Piers Anthony - Chthon

“Some of them are very nice dogs.”

“Well, if you persist in this foolishness, I’ll just have to clamber up that cliff again, jump off, and force that thing to nab me in midair before I splatter. Then where would your precious job be?”

“Please,” she whispered.

“I should have brought LOE ,” he remonstrated dolefully. “ ‘Had we but world enough, and time’—”

“I may be coy,” Coquina said, this time with some spirit, “but I’m not your…”

She was lying in the leaves, her hair matted in them. Aton lay down beside her, propped on one elbow. He picked away the bits in her hair. “I was too quick to set aside convention. I did not appreciate the enormous wisdom of the elders’ choice.”

“No,” she said. “That shame is forgotten now.”

“I will redeem it. I promised to marry the daughter of Four—”

“No!”

The shell was closed.

The pace was more leisurely after that. Magnificent vistas spread out below as they toiled near the summit. Aton had to admit that he felt better than he had in some time. Coquina’s cheerful mien and quiet strength of character collaborated with the beauty of the scenery to make life once more a worthwhile experience.

He was almost sorry when they reached the top. He would have preferred to go on climbing as they had been, never stopping, never thinking, never facing the complex problems of life beyond this mountain; just breathing the scented breeze and listening to the crackle of dry debris underfoot. Malice, for the moment, was little more than a sinister shadow. So much stronger, now, was the living vision of Coquina—pert without affectation, asking nothing, her short curls bobbing as she walked.

On impulse, Aton put his arm around her. She frowned but did not withdraw. Together they mounted the final incline to the summit.

Aton had been expecting a special view, but the scene that met his eyes here exceeded his anticipation. The mountain turned out to be not single but double; a massive split separated the halves, plunging down half a mile to become a narrow crevice between them. The walls on either side were sheer. He retreated a step, repelled by his own attraction to the chasm.

“This,” Coquina said, poised alarmingly near the brink, “was once a field and rill—”

“Rill?”

“Stream. And a field is a flat clearing.”

“I won’t interrupt again,” he agreed.

“Long ago the mountain rose out of the ground. But the rill was older, and it would not move aside. It cut through the rising mass. After a little while—an eon or two—the mountain became annoyed. It ascended more rapidly, until the river could not keep up. The water gave up and went around the mountain after all. Now we have the river bed a mile above the river, and the mountain has two peaks.”

“If I had been that river,” Aton said, “I would have tunneled through that upstart hillock.”

“You would have been sorry. The river did try that, and there is a hole at the edge of a pond, leading into the base of the mountain. But the water that goes in one side never comes out the other. So most of the river backs up and stays away from that area.”

“I don’t blame it. It’s a good thing you warned me; you may have kept me out of bad trouble.” He stood behind her, watching the wind from the cleft fluff back her hair and catch at her hiking skirt.

“The song is gone,” he said.

Coquina turned slowly to face him. “Aton.”

The shell is open, he thought. All it takes is the touch of genuine love.

Gravely he removed the hvee from his hair and tucked it in hers. She smiled quizzically, her eyes shining. They stood at arm’s length, gazing at each other in silence, waiting for the hvee.

Then she was in his arms, sobbing against his shoulder. “Aton, Aton, hold me. You are the first…”

He pressed her close, savoring an emotion that was real, that had not been contaminated.

She stepped back from him, once more silhouetted against the midmorning sky. She was radiant. “So new,” she said. “So beautiful. Kiss me, Aton, so I can believe…”

He put his two hands on her shoulders, bringing her close slowly. As her face approached a cloud seemed to pass before it. A shimmering, a fading…

…And it was the face of the minionette. Hair the color of the living flame surrounded it, twining in serpentine splendor, in and out. Black-green eyes stared into his. The red lips parted. “Kiss me, Aton…”

“No!” he cried, his dream of freedom blasted. He put his hand against the specter, covering the liquid eyes. He shoved it away with a convulsion of horror.

And stood alone on the mountain, wrapped in the melody…

These are not our people.

The universe was clean in its conception:

Bright pure suns swept up the swirling dust,

Nebulae drifted eternally—until one fell from grace.

Our galaxy is ill:

It rots at the core, dissolves into decay, festers with putrid stench,

Diseased by the ultimate horror:

Life.

From this morass rises an unthinkable caricature of intellect,

Dedicating itself to the greater decimation of order,

Contaminating every particle.

Its guises are several, but our concern is with the nearest:

Man.

These are not our people.

The enemy is man.

This evil must be expunged, our galaxy sterilized.

No vestige of slime may remain.

Yet—the malady is far advanced;

The infection has greater resource than we.

Prematurity is defeat.

We control our revulsion; we study and are subtle.

We recruit the envoys of man’s doom from his own ranks.

We select an individual and tame him to fit our purpose.

This creature is less than sane

(His culture says),

He is ideal:

Aton.

Aton has a dream of union

Aton longs to embrace beauty

Aton seeks to murder evil…

Aton, Aton, child of illusion,

“Fair and foul are near of kin.”

Your strength rises from evil.

Look to your excrement;

Smear your face in truth

Forget ambition;

Return.

For these are not your people—

And we are not their god.

It was bright, blindingly bright, even in the heavy shade. Aton had forgotten how much natural incandescence was wasted in the open. The smell of the outdoors was everywhere, rich and ecstatic. It was day and it was warm, not with the arid blast of the caverns, but with sweetness, with splendor.

Freedom! Nightmare was behind him now, his long trial over. The insane evil of the caverns could fade into the past, leaving only the Aton who had won free—the purged Aton, the clean Aton.

There were trees and grasses and open ground. The man who had conquered Chthon and kept his sanity dropped to his knees, not in any prayer of thanks, but to grasp physically at the renewed wonder of it all. His pale fingers dug into the soft turf, pleasure running up his arms; he brought a handful to his mouth, tasting the torn green of it and the fresh decay.

There is no filth in nature, he thought. There is no horror that does not originate in man’s own mind.

He rolled on the ground, transported by the joys of familiarity. He knew this planet—it was as though there had been no dark interlude between his murder of Coquina’s love and the present wonder, as though all of Chthon had not intervened to avenge that crime.