§403

Sixteen

Aton recovered slowly. The calendar on the wall across the room opened on the face of Second Month, §403 -- almost a year after the horror he remembered. He had kissed the minionette, and... almost a year!

Where have I been? What have I done, in that vanished interim?

He looked about. The first substantial feature of the comfortable room that his attention fixed upon was the hard-backed wooden chair: the mighty chair of Aurelius, guarding the exit. Across the floor was the plush couch, also too familiar -- the couch he had always thought of as his mother's. Above it still was the framed picture of the daughter of Ten, evoking no guilt now. Beside that --

Beside that was the webwork of Xest artistry: mother and son.

He blotted the room from his mind and studied himself. He was wearing a light shirt and clean farming overalls and the soft heavy footwear of the hvee farmer; whoever had dressed him had known how. Could he have done it himself, in some amnesiac state?

There was a stirring in the adjacent room. Aurelius? No, he was dead, as the nymph of the wood was dead, as everyone who had cared for him was dead. Who occupied this house of Five? The tread was light, familiar.

"Theme of the shell!" he exclaimed, suddenly glad, very glad. He had thought of her, too, as dead, if she had existed at all outside his dreams. He had killed her -- but it had been a symbolic execution, a denial of his second love, and now the symbolism was gone.

She stepped into view, her hair longer than that of his four-year memory, glowing silver against the green hvee in the afternoon sunlight. Her fair features were set; her wrist was bare.

There was no physical death on Idyllia, and they both had known it. Yet he had pushed her off the mountain at the moment of rapture. She had no telepathy; she could not have known that his action represented denial, not of her, but of the minionette. To Coquina it was his second rejection... and the vibrant hvee she still wore showed that her love for him had never faltered.

To be worthy of such a woman.

"Daughter of Four," he said, "I love you."

She looked up. "Aton?"

Nonplussed, he stood up. His body felt strong -- he had not spent the past year in bed. "Coquina -- don't you know me?"

She studied him carefully. "Aton," she repeated, smiling at last.

He strode toward her. She retreated. "Please do not touch me, Aton."

"Coquina -- what is it?"

She stood behind the large-boned chair of Aurelius. "Things may not be as you remember them, Aton."

He returned to his own chair and sat down. "Were my dreams mistaken, pretty shell? Did something die on Idyllia?"

"No, Aton, no -- not that. But you have been -- gone -- a long time. I must be sure."

"Sure of what?" he demanded. "The minionette is dead and I love you. I loved you from the first, but until I conquered the minionette -- "

"Aton, please let me talk. Things will be hard for you, and there is not much time." Her formality amazed him.

"Coquina!"

She ignored his cry and began talking, a trifle rapidly, as though reading a lecture. "I went to the forest before you were released from Chthon and I talked with the minionette. I talked with Malice. I showed her the hvee I wore, and she took it and showed me that she loved you, even as I."

"She did, in her way," Aton said.

"She was lovely. I could see the family resemblance. She told me those things about you that I had to know, so that I could care for you during your recovery, and she warned me about the evil one that would come from Chthon, so that I could protect you from him. She said -- she said that she would be gone, soon, and so she left me the song."

"The song!"

"She wanted you to be happy, Aton, and she saw that your minion blood was destroying you, while the evil one waited for the remainder. She gave you to me. You did not conquer her, Aton. Not that magnificent woman."

Comprehension appalled him. "All this -- before I escaped from Chthon?"

"We loved you, Aton."

"Malice knew she was going to die?"

"Yes. Her name, by the terms of her culture, means 'Compassion,' and she loved your father enough to leave him, and you enough to die for you. When Aurelius saw you pass the fields, with her, he understood, and he gave up his long fight against the swamp blight. She died soon after. The cousin of Five came, and we buried Aurelius beside her in the forest."

"The song," Aton said, unable to concentrate.

Coquina glanced at him. "I had to wake you... early," she said. "The song -- "

She came to a decision. "This is the song."

She sang, then, and it was the melody of his childhood. Her voice lacked the splendor of that of the minionette; but no voice, he realized, could compete on such a level. It was the song.

She followed it through to its conclusion, but the magic was gone. "It isn't broken any more," he said, understanding only now that the true appeal of it had not been the melody itself, but the fact that it was incomplete -- as had been his whole relationship with the minionette. Not the song, but the break had been his compulsion. Why had he never seen this before?

Coquina watched him closely. "It means nothing to you, now, Aton?"

"I'm sorry," he said, finding the expression inept. "You might as well have spared yourself the trouble."

