Chthon (17 page)

“The discoverer of Point, one of the stars on our list,” 14 said. “Probably his first ‘habitable,’ since he named it after himself. But what makes you think—”

“I followed your advice,” Partner said. “I approached the problem deviously. Your conventional approach can only take you a certain distance, since, as you point out, they could simply number a proscribed planet, as though it were uninhabited, or skip it entirely, leaving you without proof of its identity. But the clue lies in a homonym.” He found his place and read aloud again: ” ‘Point: an ancient unit of type measurement… seventy-two points to the inch…’ “

“I don’t follow—”

“Get your index and read off the named planets of Point.”

Baffled, 14 opened the book. “The first two are unnamed fireballs; then Excelsior, Diamond, Pearl—why, I recognize these! They’re type sizes!”

“Go on.”

“Pearl, Nonpareil, Brevier, Bourgeois, Elite. That’s all.”

Partner’s gaze was bright. “Sure you aren’t missing one?”

“Why, the type we use here—”

“Minion!” Anton exclaimed. “Seven point! “

“The seventh planet,” Partner whispered.

“One has to allow for an explorer’s sense of identity,” Partner said. “And his humor. Jonathan R. Point probably had a private contract signed for settlement of the first few good worlds he found, and anticipated trouble when Earth caught on. He had no intention of letting a little thing like a proscription obliterate one of
his
planets.”

Twelve

Minion reminded him of Hvee, with its gentle green mountains, its absence of industry, its innocence. The ship, nestled in an isolated clearing, seemed an imposition on the virginity of the planet.

Aton cut cross-country until he struck a dusty road that brief aerial reconnaissance indicated led to the nearest native village.

Partner allowed him to travel alone, here—there was no way he could escape a proscribed planet, except the way he came. Minion was backward, of course: the inhabitants would certainly know
of
galactic technology, but be unable to partake of it themselves. The penalty was cruel.

The first primitive huts came into view. They were fashioned of rustic thatch and clay, but looked comfortable, and the odor characteristic of bucolic habitation was not strong. That meant the natives were clean. People walked about, human rather than humanoid, paying the stranger no attention. Modification, at least, had taken no objectionable turns—not visible ones, at any rate. The men were small, garbed in short cloths and deep frowns; the women were tall, veiled, clad in all-concealing togas.

A couple came toward him, up the road. The man was a full six inches shorter than his companion, but seemed comfortable enough in his loincloth and neatly rounded beard. The woman stumbled under the weight of an enormous parcel that, combined with the meshes of her toga, threatened at any moment to bring her to the ground.

Aton stepped aside to let them pass. It seemed to him that an intolerable heat must be trapped inside the heavy wrappings of the woman, and indeed, she swayed as she walked. Her foot caught on a projecting stone in the rough road and she stumbled and almost fell. The heavy package in her arms brushed the man as she struggled for balance.

The little man spoke sharply in a dialect incomprehensible to Aton, but it was easy for him to identify well-turned invective. The man wheeled in wrath and struck her full in the veil. The woman fell, the package spinning from her arms and rolling across the road almost to Aton’s feet.

As the woman scrambled to get up, the man cursed again and kicked her violently. Aton had never seen so vile a temper. The woman made no sound, but moved quickly on hands and knees to recover the package. Reeling, she stood up, grasping the heavy object once more. From the far side of the road the man spouted a steady stream of monosyllabic vitriol.

They went on, never acknowledging Aton’s presence at all.

As he passed through the village he noticed that none of the men were doing work of any kind. Only the women labored—and strenuously.

One old man leaned against a tree at the edge of a central square, alone. Aton addressed himself to this man in Galactic sign language. “Where may a stranger stay?”

The oldster eyed him. He gestured lackadaisically. “Have you a woman?” The symbol actually used was “female chattel.”

Aton thought of Malice. “No.”

“You have come at a favorable time, then. You may take Pink Rock’s house and woman this evening.”

Aton hesitated. Customs varied widely in the galaxy, but it was best to understand the situation completely before committing oneself. “Is Pink Rock going somewhere?”

