty road that brief aerial reconnaissance indicated led to the nearest native village.

Partner allowed him to travel alone, here—there was no way he could escape a proscribed planet, except the way he came. Minion was backward, of course: the inhabitants would certainly know of galactic technology, but be unable to partake of it themselves. The penalty was cruel.

The first primitive huts came into view. They were fashioned of rustic thatch and clay, but looked comfortable, and the odor characteristic of bucolic habitation was not strong. That meant the natives were clean. People walked about, human rather than humanoid, paying the stranger no attention. Modification, at least, had taken no objectionable turns—not visible ones, at any rate. The men were small, garbed in short cloths and deep frowns; the women were tall, veiled, clad in all-concealing togas.

A couple came toward him, up the road. The man was a full six inches shorter than his companion, but seemed comfortable enough in his loincloth and neatly rounded beard. The woman stumbled under the weight of an enormous parcel that, combined with the meshes of her toga, threatened at any moment to bring her to the ground.

Aton stepped aside to let them pass. It seemed to him that an intolerable heat must be trapped inside the heavy wrappings of the woman, and indeed, she swayed as she walked. Her foot caught on a projecting stone in the rough road and she stumbled and almost fell. The heavy package in her arms brushed the man as she struggled for balance.

The little man spoke sharply in a dialect incomprehensible to Aton, but it was easy for him to identify well-turned invective. The man wheeled in wrath and struck her full in the veil. The woman fell, the package spinning from her arms and rolling across the road almost to Aton’s feet.

As the woman scrambled to get up, the man cursed again and kicked her violently. Aton had never seen so vile a temper. The woman made no sound, but moved quickly on hands and knees to recover the package. Reeling, she stood up, grasping the heavy object once more. From the far side of the road the man spouted a steady stream of monosyllabic vitriol.

They went on, never acknowledging Aton’s presence at all.

As he passed through the village he noticed that none of the men were doing work of any kind. Only the women labored—and strenuously.

One old man leaned against a tree at the edge of a central square, alone. Aton addressed himself to this man in Galactic sign language. “Where may a stranger stay?”

The oldster eyed him. He gestured lackadaisically. “Have you a woman?” The symbol actually used was “female chattel.”

Aton thought of Malice. “No.”

“You have come at a favorable time, then. You may take Pink Rock’s house and woman this evening.”

Aton hesitated. Customs varied widely in the galaxy, but it was best to understand the situation completely before committing oneself. “Is Pink Rock going somewhere?”

The man gestured at the square. Aton saw what he had overlooked before: a man bound to a great vertical stone, sinister instruments ranged on a platform before him.

“Executed? A criminal?”

“No.”

“A sacrifice?”

“No.”

“Why is he bound, then?”

“He was careless.”

“?” (The signal for perplexity.)

“He fell in love with his woman.”

(Perplexity.) “For that he is to be tortured?”

The old man stared him in the eyes. “It is merciful.”

Aton did not stay to witness the rites for the careless Pink Rock. Instead he promised to return after the ceremony, and wandered around the neighborhood, trying to reason out the mystery of these people. Monsters they might be branded, officially and in folklore—but where was the terror that held the galaxy at bay? Why the inviolate strictures against commerce and communication? All he had seen so far was an incredibly patriarchal society, with the women reduced to such absolute subjugation that it was a crime for a man even to love one.

But doubt remained. Swathed in their drapes and veils as these women of Minion were—he could not think of them as “minionettes”—it was impossible for him to make out face or feature. Still there was a quality about them that was distressingly familiar.

He shrugged it off. Of course there was familiarity. Malice had been generated here.

At the village well a solitary woman was filling a large leather bucket. She closed it with a cord looped around the top and slung it over her shoulder, staggering with the weight.

Aton stepped into her path, offering to take the bucket. He did not do it from any particular chivalry, but because he saw an opportunity to learn more about her. She shied away.

“But I only wish to help,” he signaled. He reached for the bucket, catching the strap, but she arched back so quickly that a corner of her veil was trapped. It slid off her face.

Aton stared. It was Malice.

He let her go. He knew, intellectually, that Malice could not be on the planet. Even if she were, the odds against encountering her in such coincidental fashion were prohibitive—and after the thing he had attempted so long ago, and almost suppressed from memory, she would not again tempt him with a well. He remembered also the seeming change that had come over the face of the daughter of Four, and the picture he had seen later in a huge gas crevasse in Chthon. He could not always trust his vision.

But in case this were not another fevered fragment—

Another woman came down the path. He stepped up to her, offered to assist, and clumsily caught loose her veil. Again the face of Malice. No—the eyes were not so deep, the hair less flamed. This was a faded Malice. What did it mean?

Until this point he had hesitated, careful of native proprieties, but now he had to know. Which was mad—himself or the planet?

Two women walked together down the road, carrying their inevitable burdens. Aton blocked them off and, in an agony of anticipation, tore free both veils.

Identical faces returned his stare. On each the fire hair flowed long, and deep green eyes looked out. Twin reflections of his love.

“Who are you?” he cried, aloud and with the signs.

Twin smiles of devastating beauty answered him. “I am Torment,” one signaled. “Horror is my name,” signaled the other.

At last Aton understood.

Evening, and the errand of mercy was done. The gutted corpse hung silent now, the stink of burning entrails slowly dissipating. Pink Rock’s empty sockets surveyed the gathered friends sitting in the sweet grass of the square, relaxing after their service to him.

