Phthor (25 page)

Is this the way Thor fights? Chthon’s derisive question came.

Arlo didn’t answer. The mineral entity’s display of emotion only betrayed its uncertainty. Arlo still held Ragnarok in abeyance, and Chthon was evidently unable to resume the main fray until Arlo was dispatched. If he could beat the dragon... and perhaps he could, if only he could make it to the gas crevasse in time. If that gas entered this tunnel, and then were ignited—it would not burn long, but that might be enough to finish the monster.

The distance was short on the planetary scale, but long for a man on foot, especially with one bad foot. Already the serpent was reorienting, closing in on its own tunnel. There was not going to be time.

An animal, frightened by the nearby activity, had blundered into the warren. Arlo had not seen this type before, but it had six legs and looked fleet. He touched it with his mind and leaped upon its back. Now he had a steed!

He had guessed correctly; this thing was fast. The wind whistled past Arlo’s ears as they raced along. Soon they came to the place where the tunnel passed directly under the gas crevasse. Arlo dismounted, letting the steed run on as a possible distraction. I am minion he projected into its mind, to improve its chances as a decoy. Then he knocked at the rock with his Hammer, again and again.

Behind him came the dragon, horribly swift. Why hadn’t the Taphids slowed it? Or had its intestinal juices digested the Taphids first? Arlo hadn’t thought of that before, and it was not reassuring. He might have to face a full-strength monster after all.

As Arlo made a man-sized hole in the wall and climbed upward on the rubble he was making, the serpent shot past. The sudden compression and rarefaction of the air in its vicinity knocked him off his feet. The decoy had worked— but that would not fool the monster long.

He opened an aperture into one of the vapor-exits of the crevasse. Arlo pulled himself up along the smaller tunnel as the gas poured through his vent into the main passage. The suction of the dragon’s passage helped it along.
 
Then pressure built up again. The dragon was returning, head-first; evidently it had a loop for turning about near here. Air and gas whistled back out through the crack—but enough filled the tunnel so that the monster choked on it. Good—it could not breathe the gas! Arlo himself was suffocating, but he drew upon his special physical strength and hung on. He found the tunnel’s merger with the bottom of the gas crevasse.

Above him the canyon opened, dark to his eyes, permeable to his mind. It had not maintained a fire, fortunately. Below him the dragon ground at the rock, using its pile-driver claws to plunge into it and hook it out in gross chunks. Its mouth was not really a rock-cutter, but more for chewing prey. And it was losing initiative, for it had an uncomfortable bellyache.

Arlo’s perception passed through the monster’s body. The Taphid had consumed the serpent’s stomach and now was working on the remaining innards. But the vitality of the snake was such that even gutted, it could function indefinitely. Given opportunity, it would grow a new digestive system. Meanwhile, it was hungry—and it had already fixed on its prey.

Arlo readied his Hammer, waiting to time his blow exactly right. The serpent might be able to get along without its huge stomach, but it would die without its little brain. And if that didn’t work, fire should. He needed something to use to strike a spark.

The entire floor of the crevasse below Arlo collapsed, falling into the yawning maw of the monster. Now the gas howled through, finding a vast new outlet. Arlo scrambled desperately, but the combination of vanishing footing and rushing gas carried him down into the maw.

But the serpent, its perception dulled by its intestinal problems, did not realize it actually had its prey in its mouth. It spat out the rubble, or rather blew it out with a galelike burp of gas—and Arlo emerged with the stones. He crashed into the side of the cave-in, feeling bones bruise. He inhaled involuntarily—and found that the gas was now mixed with air and dust. It would sustain him—long enough.

Something bit him. He pinched at his thigh with his left Glove and brought up a Taphid. About to crush it, he changed his mind and flicked it back into the maw. Every little bit helped!

He hauled himself up, gripping the Hammer with one Glove, and caught hold of a finger-thick whisker sprouting from the monster’s lip with the other. He scrambled over the dragon’s face until he stood atop its skull—and now he struck, guided by his ambient perception of the creature’s anatomy. Right at this precise point, here—

The blow sundered the heavy mantle of bone, transmitting the cruel shock to the tiny brain beneath. This organ was extraordinarily sensitive. The Midgard Serpent thrashed wildly and died.

