• Partial galley

Story Excerpt Continued ...

But the glowmole didn't stop. It clicked through the hole and went on.

'Something more?' Now Arlo was excited. He had a keen sense of adventure - 'You get that from your father!' Coquina liked to say, tousling his red hair - and excellent hiking ability. 'From your mother,' Aton would say, winking his eye. This was confusing because Coquina never hiked. She stayed only in the oppressively warm caverns near the boiling stream.

Actually, his parents seemed always sad, and not merely because the one had lost his eye and the other her mobility. Perhaps it was because they still remembered their first son, whose name he had never heard. That boy had died as a child before Arlo was born; he knew of it only because old Doc Bedside had told him. Thus the A of the Firstborn had come to Arlo - a nomenclature he would not otherwise have had. He knew that he was second born and second-best in the eyes of his parents, though they never suggested this to him. They did not need to.

Now Arlo was careful, for new passages could be deadly until their points were known. This section seemed routine - but he was not fool enough to rely on appearances. He sniffed the air, questing for telltale scents. Sometimes the chimera lurked in dry territory like this...

His nose caught something else. A new smell, familiar yet strange. Animal, certainly - but not any cavern species he knew.

Silently he proceeded, deviating from the direct path of the mole, alert for ambush. The glowmole would not betray him into danger, but it could easily be fooled. If something had sent it to him to lure him within range...

Arlo bared his teeth in an expression he had seen Aton use on occasion. He had a long, sharp stalactite strapped to his thigh, and two flakes of metal stone cached in his cheeks. He could slice the eye out of an attacking animal at a distance of ten times his own body length. Twenty yards, in the Old Earth measurement. This talent was useless against the stronger predators, but he could avoid or outmaneuver most of those. All he needed was a little warning.0>

The odd odor became stronger. There was always a little wind in the caverns, even most of the dead ends, and he was downwind from the quarry. His bare feet touched the warm rock with no noise, and his tongue stroked one of the cheekstones. This was the sort of experience for which he lived! Danger, adventure, suspense, action!

Then he heard something. It was a kind of ululation audible above the distant tinkle of the moving water: the cry of a wounded animal, perhaps. He zeroed in the sound and poked his head cautiously around the curve of the wall. It was there, huddled in the center of a bowl-shaped cave, disappointingly small.

It was a naked human being.

It took him a moment to grasp this, for he had seldom seen others of his species, apart from his parents and Doc Bedside. Others were pictured in LOE, so he knew they existed - but all of those wore clothing.

Maybe it was a zombie. Zombies looked human, but they weren't really - and not merely because they were naked. Arlo himself doffed his confining garments the moment he was away from home. Zombies had no minds. They move only at Chthon's direction and avoided real people. He had never seen a young zombie - but the caverns were full of surprises.

At any rate, he had little to fear. This one was small and evidently incapacitated. The sounds he had heard were crying. No wonder they had seemed so strange!

Even a zombie deserved some consideration. Sometimes Chthon forgot them, leaving individuals to fend for themselves beyond their normal habitat, and then they were helpless indeed. He could guide this one to its companions.

'Hello,' he said, stepping close - but not too close. One could never tell about a zombie.

The head came up. Tears streaked the dirty face, and large eyes shone from behind tangled yellow tresses. 'Hello.'

Arlo started. It had spoken! Zombies spoke only when under direct Chthon-control. He had thought the god was absent. 'Chthon?' he inquired, glancing inward.

'What?' the child asked.

Arlo looked into the lifted eyes. They were pale - and Chthon was not there, either. Which meant - 'You're human!'

'I'm lost.'

'You speak yourself! You have mind!'

'Don't hurt me!'

'How did you get here?'

'The old prison - I wandered too far, couldn't find my way back -'

'The prison! That's day's travel from here, for me. Much longer for you.' Arlo knew himself to be a swift traveler. He could outdistance his father because he was stronger and knew the caverns better- and could call to Chthon to hold the predators back.

'It's been several days - I think,' the child said. 'I can't tell time here.'

That was interesting. Arlo could tell time by certain rhythms in the great caverns, the pulse of Chthon, that he automatically translated to the hours and days that registered on his parents' watches. 'I will guide you there.'

The human child stood up. 'Thank you.'

Now he saw that it was female. Or at least not male. The chest was manlike, but no appendage hung from the crotch of the legs. 'Are you a girl? He inquired curiously.

'Pretty much.'

He shrugged and turned toward the river. 'This way.'

'Please -' she said. She had stopped crying, but there was still misery in her voice. 'I'm hungry and tired. Have you anything to eat?'

'There's plenty of glow,' he said, gesturing to the walls.

She looked dubiously. 'That green color? You eat that?'

'Sometimes. Or I kill an animal. Or a plant.'

'Plants don't grow down here! There's no sunlight.'

Neither statement made sense, so he didn't answer.

She considered. 'An animal, then.'

'There are some in the river.' He led the way to it.

She followed unsteadily. He wondered how she could have made it this far without food if she had not eaten the glow. And without becoming food for a predator. Most animals stayed away from the prison tunnels, because they were too hot and dry, but she had to have passed through several other habitats. Still, she showed no sign of understanding the caverns.

She must therefore know how to fight. If so, she was dangerous. Aton could fight, and Arlo knew better than to engage his father in serious combat - ever. In fact, even gentle, weak Coquina had somehow hurled him into a wall a year ago when he had, as she put it, become too big for his britches. Britches were legging of LOE vintage, unused in Chthon - but he had gotten her meaning. One day he meant to learn that fighting art...

So that seemingly helpless girl-child bore watching - until he was sure of her capabilities. Perhaps it would be possible to test them, covertly.

He swooped a jellywog out of the cold river water. The thing struggled and tried to get its stinger into his hand, but be broke its pseudo-spine with a practiced motion and let it subside. There was a kind of fascination in killing, but also a kind of guilt, so he never did it randomly. 'Here.'

She recoiled. 'That?'

'Animal. To eat.'

'Raw?'

He looked at her in perplexity. 'It's dead. I killed it. Did you want it live?'

'You didn't cook it!'

Irritated, he set it down. 'You mean, burn it?' Coquina did that to meat, ruining it.

'Yes.'

'Why should I?'

'To make it edible!'

'It is edible!'

She sat down and leaned against the wall, her legs extended toward the water. They were different from his legs: less muscular, more rounded. Nice, in their way. 'Please - can we cook it?'

'When we get to a firespout,' he said. His gaze followed her smooth legs up to their joining point, where instead to a genital there was a crease. For some reason, this intrigued him.

'All right,' she agreed with a little sigh. 'A firespout.' Her tone suggested that he was being irrational.

Irritation warred with curiosity. 'Let me see that,' he said.

'What?'

'That.' He poked his forefinger into her crease. He knew almost instinctively that he was acting improperly, but this only spurred him on. He was ready to block and jump if she attacked him; she was in an awkward position for combat, which was another factor he had considered. How fast and effective was she? 'How are you made?'

She did not protest. Her body was completely relaxed. 'The same as any other girl.'

He probed until his finger touched the rock under her buttocks, but found nothing. 'How do you urinate?'

'Do you want me to do it on your hand?'

'Yes.'

'I can't. Let's go find that firespout.'

Frustrated on several scores, he got up and headed for the nearest jet of flame. The feel of her strange, soft, inadequate anatomy had aroused an intense emotion in him, but he could find no clear expression of it.

'You never asked my name,' she said, following.

It hadn't occurred to him to be curious about that aspect of her. 'You never asked mine,' he said gruffly.

'What's yours?'

'Arlo Five.'

'Hvee!' she exclaimed.

He stopped, surprised. 'What do you know about Hvee?'

'Those number-names. They're from Planet Hvee. Everyone knows that, because it's the only place the hvee-plant grows. And your name's an A, so you're the firstborn line. You're lucky?'

He was pleased. 'My mother is Coquina Four, third line of a higher Family.'

'I guess that's the nobility of Hvee. She must have been sad when you got convicted.'

'Convicted of what?'

'Of whatever it was that sent you to Chthon, silly! What was it?'

'I was never sent here! I was born here.'

'You don't have to lie about it!

'My whole family lives here. We're not prisoners - we're natives.'

She shook her head. 'I haven't been here long. But I know that nobody ever gets born here. There's something contraceptive about the caverns. Too hot, maybe.'

'It's not hot here by the river!'

She considered, 'That's right! The wind's down, and there're living things here. Breeding must be possible after all.' She looked up at him, her light hair flung back. 'I'd like to meet your mother.'

'You can't. You're going back to the prison section where you got lost from.' But that made him think again. 'What did a child like you do to get sent there? You're unmarked.'

'We never speak of our pasts,' She said diffidently.

'You were just asking me about -'

'Still,' she said.