The man gestured at the square. Aton saw what he had overlooked before: a man bound to a great vertical stone, sinister instruments ranged on a platform before him.

“Executed? A criminal?”

“No.”

“A sacrifice?”

“No.”

“Why is he bound, then?”

“He was careless.”

“?” (The signal for perplexity.)

“He fell in love with his woman.”

(Perplexity.) “For that he is to be tortured?”

The old man stared him in the eyes. “It is merciful.”

Aton did not stay to witness the rites for the careless Pink Rock. Instead he promised to return after the ceremony, and wandered around the neighborhood, trying to reason out the mystery of these people. Monsters they might be branded, officially and in folklore—but where was the terror that held the galaxy at bay? Why the inviolate strictures against commerce and communication? All he had seen so far was an incredibly patriarchal society, with the women reduced to such absolute subjugation that it was a crime for a man even to love one.

But doubt remained. Swathed in their drapes and veils as these women of Minion were—he could not think of them as “minionettes”—it was impossible for him to make out face or feature. Still there was a quality about them that was distressingly familiar.

He shrugged it off. Of course there was familiarity. Malice had been generated here.

At the village well a solitary woman was filling a large leather bucket. She closed it with a cord looped around the top and slung it over her shoulder, staggering with the weight.

Aton stepped into her path, offering to take the bucket. He did not do it from any particular chivalry, but because he saw an opportunity to learn more about her. She shied away.

“But I only wish to help,” he signaled. He reached for the bucket, catching the strap, but she arched back so quickly that a corner of her veil was trapped. It slid off her face.

Aton stared. It was Malice.

He let her go. He knew, intellectually, that Malice could not be on the planet. Even if she were, the odds against encountering her in such coincidental fashion were prohibitive—and after the thing he had attempted so long ago, and almost suppressed from memory, she would not again tempt him with a well. He remembered also the seeming change that had come over the face of the daughter of Four, and the picture he had seen later in a huge gas crevasse in Chthon. He could not always trust his vision.

But in case this were not another fevered fragment—

Another woman came down the path. He stepped up to her, offered to assist, and clumsily caught loose her veil. Again the face of Malice. No—the eyes were not so deep, the hair less flamed. This was a faded Malice. What did it mean?

Until this point he had hesitated, careful of native proprieties, but now he had to know. Which was mad—himself or the planet?

Two women walked together down the road, carrying their inevitable burdens. Aton blocked them off and, in an agony of anticipation, tore free both veils.

Identical faces returned his stare. On each the fire hair flowed long, and deep green eyes looked out. Twin reflections of his love.

“Who are you?” he cried, aloud and with the signs.

Twin smiles of devastating beauty answered him. “I am Torment,” one signaled. “Horror is my name,” signaled the other.

At last Aton understood.

Evening, and the errand of mercy was done. The gutted corpse hung silent now, the stink of burning entrails slowly dissipating. Pink Rock’s empty sockets surveyed the gathered friends sitting in the sweet grass of the square, relaxing after their service to him.

Aton stood at the edge, certain without knowing why that no sadism had been involved. Pink Rock had not been censured—it had merely been necessary to cleanse him of his foul emotion. Certainly the last vestige of his love had been torn bloodily out before he had died. Now the lovely minionettes removed their veils and sang in rapturous chorus, more sweetly than any human group could sing, their hymn of accomplishment. Aton thrilled to the sound. Not since his childhood had he felt such enchantment—though there was an uncomfortable alien bitterness close beneath the surface.

The men of Minion sat in a separate group, washing their hands and scowling. I understand, Aton thought. You performed from necessity, angry that your artistry was required, angry with your beautiful women, angry at your society. You are always angry.

At last the minionettes reset their veils and rejoined their masters. Scowls and curses faded into the dusk. Surely these women would be happy to leave this planet, to serve normal men, when the opportunity presented. Yet Malice’s motives had hardly been that simple.

