Piers Anthony - Chthon

The others needed no warning. The water could be poisonous, or there could be minute marine creatures deadly to living flesh. Or larger ones, waiting for the first unwary entry into the water. Chthon was never innocent.

Aton and Garnet drank. The water was not cold, but it tasted fresh and sweet compared to that extracted from the air. If the two of them lived, the others would know that this source was safe.

“If we traveled the river,” Hastings pointed out, “we might not need the ’denser at all. Or the skins.”

Bossman looked at him. “Which way do we go—up or down?”

Hastings spread his hands. “I see your point.”

“ I don’t see it,” Aton’s friend with the black hair cut in. “We go upriver, we have water, and we’re heading for the top. What’s the matter with that?”

“We go upriver,” Hastings said calmly, “and we may find nothing but a layer of porous rock with the moisture percolating through and dripping down until it collects enough to make the river.”

“Follow it down, then,” she said with affected indifference.

“How fast do you think we’ll reach the surface if we travel down? ”

She looked at him suspiciously. “You fat tub. We got to go one way or the other.”

“We follow the caverns,” Bossman said, cutting off the argument. “They go up, and the wind proves they go somewhere .”

The party, not as large as it once had been, forded the river carefully and moved on. The tunnels continued to rise and expand. The glow from the walls diminished, bringing shadow; the front and rear of the column were attacked more persistently by unseen predators. Aton and Garnet walked together near the center, a little apart from the others, who gave them leeway on either side. Their position was not coincidental: the water test would be invalid if they were to fall prey to the chimera instead. They were protected by their position, but until sufficient time elapsed, close association was not desired by the others. An illness spawned by the water would find these prisoners with very little natural defense.

“You don’t curse me much, any more, Garnet,” Aton remarked.

“There’s no point, Aton. I lost.”

“Why did you cover for me?” he asked, needling her.

She closed her eyes, navigating by the sound of massed footsteps, as everyone could do now. The question needed no answer, but she spoke to the intent behind it. “Because you are like him .” This was her first reference to her life before Chthon. “Not in appearance, but in your rocklike heart. Such men, such demons as you, there is no pity in you, only purpose.”

“And you loved him, and you killed him, because he wouldn’t love you,” Aton said. “And now you love me.”

“I tried to fight it. I knew what you were the first time I saw you.”

Oh, Malice, Malice, do you taunt me as I do this lonely woman? Why must I hurt her?

“Don’t you know that I will never be yours? I will never kiss you. I will never love you.”

“I know,” she said.

“Are you going to kill me, too?”

She marched on, unable to speak.

“Or yourself, this time?”

Revenge was bitter; he no longer cared for it. Garnet had been a pawn in his game, no more. She had alibied him from association with the blue garnet by agreeing that they had been making love at the critical time. It was a more pleasant memory than the truth: that he had raped her once and found her wanting. Now she shared the blame for Framy’s death, and knew it.

“There is no escape,” he said, talking as much to himself as to her. “I tried to break her hold, but she reached across the light-years to strike me down.” Why did he tell his secrets to this woman? he wondered. Had he really captured Garnet for revenge, or merely because he needed a foil, a property, even in Chthon? Did he understand any part of his own motives?

Two more marches brought them to really spacious caverns. The ceiling towered into a lofty gloom, and passages were a hundred feet across. The wind was no more than a fading whisper, and it was cool: distinctly disconcerting, in Chthon. There was a feeling, an expectation; the caverns could not continue much longer. The steady rise must already have brought them very near the surface.

The walls peeled back abruptly. They stood on the brink of the passage termination: an enormous chasm, so wide that the farther shore was lost in dark obscurity, so deep that toppling pebbles never returned the sound of their landing.

They gathered apprehensively, two hundred men and women milling at the brink. On either side the floor ended; there was no way around.

“Fire a torch,” Bossman snapped.

One of the rare brands was lighted, sputtering its yellow light with unfamiliar brilliance. Holding it aloft, Bossman stood at the edge and looked down.

“They ain’t supposed to burn that way,” someone muttered. “That’s too fierce.”

“How would you know?” another said. “Three years since you saw real light, ain’t it?”

The ceiling of the chasm became visible as the light flared up. It was nearer than Aton had thought, within fifty feet, a mass of depending porous formations like an undersea landscape, from which streamers of opaque vapor drifted down. There was something ominous about it. What vapor was heavier than air? But the far side was still out of sight, and the depths into which the mist descended were murky.

Bossman shouted, and the echo took ten seconds.

“There’s one way to find out how deep this thing is,” a man suggested.

Bossman smiled.

“No!” Hastings, exclaimed, jumping ponderously to stop him. But he was too late. Bossman had flung the torch into the gulf.

Hastings stared in horror. “That’s gas, you fool,” he said. “It’ll burn.”

Fascinated, the group watched the glowing stick go down. As it fell it grew brighter, illuminating the sharply slanting canyon wall beneath their feet. The brilliance was extraordinary; the light became a minor nova. Now it was reflected from below, from a whitish cloud filling the foot of the crevasse. The near wall was featureless.

The torch struck the nether cloud, and suddenly there was light, flashing silently, like sheet lightning, and then vanishing. Again the flash, revealing the splendor of Chthon in neon radiation.

Aton peered down, and saw the face of Malice, in the fire and the depth, flickering on and off, on and off, in a beckoning smile. “Kiss me,” the silent image said. “Here is the other side of the song.”

Strong hands pulled him back. “You don’t want to die that bad,” Garnet said.

At last the glowing failed, and the abyss was dark again.

“Not dense enough,” Hastings said, the cold sweat running off his body. “Praise Chthon you didn’t blow us all to hell. Can’t you see what this is?”

Bossman accepted the reprimand. “What is it?”

“The fire cycle,” Hastings said. Faces stared blankly at him. “Look, the vapor drops from the ceiling there, some kind of natural gas. It settles in a pool at the bottom. Probably there are many crevices and rifts that suck the mixture through to the flames. Miles of tubing, similar to what we have been traveling through, only much farther down. The while thing is a gigantic blowtorch (if you remember the primitive term), spewing fire and super-heated air out the other end, heating the caverns. As that air travels and expands, it cools, until it arrives back here and brushes those saturated formations above, picking up more fuel.”

“What do you know,” Bossman said in amazement.

This meant, Aton realized, that this was a closed cycle. Water vapor, oxygen, combustibles—all seeped through porous rock, allowing no physical exit. There could be no escape this way, even if they found a way to cross the main chasm. The draft went nowhere, and they were still trapped.