Aton stood at the edge, certain without knowing why that no sadism had been involved. Pink Rock had not been censured—it had merely been necessary to cleanse him of his foul emotion. Certainly the last vestige of his love had been torn bloodily out before he had died. Now the lovely minionettes removed their veils and sang in rapturous chorus, more sweetly than any human group could sing, their hymn of accomplishment. Aton thrilled to the sound. Not since his childhood had he felt such enchantment—though there was an uncomfortable alien bitterness close beneath the surface.

The men of Minion sat in a separate group, washing their hands and scowling. I understand, Aton thought. You performed from necessity, angry that your artistry was required, angry with your beautiful women, angry at your society. You are always angry.

At last the minionettes reset their veils and rejoined their masters. Scowls and curses faded into the dusk. Surely these women would be happy to leave this planet, to serve normal men, when the opportunity presented. Yet Malice’s motives had hardly been that simple.

One woman stood silently before the corpse in an attitude of prayer, Aton came up behind her and took her arm. This was Pink Rock’s widow.

She led him to a hut near the outskirt, and stood aside courteously for him to enter first. She had accepted the change-over without protest or surprise. She had had a man who loved her; now she had one who did not. That was all.

The dark interior smelled of fresh hay. Aton’s eyes adjusted to a room somewhat larger than anticipated, quite clean and well arranged. There was a mattress of soft grasses across the back, wide enough for two. A low table beside it supported several light fiber pillows, a candle, and a whip.

“I hunger,” he gestured peremptorily, and she fetched flat bread and flat water. He spat it out in a show of anger, and she went outside to bring replacements. “I tire,” he signaled, and she undressed him gently and led him to the mattress. She lifted his feet into place and propped him with pillows skillfully. The minionette was dutiful; the minionette was strong. Aton’s mind returned, horribly, to a similar scene. He did not want to remember it, but could not help himself. Once before he bad found himself in a confined space with a woman, a minionette. Once before he had undressed.

“Tell me your name.” He had to destroy that memory.

“Misery,” her signal answered. He heard “Malice.” He saw again the bubble confine of the asteroid lodging—the spotel. The two of them had docked the shuttle, passed directly from ship’s lock to entrance lock and on into the lush private accommodation. He had doffed his skin-tight protective suit immediately, becoming naked before her in the half-light. Malice had been quiet and mechanical—hardly the sparkling creature he had captured so recently at the Xest outpost. She did not strip.

“Do you want to know my name?” Inane conversation, hardly visible in the coming night. Anything to kill that terrible recollection!

Misery answered: “If it pleases the master to tell it.”

“Damn!” he exploded, looking at the veil, seeing the blank mask of the space suit holding her beauty from him. “You servile husk! Don’t you have any will of your own?”

He had spoken out loud, forgetting to signal; he knew no native could understand. But Misery responded with a beatific smile visible even through the dark veil.

Angry and alarmed, he tore off that veil. Had he been trapped into—

Her hair was dull, her eyes gray. She resembled more the Captain than the nymph. She was smiling still, but blankly.

I am a fool, he thought. If she had understood my spoken words, she would not have smiled. This is a native girl, trained to react to harshness with a forgiving smile.

Yet the man who loved her had been tortured to death.

“You may think of me as ‘Stone Heart’,” he said, adopting the evident custom of the planet. He was still angry, as perhaps the native men were angry—at her, at the system she represented, the enormity of it and its somber mystery. At the awful memories this situation evoked by being unfairly similar.

“Why aren’t you beautiful?” Now he was being deliberately unkind, and his anger turned against himself. Must fury beget fury?

She only smiled.

“Take off your clothing,” he ordered. He could hardly see her now. “First light the candle. I want to see you.” She obeyed slowly.

Her body was glorious. The long hair flowed over shoulders and sculptured breasts, and his eye followed the fold of the space suit as it peeled away from her narrow waist and swelling hips and thighs. Alone with her, entirely alone, for the first time.

But this is the memory! he thought. It is Misery I am looking at, not Malice! Not Malice. Not—

Not, not subject to the laws of any planet, but here, in the inviolate privacy of the spotel, the rented transitory lodging of newlyweds and wealthy travelers of space. A luxurious retreat, a luxurious body, unfettered at last.

Misery!

I love you, Malice, and you are mine.

Misery!

Why don’t you respond, Malice?

Memory…

Why are you silent?

Malice…

Why have you withdrawn? Are you ill? Malice, Malice…

But she was in radiant health, hair burning, burning, eyes never so deep; natural, normal, except that she seemed to have no awareness of him.

Speak to me!

She would not. What unseen hand had placed a spell upon her, made her mute, in the hour of triumph? Had some post-hypnotic state been invoked, some command inflicted by an unknown enemy intent on his destruction? Was it now his duty to break her out of it, a sleeping beauty, with a single splendid kiss?

He kissed her, but she did not wake to him. Her lips were mushy, unresponsive.

Or was a greater effort required? Should he make love to her?

When he had not yet given her the hvee?

He took her in his arms, one elbow beneath her shoulders, the other under her knees, carried her limp body to the couch, and spread it out.

Misery! With a terrible shock Aton wrenched himself back to the present. Misery lay on the straw pallet, nude and lovely, open to the caress of his hands. He had thought his Malice to be unique, but here was a duplicate form, one of dozens in this village alone, and hundreds, thousands on the planet. He had mistaken the standard attributes of the species for beauty, duping his emotion all his life.

Misery smiled again, twisting her body in pleasure. How strange that this woman, the one he did not desire, reacted so positively to his careless touch, while Malice…

Malice—was it amnesia? Yet she showed no distress, no alarm, no confusion. She saw him, recognized him—as an article of furniture, not as a man. She was not catatonic, nor did she collide with him when she moved.

