Phthor (6 page)

“Father!” Arlo cried. His arms and legs were numb, his body sore from the bruising run, but that hardly mattered.

Aton turned. He was fifty-two years old, dark-bearded and powerful, with a certain aura of determination or ruthlessness about him. He punched his fist into Sleipnir’s nose, his way of patting the animal. The creature was so tough it could not feel a light touch. Aton’s single eye looked inquiringly at Arlo.

“Girl. Wounded. Dying. Blood. Help,” Arlo said between gulps of air.

Aton put one hand on Sleipnir’s back and vaulted aboard. This vigor did not seem strange to Arlo; his father had always been an active man, and only recently had Arlo outgrown him. Aton leaned over, caught his son under the arms, lifted him and deposited him on the rear segment of the steed. Sleipnir didn’t notice; all he cared about was that Aton was riding him.

There had never been another human being in this region of the caverns other than Aton, Coquina, Arlo, Doc Bedside, and the zombies. Yet Aton hadn’t hesitated. “Where?” Aton asked.

“In my gardens.”

Aton had never been to the gardens, though he knew where they were, because the way was blocked by so many animate and inanimate threats. Aton did not have the aid of Chthon on that route; it was as though the god wanted no one but Arlo there. But of course Arlo had explored all the tunnels and knew his way through safely, regardless of Chthon’s influence.

Aton guided Sleipnir according to Arlo’s instructions, and they thundered toward the gardens. Even on this fleet mount, it took some time because the safe route was circuitous. Afraid to contemplate what they would find there, Arlo talked with his father: a thing he seldom did. It was not that there was any bad feeling between them, but that there was inadequate feeling. Arlo really did not know his father well. “What is a minionette?” He had asked this question of Bedside, but received no satisfactory answer. Of course a minionette came from planet Minion; why should that be significant? Why did she equate with sirens, Valkyries, and death?

Aton’s back stiffened, and Arlo knew that he had made a mistake. As the second son, substitute for the favored firstborn, he dared not presume. He had supposed this to be a special case. “Who spoke to you of that?”

“Old Doc Bedside.”

Aton grunted contemptuously, but he relaxed a bit. “What did he tell you?”

“Only that I was quarter-minion. My grandmother—”

“Enough!”

Arlo was glad enough to let it drop. Aton was a man of violent temperament, and he had a sadistic streak. It was evident that Bedside had been sowing dissent, in his subtle fashion. Time for a change of subject.

“How did you get Sleipnir?”

Aton relaxed again. “That was Bedeker’s doing.” He always called Doc Bedside that. “He and I went exploring in the early days, but we were careless and got trapped by a caterpillar. He tried to distract it while I pounded a hole in the wall, but it stabbed him with its tail and incorporated him.”

Arlo knew how that worked. The long caterpillars rammed their tail-spikes through the quarry, inhaling the victim through the middle. In moments, special substances or nerves extended into the victim’s body, and instead of dying, he was reanimated as a segment of the creature, marching in unison with the other segments. In due course, the segments of the latter end of the creature were slowly drained of their resources, going to sustain the forepart, shrinking until they were little more than walking lumps. The caterpillar never ate with its mouth; its face was a huge facade intended to frighten potential prey toward the tail. There was little defense against a caterpillar except avoidance, as with other chthonic menaces. But it could readily be avoided with suitable foresight. On occasion Arlo had scrambled over a caterpillar’s mid-portion, since only the tail could attack.

Then the other meaning of Aton’s words penetrated. “Bedside was incorporated? But he’s alive!”

“That took you a while, son,” Aton said with a brief laugh. “Bedeker is only half-alive. He’s a creature of Chthon, a mad doctor, a golem, an animated stick. A good doctor, though, especially with Chthon’s assistance. You should have gone to him for help first.”

“I couldn’t. Chthon wants the girl dead.”

“I thought as much,” Aton said. “Chthon wasn’t in on this particular scheme, it seems. You’re beginning to appreciate that the god of the caverns is not necessarily beneficent.’’