Success! Arlo leaped off its hurtling skull and ran toward the chasm outlet. But as the monster collapsed, it exhaled a cloud of its remaining internal vapor, digestive gas that burned Arlo’s skin, suffocating him anew, and blinded him. The Taphids had been lucky to survive that corrosive atmosphere! Poison from vents near the teeth mixed with this, making the cloud completely deadly. Arlo staggered a few more steps, then collapsed.

As Thor had perished in the cloud of venom released by the dying Midgard Serpent, he thought, feeling his mental control slipping as his body died. An almost perfect parallel that could hardly have been scripted by Chthon—

But that was what Chthon wanted him to believe! As long as he did, he was doomed, as the cause of Life was doomed, and any sane compromise was doomed. He had to seek his own destiny, not a reenactment...

Then he felt the multiple bites of the Taphids. They were swarming over him, having been belched out with the last great spasm of the serpent. He lacked the vision and the strength to pick them off, and in any event they were already burrowing voraciously. What appetite! They must reproduce in the very act of eating, to consume so ravenously!

Destiny? It was too late! As Arlo’s control slipped, Bedside’s blade cut into Benjamin’s body. Benjamin grabbed Bedside’s two ears, flung him about, and shoved him against the pointing blade of the fallen scythe. Blood spurted from both men as they continued their death embrace.

Fenris the Wolf twisted his head about, orienting on his enemy by sound. His jaws snapped sideways—and caught Aton at last. One gulp, and the man had been swallowed as the two women screamed.

The sucker imbibed the remainder of the EeoO pool, leaving only a film of jelly.

The Lfa generated another spark—and this time the crevasse caught and held. Flame ballooned up to the high cross-passages, sucking in cool air, and plunged down toward the bottom vortex where the gas leaked into the dragon’s tunnel.

Arlo felt the heat incinerating his body, killing the Taphids in the process—and had a final realization. He had allowed himself to be deceived by a decoy! He should have struck, not at the dragon, but at Chthon’s killchill circuitry! Then the deadline would have been postponed, allowing him to force a compromise between Life and Death, saving them both.

With what was left of his mind, now heating in its fragile housing of bone, Arlo flung a blast of § energy directly at that delicate submechanism that was Chthon’s ultimate weapon. He could not destroy it physically, but he could alter the impedances, change the flows of current, make it into something else, neutralize it—

Chthon fought him. But Chthon, too, had been weakened. The chasm blaze was melting adjacent circuits, shorting some, interrupting others, interfering with the orderly process and feedback that was sentience. The two fading minds, animate and mineral, struggled over the killchill unit, buffeting its mechanism back and forth, while the increasing inferno sent heat through rock and passages, changing the composition of delicate diodes and resistance-sections.

Desperately, Arlo tried to demolish the structure before his

own mind collapsed. As desperately, Chthon sought to trigger it off, though the guiding chill-wave had not yet arrived. As a result, it changed. It drew into itself in a kind of short circuit all the reserve powers of Chthon, coalescing about very special, potent substances, merging oxygen and fluorine in an entirely new and thorough manner, not restricted to organic material but all-inclusive, tapping violently into § without the limiting fuse of Arlo’s brain, resulting in— Phthor.

Symbol
      
Element
       
Atomic Number
    
Atomic Weight

O
     
Oxygen
        
8
         
16,17,18

F
      
Fluorine
        
9
         
19

Sector Cyclopedia, §426

Epilogue:

Phthor

Destruction

Ragnarok

First future: victory for Chthon

Cleansing the galaxy of contamination.

Second future: victory for life

Inevitably
  
destroying
  
its
  
own
  
sentience,
  
unrestrained: the Taphid.

Third future: compromise

Failed.

Fourth future: Phthor

Otherwise known as the birth of a quasar

Most powerful explosion of a galaxy

Akin to the violence of the Creation itself.

Life and Death: all gone

Ragnarok

Destruction

Phthor.

We in the external universe observe

We note the result of victory

Or of mutual loss.

This new bright quasar shines

An example

A warning

Showing the way to the greater good

Compromise.

We record the case history

And present it here for eternity:

An example

An education.

We accede to what must be.

We: the mineral intellects of the universe.

We end our war with Life.

We renounce—Phthor.