Piers Anthony - Chthon

Without thinking, Aton flipped his loop over the outcropping and flung himself over. It was the spaceman’s reflex: immediate action, thoughtless of personal danger. He dropped, the pack he still wore tugging upward against his armpits. Halfway down the sheer face the taut rope he gripped yanked him to a halt with a violence that smashed skin from fingers and palms and almost tore loose his grip. There were muscles in arms and shoulders that would cause him severe regret on the morrow.

He was dangling a little below the girl. As her hold finally gave way he spread one arm and caught her around the waist, pulling her body clumsily to him. She clung to him weakly, nearly unconscious with her own fatigue.

Preoccupied as he was, trying to handle a double load augmented by the weight of the packs, with a single straining hand on his rope, he nevertheless noted with nightmare irrelevance how lithe and sweet her body was against his. Except for the time that first evening at the country dance, he had never held her; it came somehow as a surprise now that she was very much a woman.

Meanwhile reflex took over again. His hand loosened, permitting a controlled slide down the rope, burning fearfully. But he landed roughly on the lower ledge and let Coquina down on the widest portion, where she could lie safely. As he kneeled beside her, her arm came around his neck, hugging him.

“You are strong, strong,” she whispered, eyes closed. “Stronger than I.” Then her hand fell away and she was unconscious.

Her words left him elated. He knew they were sincere. Whatever had passed before, she saw him now as a man and not as a pampered patron. That, perhaps, had been the thing he was warring against. With profound pleasure he set about doing the things that she had done before, for him. He made her comfortable, foraged in the packs for food, and brought it to her. Later he wrapped gauze around and around his clotted hand and lowered the packs to the foot of the cliff, and climbed down himself to arrange a nearby campsite.

Only after they were both down did he allow her to put salve on his hand and rebandage it. She was taking over again, and he liked it still—and he realized with a pleasant shock that Malice had been driven completely out of his mind for some time, and that there were far more immediate things for his concern.

Coquina’s first words that evening, as a solitary cricket chirruped from somewhere, were of apology. “I’m sorry I couldn’t stay with you, Mr. Five. I did not mean to—”

“Never call me that again,” he said, cutting her off. “I am a man, not a title—a foolish man who almost killed you.”

“Yes, Aton,” she said. “But no one dies on Idyllia.” She got up. “I have work to do.”

Aton grabbed her by the ankle and brought her down again. “Do it tomorrow. Right now you are going to rest quietly if I have to sit on you. Why didn’t you tell me how tired you were getting?”

Her smile was rueful. “A slave does not consider personal problems. The patrons usually have more than enough of their own.”

Aton blanched inwardly at the reference to patrons. Things had not really changed between them. “Have you been a slave here all your life?”

Another wan smile. “Of course not. No one is born to slavery. There are conventions… I came here the only way anyone can. I volunteered.”

“Volunteered!”

“It is a good situation. There’s a long waiting list. The standards are high.”

“So I noticed,” Aton said, appraising her figure.

She put her hands in front of her, unconsciously defensive. “I’m not that kind of slave, and I wouldn’t care to be judged on such terms.”

“Forgive me,” Aton said contritely, “for being male. I value you very much on whatever terms you consider to be applicable. But surely you sometimes have trouble with men in lonely places like this?”

“Sometimes,” she admitted. “But we are trained to protect ourselves.”

Aton thought of some of the tricks he knew. “Even against spacemen?”

“Especially against spacemen.”

He laughed. “My pride will not let me believe that, but I like you very well as you are.” She laughed with him, and he felt a warm glow. But the Malice image hovered in the background, undead.

He banished that thought. “You are surprisingly strong for a woman, Coquina. Where are you from?”

“I shouldn’t tell you…”

Suddenly she didn’t need to. “Hvee’ he exclaimed. “They don’t grow women like you anywhere else in the galaxy. Only on my home world.” With this discovery his interest in her blossomed. His interest was no longer idle—if idle it had been. “Name your Family.”

“Please don’t.”

Aton snapped his fingers. “Four?” he demanded, and she had to nod. “I should have known. Aurelius’ judgment was always impeccable. He swore he had arranged the finest match—and he had, oh, he certainly had—I would have loved you.”

Her expression did not change, but he sensed the hurt in her immediately. “I was speaking of the past,” he said lamely, but the damage had been done. “It was the song, the broken song. It was driving me, and I could not turn aside. Now I am suspended, a fish on a hook; I can only acknowledge what might have been.”

“You have mentioned this before.”

Yes, of course—I have been telling her everything, not knowing to whom I spoke. Not knowing!

“How did you come here?” he asked, trying to hide his embarrassment.

“I never saw the man I was to marry, or knew his name,” she said, almost inaudibly. “But I—I hated him, when he brought the shame upon my Family. To be refused sight unseen… and the Families would not annul the liaison. I couldn’t stay.”

Aton tried to take her hands, but she eluded him. “I did not know. ‘Third daughter of Eldest Four’—it was only a designation, not a person.”

“Slaves, too, have pasts,” she said. “But they do not matter.”

“But you must have known. We were not thrown together by coincidence.”

“No. You were my assignment. Your face and your name were not familiar. Until you talked about your past, and I began to understand. The Families could not introduce us formally—”

“And you never said a word. Never a word!” He was not hungry, but he nervously took one of the self-heating food canisters from his pack and began to eat from it. She followed his example, except that hers was a refrigerant package. He knew the symbolism was accidental, but it spurred him to another effort.

“Let’s forget what has happened between us,” he said. “It—there is too much to overcome. Too much of shame. Let’s wipe the slate clean and begin from this point. I want to know about you .” She did not respond. “Please.”

She demurred. “A slave may not—”

“Damn slavery! You’re the woman I should have married, and I want to know .”

She was shaking her head mutely.

Aton looked at her with embarrassed exasperation. She had never seemed recalcitrant before—but of course he had not questioned her about herself before. Surely the circumstances negated any token convention. Unless—

“I have it,” he said. “You told me that no one dies on Idyllia. That’s not rhetorical, is it? That must mean that the clients are watched all the time—and not only by their faithful slaves. Are we under observation now?”

She lowered her eyes.

“And if I had not caught you, there at the cliff, some contraption would have popped out of the stone, thumbed its mechanical nose at me, and whisked you away…Answer me!”

“Something like that.”

“And you’ll be demoted to dog-walking detail if you say a word.”