Disgruntled, he made as if to strike her. He was quickly becoming furious.

She neither flinched nor fought. Suddenly she smiled - such an impish, carefree grin that he realized she had been teasing him. He smiled back, appreciating the humor of it - and she turned abruptly sullen.

She came from the prison; that was his only hint. So she was a criminal, cast out from her own kind. But surely not merely because her moods were mercurial!

The prison caverns were not completely familiar to Arlo for several reasons. They were hot and windy, so that a person without a supply of water soon dehydrated; they were far removed from his normal haunts; they were partially closed off from the main caverns so that it was hard to reach them and Aton had forbidden him to visit them. Thus he had seen little of the prisoners, and regarded them much as he did the zombies: creatures of a different environment, not his kind. All of them were adult, some old; the men were stringy and muscular, the women with full or pendulous breasts and furry hair on their underbellies. They were ugly compared to Coquina despite their nudity; but sometimes, considering them, he had discovered his genital swelling up hard.

'Your penis is getting long,' the girl said.

Embarrassed for no discernible reason, Arlo moved on downriver, forcing her to scamper to keep up. 'Why don't you speak of your pasts?' he fired over his shoulder.

'I don't know. It's just convention, I guess. I don't-'

'Don't step in that!' he cried suddenly.

She halted, one foot poised above the water. 'I can't jump across all the time the way you do! It's not deep here.'

'This is a sucker section.'

'What's a sucker?'

'I'll show you.' He dipped the jellywog into the clear river and wiggled it, keeping his fingers out of the water. In a moment there was a shimmer of motion.

When he pulled the wog out, two thin, transparent tails hung from it. Already a ribbon of red was forming within each one as blood from the meat siphoned into the parasite's digestive tract. 'Suckers hurt,' Arlo explained.

'Ugh!' she agreed, shrinking back.

Arlo bashed the jellywog against the wall, dislodging the suckers. They dropped back into the water and disappeared with quick swirls.

'Why didn't you kill them?' the girl asked.

'They don't taste very good unless they've just gorged.'

'I don't mean to eat! I Mean to make them dead.'

'Why?'

'They're dangerous!'

'Not to me.'

'You just showed me how they-'

'Anyone stupid enough to put his foot in their waters-'

'You still haven't asked me my name.'

'I forgot.' He went on downstream. She followed, not able to jump over nimbly enough.

The firespout jetted from a cleft in hot stone. Arlo held the jellywog over it, letting the fatty flesh singe.

'How does that work?' the girl asked.

'Aton says it's a leak from the gas-cavern system. Most of the gas goes to the big tunnels above the prison, but some squeezes a long way through rifts and leaks out in places like this. Aton lit this one so it wouldn't foul our air.'

'You sure know a lot!' she said admiringly.

'I'm fourteen, almost. I know how to read.'

'I'm eleven. I read, too.'

'What did you do? Kill someone?'

'You never asked my name.'

'If I asked your name, will you tell me what you did?'

'No. I'm not supposed to tell.'

Arlo shrugged, though he was furious at being balked again. This child did not seem like a criminal - but according to Aton, only the worst offenders were sentenced to Chthon-prison. What could she have done, to deserve this?

'I could tell you a lie,' she offered. 'I'm good at that. You wouldn't know the difference, would you?'

'I would if you told me it was a lie!'

'But I could pretend it was the truth.'

Arlo found her reasoning too devious. 'Coquina says people should always tell the truth.'

'Do you believe that?'

He thought of the necessary lies he had told his mother. 'No.'

'Well?'

'All right. What's your name?'

'Vesta. That's a lie, too.'

'Why?'

'Because my real name might give away what I did.'

'Then why were you so eager to give me your name?'

'So you'll know me.'

'I don't need a name for that!'

'Yes you do. A girl's name is excruciatingly important.'

'Not to me.'

'Call me Ex for short.'

'I don't need to call you anything!'

'You're lovely when you're mad.'

'Here's your food,' he said, shoving the scorched and bubbling meat under her nose.

'It should be Esta, or maybe Es, but I like Ex better.'

'So why are you in prison?'

'I'm not. I'm out in the caverns, here. I'm an Ex-prisoner.'

'That isn't what I meant!'

'Ugh!' she said, snuffing the jellywog. 'Maybe we should have left it raw.'

'You told me you'd tell me if I asked your name!'

'I told you I'd tell you a lie,' she said. 'I did.'

'The name-lie doesn't count!'

'The lie,' she said carefully, 'was that I would tell you why I was sent to prison.'

For a moment he was baffled. 'I don't understand you!'

'Do you need to?'

'Yes!'

'Why?'

'I don't know,' he admitted, dismayed.

'You could take back your burned fish.'

'Why?'

'To get even for the lie. Punishment. Revenge.'

'That would waste the food.'

'Then you could hurt me some other way. Hit me, maybe.'

He thought about it. The notion was peculiarly attractive, but she was probably teasing him again. The blow would never land - or would be accepted as the gambit for a deadly counter. That was the way Aton fought, and even in play it was dangerous. Still, this could test what she really knew about combat. If he stuck hard and fast, blocked the counter shot and jumped away simultaneously, it might be worth the risk. 'Yes.'

'Hit me!' she said, putting her hands behind her back and lifting her small chin. She was very pretty that way.

Arlo hit her.

Swift and hard, his fist caught her on the chin and knocked her back. He was pleased - he had actually foiled the counter and gotten out of range unharmed!

Ex fell like a broken stalagmite. The back of her head cracked into the stone wall. She collapsed into a huddle similar to the one he had found her in, but this time she was not crying.

Immediately Arlo was sorry. He had not realized how much larger he was than she, or how little resistance she would have. It was obvious now that Ex was not a trained fighter. She had aggravated him and invited retaliation, not expecting more than a token strike. He had been angry but had never meant to destroy her.

He squatted, looking at her head. There was blood on it, seeping through her yellow hair, turning it red. He scooped some water from the river - this was beyond the sucker section - and splashed it on, trying to clean the wound. She was not dead, but he knew that head injury could kill her slowly or make her like a zombie. Loss of blood was not good either, and its smell would attract predators.

Arlo realized that he was much better at killing than at healing. 'Chthon!' he cried in anguish, appealing to his friend the god for help. But still Chthon was absent.

Quickly he considered his alternatives. He could put her in the river, letting her body float down to the nearest pot-whale. It happened to be a medium-sized one, capable of consuming the carcass in a few hours. But she wasn't dead yet, and despite all the annoyance she had caused him, he still didn't want her dead. Never before had he had company, other than adult; now he knew he needed it.

He could tell his parents. But Aton would be suspicious of human intrusion into the caverns, and Coquina would be upset. They might make Ex go away, back to the prison-tunnels-and Arlo wasn't ready for that either. This little girl had made an impression on him - of what nature he wasn't sure. But he could not let her go until he knew.

He could take her to his hvee garden, a secret place even his parents did not know of. Ex had said hvee grew only on Planet Hvee, but this was not true. In his garden it would be easy to take care of her and feed her until she recovered - if she did recover. If not-there were plenty of pot whales.

So his mind reasoned, but his emotion was already committed. He had hurt her; he must make her well. He hardly knew her, yet she promised to fill a void that was no less intense for its recent discovery.

He picked her up, amazed again at how little she weighed, and carried her downstream. Her bare legs dangled across his left arm, and her blood-damp hair across his right. He felt again the unaccustomed agony of remorse.

Never again would he strike a person thoughtlessly.

In due course he passed a glow chipper - a gray, man-sized creature with close-fitting scales, standing on its hind legs and bracing against its tail to reach the edible height of glow with its buck teeth. It was strong but harmless; in fact, it was possible to ride on its back even without Chthon's intercession. Few cavern creatures were that docile!

'Good!' Arlo exclaimed. 'Chipper can carry the burden!'

But he soon realized that this would not do after all. Riding was one thing; making the stupid creature carry was another. Only Chthon could tune it to that degree. By themselves, the chippers followed their natural bent. They knew that Arlo was not a threat to them, so they ignored him. No help there.

The burden was not great, but travel was cumbersome with his arms engaged. He might have slung her over his shoulder, but he was afraid her dangling head would bleed worse. He was unable to take advantage of the most direct route to the garden because he could not swim or climb this way. Few of the linked caverns were conveniently level; their reaches twisted like monstrous wormholes-lava tubes, Aton called them-cut through by streams and fractures. The most dangerous animals tended to frequent the lower reaches of any given cave-the very region Arlo now had to walk. And he could neither throw his cheek stones nor wield his stalactite-spear while carrying Ex.

It was amazing what a difference one girl made.

He was in no trouble yet. The animals of the caverns were not as smart as he and would not realize his limitations immediately. But this was increasingly nervous business, for news of his strange behavior would already be spreading through Chthon. Free, strong, and agile, he had few mortal enemies; handicapped, he would have many. The chimera...

