Phthor (23 page)

Chapter VII:
  
Phthor

Arlo woke sweating with revulsion and horror. The vision of Life’s ascendancy was as bleak as that of Chthon’s. Each victory meant awful death for those closest to him, in that microcosm reflecting the carnage of the macrocosm.

Had this vision been sent by Chthon? Arlo doubted it; the elements of it rang too true. His future life with Vex would be like that, and in the end he would indeed have to kill his only son or be killed by him, in the minion way. This was what loving her entailed, and they both knew it. He could not escape that destiny by deserting Aton and Coquina and leaving the caverns forever; his fate was inherent in his love for the minionette.

“Thank God you made it,” Torment said. “I may have destroyed your foot, but I got most of the venom out. You’re tough, and I think the caterpillar poison countered the salamander poison somewhat—but that was close.”

“You’re beautiful,” Arlo said, kissing her.

“So are your dreams,” she said. “I’d like to know their literal content....”

That she had turned normal and died. That had passed through his mind as he kissed her, which was why the kiss had not hurt her. “The essence is this: we cannot afford Ragnarok. Our victory is as bad as Chthon’s. No matter who wins, Evil prevails. Compromise is essential.”

“It’s a bit late for that,” she said. “The forces have joined in combat all over the planet.”

“The war must be stopped. It shall be stopped.”

Torment smiled, appreciating his angry determination. “How?”

“My mother Coquina is confined in her hot cave, on pain of death. She really has no way to compete with the minionette.”

“No normal woman does,” Torment agreed with a hint of pride. “But what relevance—?”

“For a moment I thought they would fight. If one killed the other, the problem... would not really be solved. Coquina did not fight, though she knows how. Instead she— compromised. And gained more than she might have lost.”

“Compromise comes hard to a minionette.”

“Chthon thought to use me—as did you,” Arlo said. “I have assets derived from Life and Death. Now I have need to invoke them, for our galaxy depends on it.”

“Perhaps you had better rest. You are weak from the salamander toxin and the blood I had to squeeze from you to get it out.”

Arlo looked down at his foot. Now it hurt, and the toes felt numb. She had bound some cloth about it, taken from some hidden part of her uniform.

In fact, she had handled the matter very rapidly and competently. Vex would not have been so apt. There was a difference between individual minionettes, and Torment was worthwhile.

They rounded a turn—and before them was the chimera. Both of them recognized it instantly, though neither had ever seen it before. Birdlike and malignant, it faced them, hovering in place.

The chippers stopped, afraid. “Oh-oh,” Torment said. “Can’t outmaneuver that. But maybe I can block it off until you get your gloves on it—”

“No use,” Arlo said. “Look behind.”

“I don’t need to. I can feel it. Another chimera.”

“And more in the adjoining passages. We are trapped.”

She glanced at the box containing the Xest’s Taphid supply. “I wonder—?”

“Still not thawed,” Arlo said. “And if it were, we’d be the first eaten. So no net gain.”

Torment turned to him. “I think I would have loved you anyway. Any minionette would.” Then she drew her knife. “If we stand back to back, we may kill one or two before they finish us. I’ll take out the first with my blowgun; I have a spare one for you, in case you misplaced the one I gave you before. Try to protect your eyes; they’ll go for that first.”

“You, yes; me, no,” he said, remembering something Aton once had mentioned about the delicacies the chimera preferred. It was not reassuring.

Arlo knew it was no use. The chimera fed on more than eyeballs and gonads, and it could strike at the speed of sound. Knives, blowguns or even blasters would be of little avail against this covey.

Yet he had a mission. He concentrated, reaching out—and a soundless implosion occurred somewhere within his head and body. Diverse but unimaginably powerful elements were thrust together like the mechanisms of a nuclear device, and as they merged there was a qualitative change.

“What happened ?” Torment cried, alarmed and dazed by the emotional turbulence surrounding the metamorphosis.

“Enough pressure can convert black carbon into diamond,” Arlo said.

The chimeras launched themselves. From each available direction they shot like projectiles at the target. Arlo felt them in his mind just before he saw them move. Death...

Death!

The chimeras dropped to the cavern floor.

“They’re dead—all of them,” Torment said in wonder.”I can feel it. An instant of incredible bliss... something wiped them out!”

Arlo relaxed. “Twice I have fallen prey to animal toxins— but survived. It was not because I was lucky, but because I have special resources. I am part human, part minion, part Chthon. Life has shown me its secrets—and so has Death. From each I draw power—and together they are—Phthor.”

“I will take you back to your cave,” Torment said, as though he were babbling. “Your emotion is so twisted I cannot interpret it. You need time to rest, to recover—and we’d better get out of here before whatever finished those birds orients on us.”

Arlo concentrated. Again in his mind and being he fused the diverse elements of his makeup, his genetics, his knowledge, and his emotion. The essences of the oxygen of life and the fluorine of death, precisely merged, figuratively. Consciously he repeated what had been involuntary a moment before.

The pieces fitted together, forced by the need he saw—the need to stop Ragnarok, to unify the essences of Life and Death, to prevent the twin horrors of victory by either faction. He stood at the crux of the great Y, so much more than the spread of the World Tree Yggdrasil. Here the futures diverged, and now he understood the message of the mythological Ragnarok. No matter which side won, Evil triumphed—because the battle itself was suspect.

They must not be permitted to diverge. One horn of it could not exist apart from the other, by definition. The horns had to be unified, integrated, fashioned into the I-course of a single, successful future.

Awareness came, like that of Chthon. He perceived the caverns through the senses of the creatures within them—but not limited to the animals. He was receiving from the minionettes, the Xests, the Lfa, and the EeoO: all the life of both sides.