Could her love for him have failed? Had it ever existed at all? Her bright hair and measureless eyes denied both. Her love was strong. It had to be for him; the minionette did not glow in the company of the wrong man. She would never have come with him, without love.

She had been a captain in space, enormously capable. Never would she do a thing without excellent reason. There had to be a motive. Did she know something that he did not? Something that she was unable to tell him?

He had a vision of the elemental drama for children: behind the lock there stands a criminal, blaster in hand, about to rob and ravish the heroine. At the entrance is her lover: muscular, handsome, intelligent. But if she makes known her plight, that lover will be the first to die. And so she must be silent, and try to signal to him in some manner that the hidden intruder will not intercept. If she is able to convey the message, however obscurely, the resolution is assured.

Malice lay exposed, arm hanging down, legs gently spread, astonishingly lovely. Her breathing was regular, her eyes closed.

Where was the villain? The airlock had borne the unbroken seal of the proprietor. There could be no third party here, not on an isolated airless asteroid, pressurized only upon their entry. There could be no secret monitoring device, no remote-control threat. Privacy, above all else, was what the proprietors sold. YOU CAN DEPEND ON PRIVACY AT THE SPOTEL, the company advertised, and it had the means to protect its reputation.

Malice lay passive. The mystery was deeper than that… and he could not bring himself to perform an act upon a mannequin. He was baffled.

His mental censor balked. Memory would not go further. Relieved, he returned his full attention to Misery.

Her hair, in the candlelight, was brighter now. This woman, if he understood the signs, was learning to love him already—and all he had done was to aggravate her. Suddenly he felt remorse, felt warm respect for her suffering.

Misery recoiled.

This time he had neither signaled nor spoken, yet she had reacted. The minionette was telepathic! He had suspected this before; why had he forgotten? She could read his thoughts, or at least, his emotions, and was responding to these, not his words.

There remained one oddity.

Aton gathered his mental forces and sent a blast of emotional ferocity at her, hate and fury as sheer as he could make them.

Surprised pleasure lighted her features. She bounced up, caught his shoulders, pressed herself against him, kissed him passionately.

Her emotions were inverted! His hate was her love!

Things fell into place: the villainy of the little man on the road, the response to any male irritation. And Malice—she had been most affectionate when he was angry or miserable, and cold when he felt romantic. No wonder she had been impossible to get along with!

Misery was close to him, her hair brightening by the instant. He hit her. She rocked with the force of the blow, smiling dazzlingly. He grasped her flaming tresses and brought her roughly to him, smiting her with hate. She leaped to meet his savage kiss. He bit her soft lip, hard, to bring blood; she moaned with pleasure and did not bleed.

Aton locked an arm over her neck, pinning her securely. Then he brought to mind an image of gentle fields of hvee, the waiting love overflowing, selflessly desiring an object.

Misery twisted and struggled, her face a mask of pain. “Yes,” he said, “it hurts you, doesn’t it? How much more would it hurt if I were to love you, yourself, not just the hvee?” A strangled cry broke from her.

He held her still, though she was very strong. “Don’t you see, Misery—I’m actually being more sadistic than you can imagine. I know it hurts you to be near love—therefore I hurt you most by loving you. And you must return with joy the love of the man who hurts you most.”

She ceased her struggles and looked up at his face with confusion. She could not understand his spoken words, but the mood behind them was devastating.

“I will have mercy on you,” he continued, not releasing her. “I will spare you, as my darling did not spare me. Because I cannot directly feel your emotion, not in the sense you can feel mine. Because you cannot comprehend the paradox of your make-up. Because I know the sincerity of your intent, and the necessity of your widowhood. Because I want to make you happy in the brief time available to me. I shall reward you by taking out on you all the fury I feel for what your sister has made of me.

“I’m going to kill you, Misery.”

He took her head in his powerful hands, hooking his fingers in her ears, and twisted. She smiled. His muscles jumped as he wrenched, trying to break her neck, but slowly. She gave herself up to the luxury of it. She was like a doll, limp, pliable, unbelievably tough underneath. Then the fury took him, and he drove her head against the mattress as though to tear it off and bury it by brute force.

It was a long, long time before, exhausted, he realized that bare hands, no matter how capable, were insufficient to kill the minionette. She was a creature of punishment; she was made for this; she delighted in it.

Aton rested, defeated, her body warm against his, caressing him, loving him. He had not been able to expunge that which was in him.

Would a knife pierce that seemingly fragile flesh? He was afraid to find out. The whip, well worn, had left no sign on her body.

But there were other mysteries. All the minionettes were cast from a single mold; all responded to the sadistic love inversion, while the men appeared to be normal. But he had seen no old women. Could they all be young?

“How long do you live, Misery?” This time the signal.

She tried to answer him. “There is no limit—”

“You are immortal?”

“No.”

“How do you die?”

“When there is pain, too much, it kills.”

And our love is your pain, he thought. As long as a man hates you, you live and grow more beautiful and your hair flames. But when he is kind to you, when he loves you, you die.

Yet it had been Pink Rock who had died, not his woman.

“Do you know the meaning of love?” he asked her.

“Oh, yes, it is my being. I love—”

“Did you love Pink Rock?”

“Yes—he was good, at first. But we had no son. Then his mind became twisted, and he hurt me. I might have made him love me again, if they had not taken him away.”

Of course. The minionette was tough. She would not expire in simple feminine helplessness. If a man began to “hurt” her, she would try to cure the pain by recapturing his original attitude. She would, in fact, do everything in her considerable power to make him, by male definition, hate her. The men of Minion could hardly allow that. The line between love and hate might seem narrow to some, but it could also be appallingly wide—wide as the chasm of Chthon. For who could say in what manner that terrible emotion might manifest itself, before it settled on the intended object?

