“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—”