Arlo shuddered momentarily. He could not risk that!

There was only one dry, level-route shortcut to the garden: through the labyrinth of the dragon.

Arlo did not fear the dragon, but that was because it was unable to leave its own tunnels. It was huge body was so constructed that it could operate effectively only in its own territory; in a larger cavern it would become clumsy, easily escaped. But within its ten-foot diameter tubes it was a juggernaut, ferocious and irresistible. It was carnivorous, feeding on those creatures large and small who foolishly wandered or dropped into its premises and were unable to find their way out in time.

Now Arlo was about to enter that region. For the sake of a bothersome girl who would probably die anyway. He knew he was acting irrationally -being a fool, as Aton put it-and a part of him raged against that. Still he went.

These passages were not natural. They were round, scraped out of the solid rock by the mighty claws of the dragon. True, the rock was soft here; Arlo could chip it himself with his stalactite. But it would have taken him months of tedious labor to make even a small tunnel - and these were not small!

He entered through a reduced-diameter tube, left over from that time, perhaps centuries ago, when the dragon had been young. It had widened most of the passages, but there were a lot of them to cover and it had neglected some at the fringe. Perhaps it had merely changed the design, so that they were not needed anymore - or even left them deliberately for the entry of prey. Obviously more were caught than escaped, or the dragon would have starved.

Arlo had been all around the burrow, extensive as it was, and knew that it was largely two- dimensional. The dragon's bulk was such that it would be crushed by its own weight in any fall, so it didn't like to climb. Old Doc Bedside had explained that; he knew a lot about the way animals functioned.

Also, the dragon normally slept at this time and it was not readily roused. So the gamble was not intolerable.

The small tube debouched into a great one. Claw-scrape marks showed the dragon's handiwork, constantly scraping the passage walls to accommodate its increasing girth. The overall pattern of the complex was not complicated; the tubes radiated out from the hub-chamber like the spokes of one of the wheels depicted in LOE. A spiral tube intersected them, making several complete rounds before it terminated in a dead end. All the spokes carried beyond the spiral, dead-ending also. Most creatures that wandered into the labyrinth got lost because their minds could not fathom the nature of the pattern. When pursued by the dragon, they instinctively fled out ward and landed in a dead end-where they were sure prey.

Arlo carried his burden swiftly toward the center. It was escape-noise to which the monster was primarily attuned. Approach-noise it tolerated because it wanted the prey to get as far inside the system as possible and get lost. So long as Arlo walked firmly and without fear, the dragon was unlikely to be alerted.

Still, Arlo wished this stage of his journey were over.

The spokes were short compared to the spiral, but it would have taken Arlo ten minutes to traverse the pattern empty-handed. Now it would take double that.

He came to the hub. The dragon was there, asleep within the mighty folds of its skin. Even in repose, it was almost twice Arlo's height. Of course it stood no higher when active; its legs were short and its torso stretched out for a leaner running posture. The smell of it was stifling, for its dung lined the chamber and flavored the entire burrow. It was snoring: a whooshing like that of a distant wind-tunnel.

He skirted it, forcing himself to walk boldly so as to maintain the 'approach' pattern. The outer trek would be more ticklish. He could have used the spiral tube, but that would have taken much longer and would have been more likely to alert the slumberer. It was not the nearness or loudness of the sound that counted so much as their nature and direction.

Ex stirred in his arms. That was good because it suggested she was recovering, but also bad because he would not caution her to silence. The sound of his voice would bring the dragon to troubled life!

The girl sneezed.

The dragon started. Its massive tail twitched.

Arlo continued walking. Any change in his motion-pattern would be fatal - if his situation were not already hopeless. A sneeze was not fear-noise; it just might pass...

The great beast rolled over, its metal-hard rock-hewing claws coming into view. Each foot was the size of Arlo's chest, and each nail was backed by the peculiar musculature and bone leverage that gave it phenomenal driving force. The dragon, Arlo realized, could be a distant cousin of the glowmole because of that special foot structure.

Now he entered the far tube he had selected, and the dragon did not stir again. They had gotten past. Arlo shuddered with relief.

'Where are you taking me?' Ex inquired loudly.

There was a snort. Arlo did not need to look back to know the dragon was alert now! They were in for it.

'Fool!' he cried angrily dumping the girl down on her feet. 'Run-if you can. Straight down this tunnel. There's a hole near the end-I'll go another way.'

Already the dragon was moving, ponderously because it was still sleepy, shaking the rock with pounding of its feet. Arlo screamed as if in terror - no difficult task! - and charged down the spiral tube.

The dragon reached the intersection and hesitated, confused by the presence of two items of prey. Which one to follow? But in a moment it decided: the frightened one. Sinuously it turned the corner, coming after Arlo. Ex stayed frozen as the lengthening torso slid by her. Arlo could tell without seeing her directly; there was no sound except that of the dragon.

He had intended to lure the monster, but now he was in trouble. He might avoid it for a while by dodging at right angles into other cross-tubes, for its mass and velocity would make it less agile than he. But that could not last forever - and it would not save Ex, wounded and lost as she was. The moment the dragon gave up on him, she would become its prey - and standing still would not fool it this time! Why wasn't she running while she had the chance?

The rock shook as the dragon's awful claws landed, propelling its torso forward. Its breath blasted out like burning gas, smelling of carrion. Now Arlo understood some of the reason so many trapped animals acted foolishly or collapsed early. The shuddering stone made the footing seem uncertain, leading to misjudgment and diminished mobility. The very wind from the monster's lungs tended to blow the prey over. And the heat and odor of that breath might paralyze the prey.

A cross-tube loomed, and Arlo dodged into it. The dragon skidded around the corner, losing velocity. Good he needed that leeway! Perhaps he could confuse it while it was still sleepy, and double back to find Ex and direct her to the escape. A slim chance, but-

A wiggle in the tube, then a blank wall loomed before him. He stared, dumbfounded. He had blundered into a dead end! He should have veered the opposite way, toward the center, where there were many options. Instead he had been headed outward, like any dumb animal - and fallen into the dragon's trap.

The sides of the tunnel were smooth here, with no claw marks. Evidently the dragon had plastered the wall with its thick spittle, making it resistive to the ubiquitous green glow that grew on the stone everywhere else. Why?

It was hopeless now, but he had to fight. The bulk of the monster blocked the entire passage; no way to slide past! Its two tiny eyes focused on him as it bore down, jaws gaping.

Arlo spat one stone into his hand, took aim, and skated it at the dragon's right eye. But the creature blinked, letting the sharp flake slice its leathery eyelid instead. Arlo threw the second stone at the other eye - and again the dragon blinked. This ploy had not worked - and even had the monster been blinded, it could have dispatched the prey readily.

The stalactite-spear was Arlo's last weapon, apart from his cunning. He drew it forth, waiting for the huge jaws to snap at him so that he could leap aside, bestride the snout, and plunge it into an eye. The eyelid would not stop this!

For good measure, he made several feints with his arm, forcing the dragon to blink unnecessarily. It did not know he was out of stones.

The head lunged, eyes closed. Arlo bounded high, landing across the hot black nostrils. He scrambled up toward the eyes - but his feet skidded in the slime of the nose and he landed instead directly before the closing jaws. He could not reach the eyes!

He thrust the spear into the soft, runny membrane of the nostril. The dragon bellowed and hunched away. For a moment its thickening body met the slick walls of the tube, creating a vacuum as it scraped back. Had he found a way to balk it?

Then the jaws opened wide, showing what were surprisingly small teeth. Air hissed out, and saliva, forming an opaque cloud.

'Venom!' Arlo exclaimed as its stinging mist encompassed him. Now he was done! 'Chthon! Chthon!' he cried.

Here, friend, the voice in his brain said. Chthon had returned!

The dragon's body thinned. Fresh air sucked in around the edges. Arlo gulped it avidly, clearing the pain from his lungs, letting the tears wash it out of his eyes. He was safe now; no creature in the caverns could prevail against the god's control.

Arlo let go a burst of gratitude and query: Chthon had saved him - but where had Chthon been until now? 'Come see what I found!' he said aloud, remembering Ex.

Then Chthon left him. Dismayed, Arlo stood looking about, as though his mere eyes could locate that presence. Was this a rebuke? What had he done?

Yet Chthon's absence was not complete, for the dragon remained quiescent. What did this refusal to communicate mean?

Arlo shrugged. He ran back to recover his fallen weapons, then loped down the tunnel toward the spot where he had last seen Ex. First he must get her and himself out of the warren; then he could ponder Chthon's meaning at leisure.

She was there, sitting crosslegged in the passage. Apparently she never had recovered the wit to run! Her head lolled forward, and sweat glistened on her body.