The men of Minion were wise. They understood the devastation lying stored beneath the careless torch of uncontrolled emotion. They took the necessary and merciful step, and extinguished it before the minionette acted. They were kind, in their fashion—they tried to give the man back his natural hate before he died, to take with him to his spirit world.

The civilization of the greater galaxy was not so wise. It envisioned mercy as abstinence from death. It recognized the inherent danger of the love of the minionette, but preferred to ship the victim to the eternal prison of Chthon, rather than perform the execution directly.

But even Chthon could not contain the evil of that love. How many there had died?

Why had Malice come into the galaxy? How? What had made her seek him out? Why had she enticed his young love, love that must have tortured her from the beginning? She would have been better off without him, secure in her position in the Merchant Service. Or on her home world, where men understood.

His brain knew the answer, but would not yield it to consciousness. She had told him, there at the—

“Misery—was Pink Rock’s love stronger than mine, before he changed?”

“No, Stone Heart. Your love is the strongest. More than any man.”

Because I am of the galaxy. Because I am a member of a species not conditioned to the minionette. What a rare treat, when a woman of this planet escapes into the galaxy, where every man feels his feelings with naïve strength. Where, unaware of the telepathic linkage, his every confused nuance of anger and pain sears his imagination.

Yes, my emotion is strong. The sensitive hvee responded to it and grew for me in my childhood, and Malice understood that potential—and something else—when she encountered that little boy on that pastoral world. She made her sacrifice and cast her fine net over that boy, and sent him away before the burgeoning sensation became too much for her. She knew that my love was not for her, not then, though it tempted her sorely. I was then a harmless dalliance, a moment of anticipation, not ready for harvest.

Not until I sought her out, torn by such frustration and such doubt from the fruitless search that she was unable to resist. She tried to savor me secretly, close but disguised. Until the Xest picture penetrated the Captain and revealed the minionette…

…And doomed us both.

“Come, Misery,” he said. “I will inflict on you a love you’ve never dared dream of before.”

10

Ninety-nine men and a hundred and forty-two women began the terrors of the Hard Trek. Not with courage and boldness, not seeking destiny with consummate determination; but frightened, desperate, driven—driven by the certain knowledge of hunger and pain behind.

The revolution of the lower caverns had been betrayed, and every one of them had to pay the price of failure. No food came down from the upper caverns any more. Tally’s people had ample reserves, many stones hoarded for just such an emergency: they would not relent.

The fragment of Framy’s blue garnet might have purchased time, had it been known to exist before. Instead, it was proof of doom, showing that they had denied what the upper cavern leaders had known to be truth. The revolt had never had a chance, in the face of that; it had been no more than a convenient pretext to abolish the entire nether population.

The trek began with fatalism. No one could doubt that the majority would soon be dead, and not cleanly.

The legend of Doc Bedside guided them. He had set off five years before, downwind, homemade pack and kit bound to his wiry body, a sharp stone in his hand. He had disappeared into the land of the chimera and never been heard from again—until Aton brought the confirmation that he had won through. Bedside had emerged the other side of sanity—but could such madness take two hundred and forty-one experienced and fore-warned travelers? They followed his route, searching for the tokens of his passing, if they existed; it would be easier, this second time.

They were wrong, of course.

Aton marched in the vanguard for ten hours, or what he thought of as that length of time, following the spacious caverns and passages up a gentle but steady incline. The walls spread farther apart, the ceiling grew higher; as the space increased, the wind diminished and cooled. The journey became almost pleasant. But for the total lack of food, the outer caverns were far better for human residence than the ones they had known.

They rested for an estimated six hours, hungry bellies growling. No one stood guard. Everyone had to travel together, and the fearsome pit creatures never approached so large a party. Almost, they hoped for an attack—because concerted action might trap and bring down even the chimera, and there was sure to be meat on its body. Starvation would halt the journey at its beginning unless something edible was located soon. Bedside must have eaten from the caverns.

On the third march the first people collapsed from exhaustion and hunger. They were methodically butchered and eaten.

Aton stood in the faltering circle as Bossman showed the way: he severed the warm limbs with his axe as other men pulled them away from the trunk of the first corpse. The blood spattered and covered the blade, poured over the stone floor, thickened as it flowed morbidly back down the trail they had taken.

Hastings made fire, burning a few of the old, dry, useless water-skins; the smoke and stench were nauseating, and the meat scorched and dripped and did not cook well. Future preparations would have to be raw.

Bossman’s axe did further duty, reducing the limbs to smaller sections and breaking up the trunk. Individual knives and stones were pressed into service to finish the job. “Whoever is hungry, eat,” he said.

Not many did, that first time. Usable portions were wrapped in the remaining skins and assigned to surly porters, since Bossman didn’t believe in waste. The bones and other refuse were left for the chimera. During later marches more and more people broke down and ate, gagging over the rawness of it but finding it preferable to starvation.

In time, every surviving member of the party was eating—by definition. Those who had been unable to surmount their scruples, starved.

Scruples were not for the Hard Trek.

During the fourth march the attacks began. Stragglers screamed and were found with their innards strewn. A clean-up crew was organized to salvage usable portions. But the main party was not approached, and the chimera remained unseen by any eyes not inside it.

For the fourth sleep Bossman found a use for their traitor. He bound Framy to a projection a little beyond the camping area. “Sing out if you see the chimera,” he advised. “Sleep if you want to.”

Aton listened.

