Phthor (3 page)

The small tube debouched into a great one. Claw-scrape marks showed the dragon’s handiwork, constantly scraping the passage walls to accommodate its increasing girth. The overall pattern of the complex was not complicated; the tubes radiated out from the hub-chamber like the spokes of one of the wheels depicted in LOE. A spiral tube intersected them, making several complete rounds before it terminated in a dead end. All the spokes carried beyond the spiral, deadending also. Most creatures that wandered into this labyrinth got lost because their minds could not fathom the nature of the pattern. When pursued by the dragon, they instinctively fled outward and landed in a dead end—where they were sure prey.

Arlo carried his burden swiftly toward the center. It was escape-noise to which the monster was primarily attuned. Approach-noise it tolerated because it wanted the prey to get as far inside the system as possible and get lost. So long as Arlo walked firmly and without fear, the dragon was unlikely to be alerted.

Still, Arlo wished this stage of his journey were over.

The spokes were short compared to the spiral, but it would have taken Arlo ten minutes to traverse the pattern emptyhanded. Now it would take double that.

He came to the hub. The dragon was there, asleep within the mighty folds of its skin. Even in repose, it was almost twice Arlo’s height. Of course it stood no higher when active; its legs were short and its torso stretched out for a leaner running posture. The smell of it was stifling, for its dung lined the chamber and flavored the entire burrow. It was snoring: a whooshing like that of a distant wind-tunnel.

He skirted it, forcing himself to walk boldly so as to maintain the “approach” pattern. The outer trek would be more ticklish. He could have used the spiral tube, but that would have taken much longer and would have been more likely to alert the slumberer. It was not the nearness or loudness of the sounds that counted so much as their nature and direction.

Ex stirred in his arms. That was good because it suggested she was recovering, but also bad because he could not caution her to silence. The sound of his voice would bring the dragon to troubled life!

The girl sneezed.

The dragon started. Its massive tail twitched.

Arlo continued walking. Any change in his motion-pattern would be fatal—if his situation were not already hopeless. A sneeze was not a fear-noise; it just might pass...

The great beast rolled over, its metal-hard rock-hewing claws coming into view. Each foot was the size of Arlo’s chest, and each nail was backed by the peculiar musculature and bone-leverage that gave it phenomenal driving force. The dragon, Arlo realized, could be a distant cousin of the glowmole because of that special foot structure.

Now he entered the far tube he had selected, and the dragon did not stir again. They had gotten past. Arlo shuddered with relief.

“Where are you taking me?” Ex inquired loudly.

There was a snort. Arlo did not need to look back to know the dragon was alert now! They were in for it.

“Fool!” he cried angrily, dumping the girl down on her feet. “Run—if you can. Straight down this tunnel. There’s a hole near the end—I’ll go another way.”

Already the dragon was moving, ponderously because it was still sleepy, shaking the rock with the pounding of its feet. Arlo screamed as if in terror—no difficult task!—and charged down the spiral tube.

The dragon reached the intersection and hesitated, confused by the presence of two items of prey. Which one to follow? But in a moment it decided: the frightened one. Sinuously it turned the corner, coming after Arlo. Ex stayed frozen as the lengthening torso slid by her. Arlo could tell without seeing her directly; there was no sound except that of the dragon.

He had intended to lure the monster, but now he was in trouble. He might avoid it for a while by dodging at right angles into other cross-tubes, for its mass and velocity would make it less agile than he. But that could not last forever—and it would not save Ex, wounded and lost as she was. The moment the dragon gave up on him, she would become its prey—and standing still would not fool it this time! Why wasn’t she running while she had the chance?

The rock shook as the dragon’s awful claws landed, propelling its torso forward. Its breath blasted out like burning gas, smelling of carrion. Now Arlo understood some of the reason so many trapped animals acted foolishly or collapsed early. The shuddering stone made the footing seem uncertain, leading to misjudgment and diminished mobility. The very wind from the monster’s lungs tended to blow the prey over. And the heat and odor of that breath might paralyze the prey.