No-not sweat. Slime. Foul-smelling, glistening white, forming all over her skin. Had her head wound done this-or the dragon's poison?

No, there had not been time for the monster to exhale its venom on her. This was myxo, the mucus of Chthon. Once before he had seen it, on his father Aton, when the man had attempted to go where Chthon had forbidden. And Doc Bedside had discussed it. It was the god's way of punishing a creature with brain and willpower to resist the mandates of the caverns.

'No!' Arlo cried, putting his hands on the girl. She was burning hot: another sign. 'She is not an enemy! I hurt her, I brought her here - I must save her!'

Chthon paid no attention. More thickly now the awful white sludge formed, encrusting Ex so that she looked like forming stone.

Never before had Arlo sought to oppose his will to that of Chthon. Now it had to be done.

He drew his stalactite and placed the point to his own breast. He clasped both hands about the base and tensed his muscles. 'Stop - or I die!' he cried.

Suddenly the will of Chthon was on him, forcing his muscles to go limp. Arlo fought, pressing the point in to cut his skin - but the force against him was incomparably greater than that of the dragon.

Before him the girl stirred. Flakes of white fell off her as she tried to stand. Arlo could not assist her. All his being was locked in the struggle with the god - a struggle he knew now he could not win. Chthon was too powerful; Chthon ruled all the caverns! To fight against Chthon was to become - a zombie.

Yet Arlo fought. White began to form on his own skin, the first glistening of the myxo slime. Heat raged within him - not the heat of passion, but of decimation. Slowly, inevitably, he was being crushed, but he would not quit.

Abruptly it stopped. He held his sword a moment longer, to be sure the siege had not merely been shifted back to the girl, then relaxed. Chthon had gone again.

The dragon hissed, the noise reverberating through the passages. Chthon had let it go, too!

Arlo took Ex out of the labyrinth in a hurry, before the dragon could reorient. Then on to another stream, a safe one, where he washed the repulsive myxo off her body and the blood from her hair. Then he brought her to his private garden.

The garden was in a tremendous cavern, so tall that the ceiling could not be seen from the sculptured flood. It was bright and warm, for not only did the walls and floor give off an especially fine glow, so did the delicate green and blue plants nestled in alcoves. But more than this, it was illuminated by steady, yellowish flame across the upper reaches: burning jets of gas, monstrous fire spouts that cast light and heat all the way to the bottom, except when clouds formed. The garden was also noisy - not with the rush of wind, but with the merging roar of falling water and jetting fire.

Arlo carried Ex to his favorite bower and laid her down beside the spuming base of the great waterfall. He fetched moss to pillow her head, but as he placed it, she sat up so alertly that he knew she had been awake for some time. 'Hi,' she said.

He stared at her blankly. 'What?'

She had spoken in a language of Old Earth, rather than Galactic. He was familiar with it, thanks to LOE, but had hardly expected this dead tongue to emerge from a living mouth.

'Oh, it hurts!' Ex cried, clutching her head and falling back.

Distracted, Arlo forgot the question he had been about to ask. He packed the moss under her head while she grimaced with evident pain. If only he had not hit her! He felt helpless, not knowing what he could do that would really help. She writhed for some time, groaning, while his apprehension and guilt mounted. Her head was bleeding again, staining the moss black.

Just about the time he became convinced she would die, she relaxed. Her eyes closed and she appeared to sleep. He watched her for some time, but she did not move, and gradually his alarm subsided.

It was replaced by another siege of irritation. Why hadn't Ex told him she knew how to speak Old Earth? And if she had recovered while he was carrying her from the dragon's maze, why hadn't she let him, know? She had been able to move well enough for a while in the tunnel, before the myxo siege, then relapsed. Or so it had seemed.

It also occurred to him now that her latest seizure had arrived very conveniently for a girl who did not like to answer questions. Yet she had been injured, so he could not be sure she was pretending. What was he to believe?

Torn by doubt, Arlo left her and walked through his garden. The vegetation was tall and luxuriant, with that faint, pleasant odor associated with hvee, the love plant. Old Doc Bedside had brought him a sprig of immature hvee several years ago, a personal gift. Arlo had never liked or trusted Bedside, but the madman had a disquieting knack for doing genuine favors at opportune moments. The hvee had been a major example.

Perhaps Bedside had merely intended that Arlo wear it in his hair, as the men of Planet Hvee did. But the same immaturity that allowed the hvee plant to pass from man to man without becoming attached, enabled it to grow again in the ground. Hvee only grew on its home world, in all the galaxy - but Arlo tried it anyway.

He succeeded. The planet rooted and thrived. It was evident that the conditions it required for propagation existed here in the bright cavern, as well as on its native planet. In fact, his lone sprig had fissioned into twins, then four, and Arlo had rooted new plants and grown them to seeding maturity. Now they were radiating, becoming separate varieties, some larger, some greener, some hardier than others. He was trying to crossbreed them with the cavern glow moss, to achieve a glowing of hvee unique in the universe, and was having some success. Arlo was not experienced enough to realize how remarkable this achievement was, or how it reflected on Chthon's ability to control the processes of life within the caverns.

He stopped beside his most promising alcove, where a new variation grew. This plant was blue, and - yes - it did glow slightly! The first blue-glow crossbreed! He held out his hand to it, and the plant shied away from him. It did not actually move; this was an emotional thing. The leaves nearest him dropped subtly, signifying negation.

Shocked, he retreated. Never before had any of his plants rejected him! What did this mean?

He approached another hvee, a more conventional green one. It, too avoided him. Thus it was no peculiarity of the hybrid, but something between him and the hvee. And because of what the hvee was, that was awful.

Chthon! he cried mentally. But even the god rejected him. There was no contact.

This shook him fundamentally. Suddenly it was too much. Arlo ran from the garden, into one of the round exit tunnels following it up to its intersection with another, and on in an intricate ascent. He did not know exactly what he was running from.

Then he realized that he was headed toward the cave of the Norns. Yes - they could explain this. His subconscious had guided him truly. He continued on through the intricate network, avoiding pitfalls and dangers that would have wiped out any person or creature not completely familiar with these bypaths. He maneuvered through canyons and corkscrews crossing the paths of caterpillars and the labyrinth of a small dragon, and came at last to the cave.

It was a ledge behind the tall waterfall, about halfway up the cavern wall. Here the river was comparatively narrow, for it was falling rapidly. It formed a flattish translucent sheet that screened the ledge, wafting cool spray-mist across it. On the other side, he knew that spray dissipated in the air, helping from the clouds that occasionally added their rain to the plants below. Sometimes he wished he could fly among those clouds, penetrating their mysteries as readily as he penetrated those of the smaller tunnels. But such wishes were mild. He would have felt at peace here, were it not the lair of the Norns.

They came out of their dark hole, three human figures. They were zombies: two complete, the third half.

The half-woman stepped toward him. 'Yes we can tell you Arlo, son of Aton,' she said. 'If we would.' She was actually rather sensual, with large, well-formed breasts, a small waist, unwrinkled skin, and flowing black hair. Arlo had no notion how old she was; it was impossible to tell with zombies. Probably fifty or sixty years, for her eyes were slits through which an ancient hunger shone.

Arlo drew up to the edge of their ledge and waited, not speaking. It did not surprise him or alarm him that Verthandi should know his mission without being told; that was the nature of the Norns. Their visions derived from Chthon, who of course knew everything. Yet they were not entirely of Chthon, for some human elements remained, especially in Verthandi. Their perspective differed.

The half-woman reached out her hand to intersect the waterfall. Spray shot out to douse Arlo. She had uncanny aim! 'My sisters will answer you,' she said, 'but they must touch you.'

Because they were blind. Something in the zombie process had destroyed their sight and much of their hearing, so that they were largely dependent on tactile input. Probably the myxo - a thick enough coating of that gummy stuff... ugh! Arlo knew that, and had sympathy for their plight - but he did not like being touched by those wrinkled grasping hands.

'Then talk to your hvee,' Verthandi said, turning her back.

She really did know! And so she must know the answer. He would have to submit. He knew they would not hurt him, in fact he could probably pitch all three over the cliff if he had to. Except that would anger Chthon. By the same token, they would be careful of him, for they were more dependent on Chthon than he was.

He stook, and the three came to him. Urder reached out a thin hand and laid it on his chest. From her mouth poured a dribble of gibberish as her fingers slid across the muscles of the chest.

'Child of malice,' Verthandi translated. 'Incestuous issue, but very strong.'

'I'm the child of Coquina,' Arlo said, irritatedly. 'She was never malefic.'

Urdur poked her jugged fingernail at his masculine nipples and emitted shrill laughter. Arlo realized he had been duped by some sort of pun or joke whose meaning only the Norns comprehended.