“Yes!” It had been a hard lesson, as most cavern lessons were. Yet Arlo realized that his father was pleased. Aton hated Chthon—yet he stayed here in Chthon’s demesne, and Chthon tolerated him. Why? Arlo dared not ask—yet.

“An ordinary man would have been lost,” Aton continued after a moment. “But Bedeker belongs to Chthon, and Chthon controls all life in the caverns. Except the three of us. The human mind is too complex to control without an enormous special effort.”

“The myxo!” Arlo cried.

“Right. And those of us with minion blood are capable of resisting the myxo, so that if Chthon prevails, the result is not a controlled human mind but a zombie. So it isn’t worth it. Still, the mineral intellect has ways of making its point. Chthon could have stopped the caterpillar—but maybe it wanted to teach us a lesson.” He always referred to Chthon as “it,” signaling his smoldering antipathy. “So it let Bedeker get caught. I escaped—only because Chthon let me—but for a week Bedeker marched in the caterpillar. Several more segments were incorporated behind him. I thought I’d never see him again, and I wasn’t sorry.”

Aton shook his head, his dark hair waving with the motion. “Until that episode, I never really appreciated Chthon’s full power. Maybe I still don’t. Well, Chthon showed me! A predator attacked that caterpillar—some huge wolflike thing—and—”

“Wolf!” Arlo cried. But he shut up as his father paused. He wanted to hear the rest of the episode.

“The wolf severed it just in front of Bedeker. The main caterpillar escaped, but Bedeker survived as an independent segment. He wasn’t a real caterpillar; he couldn’t use his tail to incorporate new segments. He was just a ten-legged fragment walking around. But now he had control. Maybe it was really Chthon-control; I’m sure I would have died in that situation. But in due course the predator attacked again, this time cutting off the last four segments. And still Bedeker lived. He returned almost to normal—it’s hard to tell, since he is half mad, half Chthon anyway—while the remainder of his former body carried on by itself. Again, no death. The new head assumed control and started eating. Those last segments had been pretty strong, so the thing was stupid but powerful. Bedeker gave it to me to take care of, and he named it Sleipnir, after the eight-legged horse of Norse mythology.. You’ll find that in LOE.”

Aton fell silent, and Arlo asked no more questions. The story was incredible—yet he had to believe it. Chthon did have such power, and Doc Bedside did have huge scars on his body whose significance suddenly manifested. But how amazing, for the old mad doctor had almost literally birthed this fine cavern horse—a four-segment caterpillar fragment! Where else could such a thing have happened?

They entered the gardens. Aton looked around with interest, blinking in the unaccustomed yellow light, for he had not had opportunity to inspect this region before. “Nice,” he said appreciatively. “I seem to remember something like this, vaguely. I think the first time Chthon guided me through the caverns, using the half-woman...”

“Black-haired?” Arlo asked.

“Yes. Half-zombie. Don’t tell me she’s still around?”

“Yes. She’s one of the Norns.”

“Norns!” Aton exploded, laughing. “Chthon must have quite a sense of humor, deep in its stone circuits. She was a Lower Cavern bitch, when I knew her.”

Bitch. The female of an Old Earth dog, evidently a term of disrespect. But now they were coming into Arlo’s particular garden near the falls, where the girl lay.

Ex remained as she had been. Arlo had difficulty looking. It was not the sight of wounds and blood that bothered him, but the fact that he had so recently known this person, and in fact had some responsibility for her condition.

“She’s been gutted, but she lives,” Aton said. “That’s remarkable. Are you sure she’s not zombie?”

“She’s human! Chthon tried to take her—and then sent the wolf.”

Aton looked up. “Wolf?” he asked sharply, evidently making the same connection Arlo had. A wolf had freed Bedside from the caterpillar...
 
“That’s what it felt like. Its mind. Bedside blocked me off, so I came too late and hardly saw it. Big—big, like a wolf.’’

“You’ve never seen a wolf!”

“I’ve seen the pictures in LOE. But it’s only the feel I mean. The malignancy. It doesn’t matter what it looks like. It’s a wolf.”

“A wolf,” Aton repeated. “You’re right: in the caverns, feel is more important than appearance.” Then he shook himself. “So you’ve got a girl! She must have strayed from the prison.”