A cross-tube loomed, and Arlo dodged into it. The dragon skidded around the corner, losing velocity. Good—he needed that leeway! Perhaps he could confuse it while it was still sleepy, and double back to find Ex and direct her to the escape. A slim chance, but—

A wiggle in the tube, then a blank wall loomed before him. He stared, dumbfounded. He had blundered into a dead end! He should have veered the opposite way, toward the center, where there were many options. Instead he had been headed outward, like any dumb animal—and fallen into the dragon’s trap.

The sides of the tunnel were smooth here, with no claw marks. Evidently the dragon had plastered the wall with its thick spittle, making it resistive to the ubiquitous green glow that grew on the stone everywhere else. Why?

It was hopeless now, but he had to fight. The bulk of the monster blocked the entire passage; no way to slide past! Its two tiny eyes focused on him as it bore down, jaws gaping.

Arlo spat one stone into his hand, took aim, and skated it at the dragon’s right eye. But the creature blinked, letting the sharp flake slice its leathery eyelid instead. Arlo threw the second stone at the other eye—and again the dragon blinked. This ploy had not worked—and even had the monster been blinded, it could have dispatched the prey readily.

The stalactite-spear was Arlo’s last weapon, apart from his cunning. He drew it forth, waiting for the huge jaws to snap at him so that he could leap aside, bestride the snout, and plunge it into an eye. The eyelid would not stop this!

For good measure, he made several feints with his arm, forcing the dragon to blink unnecessarily. It did not know he was out of stones.

The head lunged, eyes closed. Arlo bounded high, landing across the hot black nostrils. He scrambled up toward the eyes—but his feet skidded in the slime of the nose and he landed instead directly before the closing jaws. He could not reach the eyes!

He thrust the spear into the soft, runny membrane of the nostril. The dragon bellowed and hunched away. For a moment its thickening body met the slick walls of the tube, creating a vacuum as it scraped back. Had he found a way to balk it?

Then the jaws opened wide, showing what were surprisingly small teeth. Air hissed out, and saliva, forming an opaque cloud.

“Venom!” Arlo exclaimed as its stinging mist encompassed him. Now he was done! “Chthon! Chthon!” he cried.

Here, friend, the voice in his brain said. Chthon had returned!

The dragon’s body thinned. Fresh air sucked in around the edges. Arlo gulped it avidly, clearing the pain from his lungs, letting the tears wash it out of his eyes. He was safe now; no creature in the caverns could prevail against the god’s control.

Arlo let go a burst of gratitude and query: Chthon had saved him—but where had Chthon been until now? “Come see what I found!” he said aloud, remembering Ex.

Then Chthon left him. Dismayed, Arlo stood looking about, as though his mere eyes could locate that presence.

Was this a rebuke? What had he done?

Yet Chthon’s absence was not complete, for the dragon remained quiescent. What did this refusal to communicate mean?

Arlo shrugged. He ran back to recover his fallen weapons, then loped down the tunnel toward the spot where he had last seen Ex. First he must get her and himself out of the warren; then he could ponder Chthon’s meaning at leisure.

She was there, sitting crosslegged in the passage. Apparently she never had recovered the wit to run! Her head lolled forward, and sweat glistened on her body.

No—not sweat. Slime. Foul-smelling, glistening white, forming all over her skin. Had her head wound done this—or the dragon’s poison?

No, there had not been time for the monster to exhale its venom on her. This was myxo, the mucus of Chthon. Once before he had seen it, on his father Aton, when the man had attempted to go where Chthon had forbidden. And Doc Bedside had discussed it. It was the god’s way of punishing a creature with brain and willpower to resist the mandates of the caverns.

“No!” Arlo cried, putting his hands on the girl. She was burning hot: another sign. “She is not an enemy! I hurt her, I brought her here—I must save her!”

Chthon paid no attention. More thickly now the awful white sludge formed, encrusting Ex so that she looked like forming stone.

Never before had Arlo sought to oppose his will to that of Chthon. Now it had to be done.

He drew his stalactite and placed the point to his own breast. He clasped both hands about the base and tensed his muscles. “Stop—or I die!” he cried.

Suddenly the will of Chthon was on him, forcing his muscles to go limp. Arlo fought, pressing the point in to cut his skin—but the force against him was incomparably greater than that of the dragon.