“…I know I done wrong. I lied all the time. Aton, he was smart, he only lied when it counted. Must’ve figured we’d both get canned if they knew. I wonder who found that other chunk of blue? Somebody picked it up and smuggled it up the hole. But I guess I’m paying for all them little lies now. ’Cause I can’t make up for the real ones, they’re part of me. But I know I got to pay, and the only way I can do it is that way he showed me, by taking it out on something else, like Garnet did. I got to be punished for the lie I didn’t tell, and maybe that makes good the ones I did tell and can’t take back.

“Who’s that? I hear you, you can’t hide from me, I hear good.

“Don’t try to fool me. I hear the—the tread of your foot, and—and the bellow of your breath and the swish of your tail and…”

The choking screams brought the men running from the main group, to stand sickened at the sight of what remained. Blood dripped from empty sockets and from a mouth where a tongue had been and down between scratched legs.

Bossman studied the living body and hefted his ax. One blow severed the cords of the neck. “I made him feel a little easier,” he said, apologizing for his weakness.

Another man cut the corpse free from the projection. “Maybe that’s what separates the men from the chimera,” he said. “We kill before we take the delicacies.”

Do we? Aton wondered. Do we really?

Early in the sixth march they encountered the river, perhaps a hundred miles from their starting point. Narrow, but deep and swift, the clear water cut across the wind cavern, forming a small chasm of its own. It was the first flowing water they had seen in Chthon, and the sight was miraculous.

“The lots,” Bossman said. “If we can drink this—”

The collected garnets were produced and shuffled. Hastings handled the routine. He plunged both hands into the skin of stones and withdrew two closed fists while Bossman shaped the others into a rough line. Hastings put his fists under the nose of the first person, a dour woman. She slapped the left one; it opened to reveal an ordinary red garnet. She took it and flipped it disdainfully back into the cache and drifted away unchallenged.

Hastings returned the empty hand to the bag and brought it out again, closed. The next person in line selected the same fist: a second red garnet. He also left, relieved.

Aton was third in line. He chose the same hand—and the fatal blue fragment was his.

“One,” Bossman said. “Better take one more, to be sure.”

A woman stepped out of line and came up. It was Garnet. “I’ll do it,” she said. “Might as well move up my turn.” Bossman frowned, but let it stand.

The line disbanded. It would reform at the next crisis, with the man following Aton at the head, in fixed order, until every person in the party had drawn. After that it would begin again. The garnets were put away.

Bossman pointed to the stream. “Drink,” he said. “Good and deep. Fill your skins, too.” He spoke to the others. “Stay on the ’denser. We ain’t sure yet.”

The others needed no warning. The water could be poisonous, or there could be minute marine creatures deadly to living flesh. Or larger ones, waiting for the first unwary entry into the water. Chthon was never innocent.

Aton and Garnet drank. The water was not cold, but it tasted fresh and sweet compared to that extracted from the air. If the two of them lived, the others would know that this source was safe.

“If we traveled the river,” Hastings pointed out, “we might not need the ’denser at all. Or the skins.”

Bossman looked at him. “Which way do we go—up or down?”

Hastings spread his hands. “I see your point.”

“I don’t see it,” Aton’s friend with the black hair cut in. “We go upriver, we have water, and we’re heading for the top. What’s the matter with that?”

“We go upriver,” Hastings said calmly, “and we may find nothing but a layer of porous rock with the moisture percolating through and dripping down until it collects enough to make the river.”

“Follow it down, then,” she said with affected indifference.

“How fast do you think we’ll reach the surface if we travel down?”

She looked at him suspiciously. “You fat tub. We got to go one way or the other.”

“We follow the caverns,” Bossman said, cutting off the argument. “They go up, and the wind proves they go somewhere.”

The party, not as large as it once had been, forded the river carefully and moved on. The tunnels continued to rise and expand. The glow from the walls diminished, bringing shadow; the front and rear of the column were attacked more persistently by unseen predators. Aton and Garnet walked together near the center, a little apart from the others, who gave them leeway on either side. Their position was not coincidental: the water test would be invalid if they were to fall prey to the chimera instead. They were protected by their position, but until sufficient time elapsed, close association was not desired by the others. An illness spawned by the water would find these prisoners with very little natural defense.

“You don’t curse me much, any more, Garnet,” Aton remarked.

“There’s no point, Aton. I lost.”

“Why did you cover for me?” he asked, needling her.

She closed her eyes, navigating by the sound of massed footsteps, as everyone could do now. The question needed no answer, but she spoke to the intent behind it. “Because you are like him.” This was her first reference to her life before Chthon. “Not in appearance, but in your rocklike heart. Such men, such demons as you, there is no pity in you, only purpose.”

“And you loved him, and you killed him, because he wouldn’t love you,” Aton said. “And now you love me.”

“I tried to fight it. I knew what you were the first time I saw you.”

Oh, Malice, Malice, do you taunt me as I do this lonely woman? Why must I hurt her?

“Don’t you know that I will never be yours? I will never kiss you. I will never love you.”

“I know,” she said.

“Are you going to kill me, too?”

She marched on, unable to speak.

“Or yourself, this time?”

Revenge was bitter; he no longer cared for it. Garnet had been a pawn in his game, no more. She had alibied him from association with the blue garnet by agreeing that they had been making love at the critical time. It was a more pleasant memory than the truth: that he had raped her once and found her wanting. Now she shared the blame for Framy’s death, and knew it.

“There is no escape,” he said, talking as much to himself as to her. “I tried to break her hold, but she reached across the light-years to strike me down.” Why did he tell his secrets to this woman? he wondered. Had he really captured Garnet for revenge, or merely because he needed a foil, a property, even in Chthon? Did he understand any part of his own motives?

