Piers Anthony - Chthon

Bedside gestured, and soft green light radiated from the walls: the light of the caverns of Chthon. Aton made no comment. ‘Partner’ had suffered through conventional illumination, to conceal his identity, but now the mask was off. What was the real connection between this man and Chthon, and why had he chosen to hide his history before?

“What is ‘Myxo’?” Aton asked him.

“Mucus. That wasn’t obvious?”

“Not at the time,” Aton said, thinking of Chthon and the horrors therein. The Hard Trek had saved its worst until last. What sort of man could like it well enough to post academic riddles for those who might follow? “Do you know how many died, trying to make the escape? How did you manage it, alone?”

Bedside settled back against the wall, squatting as though he were in the bare caverns he evidently longed for. His scalpel was out of sight, but ready, Aton was certain. No careless man survived the perils of the trek. No normal man. No sane man.

“Insanity, of course, is a legal fiction these days,” Bedside said, choosing to tackle the implied question first. “Biopsychic techniques have eradicated the problem, officially. Just as other medicine has conquered physical illness, with a chilling exception or two.” Aton could not miss the ironic reference to the worst illness of all, the chill. “Nevertheless, it becomes necessary for society to incarcerate certain, ah, nonconformists. When I found myself in Chthon as a prisoner, my—oh, let’s call it my escape complex—my escape complex was activated. I had purpose. In that circumstance I became in effect sane. Do you follow me?”

“No.”

Bedside frowned. “A man who is adjusted to an abnormal situation, while living in a ‘normal’ society, has a tendency toward nonsurvival. But place that man in a situation conforming to his particular bias, and his traits become those necessary for survival, while the normal man perishes. This is the reason it is said that no sane man may escape from Chthon. Chthon is not oriented toward sanity. Of course, the odds against a compatible juxtaposition of anamorphoses—”

Aton was shaking his head. He was not paying much attention to the words; he knew that this was only a conversational prelude to the desperate contest to come. He was confronted with as deadly a foe, here, as he had ever met in his life—one that he had to kill. On this battle hinged his future, though the issues were devious. A loss would mean a return to Chthon and neo-sanity; victory, a return to the blasted prospects of a dead hvee.

Perhaps, after all, he was only fighting to preserve his right to blot himself in suicide.

“Put a fish in water and it swims,” Bedside rapped. “Put that fish on land—”

Aton nodded, not wishing to carry the subject farther.

“Chthon was my element,” Bedside continued remorselessly. “I made my way out. I swam. The monsters there were as nothing to the monsters in my mind. But once I returned to society, I found myself drowning in air, as I had drowned before. My aberration quickly signaled my position, and I was arrested again. They could not ship me to Chthon a second time, because they thought I might lead the entire complement out. They could neither ignore me nor let me go. They preferred to apply a little medicinal insanity to their own intellects, and assume that there was no escape from Chthon, and that I was therefore merely a demented creature who identified with the notorious Dr. Bedecker. All of which was true enough, in its way.

“At any rate, they put me in a ‘hospital’ for ‘observation.’ This imprisonment reactivated my escape syndrome, and I was able to function effectively again. Their walls and guards were child’s play, after the Hard Trek.”

Aton watched him cynically. “If you knew that freedom would cost you your sanity, why did you strive for it?”

Bedside smiled with his teeth. “Another romantic lunacy. We assume that a personality problem can be liquidated merely through an understanding of it—as though a man could lift a mountain once he admitted it was heavy. No: recognition is not synonymous with solution. I fly toward freedom as a moth toward the candle, and nothing so insubstantial as Reason will turn me aside.”

Aton thought of his own headlong drive to unite with the minionette, her hair red for passion, black for death. Reason—how could it hope to bridge the cold, bleak void gaping open, the loss of a song that was healed, a shell that was broken? The moth hurt because its wings were ashes, but had not yet grasped the fact that it could no longer fly. With what mixture of metaphor could he analyze himself? Caterpillar to the inferno?

“But you are sane and free now.” Unlikely.

“Neither one is natural,” Bedside said. “But yes: I have more sanity and more freedom now than ever in my life before, and this is the offer I bring to you.”

“Freedom and sanity—in Chthon? You offer garbage,” Aton said, and positioned himself for action.

“Did you imagine,” Bedside said, curiously quiet, “that you could brave the lungs and the stomach of Chthon, and not be accountable to the brain?”

“I’m not accountable to your god. I won my freedom.”

“Not yet,” Bedside said. “Chthon granted you a reprieve. You did not conquer it.” The words had a familiar ring. How many forces fancied they were manipulating his life? Or were they fancies?

“As you remarked,” Bedside continued, “we are very much alike. By normal standards, I am mad. Only my mission for Chthon preserves my balance. Chthon takes care of me in a way you will soon understand. But you—”

“I was judged to be criminally insane,” Aton admitted. “On Hvee, that term is still in vogue. But that was before the death of the minionette. I am well, now.” The falsity of that statement stung him as he made it. The hvee did not love him any more, which meant that he was totally depraved, whether he comprehended the reason or not. Had Coquina suspected? Was this the reason she had kept her distance? Then why had she cared for his body, all this time? Why had she sent him forth to defeat this “evil one”? Too much was unresolved.

But he would do this one thing, for her, for the sake of the love he thought he felt, though he knew it now to be a shallow, selfish thing, a love unworthy of her. He would make this offering, since she seemed to want it: the lifeless body of Bedside.

“Your particular madness stems from a biological basis,” Bedside said. “There is no cure for it. You cannot undo your parentage. You will go on killing sadistically because the minion in you craves the telepathic pleasure of innocent pain. You will go on forgetting your crimes because the man in you cannot accept the guilty pleasures your other self demands. You will go on vindicating the judgment of those who proscribed Minion, hating yourself far more than any other thing—and not without justice.

“Oh, yes—you know your madness now, don’t you, minion?”

“I did kill,” Aton said, “but not sadistically. There was justice and mercy in my action. I was not the chimera.”

Bedside did not relent. “I am not talking of honest murders, minion. I know there are times in Chthon when killing is necessary. Nor do I mean your failures: your Idyllia girl, your vengeance on the minionette, the cavern woman. You tried to kill them all, but you were so much at war with yourself that you could neither love nor hate effectively.

“No, not these actions. But think back to one specific case: your little friend, Framy. (Yes, my god tells me everything.) You protest your innocence there because you did not technically spill his blood. But you betrayed the nether caverns, and pinned the blame on him, and had him posted for execution. And you were there, listening, when the chimera came. Your minion sensitivity responded to the savage little mind of the chimera as it stalked, and you knew it was coming for Framy. You could have alerted the others, and saved him—but you did not. You were there, savoring his agony, as that chimera struck, and still you gave no alarm. Only his dying scream alerted the others—too late.