Before him the girl stirred. Flakes of white fell off her as she tried to stand. Arlo could not assist her. All his being was locked in the struggle with the god—a struggle he knew now he could not win. Chthon was too powerful; Chthon ruled all the caverns! To fight against Chthon was to become—a zombie.

Yet Arlo fought. White began to form on his own skin, the first glistening of the myxo slime. Heat raged within him— not the heat of passion, but of decimation. Slowly, inevitably, he was being crushed, but he would not quit.

Abruptly it stopped. He held his sword a moment longer, to be sure the siege had not merely been shifted back to the girl, then relaxed. Chthon had gone again.

The dragon hissed, the noise reverberating through the passages. Chthon had let it go, too!

Arlo took Ex out of the labyrinth in a hurry, before the dragon could reorient. Then on to another stream, a safe one, where he washed the repulsive myxo off her body and the blood from her hair. Then he brought her to his private garden.

The garden was in a tremendous cavern, so tall that the ceiling could not be seen from the sculptured floor. It was bright and warm, for not only did the walls and floor give off an especially fine glow, so did the delicate green and blue plants nestled in alcoves. But more than this, it was illuminated by steady, yellowish flame across the upper reaches: burning jets of gas, monstrous firespouts that cast light and heat all the way to the bottom, except when clouds formed. The garden was also noisy—not with the rush of wind, but with the merging roar of falling water and jetting fire.

Arlo carried Ex to his favorite bower and laid her down beside the spuming base of the great waterfall. He fetched moss to pillow her head, but as he placed it, she sat up so alertly that he knew she had been awake for some time. “Hi,” she said.

He stared at her blankly. “What?”

She had spoken in a language of Old Earth, rather than Galactic. He was familiar with it, thanks to LOE, but had hardly expected this dead tongue to emerge from a living mouth.

“Oh, it hurts!” Ex cried, clutching her head and falling back.

Distracted, Arlo forgot the question he had been about to ask. He packed the moss under her head while she grimaced with evident pain. If only he had not hit her! He felt helpless, not knowing what he could do that would really help. She writhed for some time, groaning, while his apprehension and guilt mounted. Her head was bleeding again, staining the moss black.

Just about the time he became convinced she would die, she relaxed. Her eyes closed and she appeared to sleep. He watched her for some time, but she did not move, and gradually his alarm subsided.

It was replaced by another siege of irritation. Why hadn’t Ex told him she knew how to speak Old Earth? And if she had recovered while he was carrying her from the dragon’s maze, why hadn’t she let him know? She had been able to move well enough for a while in the tunnel, before the myxo siege, then relapsed. Or so it had seemed.

It also occurred to him now that her latest seizure had arrived very conveniently for a girl who did not like to answer questions. Yet she had been injured, so he could not be sure she was pretending. What was he to believe?

Torn by doubt, Arlo left her and walked through his garden. The vegetation was tall and luxuriant, with that faint, pleasant odor associated with hvee, the love plant. Old Doc Bedside had brought him a sprig of immature hvee several years ago, a personal gift. Arlo had never liked or trusted Bedside, but the mad man had a disquieting knack for doing genuine favors at opportune moments. The hvee had been a major example.

Perhaps Bedside had merely intended that Arlo wear it in his hair, as the men of Planet Hvee did. But the same immaturity that allowed the hvee plant to pass from man to man without becoming attached, enabled it to grow again in the ground. Hvee only grew on its home world, in all the galaxy—but Arlo tried it anyway.

He succeeded. The plant rooted and thrived. It was evident that the conditions it required for propagation existed here in the bright cavern, as well as on its native planet. In fact, his lone sprig had fissioned into twins, then four, and Arlo had rooted new plants and grown them to seeding maturity. Now they were radiating, becoming separate varieties, some larger, some greener, some hardier than others. He was trying to crossbreed them with the cavern glowmoss, to achieve a glowing of hvee unique in the universe, and was having some success. Arlo was not experienced enough to realize how remarkable this achievement was, or how it reflected on Chthon’s ability to control the processes of the life within the caverns.