11

Two more marches brought them to really spacious caverns. The ceiling towered into a lofty gloom, and passages were a hundred feet across. The wind was no more than a fading whisper, and it was cool: distinctly disconcerting, in Chthon. There was a feeling, an expectation; the caverns could not continue much longer. The steady rise must already have brought them very near the surface.

The walls peeled back abruptly. They stood on the brink of the passage termination: an enormous chasm, so wide that the farther shore was lost in dark obscurity, so deep that toppling pebbles never returned the sound of their landing.

They gathered apprehensively, two hundred men and women milling at the brink. On either side the floor ended; there was no way around.

“Fire a torch,” Bossman snapped.

One of the rare brands was lighted, sputtering its yellow light with unfamiliar brilliance. Holding it aloft, Bossman stood at the edge and looked down.

“They ain’t supposed to burn that way,” someone muttered. “That’s too fierce.”

“How would you know?” another said. “Three years since you saw real light, ain’t it?”

The ceiling of the chasm became visible as the light flared up. It was nearer than Aton had thought, within fifty feet, a mass of depending porous formations like an undersea landscape, from which streamers of opaque vapor drifted down. There was something ominous about it. What vapor was heavier than air? But the far side was still out of sight, and the depths into which the mist descended were murky.

Bossman shouted, and the echo took ten seconds.

“There’s one way to find out how deep this thing is,” a man suggested.

Bossman smiled.

“No!” Hastings, exclaimed, jumping ponderously to stop him. But he was too late. Bossman had flung the torch into the gulf.

Hastings stared in horror. “That’s gas, you fool,” he said. “It’ll burn.”

Fascinated, the group watched the glowing stick go down. As it fell it grew brighter, illuminating the sharply slanting canyon wall beneath their feet. The brilliance was extraordinary; the light became a minor nova. Now it was reflected from below, from a whitish cloud filling the foot of the crevasse. The near wall was featureless.

The torch struck the nether cloud, and suddenly there was light, flashing silently, like sheet lightning, and then vanishing. Again the flash, revealing the splendor of Chthon in neon radiation.

Aton peered down, and saw the face of Malice, in the fire and the depth, flickering on and off, on and off, in a beckoning smile. “Kiss me,” the silent image said. “Here is the other side of the song.”

Strong hands pulled him back. “You don’t want to die that bad,” Garnet said.

At last the glowing failed, and the abyss was dark again.

“Not dense enough,” Hastings said, the cold sweat running off his body. “Praise Chthon you didn’t blow us all to hell. Can’t you see what this is?”

Bossman accepted the reprimand. “What is it?”

“The fire cycle,” Hastings said. Faces stared blankly at him. “Look, the vapor drops from the ceiling there, some kind of natural gas. It settles in a pool at the bottom. Probably there are many crevices and rifts that suck the mixture through to the flames. Miles of tubing, similar to what we have been traveling through, only much farther down. The while thing is a gigantic blowtorch (if you remember the primitive term), spewing fire and super-heated air out the other end, heating the caverns. As that air travels and expands, it cools, until it arrives back here and brushes those saturated formations above, picking up more fuel.”

“What do you know,” Bossman said in amazement.

This meant, Aton realized, that this was a closed cycle. Water vapor, oxygen, combustibles—all seeped through porous rock, allowing no physical exit. There could be no escape this way, even if they found a way to cross the main chasm. The draft went nowhere, and they were still trapped.

The party slept: men and women sprawled in all attitudes across the floor, gathering strength and courage for the march back to the river. In the “morning” those unable or unwilling to continue would be slaughtered and prepared; this was already routine, and no lots had been necessary so far for the performance of this ultimate service. Some few volunteers kept guard upwind, though in the overriding fatalism the chimera had lost much of its terror. If it came, the first scream would precipitate a savage chase—for the meat on its body.

Garnet did not sleep. She stood overlooking the sheer drop, silent and still. Her hefty body had slimmed with the lean marching. Soon it would be too slim—but right now she was a handsome figure.

Aton came up behind her. “I could push you over, now.” Would it never end?

“I guess the water’s safe,” she said.

“Turn around.”

Garnet turned with a sullen half-smile. Aton put a hand on her collarbone, fingers touching her neck, the heel of it just above and between her breasts. He exerted slow pressure. “Your body will tumble into that mist,” he said. “Over and over until it thuds against the bottom with no sound for human ears, and lies there, mistress to the rock and gas until it rots and sublimates into food for the sacrificial flame. A pyre for Garnet. You’ll like that, won’t you?”

“We both drank, and nothing happened. Must be good water.”

“Perhaps I will make love to you first,” he mused. “Then you would have to die. Everything I touch has to die.”

“Yes.”

He nudged her, but Garnet did not flinch. “It is deep behind you,” he said. “Deep as a well.

“I never knew quite how she traveled,” Aton continued, his hand sliding down to press against her breasts, but keeping her poised at the brink. “I left her on the asteroid, locked in the spotel, and I took the shuttle myself, so that she had either to remain or reveal her identity and location to outsiders. I went home, and then to Idyllia, but somehow she never left me… and I found her again on Hvee. She was in the forest with her song—the song she never finished. I knew then that I had to kill her.”

Garnet’s bare heels rested on the verge.

“But there was no cliff, no mountain, there near the farm. It had to be that special way, you see. I took her to the forest well, so narrow, so deep. Let the fall kill her as it killed my second love, as it broke the shell.”