Skuld now put her cold hands on his right leg. She burst into her own gibberish. Again Verthandi translated: 'How soon this flesh carries us all to Regnarok!'

This time Arlo kept his mouth shut. The prophecy made no sense, but he didn't want to provoke more insane mirth.

Now Verthandi herself touched him. Her hands were smooth and strong, and they took hold of his genital, kneading, stretching, forcing a reaction that was not unpleasant. 'This hardening rod transfixes your sister,' she said.

'I have no sister!' Arlo cried, jerking away. 'Why don't you answer my question? Why does Chthon hide from me? Why does my own hvee turn against me? Who is this child Ex?'

Verthandi looked calmly at him. She was breathing with greater volume now, and had the shape of a remarkably fair woman. But her words remained zombie. 'We have answered; past, future and present. Your angry incest destroys life and death.'

Arlo backed away. 'This is crazy! What is your price for a fair answer?' For he knew they could tell him, if they only would.

Verthandi squinted at him a long moment. 'You are sixteen, very nearly,' she said.

Arlo started to correct her, then realized that he could not be really sure of his age. It had been a couple of years since he had asked Coquina about it, and perhaps he was older now.

'That may be considered an age of consent,' the Norn continued.

Now he understood her well enough to become uneasy. She had massaged his body, arousing a certain urgency in him, a certain mystery. Surely she knew more about this matter than he did, and wanted more of his body than a mere touch. And because there was a strong, confusing element of desire in him, his repulsion was greater. 'Not that!' He did not know what or why not; perhaps it was a fear of being initiated into mysteries that could make him part zombie himself. 'What other price?'

She gestured. 'Stand in the water.'

He looked at the falls. It would be suicide to attempt to stand in that down rushing wall! But she extended her gesture to the side, and he saw that further along there was a smaller shoot that splashed off the ledge, forming an arcing spray over the chasm. There was a footing there-barely.

'I would be swept off,' he demurred.

She held her open hand toward him, offering to steady him. Arlo did not feel at ease, but decided this was the best compromise he could make. He walked toward the lesser falls.

From up close, the situation seemed more precarious. He felt an apprehension verging on terror. Therefore he proceeded, knowing the Norns were testing him. They expected him to fail, to back off - and then to have no pretext not to obtain his answer their way. Or give up the quest. As he would not.

He inserted the toes of one foot into the water. It was icy cold, and the force was such as to bounce his foot out again, throwing him off-balance. His arms flailed wildly, and Verthandi caught his hand, steadying him.

Perhaps she had as much of him as she required, merely grasping his hand, controlling his life physically. She could easily tip him into the gulf. So be it; he would not yield. He put his foot back in the water, setting it firmly on the slippery rock, then wedged his leg in slowly.

The numbing force of it traveled up his leg to his waist, than on up to his chest. At first it was as though he would be swept entirely away by that current; but as he came in wholly, the force steadied, and the water flowed all about him, containing him. The center of the falls was hollow; there was no strong beat upon his head. He withdraw his hand from that of the Norn and stood there, encapsulated in the descending chill.

Perhaps this was what it felt like to be a zombie, contained in Chthon's benificence.

Soon his confusion and annoyance with Ex faded. She was a young girl, a child banged on the head; naturally she reacted irrationally. He would take care of her, and she would recover. He liked that notion: taking care of her. He had never had a human companion before, especially not a female. A real female; the zombies didn't count, for they were only shells, their minds buried somewhere in Chthon. Being encapsulated might be nice-but only if it were possible to break out at will.

Now he was able to approach the hvee problem. Why had his plants shied from him? Did they resent the presence of another person in the garden? Yet old Doc Bedside came often to the garden. Arlo resented this but could do nothing; the man was another creature of Chthon - like the Norns, but different. The hvee did not like Bedside - but this had never affected the plants' reaction to Arlo. Why whould it be otherwise with Ex?

The reason had to be in Arlo himself, as the Norns seemed to have suggested. He must have changed in some way, making him foreign to the hvee. For the plants were mindless; they could not lie. They reacted only to what was in the person they were near.

This was difficult thinking! Arlo had seldom explored his own motives deeply, but now he had to try. He had to make it right with the hvee because the emotional plants mirrored his self-esteem. In this sense he was incestuous, perhaps destroying himself: his emotion breeding within their own family, not truly interacting with the emotion of other people. The Norns' message was coming clear!

How had he changed? No way-except that he had taken care of the girl. Would the hvee have liked him better if he had let her die? If he had let Chthon make her another zombie? No-he had done what seemed right, because he needed a companion.

A companion other than the hvee? No, the hvee was not jealous. In fact, it was the nature of the plant to cement the love of a man and woman. Once a given hvee fixed on a man it would die in his absence - unless in the presence of the woman who truly loved him.

Man? Woman? Love? What had any of this to do with him?

But he had to explore it honestly. The girl Ex fascinated him at the same time as she annoyed him. That was confusing. Perhaps that confusion extended to the hvee.

Well, all he had to do was to get to know the girl better. Then there would be no confusion.

Suddenly a feeling of dread infused him. Arlo grabbed for his spear and almost overbalanced himself. For an instant his face poked through the tube of water, and he gazed into the abyss.

But there was no immediate threat. He was safe here, as long as he kept his balance. As safe as it was possible to be in the caverns.

No-the menace was not to him, but to someone else. His father Aton? No, not directly. His mother Coquina? No.

He stiffened. Ex! She was alone and unguarded in the garden below, and something huge and awful was moving toward her. He felt it in that part of him attuned to the life of the caverns. That talent Chthon had taught him.

Arlo stepped out of the shower. The water wrenched at him again, and his feet slipped out from under. He sat down hard on the rock, his legs going out over the edge, his gaze fashioning a precipitous plunge through the glowing vapors of the middle space of the garden... and again Verthandi's hand caught his and held him steady.

'You have saved me. You have also answered my question,' Arlo told her. 'I will remember that. But now I must hurry.'

She only nodded. She surely knew whether he would ever return to her, and was willing to wait. Zombies had extraordinary patience.

He left the cave of the Norns, impelled by his new urgency. He made his way down through the labyrinth of passages, again reminded how formidable they would have been for anyone who did not know their idiosyncrasies and dangers. His father could not pass here-at least not with any speed or security. But Arlo had had years to explore them, with Chthon's protection and help.

This particular region had only one safe exit: a corkscrew tunnel barely large enough to let a man pass. All other routes led past potwhales, caterpillars, and other predators. Arlo could traverse them when Chthon was with them, but not alone.

As he approached the corkscrew - the term derived from an artifact mentioned in LOE, a metal wire spiral used to remove the ancient stoppers from bottles - he stopped. A salamander was there.

The best way to deal with a salamander was to avoid it. Normally they did not stray from the hottest wind-tunnels. Which suggested that this one's presence in this key location was not coincidence. Chthon could have summoned it to bar the way.

Why?

Arlo froze, a prickle of dread traveling up him spine. Ex was alone; only his determination had spared her from Chthon's siege, before. She was imminently threatened by something vicious. A wolf thing. Now-

He had to get past the salamander! But the creature was aware of him, alert - and the very touch of its tiny tooth meant death.

'Chthon!' he called automatically, knowing that was useless. One lesson this experience with Ex had already taught him: he could no longer rely on his friend and god. Not completely. And what was untrustworthy part of the time was uncertain all of the time. He had depended on Chthon to protect him from cavern predators, until he had come to think of the caverns as safe. That had been a dangerous complacency!

Now he had to handle the salamander himself - and quickly, for the menace to Ex was growing. Chthon, balked from direct attack was now using an indirect approach, sending a monster to kill Ex while the salamander blocked off Arlo. Had he remained longer with the Norns, the deed would have been accomplished before he could return. The Norns, governed by another aspect of Chthon, had not informed him. They had sought to distract him longer.

Arlo scowled. One day, when he had nothing better to do he just might see about making them regret that.

Suddenly a new, ugly connection formed in his mind. The hvee, too, had worked Chthon's will. It had sent him to the Norns, rendering Ex vulnerable. The hvee was able to grow in the caverns only because of Chthon's ambience. Chthon could make anything happen. Chthon had wanted Arlo to be happy, so the cavern god had provided him, through Doc Bedside, with the ultimate in contentment: successful hvee. But by that token, the hvee was but another zombie, or at least a partial zombie, like Verthandi and Bedside. It seemed independent, but at the root it was not.

Arlo realized that he had complicated his life phenomenally when he had set his will against that of his god.

But the salamander: let the theoretical implications go, in the face of the specific. He did not dare put his hands on it. The thing was less than the span of his spread hand from thumb to little finger, but its virulent poison could kill within minutes. He could not risk hurdling it, for the thing could jump as high as he could. He could bat it aside with a stick-but he had no stick or stone, and no time to fetch one.