"No, no," she said, smiling more warmly. "That is good. It means that the minion in you is gone. You will be well again, if only -- "

The repeated references to mysterious things irritated him. "If only what?

What is all this about my 'recovery,' and the 'evil one'? Where have I been; what have I been doing, this past year? Why won't you let me near you? Why did you have to 'wake' me at all, early or not? Have I been asleep?"

"I can tell you now." She came around the chair and sat down, keeping her distance from him. "Half minion, half man, you could not live on either world.

She warned me about the terrible consequences, if you went free before that conflict was resolved. But after she sacrificed herself you were a madman, roaming the forest in a terrible, blind rage. Your cousin of Five -- Benjamin

-- roped you from the aircar and brought you to me. We put you on drugs. We could not notify the authorities because they would have extradited you to Chthon. We kept your mind blank while it healed. The minionette warned me that it might take two years before the shock of her death purged your mind and set you free, a normal man. We knew we would have to keep you passive all that time. But -- "

"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

-- "

Aton was shaking his head. He was not paying much attention to the words; he knew that this was only a conversational prelude to the desperate contest to come. He was confronted with as deadly a foe, here, as he had ever met in his life -- one that he had to kill. On this battle hinged his future, though the issues were devious. A loss would mean a return to Chthon and neo-sanity; victory, a return to the blasted prospects of a dead hvee.

Perhaps, after all, he was only fighting to preserve his right to blot himself in suicide.

"Put a fish in water and it swims," Bedside rapped. "Put that fish on land --

"

Aton nodded, not wishing to carry the subject farther.

"Chthon was my element," Bedside continued remorselessly. "I made my way out.

I swam. The monsters there were as nothing to the monsters in my mind. But once I returned to society, I found myself drowning in air, as I had drowned before. My aberration quickly signaled my position, and I was arrested again.

They could not ship me to Chthon a second time, because they thought I might lead the entire complement out. They could neither ignore me nor let me go.

They preferred to apply a little medicinal insanity to their own intellects, and assume that there was no escape from Chthon, and that I was therefore merely a demented creature who identified with the notorious Dr. Bedecker. All of which was true enough, in its way.

"At any rate, they put me in a 'hospital' for 'observation.' This imprisonment reactivated my escape syndrome, and I was able to function effectively again.

Their walls and guards were child's play, after the Hard Trek."

Aton watched him cynically. "If you knew that freedom would cost you your sanity, why did you strive for it?"

Bedside smiled with his teeth. "Another romantic lunacy. We assume that a personality problem can be liquidated merely through an understanding of it --

as though a man could lift a mountain once he admitted it was heavy. No: recognition is not synonymous with solution. I fly toward freedom as a moth toward the candle, and nothing so insubstantial as Reason will turn me aside."

Aton thought of his own headlong drive to unite with the minionette, her hair red for passion, black for death. Reason -- how could it hope to bridge the cold, bleak void gaping open, the loss of a song that was healed, a shell that was broken? The moth hurt because its wings were ashes, but had not yet grasped the fact that it could no longer fly. With what mixture of metaphor could he analyze himself? Caterpillar to the inferno?

"But you are sane and free now." Unlikely.

"Neither one is natural," Bedside said. "But yes: I have more sanity and more freedom now than ever in my life before, and this is the offer I bring to you."

"Freedom and sanity -- in Chthon? You offer garbage," Aton said, and positioned himself for action.

"Did you imagine," Bedside said, curiously quiet, "that you could brave the lungs and the stomach of Chthon, and not be accountable to the brain?"

"I'm not accountable to your god. I won my freedom."

"Not yet," Bedside said. "Chthon granted you a reprieve. You did not conquer it." The words had a familiar ring. How many forces fancied they were manipulating his life? Or were they fancies?

"As you remarked," Bedside continued, "we are very much alike. By normal standards, I am mad. Only my mission for Chthon preserves my balance. Chthon takes care of me in a way you will soon understand. But you -- "

"I was judged to be criminally insane," Aton admitted. "On Hvee, that term is still in vogue. But that was before the death of the minionette. I am well, now." The falsity of that statement stung him as he made it. The hvee did not love him any more, which meant that he was totally depraved, whether he comprehended the reason or not. Had Coquina suspected? Was this the reason she had kept her distance? Then why had she cared for his body, all this time? Why had she sent him forth to defeat this "evil one"? Too much was unresolved.

But he would do this one thing, for her, for the sake of the love he thought he felt, though he knew it now to be a shallow, selfish thing, a love unworthy of her. He would make this offering, since she seemed to want it: the lifeless body of Bedside.