He stepped close, bending his elbows, placing a hand on each of Garnet’s shoulders. “Because death made love an illusion. ‘Kiss me, Aton,’ she said, there on the mountain, there at the well. And then the song came up.” He shook her. “Say it.”

Garnet’s eyes were closed. “Kiss me, Aton.” Death was as close to her as his lips.

“The crime that budded in effigy had to blossom in reality. I touched her lips.” He kissed her, carefully. “And I hurled her—”

Garnet’s feet left the edge as Aton’s brutal strength lifted her out. She swung beyond the drop, and sank, and fell, and came to rest beside him, lying on the floor.

He stroked her hair. “And she said, ‘I knew you could not do it, Aton—not when it was real.’ And I could not. And love made death an illusion.”

He held her there, still and mute. “There is no song about you, Garnet,” he said. “But if I were to love you, the song would come, and you would perish, for only the minionette rules me.”

“The minionette,” Garnet whispered.

He held her, feeling her terror. “And my planet, my home, my Hvee world, it sold me to Chthon, because I loved her. Now I return.”

“We’ll all die, Aton.”

“I have no choice, you see,” he said, and kissed her again on face and breast and left her.

12

The Hard Trek, Aton thought, the Trek has taken us from the world of the rushing winds where we tarried so long in what we did not know was comfort. It has shown us the world of the furnace heart, where the generative gasses fling their essence into the wider system, as Earth herself flings hers, without abatement and without compassion, to flame briefly and flicker out and return at last, tired, only to be blasted forth again. And now it shows us the last of its mighty elements, the world of water.

He stood at the edge of the river, looking into it and dreaming. It had been spurned before; would it now, like a woman, show them its vengeance?

Miles below, downstream, the party had gathered and was resting while two men reconnoitered, one upstream, the other downstream. Each would leave tokens behind, marking his trail; the rest would follow the one who did not return. This was logical: what man, finding freedom, would venture again into the caverns? What man would risk the loss of a hopeful path by turning back? Only defeat would make him welcome his fellows.

Thus Aton found himself alone, tracing the source, because his urge to escape was the strongest. He was armed, and he had a pack with rich red meat, and he had a vision. Bedside had come this way, perhaps, and Bedside had escaped. Somewhere there would be a sign.

The glow was brighter, here by the water. Aton stooped to dip his fingers in the clear liquid and touch the shining fringe at his feet. The surface of the path was smooth and a trifle slimy. His passing contact left patches of darker stone, as though he had crushed the vegetable beacons eating at the rock. The green luminescence came up through the water, casting its energies into his face with surrealistic beauty.

There was a narrow channel along one side of the stream, a kind of raised pathway about eighteen inches deep that clung to the upright wall. Aton followed it, since it was uncommonly convenient. The alternative was to wade waistdeep through the swift flow, trusting his naked feet to whatever lurked beneath.

He took the path, but did not trust it. Never yet had Chthon offered a gambit that was safe to accept. The walkway had to be used by something, and that thing was bound to be inimical. He moved quickly, not so much because time was short—though this might easily be the case, if the distance to the surface were far—as to confound any stalking creature behind him. Or surprise anything lurking ahead.

A mile passed, and more, but there was nothing. No vicious pit animal barred the way. No sudden precipice appeared. The patch continued, firm and level, and the water flowed beside it passively. At length the walls began to spread, allowing the river to slip over its marble banks to decorate a tumbling landscape. The path remained, winding steadily over and around rivers of stone, and occasional debris.

The caverns began to show their variety. Stalactites came into view, great stone icicles aiming at the floor, stalagmite columns rising like monster teeth to meet them. The river shaped itself into brief rapids and quiet pools, and all about it the stone was polished in restful hues. The gentle light, refracted from both the water and shining stone, lent an eerie loveliness to all of it.

Aton went on slowly, struck by the unfamiliar surroundings in much the way he would have been affected by a beautiful but unknown woman. These caverns were still; there was no wind here, and its absence was subtly disquieting. The flexible chambers widened and narrowed and widened again in serpentine rhythm, carpeted with slippery flowstones and walled with mineral tapestries. The columns dropped commandingly, forests of them, parting only for the winding river channels and for the even path he followed.

It was suspicious. This was not the deadly underworld he knew. Where were the salamanders, the chimeras? Where was the owner of the path? Where the red tooth, the claw?

Movement! Aton gripped his fragment of stone and stalked it, for if it did not flee, it would soon be stalking him. Behind the curtains of stone he saw it fleetingly: a huge hairy body, gray.

Hairy? In the caves?

Was this the sign that the exit was near?

He brought the thing into sight. It was not hairy after all. It was an enormous lizard, rapping at the wall with strong buck teeth: a stone chipper, not a carnivore, eating the green glow. Probably harmless after all. Surely the chimera had preyed on something before it had discovered man.

Aton came at it from behind, studying for a vital spot beneath the leathery scales. The creature was large, the size of a man, standing on its two hind feet and bracing its front members against the wall. It did not turn; either it could not hear him, or did not consider him dangerous.

He plunged the makeshift blade in under the right fore-leg, where the scales were thin. It went in easily, ripping through soft flesh. The chipper fell to the floor soundlessly, not understanding, clutching at the wound with the opposite claw. Dumbly it tore itself open, trying to stop the pain, as Aton stood and watched, breathing heavily. After a while he cut out its eyes and left it, struggling yet, stirring its own gore into the green stone.

The walls closed in again, and the river and the path resumed. This time he saw shapes in the water: eyeless, rubbery fins, flexing about from side to side along the bottom. Marine life, at last.