One woman stood silently before the corpse in an attitude of prayer, Aton came up behind her and took her arm. This was Pink Rock’s widow.

She led him to a hut near the outskirt, and stood aside courteously for him to enter first. She had accepted the change-over without protest or surprise. She had had a man who loved her; now she had one who did not. That was all.

The dark interior smelled of fresh hay. Aton’s eyes adjusted to a room somewhat larger than anticipated, quite clean and well arranged. There was a mattress of soft grasses across the back, wide enough for two. A low table beside it supported several light fiber pillows, a candle, and a whip.

“I hunger,” he gestured peremptorily, and she fetched flat bread and flat water. He spat it out in a show of anger, and she went outside to bring replacements. “I tire,” he signaled, and she undressed him gently and led him to the mattress. She lifted his feet into place and propped him with pillows skillfully. The minionette was dutiful; the minionette was strong. Aton’s mind returned, horribly, to a similar scene. He did not want to remember it, but could not help himself. Once before he bad found himself in a confined space with a woman, a minionette. Once before he had undressed.

“Tell me your name.” He had to destroy that memory.

“Misery,” her signal answered. He heard “Malice.” He saw again the bubble confine of the asteroid lodging—the spotel. The two of them had docked the shuttle, passed directly from ship’s lock to entrance lock and on into the lush private accommodation. He had doffed his skin-tight protective suit immediately, becoming naked before her in the half-light. Malice had been quiet and mechanical—hardly the sparkling creature he had captured so recently at the Xest outpost. She did not strip.

“Do you want to know my name?” Inane conversation, hardly visible in the coming night. Anything to kill that terrible recollection!

Misery answered: “If it pleases the master to tell it.”

“Damn!” he exploded, looking at the veil, seeing the blank mask of the space suit holding her beauty from him. “You servile husk! Don’t you have any will of your own?”

He had spoken out loud, forgetting to signal; he knew no native could understand. But Misery responded with a beatific smile visible even through the dark veil.

Angry and alarmed, he tore off that veil. Had he been trapped into—

Her hair was dull, her eyes gray. She resembled more the Captain than the nymph. She was smiling still, but blankly.

I am a fool, he thought. If she had understood my spoken words, she would not have smiled. This
is
a native girl, trained to react to harshness with a forgiving smile.

Yet the man who loved her had been tortured to death.

“You may think of me as ‘Stone Heart’,” he said, adopting the evident custom of the planet. He was still angry, as perhaps the native men were angry—at her, at the system she represented, the enormity of it and its somber mystery. At the awful memories this situation evoked by being unfairly similar.

“Why aren’t you beautiful?” Now he was being deliberately unkind, and his anger turned against himself. Must fury beget fury?

She only smiled.

“Take off your clothing,” he ordered. He could hardly see her now. “First light the candle. I want to
see
you.” She obeyed slowly.

Her body was glorious. The long hair flowed over shoulders and sculptured breasts, and his eye followed the fold of the space suit as it peeled away from her narrow waist and swelling hips and thighs. Alone with her, entirely alone, for the first time.

But this is the memory!
he thought.
It is Misery I am looking at, not Malice! Not Malice. Not
—

Not, not subject to the laws of any planet, but here, in the inviolate privacy of the spotel, the rented transitory lodging of newlyweds and wealthy travelers of space. A luxurious retreat, a luxurious body, unfettered at last.

Misery!

I love you, Malice, and you are mine.

Misery!

Why don’t you respond, Malice?

Memory…

Why are you silent?

Malice…

Why have you withdrawn? Are you ill? Malice, Malice…

But she was in radiant health, hair burning, burning, eyes never so deep; natural, normal, except that she seemed to have no awareness of him.

Speak to me!

She would not. What unseen hand had placed a spell upon her, made her mute, in the hour of triumph? Had some post-hypnotic state been invoked, some command inflicted by an unknown enemy intent on his destruction? Was it now his duty to break her out of it, a sleeping beauty, with a single splendid kiss?

He kissed her, but she did not wake to him. Her lips were mushy, unresponsive.