Piers Anthony - Chthon

Aton left.

Four shifts later, in the cargo hold, Aton and the Captain loaded the Taphid caskets into a planetary shuttle. “No one else is going?” he inquired.

“No one else.”

Aton completed the job in silence. This strange woman would tell him what was happening soon enough. Apparently she had cleaned up the hold herself in the intervening period. The damaged caskets had been repackaged.

The little shuttle cast loose in the shadow of the mother vessel. The unwinking stars were visible through the shuttle’s port. Aton idly studied them while the Captain handled the controls, trying to guess what part of the galaxy they were in. “When I was a spaceman,” he said, referring to his recent years in the Navy, “I learned never to look at the naked stars. When you stare at them too long they are apt to burn holes in the retina.”

She snorted. “When I went to space, I learned to tell fact from fiction.”

Aton laughed. The shuttle came around the ship, into the sunlight. A hood slid over the port, protecting them from the more severe radiation and leaving only the internal screen for guidance. The Captain piloted the little ship down from orbit, into the traces of atmosphere.

“This is the Xest outpost,” she said.

“I still haven’t learned about fact and fiction. You mean there are such things as Xestians?”

“Xests. Everything exists, if you travel far enough,” she said. “They seldom communicate with human worlds, but the Xests may be the strongest nonhuman influence in our region of the galaxy. They happen to believe in live and let live, and they don’t need us. But this outpost is so much closer to human trade routes than to their own that they elected to do business with us. The Jocasta is one of several merchant ships handling private orders.”

“And they eat the Taphids!”

“They may. They may raise them as pets. We don’t know. At any rate, they ordered this shipment. They pay well and their credit is excellent.”

Aton shook his head. “Every time I think I’m used to space, it amazes me again. Yet if so many myths are true…” He left the sentence unfinished, thinking of the minionette.

She glanced at him. “There is one problem.”

“Naturally. That’s why Machinist Five was invited.”

“The Xests are nonsexual creatures. They have great difficulty comprehending the human system. Traders have succeeded in a partial explanation, but misunderstandings remain. They believe that two beings, one male and one female, make up the composite human entity.”

“Don’t they?”

“The Xest mind misses the nuances.” She frowned. “As Captain, protocol requires that I visit in person. But to them—”

“By yourself you’re only half a captain!” Aton slapped his knee. “Grievous violation of etiquette.”

“Precisely.”

The Xests were small by human standards, under a hundred pounds if scaled by Earth gravity. Here, however, weight was only a quarter Earth-normal. Eight delicate appendages sprouted from the aliens’ globular bodies in phalangidean symmetry. Communication had to be by galactic signs; they had no conception of sound.

Protocol further required the entertainment of the human for a specified period and the exchange of gifts. The Xests were semitelepathic, able to respond directly to emotion but not meaning, and believed that the honor paid to the visitor was automatically appreciated by the species. Captain Moyne presented them with several cylinders of emergency oxygen—a commodity as precious to them as to man—and in return an artisan contracted to produce a portrait of the human.

It was not long before the Xest spokesman got off on the favorite riddle: the binary nature of man. “Two species to make one Human?” it signaled.

“One species, two sexes,” Aton returned.

“Yes, yes—Male of one species, Female of other.”

“No, no—male and female of same species, Homo sapiens.”

“Of same unit?” the sexless creature signed.

This would be another term for their conception of blood relationship. “No, too close,” Aton began, but gave it up.

Captain Moyne watched this exchange with a half-smile, but made no comment.

“Will never understand,” the Xest finished, perplexed. “Fire and water mix to make Human. Inevitable destruction—but that is your problem. Let us talk of trade.”

The hosts understood the need for occasional estivation. A generous accommodation was provided for the Human: one bedroom, complete with bathroom fixture, kitchen fixture, appurtenances, bed.

“All right,” said Aton. “Who gets it?”

“I do,” the Captain answered firmly.

“Don’t you think it should be share and share alike?”

“No.”

“Should I make a complaint to the innkeeper?”

“Protocol forbids. You may absent yourself while I prepare to retire.”

“But where will I sleep?”

“When you return you may make yourself a lair on the floor.”

Upon that return, he found her sitting up in bed clad in the filmiest nightgown he had ever seen through. The game, it appeared, was not over yet, and she had certainly come prepared. The surprising rondure of the woman behind the uniform was once more evident beyond any reasonable doubt. She both intrigued and frustrated him, and he was not entirely pleased by the suspicion that she understood this well.

Aton sat on the edge of the bed. “What is your secret, Captain? You have the body of a young girl—a mature young girl—yet you must be fifty, at least.”

“The years in space are brief,” she said. She retained the skullcap; no trace of her hair showed.

“Not that brief.”

“Leave a woman her secrets, and perhaps she’ll leave you yours.”

There was an implication here. “What do you know of my secrets?”

She leaned forward, letting the sheet drift to her slim waist, letting the nightgown pull tight. “The lay roster. You’ve been using it to search out every female crew member on the ship. You are seeking a woman.”

She knew. Suddenly he wanted very much to talk about it, to lay bare the secret that had driven him from planet to planet and ship to ship for four years. The enormous futility of that search, that difficult seeking through stolen passenger lists and pay rosters for an imitation siren, that almost certain disappointment, brought a crashing misery about his soul. It was too much to bear.

He became aware of himself cradled in her arms, his head against her beating breast. She held him closely, stroking his hair, while the sorrow and pain of his memory flowed from him. “I’m in love with an illusion,” he whispered. “A girl with a song played a game of love in the forest, and I can’t rest until that song is complete. I have to find her, even though I know—”

“Who is she?” the Captain asked softly.

Again the agony washed over him, a sea of despair he had dammed back too long. “She called herself Malice,” he said, “and I suppose it was allegorical. The name of a siren, a minionette, who lives to torment man. In that guise she gave me the hvee. If she exists, I am lost; if she does not, my life has been a dream, a tender nightmare.”

She bent down and touched her lips to his with the tingle of fire. “Do you love her so much, Aton?”

“I love her! I hate her! I must have her.”

She kissed his cheek, his eyelids. “Can there be no other woman? No other love?”

“None. Not until the song is finished. Not until I know what no person knows, what no text reveals. Oh, God, what I would do for love of Malice… only to have her with me.”

She held him, and in time he drifted fitfully to sleep, still fully clothed. “It was so sweet, so sweet,” he thought he heard her say.