The miles passed uneventfully. Abruptly the passage ended. The water plunged from a tall vertical tunnel, bubbling in a circular pool and flowing on into the bed he had been tracing. The path circled this small pool and diverged. Through the rock it bored, a round passage.

Aton looked down that sharply cut passage and saw nothing. He put his ear to the wall and heard a distant tapping, a heart-beat. Something was at the other end. Something large.

He looked into the pool and saw a strange globular jellyfish deep below, perhaps a yard in diameter, balanced in a pothole just out of the striking falls. He craned upward and saw—light. Daylight.

The wall of the shaft was rough. The severed strata defended themselves in concentric circles, some reaching an inch or more in toward the glassy column of plummeting water. One side was comparatively smooth, as though the water had eroded it clean during some capricious house-keeping effort; but now there was a foot or more of space on every side, between wall and water.

Aton removed his water-skin—a ludicrous impediment in the circumstances—parked it with his other supplies, and prepared for the most difficult climb of his life.

The diameter of the shaft was about a yard at the bottom, and it appeared to expand slightly at the top. Aton braced his back against the smooth side, spread his arms in a semicircle against the wall at shoulder level, and lifted one foot around the devastating center column to find a purchase against the opposite side. He brought the other foot into play and began to climb, letting the river plunge harmlessly between his spread thighs. With his arms he lifted his back away and up; then took two baby steps up the far side. Again and again, advancing two or three inches at a time.

The climb was not hard, at first, but there was a long way to go.

He decided not to conserve his strength, since even the act of resting in such a position would fatigue him. If he could achieve the top quickly, there should be ample opportunity to rest. If he did not get there promptly, fatigue might prevent him from reaching it at all.

He accelerated his pace, humping up in a rocking pattern, sometimes painfully, the muscles of his legs bunching and relaxing and bunching again. His arms grew tired first, and he turned them down at the elbows, wriggling just enough to make progress, scraping his elbows but not caring.

Fatigue rose about him, but he kept on. His eyes stared fixedly into the still center of the column so close at hand, letting those depths mesmerize him. He wanted to let go of the wall for just a moment and embrace that perfect shape, and ride it down smoothly to the base, kissing its clean surface. Suddenly he was thirsty, more thirsty than ever before in his life, excruciatingly so—and the cool spray on his face tantalized tongue and throat.

One drink, he knew, and it would be over. It was the cup of death he sought, denied him by air and fire but never so deliciously close as this.

Death. Why had he killed that chipper? It had been an act of sadism, an act he had enjoyed. Why? Why did he want to die? What was the matter with him?

In the glass before him the liquid eyes of Malice shone, hinting at an answer he dared not grasp. She was in the fire; she was in the water. The prisoners of Chthon were right to fear him. He was in love with evil.

But the power of that image bore him up. He had been unable, before, to kill the object of his terror. The ties of childhood had been too strong. But after the rigors of Chthon he would have that strength, and he would do what had to be done.

First he would unravel the mystery of the minionette, traveling to the home world that Hastings, for a private garnet, had discussed. Minion—a proscribed planet whose location was as secret as that of Chthon, because of its deadly inhabitants. No—they were human, but genetic engineering could do strange things within the shell of the human body, and leave it less compatible to the mainstream of the species than many an alien shape. No, Hastings had not actually known what it was about the inhabitants, he had claimed, and had left suddenly, as though repulsed by Aton’s inquiry. Hastings no longer talked to Aton; no one did, any more, except Bossman, curtly, and Garnet.

Yet—he was not of Minion. He only wanted to know. What did these rough prisoners see in him, that drove them back?

Why had he killed the chipper? It was Malice that needed killing. He was the enemy of the minionette, not of others. Except for that need, he was a free agent.

“And each in the cell of himself is almost convinced of his freedom,” the ancient poet Auden had said in the remembered depths of LOE, now boarded by Garnet. Almost convinced!

His straining body had hoisted him very near the top. The endless tunnels waited eighty feet below, and well might wait in vain. Five feet above, daylight spilled over the lip; light mixed with the pouring water. The green glow was gone, unable to face the sun; and it was bright, far brighter than he could remember any day ever being—on a habitable world.

Was he to be helpless against the brilliance of freedom? He waited, staring into it, forcing his eyes to adjust, before going on.

His head came up above the turn and he saw the surface of the planet, just feet away. The mouth of the cave was open to a level sheen of water, sucking it down. Reflected from the distance was a tree—a palm tree. The smell of the outdoors wafted in luxuriantly.

Rising out of the water to meet the upper dome were the stalagmites of man: steel bars. A perfect prison: the sound of the falls would override any effort to call for help, assuming that there were any human ears to hear it, and assuming that such an ear did not belong to a prison guard. The bars, of course, would be proof against tampering. Any effort to break or dislodge them would sound the alarm. Set inside the cave, they prevented visible signaling; the water, coming in, would carry no messages out.

Almost convinced.

This was not the escape from Chthon. This was the ration of Tantalus.

Aton never remembered the descent. He found himself lying on the narrow footpath, aching in shoulders, back, and thighs, abrasions stinging the length of his backside and the soles of his feet. A word was ringing the length of his mind and through the echoing tunnels of his brain. He concentrated and it came: rill.

And suddenly he knew with a faith that denied coincidence the true identity of the surface of Chthon, saw the poetic allegory of it and the irony of his denied redemption. What would there be above hell, except heaven? It was right, it was right, he told himself, that he be refused from below that which he had cast down from above. The cell of himself was not ready for freedom.

He dipped a hand in the cool water and splashed his tight brow. He knew this water, this river, this rill that went in one side of the mountain—and never came out again.