He did have his stalactite spear, still tied to his body. If he could stab the thing...

No time to debate. The salamander started for him, for these creatures always attacked, never relented. He had to fight or run. He could outrun it, and ordinarily would have - but there were no tunnel loops here that would enable him to circle beyond it and escape in the direction he required. Not in time.

He leaped toward it, stabbing with his point. The creature cooperated by opening its jaws to bite the weapon - and the point of the spear rammed right down its throat. Lucky thrust! Arlo threw the spear to the side. The salamander was not yet dead, but it could not dislodge itself from its impalement, or move while anchored by the heavy stone spear. The way was clear.

Then he hesitated. He might have need of his spear again. In fact, he surely would, to balk that menace closing in on Ex. Gingerly he picked it up by the end, lifting the salamander into the air. Its beady eyes stared at him with consummate malevolence, and this gave Arlo an odd thrill. He liked the hate of this little monster!

He moved on, carrying the spear horizontally and to the side, so that the poison would neither roll down the spear to his hand nor be carried to him in droplets on the wind. He could scrape the salamander off against a suitable rock, then rinse the spear carefully in running water. When he had time. Right now he had to carry it awkwardly.

The corkscrew was a special problem. If he slid the spear down ahead of him, poison might drip to the stone to be picked up by his body. If he held it above him, drops could fall on him. But he found he was able to carry it behind in such a way that it was never actually above him. Drops did fall on the stone, and he knew it would be long before he dared travel this way again. Well, the Norns could wait!

He ran on through the wider, lower tunnels. Soon he would reenter the gardens - and he had gained on the menace. The animal was very large, he knew, now that he was closer to it. It could not take the most direct route, but had to find passage for its girth. So it was slow.

'Arlo.' A man stood in his way. He was shorter and slighter than Arlo, and he was old: in his middle sixties, Arlo knew. This was Doc Bedside.

Arlo knew the man was up to no good. In fact, he represented another barrier interposed by Chthon - a more more formidable one than either Norn or salamander. For Beside was not only mad, he was intelligent.

Still, perhaps he could bluff his way past. 'I have speared a stray salamander. I must dispose of it. Be careful of the poison.' And he poked it suggestively at Bedside.

'Ah, yes, the episode of the salamander,' Bedside said, not yielding the right-of-way though his eyes seemed to glow within the sallow crinkles of his face. 'Had your father but known... "

'I killed it, not my father,' Arlo said. How could he move the man? The wolf was getting closer to the sleeping girl; now he felt both her slumbering innocence and its malice.

Malice - what had the Norns said?

No time for that! He had to get by, but he could not simply shove the old man aside. Bedside had peculiar powers of his own, as the most cunning of all Chthon's minions. In many cases he actually spoke for Chthon. A direct attack on him would be like a sally against Chthon: despite everything, unthinkable.

'Aton was physically balked by the salamander,' Bedside said. 'But he was emotionally balked by the minionette. His death reflected his life, could he but have read the parallels in time.'

'Minionette? Death? My father lives,' Arlo said, perplexed.

'All men sent to the prison Chthon are officially dead,' Bedside said. 'The caverns have taken the place of capital punishment. There is no release; it is like the mythical underworld. I died in "Times New Roman">§394 by that definition; Aton died in "Times New Roman">§400. I was sentenced to prison Chthon because I am mad; he because he loved a minionette. Much the same thing.'

Arlo was growing desperate because of the looming approach of the cavern menace, yet his thirst for information about his parent's situation compelled him to follow this up. He knew Bedside was holding him here, just as the salamander had, just as the Norns had. But the hunger the old man had roused was more compelling than that the Norns had touched and harder to combat than the salamander's threat. He knew Bedside would speak only while his terms were met, again like the Norns he resembled.

Ah- but the wolf seemed to have mislaid the scent of the prey, temporarily. Chthon could not guide it all the way, for that would overtly break the covenant they had so recently made. The wolf had to find Ex itself. So a little extra time had developed. Arlo had to delay - or lose, perhaps forever, his chance to acquire this knowledge. Restricted as he was to the caverns, his sources of outside information were invaluable. So he listened, though simultaneously angry about being controlled this way.

'What's a minionette?' he asked.

'A female of modified human stock inhabiting the planet Minion. Your grandmother was a minionette; you are quarter minion.'

'But you said my father was imprisoned for loving a minionette! My mother-'

'Coquina is human, or close to it. She is native Hvee. The minionette is death.'

'The salamander is death!' Arlo said, looking at the creature on his spear. It still lived, struggling every so often.

'Precisely. Aton sought the incalculable wealth of the blue garnet, but what he found was the salamander. In the equivalent episode of his life he sought the lovely siren - or shall we say Valkyrie - the minionette, but that quest only brought him here to the nether world. Siren, Valkyrie, minionette: all are mere conveyances to death. All his life was like that.'

'All reflecting his death? That makes no sense-'

'His life reflected his death, and his death his life. All he had to do was interpret the parallels, and he would have known his future.'

Arlo remained incredulous. 'The salamander like the minionette? Did she have poison fangs?'

'In her fashion. Your life, too has parallels - if you can read them. The hints are all about you.'

Arlo smiled, looking again at the salamander. 'If I meet a minionette, I'll poke my spear through her belly.'

'Undoubtedly. That would certainly be best.'

If Bedside agreed with him, Arlo knew he had better reconsider. But suddenly an unbearably intense sensation passed through him. The wolf had recovered the scent, charged Ex, and had her in its teeth!

Arlo held the salamander before him and sprinted. This time Bedside, alert to the menace, got out of his way. Arlo would gladly have impaled him along with the salamander!

Moments later he burst into the garden. But his approach had already alarmed the monster. All he saw was its huge haunch as it fled. He hurled the spear after it, hoping to nick it with the poisoned end, but the range was too long.

Ex lay in blood on the stone. Her body had been torn open like that of a butchered chipper, exposing her innards yet she lived. Arlo took one horrified look and knew he could do nothing. He had to get help.

Where? Not from Chthon, certainly! Who else was there to turn to?

He was hardly aware of his rush home. Suddenly he was there, panting violently, drawing on his trunks as Coquina looked up in surprise.

She wore a dress, very like those pictured in LOE. She was always clothed, despite the stifling heat. Clothing was part of the home-cave ritual; it had never occurred to Arlo that things should ever be otherwise. She was a woman of about fifty, and whether she was beautiful or ugly was irrelevant. She was his mother.

Arlo had a hard time catching with breath, and the sweat seemed to be squirting out of his skin in this sudden oven. But Coquina never left her burning-wall premises, heated by a boiling stream. Not for more than a moment, certainly.

'A girl,' he cried. 'Attacked. By a monster. Dying-'

Coquina wasted on time with questions. 'Aton's questing in the upwind forest. Find him there. Take Sleipnir.'

'I can't ride Sleipnir!' Arlo protested.

'Hang onto his tail; follow him. He can find Aton immediately and carry you both back.'

She was right: this was the fastest way. 'Thanks, Mother! She hadn't even shown surprise over Ex!

He left the oven-cave and ran to the pasture. This was a closed minor network of passages reserved for the animal, barricaded not against his escape but against the intrusion of dangerous predators. He located Sleipnir by the sound of the animal's grazing: a steady chip-chip-chip. Sleipnir was another glow feeder, his great front teeth chipping off flakes of rock to chew for their coating of lichen. It was a tedious chore, requiring much time and effort - but the creature had time, and strength, and imagination for little else. In fact, Aton had to pasture him in a suitable section each time, or the chipper would work over a recently deglowed stone, and starve.

Sleipnir had a bulbous, long-snouted head, a segmented body, and eight powerful legs. He was low and long, able to run through fairly tight tunnels without pause. That was what made him such a good steed - for Aton. Sleipnir had little wit but he knew his master and tolerated no one else upon him though he was strong enough to carry several people at once.

'Come, stupid,' Arlo said.

The animal ignored him.

'Sleipnir!' Arlo cried loudly. Now he perked up, hearing his name - but when he saw that it was only Arlo, he returned to his repast. CHIP! CHIP!

Arlo grabbed hold of the creature's spike like tail. 'Find Aton!' he bawled, making his voice sound as much like his father's as he could. 'Aton! ATON!'

That registered. Sleipnir looked about, searching for his master. When he did not see him, he sniffed the floor. 'Aton! Upwind forest!' Arlo cried, jerking on the tail. With Ex dying, he had to struggle with this moronic beast!

Sleipnir could not understand the words, but now the need to find his master had been invoked, and he began to move. His brain was minimal, but his nose was sophisticated. In a moment, he had located the freshest spoor. He pursued it.

Was there really such a difference between man and animal, Arlo wondered. Norns, salamander, and Doc Bedside had evoked particular responses in Arlo, just as Arlo had evoked this response in the pseudo-horse. Intelligence was not of itself sufficient to circumvent such responses, or he would have been able to save Ex by ignoring the distraction placed in his way.