“Yes. She said so.” But now Arlo was aware of a certain deviousness in his father and knew he was concealing something. Aton should have been surprised, perhaps angry—but he was neither. He could hardly be in collusion with Chthon. So what did he know?

“We can’t save her,” Aton said regretfully. “Her guts have been spilled. I don’t know what keeps her alive.”

There were times when his father lacked tact. Yet it was true. There was no explaining what kept Ex breathing. “We have to try,” Arlo said.

“All we can do is tie her together and see what happens. Only Chthon can save her.”

“But Chthon won’t.”

The man’s eye looked at him, and Arlo knew the question was rhetorical. “Why not?”

“Because Chthon sent the wolf to kill her!”

Aton nodded. He gathered strong vines from the native flora of the garden. “Don’t you think Chthon could have arranged to kill her outright, instead of leaving her hanging by a thread?”

“I—” But his arrival could not have had much effect; the wolf had already been departing. “Chthon wanted her—this way?”

“It is possible to bargain with Chthon. That’s how I saved your mother.”

Arlo was torn by hope and incredulity. “You—?”

“She had the chill.”

“The chill?”

“I forgot. That’s not in LOE.” He sighed. “I hate this business. I think your girl is going to die, so I’m talking about something else. But maybe this will help.” He paused, finding his mental place as his hands worked, preparing the vines. “Most of what I know about the chill I learned from fat Hasty. That’s Hastings—a fellow prisoner, a quarter-century ago. Hasty, Framy, Bossman, Garnet, the black-haired bitch—I never did know her name—”

“Verthandi.”

Aton snorted, but continued: “Two hundred forty-one denizens of the nether caverns, and as many more in the upper prison. But Hasty was special. He knew everything, except how to mine a garnet. He died stuck in a hole, chopped in half by Bossman’s axe. Had to be done, because the jelly whale was coming...”He trailed off.

“You mean a potwhale?” Arlo asked.

“Hasty did a marvelous presentation. He phrased the mystery of the chill as though it were a parody of the earlier quest for the nature of light. He talked about the particle theory and the wave theory, and showed how the first was exploded and the second swamped. He had fun with his puns! He also took his digs at the obtuseness of military doctors who suppose that no person without a fever can be sick, even though he appears to be dying. And the scholastic ‘publish or perish’ system that has always kept professionals too busy with irrelevancies to attend to their legitimate work.”

Arlo shook his head. “I don’t understand.”

“No, of course you wouldn’t. The prisoners didn’t grasp the nuances either. But the essence was this: the chill comes in ninety-eight-year cycles—waves of it spreading out from the center of the galaxy. Where it strikes, more than half the population dies. Each infected person becomes colder and colder until he can no longer sustain the bodily processes necessary to life. There is no cure.

“Coquina caught it when it crossed planet Hvee the last time, in §403. I knew she would die. She had stayed in the path of the chill only to take care of me in my madness, and in that manner she showed me what true love was. I knew I loved her too. So I did what I had resolved never to do, and I made a bargain with Chthon, agreeing to come here to stay provided Chthon enabled her to live. As long as Chthon keeps its bargain, I keep mine. Honor between enemies, you might say. She stays in a cave so hot her body temperature cannot drop, and Chthon’s ambience touches her to keep her sane and functional, and so she survives. It isn’t much of a life for her, but if she ever leaves that heat, or the presence of Chthon, she will die.”

Arlo was stunned. In one speech his father had clarified lifelong mysteries—yet how many new mysteries unfolded in that telling! What was the real cause of the chill, and how could Chthon nullify it as though Coquina were merely another hvee plant, existing by the god’s will, yet no zombie? What had brought Anton, by his own statement, to madness? How did the minionette relate to this? And why had Chthon wanted Anton to live here? Arlo knew better than to inquire; his father, like Bedside, volunteered information only when he chose. This had been an unprecedented windfall, but that was all.

Aton wrapped the vines around Ex’s torso, pulling the great wound together and poking her intestines inside, one link at a time, gently. Even Arlo could see that this was extremely crude surgery, bound to be futile; but there was little else to do.