"Your particular madness stems from a biological basis," Bedside said. "There is no cure for it. You cannot undo your parentage. You will go on killing sadistically because the minion in you craves the telepathic pleasure of innocent pain. You will go on forgetting your crimes because the man in you cannot accept the guilty pleasures your other self demands. You will go on vindicating the judgment of those who proscribed Minion, hating yourself far more than any other thing -- and not without justice.

"Oh, yes -- you know your madness now, don't you, minion?"

"I did kill," Aton said, "but not sadistically. There was justice and mercy in my action. I was not the chimera."

Bedside did not relent. "I am not talking of honest murders, minion. I know there are times in Chthon when killing is necessary. Nor do I mean your failures: your Idyllia girl, your vengeance on the minionette, the cavern woman. You tried to kill them all, but you were so much at war with yourself that you could neither love nor hate effectively.

"No, not these actions. But think back to one specific case: your little friend, Framy. (Yes, my god tells me everything.) You protest your innocence there because you did not technically spill his blood. But you betrayed the nether caverns, and pinned the blame on him, and had him posted for execution.

And you were there, listening, when the chimera came. Your minion sensitivity responded to the savage little mind of the chimera as it stalked, and you knew it was coming for Framy. You could have alerted the others, and saved him --

but you did not. You were there, savoring his agony, as that chimera struck, and still you gave no alarm. Only his dying scream alerted the others -- too late.

"This is what you did in Chthon, not once but many times. You used the chimera to gratify your brutal passion. Was this your justice? Your -- sanity?"

Aton remembered. Chthon, where his lust for pain had been intensified by confinement. The men whose dying he had savored, the macabre tortures inflicted upon them by a creature he could have stopped, but didn't, as their life-blood dwindled. The unholy ecstasy that had thrilled him, the almost religious joy culminating in transported spasms of pleasure as those death agonies came.

He remembered, too, the trial, on Hvee: the experts testifying that his aberration was after all biological, not emotional, and that there could be no cure. That he had not murdered, yet, but could not be set loose again, for the safety of mankind. That even a complete personality-wash would not remove his proscribed urges. He remembered the sentence: Chthon.

The minion traits had come upon him with maturity, but for a time had been wholly directed to the search for his minionette. When her influence diminished, the horror began. His love of Coquina had been the last struggle of the human qualities within him -- a losing struggle.

The hvee had known. It had not been with him during his madness. It had loved what he once was; but when, after Chthon, it touched his macabre hand...

"This is the reason," Bedside said, "that you will return to Chthon. There you will be safe -- from your fellow man, since you are an outlaw, and from yourself. Chthon will support your sanity more perfectly than you can ever do yourself. Chthon will be your god, and you and I will be brothers -- forever secure, forever free."

It was tempting. Aton saw that his entire adult life had been a destructive nightmare of passion and pain, contaminating everything it touched. The minionette had been part of it, naturally and knowingly. But Coquina -- it would be kindest for her if he had the same courage of the minionette before him, and simply stepped out of her life. She would be better off with her own kind. The love he bore her could achieve its finest expression in deprivation.

But the minionette had died to give him human semblance. She had known him well, known of his link with Chthon, and had cried out against it. Malice and Coquina, minionette and human, his first and second loves -- these two had come together not as rivals but as sincere collaborators for his benefit. They had agreed that he had a chance, and both had staked their lives upon it.

Could he betray them now?

Perhaps both were mistaken -- but they believed in his recovery, and he owed it to both to make the ultimate effort, to resist the easy way. He could not abolish his crimes by running away from life. He had to live, to atone, to make some effort to balance the scales. He had to face what he was and what he had done -- and search for a way to make amends. This, perhaps, was the real battle he had come to participate in: that against the capitulation rendered so attractive by Doc Bedside.

"No," Aton said.

Bedside's aspect changed. "I will show you what you are," he said, his voice sharp, his mouth gaping, teeth exposed like those of the cavern salamander.

"You rationalize, you delude yourself with hopes of future goodness. But your true wish is still to kill yourself, because you know you are the partner in a crime against your culture. You tried to blame the minionette, but you are the one that forced the act. Yes, you know what I mean, minion."

Aton's attitude also changed subtly as he listened. It was coming now, and he could neither stop it nor tolerate it. Bedside's blade was on guard. His space training had prepared him for action against a knife -- but not one wielded by the hand of a mad surgeon. Normal reflexes would not be sufficient.

Bedside continued: "You have so conveniently forgotten your incestuous passions. Careful!" he rapped as Aton moved. "I would not kill you so long as Chthon needs you, but you would not find my surgery entirely painless."