When Sleipnir ran, he ran. Arlo hung to the tail with both hands and sprinted, but the steed was too swift for him. Soon he was reduced to bouncing: putting down both feet together in a kind of sliding hop, to support himself while the creature's headlong pace carried him along. This was rough exercise - but it was getting him where he wanted to go!

The passing caves became a blur. Some were dark, some light; some small, some huge. Some were straight, with the wind rushing through; some curved and recurred intricately. An outsider would have been amazed at the variety of shape and color; Arlo took it all for granted.

At last they reached the upwind forest. Here the stalactites extended down from the ceiling to connect with the stalagmites below, forming columns. But many were not vertical; the force and eddies of the wind had taken the dripping fluids slantwise, and the rock formations had followed. At times over the centuries, natural forces had shifted the wind, causing the structures to change direction, and the growing presence of upwind columns had interrupted the air stream and affected the downwind columns. Slow accretion had been replaced by wind erosion. As a result, the stalactites had irregularly descending branches, and the stalagmites had roots that twisted in widely varied configurations. The colors, too, were divergent, with glowing blue and pink stripes augmenting the green moss. Even Arlo could see that this represented a kind of history of the cavern: the glow had not always been green, but only in the developing columns were the prior types recorded.

'Father!' Arlo cried. His arms and legs were numb, his body sore from the bruising run, but that hardly mattered.

Aton turned. He was fifty-two years old, dark-bearded and powerful, with a certain aura of determination or ruthlessness about him. He punched his fist into Sleipnir's nose, his way of patting the animal. The creature was so tough it could not feel a light touch. Aton's single eye looked inquiringly at Arlo.

'Girl. Wounded. Dying. Blood. Help.' Arlo said between gulps of air.

Aton put one hand on Sleipnir's back and vaulted aboard. This vigor did not seem strange to Arlo; his father had always been an active man, and only recently had Arlo outgrown him. Aton leaned over, caught his son under the arms, lifted him. And deposited him on the rear segement of the steed. Sleipnir didn't notice; all he cared about was that Aton was riding him.

There had never been another human being in this region of the caverns other than Aton, Coquina, Arlo, Doc Bedside, and the zombies. Yet Aton hadn't hesitated. 'Where?' Aton asked.

'In my gardens.'

Aton had never been to the gardens, though he knew where they were, because the way was blocked by so many animate and inanimate threats. Aton did not have the aid of Chthon on that route; it was as though the god wanted no one but Arlo there. But of course Arlo had explored al the tunnels and knew his way through safely, regardless of Chthon's influence.

Aton guided Sleipnir according to Arlo's instructions, and they thundered toward the gardens. Even on this fleet mount, it took some time because the safe route was circuitous. Afraid to contemplate what they would find there. Arlo talked with his father: a thing he seldom did. It was not that there was any bad feeling between them, but that there was inadequate feeling. Arlo really did not know his father well. 'What is a minionette?' He had asked this question of Bedside, but received no satisfactory answer. Of course a minionette came from planet Minion; why should that be significant? Why did she equate with sirens, Valkyries, and death?

Aton's back stiffened, and Arlo knew that he had made a mistake. As the second son, substitute for the favored firstborn, he dared not presume. He had supposed this to be a special case. 'Who spoke to you of that?'

'Old Doc Beside.'

Aton grunted contemptuously, but he relaxed a bit. 'What did he tell you?'

'Only that I was quarter-minion. My grandmother-'

'Enough!'

Arlo was glad enough to let it drop. Aton was a man of violent temperament, and he had a sadistic streak. It was evident that Bedside had been sowing dissent, in his subtle fashion. Time for a change of subject.

'How did you get Sleipnir?'

Aton relaxed again. 'That was Bedeker's doing.' He always called Doc Bedside that. 'He and I went exploring in the early days, but we were careless and got trapped by a caterpillar. He tried to distract it while I pounded a hole in the wall, but it stabbed him with its tail and incorporated him.'

Arlo knew how that worked. The long caterpillars rammed their tail-spikes through the quarry, impaling the victim through the middle. In moments, special substances or nerves extended into the victim's body, and instead of dying, he was reanimated as a segment of the creature, marching in unison with the other segments. In due course, the segments of the latter end of the creature were slowly drained of their resources, going to sustain the forepart, shrinking until they were little more than walking lumps. The caterpillar never ate with its mouth; its face was a huge façade intended to frighten potential prey toward the tail. There was little defense against a caterpillar except avoidance, as with other Chthonic menaces. But it could readily be avoided with suitable foresight. On occasion Arlo had scrambled over a caterpillar's mid-portion since only the tail could attack.

Then the other meaning of Aton's words penetrated. 'Bedside was incorporated? But he's alive!'

'That took you while, son,' Aton said with a brief laugh. 'Bedeker is only half-alive. He's a creature of Chthon, a mad doctor, a golem, an animated stick. A good doctor, though, especially with Chthon's assistance. You should have gone to him for help first.'

'I couldn't. Chthon wants the girl dead.'

'I thought as much,' Aton said. 'Chthon wasn't in on this particular scheme, it seems. You're beginning to appreciate that the god of the caverns is not necessarily beneficent.'

'Yes!' It had been a hard lesson, as most cavern lessons were. Yet Arlo realized that his father was pleased. Aton hated Chthon - yet he stayed here in Chthon's demesne, and Chthon tolerated him. Why? Arlo dared not ask - yet.

'An ordinary man would have been lost,' Aton continued after a moment. 'But Bedeker belongs to Chthon, and Chthon controls all life in the caverns. Except the three of us. The human mind is too complex to control without an enormous special effort.'

'The myxo!' Arlo cried.

'Right. And those of us with minion blood are capable of resisting the myxo, so that if Chthon prevails, the result is not a controlled human mind but a zombie. So it isn't worth it. Still the mineral intellect has ways of making its point. Chthon could have stopped the caterpillar - but maybe it wanted to teach us a lesson.' He always referred to Chthon as 'it,' signaling his smoldering antipathy. 'So it let Bedeker get caught. I escaped - only because Chthon let me - but for a week Bedeker marched in the caterpillar. Several more segments were incorporated behind him. I thought I'd never see him again, and I wasn't sorry.'

Aton shook his head, his dark hair waving with the motion. 'Until that episode, I never really appreciated Chthon's full power. Maybe I still don't. Well, Chthon showed me! A predator attacked that caterpillar - some huge wolf like thing and-'

'Wolf!' Arlo cried. But he shut up as his father paused. He wanted to hear the rest of the episode.

'The wolf severed it just in front of Bedeker. The main caterpillar escaped, but Bedeker survived as an independent segment. He wasn't a real caterpillar; he couldn't use his tail to incorporate new segments. He was just a ten-legged fragment walking around. But now he had control. Maybe it was really Chthon-control; I'm sure I would have died in that situation. But in due course the predator attacked again, this time cutting off the last four segments. And still Bedeker lived. He returned almost to normal - it's hard to tell, since he is half mad, half Chthon anyway - while the remainder of his former body carried on by itself. Again, no death. The new head assumed control and started eating. Those last segment had been pretty strong, so the thing was stupid but powerful. Bedeker gave it to me to take care of, and he named it Sleipnir, after eight-legged horses of Norse mythology. You'll find that in LOE.'

Aton fell silent, and Arlo asked no more questions. The story was incredible - yet he had to believe it. Chthon did have such power, and Doc Bedside did have huge scars on his body whose significance suddenly manifested. But how amazing, for the old mad doctor had almost literally birthed this fine cavern horse - a four-segment caterpillar fragment! Where else could such a thing have happened?'

They entered the gardens. Aton looked around with interest, blinking in the unaccustomed yellow light, for he had not had opportunity to inspect this region before. 'Nice,' he said appreciatively. 'I seem to remember something like this, vaguely. I think the first time Chthon guided me through the caverns, using the half-woman... '

'Black-haired?' Arlo asked.

'Yes. Half-zombie. Don't tell me she's still around?'

'Yes. She's one of the Norns.'

'Norns!' Aton exploded, laughing. 'Chthon must have quite a sense of humor, deep in its stone circuits. She was a Lower Cavern bitch, when I knew her.'

Bitch. The female of an Old Earth dog, evidently a term of disrespect. But now they were coming into Arlo's particular green near the falls, where the girl lay.

Ex remained as she had been. Arlo had difficulty looking. It was not the sight of wounds and blood that bothered him. But the fact that he had so recently known this person, and in fact had some responsibility for her condition.

'She's been gutted, but she lives,' Aton said. 'That's remarkable. Are you sure she's not zombie?'

'She's human! Chthon tried to take her - and then sent the wolf.'