First the near ones: the moving passages as seen through the four eyes of the two great chipper-goats, the odors of rock and glow they fed on, the feel of stone and ice under their feet, unpleasantly cold. The air currents as perceived by the antennae of tiny, flying frost-gnats disturbed by the sledge. The taste of stone and water as perceived by the glow-lichen. And the uncertainty and concern of the minionette Torment: she had to safeguard this man, for he was the unifying focus of Life’s effort. Did that responsibility extend to his difficult personal situation? Should she attempt to remove his love from his sister, thereby alleviating his inherent quarrel with his father? Or was she rationalizing, yielding to the overwhelming temptation this complex and forceful young male presented?

“A son I bore by you would immediately reestablish the minion triangle,” Arlo told her. “If I really want to be free, I must marry a normal girl—as my father did.”

Torment stared at him, embarrassed. “You can read my mind—literally!”

“With semitelepathy so common in the galaxy, is it surprising that true telepathy should at last emerge?” Arlo inquired. “Let me show you something else.”

He concentrated on her. Torment screamed, clutching her head: a short, sharp cry of dismay from the root of her being. “You have—gutted me!” she gasped, clinging to the chair of the sledge.

“No.” Arlo drew her to him, close, and kissed her again. This time he savored her exquisite body, her unparalleled beauty, her respectable personality. For the moment, he loved her without bitterness.

She melted, every bit a woman. Her hair took on a sheen of almost living flame. Then she drew back, startled.

“What was that?” she demanded.

Arlo merely looked at her.

“It was—unchanged love,” she said, shaking her head increduously. “There was no reversal!”

“You are now normal,” Arlo agreed. “That telepathic emotion reversal could have been corrected generations ago, had the developers of Planet Minion researched more thoroughly. It is time the minionette merged into the human mainstream.”

Now she was horrified. “Our whole way of life—”

“Will change. But there is more,” Arlo said. He concentrated again. Torment lifted one hand to her mouth and bit her finger. “I can control your body,” Arlo said through her mouth. “I could will you dead—as I did those chimerae.”

He let her go, and she collapsed weakly against the chair. “That is Chthon-power, after the myxo—”

“I can do it without the myxo,” Arlo said. “My way is more efficient because it is natural, whole.”

“What are you?” she demanded, suspecting some ruse by the cavern entity. If Arlo had been taken over—

“I am not the enemy,” Arlo said, smiling reassuringly. “There is no enemy—except this foolish strife. I am Phthor—the integration of the powers of Life and Death.” He paused, beginning to reach his awareness out through the planet, finding his range magnified well beyond what it had been during the fishing for the dragon: beyond his own prior power and that of the Xest. “Perhaps, when this is over, I will marry you, and your children will be normal and telepathic. Now—I must stop Ragnarok.”

“This power is new to you,” she warned. “If you try too much, too soon—”

“There is no choice. This is Ragnarok.” Win or lose, he would forfeit his special powers when this was over; the second vision had informed him of that. But on the personal level, he had already done what was fated: normalized Torment. Could he change fate enough to prevent her death? If not, his agony with Vex would come to pass...

Indecision was not a minionette failing. “Then we’d better hole up somewhere safe,” Torment said briskly. “I’ll stand guard while you—reach out. If Chthon doesn’t know about this yet, Chthon will find out very soon. Then your life will be in more danger than ever before.”

“You are assuming that I am opposed to Chthon.”

Torment’s knife whipped around—and stopped as his mind clamped down on hers.

“I’m on the side of sanity,” Arlo said, letting her go. “I don’t mean to destroy Chthon. Chthon is not evil—it is merely a different way. We have to work out a compromise for mutual survival. Each side has things the other side needs. Life has mobility, technology, reproductive capacity—the ability to change the physical aspect of the galaxy, and to adapt itself to what can not be changed. Chthon has— proportion.”

She shook her head dubiously.

“Unchecked, Life will destroy itself and the galaxy,”

Arlo continued. “Like thawed Taphids, consuming its very future for the sake of its immediate appetite. The Taphids perish after they feed, for there is nothing left. Some control needs to be exercised. Chthon is that control. Together, in harmony, the two will make of this realm a paradise—for both.”

“I don’t understand it,” Torment said. “But I defer to your judgment.” She put away her knife, and took the reins. “You go about your business; I’ll find a cubbyhole.” Then, as an afterthought, revealing her private concern: “My children will be normal?” She was not wholly pleased.

Arlo yielded the management of the material concern to her. Obey her, he projected to the dull minds of the chippers, and implanted brief directives about the motions of the reins so that they would know how.

He had already sent his awareness out through the caverns. Now he intensified it. He felt the stone itself, and its trillions of fissures and bypaths and metallic threads, and the little chthonic currents traversing these, and the larger network— that sum total that was Chthon itself.

As his perception spread, he assimilated the circuitry that constituted the cavern entity, and knew where Chthon’s secrets were. The EeoO were pooled near the antiexplosion wave generator, ready to re-emerge as separate juvenile entities and attack by secreting corrosive acids around the key circuits. But a huge sucker-creature was making its way toward that region, Chthon’s counter to the threat. It would imbibe and digest the entire pool before the EeoO could complete its reproductive cycle—if it got there in time.

The Lfa had reassembled and was making its way to the great gas crevasse. Soon it would set about igniting that chasm. Chthon was not yet aware of it, so had taken no counter step. The multiple Xests were scurrying in and around the huge nether tunnel, distracting Chthon with their activity. Arlo reminded himself: he must remember to give his friend-fragment the hvee!

Farther out, the minionettes had emerged from their enclave and, under Lfa command, were systematically clearing the caverns of Chthon-possessed life. They were spraying glow-destroying acid on the walls, making the region opaque to Chthon’s perception. They had unbreakable electric lamps for their own use.