The minionette had plucked it from the ground, and he, too knowledgeable at seven, had prevented her from keeping it. “Hvee is only for men!” he had asserted, and so she had made him a present of it, and it had been his until his betrothal. It had been his after that, too, for it would not live in the possession of a woman who did not love him. The hvee loved its master, and tolerated the lover of that master, so long as that love endured, and so long as that person was worthy.
The minionette had plucked it.
The minionette!
The hvee had fixed on her! She was its mistress!
Suddenly it fell into place. He had loved her sufficiently, or perhaps his minion blood had loved her, to preserve the plant. And she had after all been worthy, not evil. The hvee responded to true emotion, and did not notice inversions. The hate Aton had thought he felt for her, later, had been false hate. The hvee had not been misled.
The death of the minionette had taken with it not only the evil chimera, but also the good hvee—except that the hvee, in the possession of the lover of the lover, had not known that its original object of affection was gone. Coquina had seen the dead minionette, but she had not understood that this was the mistress of the hvee—and the hvee had taken her innocent faith for its own. Love, not reason, was its essence. Even its apparent judgment of worthiness was illusory. It loved the man who, basically, loved himself, and rejected the one who genuinely hated himself.
Had the hvee really belonged to Aton, it might have died anyway.
But he had not actually been condemned. It had died because he knew the fate of its mistress, and knew her link with it, though never consciously aware of it. When the hvee came back to him and his knowledge, it had to wither.
He could take a second hvee and offer it to Coquina. This one would not die.
He came into sight of the house. A dim light burned in the window.
Doubt continued to nag him. Why had she sent him out prematurely? Why had she refused to touch him? After she had devoted three years of her life to the care of a dying father and a terribly living son, with the end of torture so near—why had she been crying?
Think of the date…
Yes, the date had been premature. But why? Bedside must have intended something.
He reached the house and pushed open the door without a pause. A man turned to meet him—a stranger. He was husky, perhaps fifty, at the prime of life, with a solemn visage and worksoiled hands. There was power in his bearing, unobtrusive but immovable. This was Benjamin Five, the uncle he had almost forgotten.
“Where have you been, Aton?” Benjamin inquired gravely, his tone disconcertingly like that of Aurelius. Behind him a woman’s form was lying on the couch.
“Coquina!” Aton exclaimed, passing Benjamin with disrespectful haste. She did not stir. Her pale hair fell limply over the edge of the couch and almost touched the floor. “Coquina—I will give you another hvee—”
“Young man, it is too late for that,” Benjamin said.
Aton ignored him. “Coquina, Coquina—I won the battle! The evil one is gone.” Her eyelids flickered, but she did not speak. “Coquina.” He put his hand on hers.
Her hand was cold.
Think of the date…This was the year and the month of the chill. The chill! She was dying, far past the point of return.
“Did you think her love was less, young cousin,” Benjamin murmured, “because it did run smoothly?”
Aton understood at last. The chill had struck Hvee in the first month of §305, and was due again in the second month of §403. Coquina knew this well, as every resident of Hvee knew it, and could have left the planet—if she had not had a virtual invalid to care for. There had been no place off the planet where she could hide Aton—not from the scrutiny that quarantine officials still gave every ship leaving a planet under siege. And so she had stayed, and had risked the chill with him, and had lost. Instead of leaving the moment she contracted it, Coquina had remained, caring for him—and had finally roused him so that he would not wake alone, confused and helpless, or die from neglect under the drugs.
No—her love had not been less.
She had wanted him to win his freedom while she lived, while her support was with him.
The chill. He would have known the moment he touched her, for she had been far gone when she had talked to him. She must have sustained consciousness only with great effort, while trying to prepare him for a contest she only partly understood herself. Now that contest was over, her part was done, and she had stopped fighting.
Unless she had stopped fighting when she had seen the hvee die.
Aton kneeled for interminable moments beside her, his hand on hers, looking upon her quiet face. Was she never to know that he had not betrayed her that third time? The tears came to his own eyes as the cold crept from her hand to his, crept on into his spirit.
My love, he thought to her, my love for you is not less either. All of what you shared with the minionette before, belongs to you alone, now. My second love is greater than the first.
She lay still.
Aton bowed his head, defeated. “The price for freedom is too great,” he said.
There was an imperative knock on the door. “That’s Chthon,” Aton said to Benjamin, no longer caring whether his semi-telepathy showed.
Bedside entered. He went immediately to the dying girl. “Terminal,” he said.
Aton nodded. The last of Bedside’s riddles was becoming clear. It was Aton’s turn to make a sacrifice.
“I will pray to your god,” he said to Bedside, “if only she lives.”
Bedside nodded acceptance. “We must go immediately.”
Aton got up and slid his arms under Coquina’s numb form, lifting her into the air. He carried her to the door.
Benjamin did not move. “I think you have sold your soul,” he said.
Aton stepped into the night. The clear stars shone overhead—stars that he would not see again. “ ‘Hide, hide your golden light!’ ” he quoted softly. “ ‘She sleeps! My lady sleeps! Sleeps…’ ”
§400
16
The caverns were quiet. There was no wind at all, and even the current in the water had disappeared. Some liquid hung in stagnant pools, too shallow to swim in. The rock formations had taken on a peculiar cast, an unnatural gray, and the grotesque shape of diverging passages repelled the eye.
Foreboding grew. This had the smell of a dead end. The once-mighty river had gradually seeped away, and the plentiful game had become scarce. Once more the party traveled hungry. Soon the lots would come into use again, unless someone volunteered by collapsing. The last of Bedside’s markers had been spotted two marches ago. If another were not found by the end of this march, they would have to retrace the trail.
Fourteen women and six men had survived the thirty-march journey of the Hard Trek—so far. Accident and fatigue still took their toll, and the chimera still stalked the group, though it seldom had a chance to strike any more. They were farther away from the surface than ever—and between them and final escape still waited the nemesis that had driven Bedside mad.
The march ended. They camped huddled together, trying to protect themselves from the ominous gathering of unknown forces. These caverns were menacing.