That was the tone of it. Once acclimatized to the heat and wind and able to find his way around the interlocking tunnels by sound and sight, Aton found prison life to be surprisingly easy. Too easy there could be no enduring drive towards escape, in such a situation. The inhabitants were contented, as he was not. He would have to find a catalyst.
The caverns extended down interminably. The garnets were brought up from somewhere below for sorting and trade with the outside world. They commanded a price far beyond their actual worth as gems. Artificial stones could easily surpass them in quality, but lacked the appeal of notoriety. These were the produce of condemned hands, originating in nefarious Chthon. Man always placed a premium on the morbid.
Aton found the attitude of the prisoners inexplicable. This was supposed to be the worst prison in the human sector of the galaxy, reserved for the criminally insane, the incorrigible, the perverted—those whom society could neither cure nor ignore. Chthon was pictured outside as the home of perpetual rampage and orgy, sadism and torture beyond belief.
Instead Aton discovered a crude but placid society whose members followed their own advice: make no trouble. The genuinely insane were isolated in their cells and cared for by volunteer wardens. Unless these ventured out, they were left to their own devices.
Even normal people could hardly be expected to get along so well. Were these really criminals? If not, why did they accept their lot so easily? There had to be a missing element, some binding force. He could not act until he understood its nature.
2
“Aton.” The voice was a low, warm alto.
He came out of his reverie to discover the girl Selene, provocatively posed, not giggling. Her eyes had lingered on him whenever they met; but though aware of this, Aton had felt he should be wary of women until the other mysteries were solved. A woman was trouble anywhere.
She came toward him, breasts outthrust. “I ain’t no Laza, Aton,” she said, intercepting his thought. “It ain’t going to kill you to come near me.”
Aton was unmoved. “Tally’s woman, aren’t you?”
“Tally knows where I am. Tally knows where everybody is, all the time.” She came to stand against him, soft and lithe and feline. “How long since you had a woman, Aton?”
She had scored. It had been too long a time. He had learned the way of things in space, and space was over, now, perhaps forever. Judging from the attitude he had seen so far, she was probably telling the truth about Tally. He might even have sent her, as a gesture of amity.
Selene moved away, hiding behind her water-skin. Certain that she had his attention now, she began to dance, with a rhythmic hop and swing fully as alluring as intended. Aton set his book against the wall and went after her.
She giggled and skipped away. Playing an intricate hide-and-seek with hands and body, she led him into a side passage. Aton checked, suddenly wary, but it was empty.
She brushed against him. He caught her and pinned her against her water-skin along the wall. Their lips met abruptly in a kiss, broke, touched passionately; then she escaped and pirouetted into the center of the cell. Her eyes glowed.
Aton stalked her, cutting off the exit and herding her into a niche; she dodged and wriggled with delight.
Selene began to hum a tune when she saw that she was fairly trapped. It was the final artifice: an innocent, indifferent melody, as though she were not aware of company. It should have launched him into the terminal effort.
Instead it drove him back, cooling his ardor instantly. It was the broken song.
She saw that something was wrong. “What’s the matter, Aton?”
He turned his back. “Get out of here, Silly. You aren’t half the woman I crave.”
Shocked, then in flashing anger, she ran. Aton listened to the sound of her footsteps, a bare patter in the screaming wind. They merged to form the music of the broken song.
“Malice,” he thought. “Oh, Malice—will you never leave me?”
It was a dream, of course, but only Aton knew it, and he, lured by the might-have-been it dangled before him, was foolish enough to forget that it was. In his conception he was not standing alone in the tunnel; the woman was not fleeing in anger. There had been a failure, yes, but not a total one.
She took his arm as they walked down the dim tunnel. She wore a light blouse and dark skirt which did more to enhance her figure than any nudity could do.
“Jill,” he said, “I wanted to apologize for what happened. But you have to understand the impact the song has upon me. When that comes—”
She jogged his arm. He could feel the gentle pressure of her fingers through the coat. “My name is Selene,” she said.
They turned into a side passage. It slanted down, expanding. “Your interest caught me by surprise,” he continued, aware of the awkwardness of his explanation. “Somehow I never thought of you as a woman, Jill.”
“Why do you keep calling me ‘Jill’?” she demanded. “Look at me, Aton. I’m Selene. Silly Selene, cave girl.”
He looked. “I suppose you are,” he said. “I didn’t recognize you, clothed.”
“Thanks.”
He guided her to a seat and found a place beside her. “I never realized there was one of these in Chthon. We had a theater for the crew on board the Jocasta, but I never attended…”
He faded out, alarmed. Her hand was in his lap, fumbling with the fastening of his trousers. Then her fingers were inside, reaching down to discover what lay there. He tried to protest, but immediately the people in the neighboring seats turned to stare, forcing him to silence lest his exposure be advertised.
The feature flashed on the big front screen. Aton’s attention leaped to embrace that still scene. A man, toiling up a steep path, a strong man in antique costume, a young man garbed in flowing robes of indeterminate color. One man, but filled with meaning. Behind him the trail tapered away to a rocky, mossy slope, strangely attractive as a landscape.
The picture shifted, fading into another tableau. This time the foreground opened: a sheer drop with a horrifying hint of depth. The path had crested, as though running through a pass; indeed, one rounded hillock swelled in sight, while the surrounding land dipped away. Two men faced each other, having mounted on either side, meeting at the top. On the right was the strong young man of the previous picture; on the left, an older man, similarly dressed. They confronted, talking or debating. The old man’s arm was raised in imperious gesture.
The third frame was more forcefuclass="underline" the young man’s body was twisted, caught in violent motion, arms outflung, face contorted. The other person was poised in space beyond the precipice, arms raised as if to flail the air, birdlike, but falling nevertheless. They had had an argument, a falling-out, perhaps a contest of strength over the right-of-way. Who could say, since the images were fragmentary and silent? But the deed was done, irrevocably. Far below, out of sight, Aton knew that there was a narrow river bed—and wondered why he knew.
One more picture, seemingly unrelated to the prior sequence: a huge animal shape with mighty folded wings and the sensual breasts of a mature woman. Its mouth was open in a kind of question, as if to pose a riddle. That was all.
Unutterable horror seized Aton, a sick revulsion that churned his stomach and drove his senses back away from his naked face, recoiling from the monstrous import.
Now there was sensation in another area. He looked down and saw the female hand, clamped like calipers, stretching cruelly. But it was a cord, a serpentine length of it, blood-red in the half-light, connecting his belly to hers. He saw her face, and it was not the face of Laza, who would kill him, but another face, more lovely and more evil than any he could imagine.