This was Bedside's final effort. Could he nullify it? The man was infernally clever.

There in your spotel," Bedside whispered intently. "That's when you did it.

Chthon knows. That's when you had the minionette alone, knowing what she was."

The bright eye-lenses glittered in the green glow, just above the pointing blade. "That's when you raped your moth -- "

The knife clattered to the floor as minion struck with the strength and speed of telepathy. Bedside stared at the thing he had loosed, a living chimera.

"Pray to your god for help!" it whispered, hot teeth poised, talon fingers barely touching the bulging eyeballs, ready to nudge them redly out of their sockets. "Perhaps it will help you die."

They remained in frozen tableau, the young warrior and the old. Then the chimera faded. Aton let the man fall, unharmed. "I am not what I was," he said, "and I was never the physical chimera. I will not kill you for distorting what you do not understand."

Bedside lay where he had fallen, at Aton's feet. The menace in him was gone; he was a tired old man. "You have slain your chimera."

"I have slain it."

"I return to Chthon in the morning. You are free."

Aton went to the port and swung out, feet searching for the ladder.

"Let me speak for a moment as a man," Bedside said, halting Aton's descent.

"Chthon desires your service, not your demise. There is no resentment. Chthon will help you to win your other battle."

"No."

"Listen, then. Had I had a woman like your Coquina to love me, I would never have needed Chthon. She broke my arm, eleven months ago -- I had not thought she knew your fighting art -- but she is a woman you cannot replace. You will lose her, unless -- "

Aton dropped down to the ground and began to move away.

"Think, think of the date!" Bedside cried after him. "And of the hvee!

Otherwise..." But his voice was lost in the rapid distance.

Eighteen

Aton had defeated the evil one of Chthon, once he recognized it as himself, his sadistic killer instinct. The prison of Chthon was the refuge of those who were dominated by such impulses. Doc Bedside, now the agent of Chthon, had almost proved that Aton had escaped in body only; but the sacrifice of the minionette and the care of the daughter of Four had swung the balance and brought the civilized man in him to victory. He had been roused too soon; with more time he would have come to understand and accept the painful truths he had blinded himself against. Blindness had not solved the problems of Oedipus, nor had the ritualistic physical blinding of victims solved the problems of the men of Minion. Aton had been obsessed with blindness, physical and emotional.

More time, and Bedside could not have roused the dying chimera at all. It had been close -- unnecessarily close. Why had he been thrust into battle prematurely? Could Coquina have wanted him to lose?

No, it was not possible to doubt her motives. Coquina was good, and she loved him far more than he had ever deserved. He had been the one to fall short, every time. He had denied their betrothal, even before he had met her. He had thrown her off the mountain. He had killed the hvee.

Think of the hvee, and of the date. What cryptic message had Bedside intended?

How little he knew Coquina, after all. His brief time with her on Idyllia, in retrospect, had been the happiest of his life. If he had only been able to stay with her then, instead of chasing his own obsessions. He had, he knew, a great deal in common with the daughter of Four. Her background was naturally similar to that of a son of Five. She was intellectual, upper-class Hvee, on a planet that made no presumption of democracy; she was a far cry from the low-caste girls of the latter Families. Lovely shell! Why had he never looked inside? How well Aurelius had chosen!

Think of the hvee....

But the hvee had died. All his life had been nightmare, except for Coquina --

and the hvee had condemned that too. Had he won the battle of his future, only to endure it alone?

Think of the date....

The date was Second Month, §403: no more distinctive than any other month or year, on the even-tempered, non-seasonal planet of Hvee. This appeared to be an extraneous riddle.

The hvee -- there was something meaningful. Bedside could not have known about the recent episode, since it had happened less than an hour prior to their conflict. But he had known that it would happen, whenever Aton actually touched his plant. He had warned that Coquina would be lost, unless --

Aton began to regret his contemptuous sloughing off of Chthon's emissary. What was there about the hvee that could save Coquina for a man it had deemed unworthy? A quality that a knowledgeable third party could predict?

Think...

Aton thought. His steady jog carried him across the countryside, familiar from his childhood. He could smell the light perfume of the scratched tree barks, of scuffled earth and crushed weeds and wild forest flowers. He could see the black outlines of the taller trees against the starry sky, and hear the nocturnal scufflings of minor foragers. Memories stirred in him, small poignant recollections of detail that became important only because it was unimportant. The feel of a dry leaf, the whiff of an idle breeze -- all the wonderful things set aside by adulthood. Soon, now, he would pass near the spot where he had met the minionette, where he had acquired the wild-growing hvee.

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