Chthon (21 page)

Her fingers tightened. Never before had he felt her surprise. She did not speak.

“Yes,” he said, “I know. But she did not have the song.” That was all; no explanation, no soliloquy was necessary. Misery had been forgotten, after a single night of strange romance. Neither the appearance nor the nature of the minionette served as the basis of his love—only the person of his childhood vision, bearing the music and the magic of his youth. O joy that…

The forest diminished, laid open by an asphalt highway, hot black waves bouncing into awareness. Above it a distant space-shuttle lifted, intent on some rendezvous with an orbiting visitor. This was the realm of exploration and commerce, of navies and merchant fleets. And beside him the minionette seemed to walk in uniform: handsome, competent, severe, ruthless, female.

“No more for space, Captain?”

“No more, Machinist.”

“You could have returned, when I went to Chthon.”

She shook her head, precisely. “The guileless Xests knew, and word spreads quickly in space. It is death for the minionette to wander openly among men. And…”

“And…?”

She was silent, and it was answer enough. The spotel—

They crossed over the black heat, into a field of hvee, his father’s field, and walked among the young plants reaching for an object for their love, so like himself. Above, the sky retreated before ascending cumuli; a summer storm was in the making.

From the forest to the spaceship: Aton remembered his first journey—he and his hvee, searching for love. He, as with the hvee, had found it to be something horrendous in its full formation—a dragon whose tail, once grasped, could not lightly be relinquished.

Why had she come to him, on that first day of his new year, when all the men of space were within her range? Could it have been coincidence, that artful meeting, wherein she had shown him the melody, given him the hvee, kissed him, and forever bound his heart to hers?

Why had she hidden from him, once his love was captive? Why had she flaunted the image of the Captain, knowing the torture within him? He understood the answer, now, after the experience with Misery. But even that did not wholly account for the incident at the spotel—the incident that had exposed to him the basic evil in her nature and sent him fleeing from her so ruinously. Evil not of the emotion, no.

There had been that silent treatment, then—

Then—

A lock on his memory fell open, and he understood at last what horror had denied him for almost three years. If—if the minionette was evil, so was he.

“You tried to defend that native girl—the one who deserted my father!” he exclaimed, now and in the spotel-past.

Now and in the past, the minionette failed to speak.

“When did you go to space?” he demanded. They had left the hvee behind and were sitting beneath the old garden shed. It was a peaked roof supported by four stout, weathered posts. The breath of the building storm came down and through the absent walls, bringing chill tingles to the skin.

The emotional chill had been closer, then, as Aton advanced by rugged steps toward the truth his intellect rejected. The two of them, in an enclosure very like this, subjectively, struggled for comprehension in the face of peculiar resistance. Aton had never before appreciated the full force of cultural conflict.

“I know the answer,” Aton continued. “I know when you went to space. I read it in the lay roster of the
Jocasta
. You joined the merchant fleet as an on-deck cleric, early in §375. You transferred to the
Jocasta
despite many more favorable opportunities on other ships, five years later as a member of the business advisory staff, and arranged to have it dock over Hvee the year following.

“But the vital point is that you went to space just months after I was born. Why you wanted that particular ship and that schedule, long before you rose to command it, is less important than your earlier history. Where were you before §375? What did you call yourself? The roster didn’t say.”

Malice did not move at all, in either shed or spotel.

“You were on Hvee,” Aton said, and she did not deny it. “You knew Aurelius, after his wife of Ten perished. You knew of me. And—you knew the native girl he married. The girl from Minion. You knew her well.”

She sat still, looking intently at him.

“In fact,” he said with the supreme effort, “you
were
that girl.”

They sat together, in sight of the thing they both had known and never spoken.

“The one who deserted my father. The stepmother I have sworn to kill.”

Oh, Malice, I could have forgiven you that, after I learned your nature. But that is not the evil for which I searched. That is not the horror that drove me from your side.

“The woman of Ten died two years before I was born,” Aton said, admitting the truth for the first—and second—time in his life. “Her baby was stillborn. I had no stepmother.”

“Yes,” she said, breaking her silence at last. “Yes, Aton—I am your mother.” 

•    •    •

In the cooling shade of the open shed, they looked across the field of hvee. No person labored there at the moment, but the plants were healthy. Someone with great love was caring for them, as Aurelius could do no longer, and in his heart Aton recognized that touch.

“Why didn’t you tell me, that first time?” Aton asked her. “Before the—spotel.” And knew the answer as he spoke: a single answer then, doubled now. She was his mother. How could she tell the man who thought he was her lover, that—what could she say to him, who had mistaken her love so shockingly? Yet how could she give him up, her son?

But he was dissembling. She could have tried, during the early meeting in the forest—and he, too young to grasp the complexities of it, would have gone to Aurelius and destroyed everything. His father was anxious yet to have her back, and he was not without power. The moment he knew—

And the second time in the forest, Aton had been old enough to see in this miraculous woman some little part of what his father had seen. Aton too was not without power, as events had shown.

Thus had he reasoned, spuriously, at the spotel, driven by forced hiding behind the façade of reason. He had not then really understood, and had suspected that he did not, and been measurelessly discommoded by his seeming satisfaction.

Now he understood the second reason, more basic, and lacking the trappings of social convention. For to the minionette, pleasure was pain, pain was pleasure. She had responded to a visitor of her world who had been torn by sorrow and self-hate—Aurelius—because his child, in living and dying, had murdered his beloved. The minionette had loved Aurelius because she found his tremendous guilt and sense of betrayal irresistible. He was in mourning for the daughter of Ten, yet found Malice attractive, and fiercely condemned himself for this, and thus conquered her and defeated himself, unknowingly.

She had accepted the ceremony of his culture, which meant little to one who was emotionally telepathic, but without the exchange of the hvee, because his guilt could not permit that honest token. She had gone with him, delighted also by the joy of his alarm over the proscription that he was violating. Neither one of them had known, then, the reason for proscription.

On Hvee she had conceived his child. As they came to know each other more thoroughly, his agony diminished, and gradually he came to love her without guilt. Then she understood their peril—too late. She birthed his child and deserted him, because a longer stay could only have entailed far greater agony for them both. Her continued love would have destroyed him, simply because she was what she was. Because she did love him in her fashion, she could not bring herself to hurt him in the ways her culture demanded. A man of Minion would have understood, but not Aurelius.

Her son had grown up with such hate for the memory of the wayward mother that he had rejected his knowledge of the facts and had chosen to remember only the mother he wished he had had. No one could have told Aton the truth prematurely. He had been blind.

More: the very hurt and rage he nurtured became her own delight, for she
was
the minionette. She could read the hate in him, even as a child who did not know her, and it was the ideal emotion for her species. Oh, yes, she kissed him, enraptured by his confusion, and sent him home before that wonderful emotion faded. When she met him at fourteen she had done it again; his guilt and frustration at what he suspected was wrong were sufficient.

When he had searched her out aboard the carefully chosen
Jocasta
—which only now did he comprehend as the signal it was, intended to guide him to her when he was mature enough to understand—her dilemma intensified. He had come too soon; but he had been raging with the compellingly appealing frustrations, and she could not hold herself away. The game had gone on, bringing her further into his orbit: his horror of the Taphid cargo, his cold anger at the leverage her exposure of his lay roster provided her, his grief over the woman he thought he had lost. Until the crafty Xests, themselves semi-telepathic, had penetrated her ruse and left her helpless against the naïve love of her son.

She had gone with him, since he was not to be resisted, and her position with the merchant service was already forfeit. She had gone with him although she still did not know how to handle the coming crisis. She could not tell him the truth, since that would have sent him away forever—but neither could she submit to the passionate embrace he had in mind. She could not stay and she could not leave.

Thus, at the point of no return, the silence. Only in this way could she keep him close yet distant, until some more permanent alternative offered itself.

Thus Aton rationalized, now but not in the past—and found that even this was not enough. His imagination was fighting desperately to protect him from full realization. His mind had blanked the entire episode from memory as long as it could, and now gave ground unwillingly. He had to search out the evil, knowing it was there, knowing that he was not yet mature enough to face it.

The spotel episode had not been concluded. The two of them had to play it out, past and present, until the full reason for his torment lay exposed.

The secret was out: Aton was in love with his mother. Start with that, and go back. Relive it—if you can.

Back—as she had known he would, he reacted to the news with anguished indecision. The thing he had dreamed of could not be. Sweet as his emotion might be to her perception, brightening her lovely hair, it was a hollow luxury. He would go and never meet her again. He would spare her.

How little he understood the minionette!

Nude, as she remained after he had doffed the space suit, she beckoned him. “Aton,” she said. She was absolutely beautiful.

He came to her, as he always had, embarrassed for his thoughts as much as for the situation. It hurt him terribly to lose her, for she had lived—as a woman—in his fond imagination since the first forest encounter.

“Aton,” she repeated. “On Minion”—this, at the spotel, had been the first time he had heard the name of her home planet, and the name alone had stayed with him—”on Minion our culture is not like yours. I was wrong to go away with the outworlder, but I was young then and did not understand.” She took his hands in the familiar gesture. “Aton—on Minion the women live a long time, many times the life span of the men. The minionette outlives her first mate, if he is not soon executed, and then belongs to her closest of kin. By him she will bear another kin, and later yet another, from one generation to the next, until at last she is too old and has to birth a daughter. This is our way.”

Aton kneeled dumbly before her, his two hands prisoners to hers. What was she trying to tell him?

“Aton, you are half minion, and you are my kin.”

The horror of it began to force itself upon him, then. “You are my mother—”

“Yes. That is why this must be. That is the reason I came to you so early in the forest and gave you the melody and the hvee—so that you would know in your spirit what you could not know from your book. That you are minion, born to possess the minionette. You must do this, and your son after you, because it is in your culture and in your blood—your minion nature.”

Fighting what he knew now was the truth, Aton suffered a greater shock. For though the culture
he
understood forbade this thing utterly, he had, in an inversion that paralleled her emotional one—that he had not known about, then—grown up to believe her to be the most desirable of women. Because she had been, according to his incomplete knowledge, no relation to himself.

Now he knew that she, by beliefs of his own that were fundamental, was forbidden. And he found her—

Found her still the most compellingly desirable woman he could imagine. She had offered herself to him—and he wanted her, physically, more than ever before. That was what upset him most.

“Until this moment,” she said, “you were not ready, Aton. I had to wait a very long time to win you.” She relaxed on the couch, splendid in repose, pulling him with her. The living flame of her hair spread in and out, over face and shoulders and perfect breast, highlighting her body. Black-green eyes, so near to his, opened in deep vistas.

“So long a time,” she said. “So lovely. Kiss me, Aton, and come to me. Now, Aton—now!”

Fourteen

The day was turbulent. They rose together and left the garden shed, walking in the wind.

“Why did you let me discover your identity, at the spotel?” Aton asked her now. “The thing you wanted—it might easily have been, if I had not known.”

“Aton,” she said, shaking her head in gentle reproach, “Have you, have you not been to Minion? Have you not seen what love, your love, will do to the minionette?”

He had allowed himself to forget.

“Your love would have killed me, as that of your father would have killed me, had it been as you imagined when you courted me,” she explained. “Only your knowledge of the truth could make you condemn. Only through that—to you, negative—emotion could you approach me physically. You had to know.”