Aton looked up. 'Wolf?' he asked sharply, evidently making the same connection Arlo had. A wolf had freed Bedside from the caterpillar...

'That's what it felt like. Its mind. Bedside blocked me off, so I came too late and hardly saw it. Big - big, like a wolf.'

'You've never seen a wolf!'

'I've seen the picture in LOE. But it's only the feel I mean. The malignancy. It doesn't matter what it looks like. It's a wolf.'

'A wolf,' Aton repeated. 'You're right: in the caverns, feel is more important than appearance.' Then he shook himself. 'So you've got a girl! She must have strayed from the prison.'

'Yes. She said so.' But now Arlo was aware of a certain deviousness in his father and knew he was concealing something. Aton should have been surprised, perhaps angry - but he was neither. He could hardly be in collusion with Chthon. So what did he know?

'We can't save her,' Aton said regretfully. 'Her guts have been spilled. I don't know what keeps her alive.'

There were times when his father lacked tact. Yet it was true. There was no explaining what kept Ex breathing. 'We have to try,' Arlo said.

'All we can do is tie her together and see what happens. Only Chthon can save her.'

'But Chthon won't.

The man's eye looked at him, and Arlo knew the question was rhetorical. 'Why not?'

'Because Chthon sent the wolf to kill her!'

Aton nodded. He gathered strong vines from the native flora of the garden 'Don't you think Chthon could have arranged to kill her outright, instead of leaving her hanging by a thread?'

'I-'But his arrival could not have had much effect; the wolf had already been departing. 'Chthon wanted her - this way?'

'It is possible to bargain with Chthon. That's how I saved your mother.'

Arlo was torn by hope and incredulity. 'You-'

'She had the chill.'

'The chill?'

'I forgot. That's not in LOE.' He sighed. 'I hate this business. I think your girl is going to die, so I'm talking about something else. But maybe this will help.' He paused, finding his mental place as his hands worked, preparing the vines. 'Most of what I know about the chill I learned from fat Hasty. That's Hastings - a fellow prisoner, a quarter-century ago. Hasty, Framy, Bossman, Garnet, the black-haired bitch - I never did know her name-'

'Verthandi.'

Aton snorted, but continued: Two hundred forty-one denizens of the nether caverns, and as many more in the upper prison. But Hasty was special. He knew everything except how to mine a garnet. He died stuck in a hole, chopped in half by Bossman's axe. Had to be done, because the jelly whale was coming... ' He trailed off.

'You mean a potwhale?' Arlo asked.

'Hasty did a marvelous presentation. He phrased the mystery of the chill as though it were a parody of the earlier quest for the nature of light. He talked about the particle theory and the wave theory, and showed how the first was exploded and the second swamped. He had fun with his puns! He also took his digs at the obtuseness of military doctors who suppose that no person without a fever can be sick, even though he appears to be dying. And the scholastic "publish or perish" system that has always kept professionals too busy with irrelevancies to attend to their legitimate work.'

Arlo shook his head. 'I don't understand.'

'No, of course you wouldn't. The prisoners didn't grasp the nuances either. But the essence was this: the chill comes in ninety-eight-year cycles - waves of it spreading out from the center of the galaxy. Where it strikes, more than half the population dies. Each infected person becomes colder and colder until he can no longer sustain the bodily processes necessary to live. There in no cure.

'Coquina caught it when it crossed planet Hvee the last time, in ">§403. I knew she would die. She had stayed in the path of the chill only to take care of me in my madness, and in that manner she showed me what true love was. I knew I loved her too. So I did what I had resolved never to do, and I made a bargain with Chthon, agreeing to come here to stay provided Chthon enabled her to live. As long as Chthon keeps its bargain, I keep mine. Honor between enemies, you might say. She stays in a cave so hot her body temperature cannot drop, and Chthon's ambience touches her to keep her sane and functional, and so she survives. It isn't much of a life for her, but if she ever leaves that heat, or the presence of Chthon, she will die.'

Arlo was stunned. In one speech his father had clarified lifelong mysteries - yet how many new mysteries unfolded in that telling! What was the real cause of the chill, and how could Chthon nullify it as though Coquina were merely another hvee plant, existing by the god's will, yet no zombie? How did the minionete relate to this? And why had Chthon wanted Aton to live here? Arlo knew better than to inquire; his father, like Bedside, volunteered information only when he chose. This had been an unprecedented windfall, but that was all.

Aton wrapped the vines around Ex's torso, pulling the great wound together and poking her intestines inside, one link at a time, gently. Even Arlo could see that this was extremely crude surgery, bound to be futile; but there was little else to do.

'At least there are hardly any harmful microbes here,' Aton murmured. 'Wounds don't suppurate here, and there are no contagious diseases. Outside, even a scratch could kill you, or the air exhaled by a sick man.'

'A scratch by the salamander kills,' Arlo said. 'And the breath of a dragon, too.'

'Something like that,' Aton agreed, with an obscure smile.

'I bargained with Chthon,' Arlo ventured. 'I threatened to kill myself if it didn't stop the myxo.'

Aton looked up at him eye widening. 'You experienced the myxo?'

'It was trying to take over Ex, and she was crusted with white, so I put the spear to myself and-'

'And so you bargained with the nether god, because it had either to make you a zombie or let you die. And you won!'

'I guess so. But when I left Ex, the wolf attacked-'

Aton put his hand on Arlo's shoulder. 'Son, you are a man. You fought Chthon itself to save your girl, as I did. But you did not go far enough.'

Arlo was immensely flattered by his father's statement. But he looked down at the bound body, still slowly leaking blood, and knew that he had lost what he had fought for. 'I guess not.'

'You stopped Chthon from using the myxo. But so long as it controls the animals of the caverns, it can kill the girl. You cannot save her without coming to terms with Chthon.'

Arlo shivered despite the warmth of the gardens. 'Should I try to kill myself again?'

Aton closed his eye. 'Son, I have neglected you. Aesir was my son, and when he died it was as though I had no child. You were there, later, but you were hardly real to me. It is the same mistake I made when I clung to the minionette in preference to your mother. But now you are a man, and I know that though you came second, you are every bit as much mine as is Coquina. The second is not inferior to the first! I would not have you die.'

Again Arlo was amazed. This was the strongest expression of affinity he had ever heard from his father. And now he had heard the name of his lost brother: Aesir. And he had Aton's admission that he had loved the minionette. But Arlo kept his voice steady. 'I am glad. But how can I protect Ex from Chthon?'

'Only as I protect Coquina. Tell Chthon you will not oppose it so long as your girl lives. Really lives, not a zombie! Chthon wants your cooperation, even as it wanted mine. In fact-' Aton paused momentarily, a strange expression passing across his face- 'In fact, I suspect Chthon only wanted me here in the caverns so that I could beget a child. A human creature conceived, birthed, and wholly enclosed by the caverns. It is possible Chthon killed Aesir because he was not suitable for its purpose. Now you are here - and Chthon wanted you whole. I don't know why. But I think you can bargain. It would take many years to produce another like you - and I doubt Chthon wants to wait that long.'

'Chthon wants me... ' Arlo echoed. 'It must be true. Chthon has always been my friend. Until Ex came.'

Aton smiled. 'Evidently Chthon wants no child from you! And certainly no corruption of your mind by any outsider. There is your bargaining point perhaps. Tell it you will have no child by Ex and will cooperate as before no matter what she may tell you, so long as Chthon makes no further move against her. And repairs the damage already done.'

'But I don't know how to have a child - or how not to! Arlo protested.

'You'll find out how. And Chthon can prevent conception, so long as the two of you remain here. I think it's a fair bargain. See if Chthon agrees.'

Arlo turned inward - and Chthon was there, his friend, as before. 'Chthon agrees,' he said, wonderingly.

Aton raised the eyebrow above his good eye. 'Just like that!' He had no direct contact with Chthon and wanted none.

Arlo looked at Ex, who seemed to be resting easier now, 'What is conception?' he asked, suspecting it had something to do with the curious crease between her legs.

Aton turned toward Sleipnir. 'The girl is young yet. Do not force her. Let her recover, let her grow a couple of years. Get to know her well. If she is good, she will fill your life as Coquina fills mine. She will convert the animal into a man.' He climbed onto his steed.

It came to Arlo that his father had to have known that Ex was coming: company for a boy who had not realized he was lonely. But Chthon had not agreed to the arrangement, and here was the consequence: the wolf's attack.

'You asked about the minionette,' Aton said. 'When you go home, ask your mother. She will tell you as much as you care to know.' Then, to Sleipnir: 'Any route home. I believe Chthon will protect us this one time.' And he was gone.

Arlo felt Chthon's confirmation. The god had known what Aton would say and do, and thus had permitted his visit to the gardens. This once.

He sat beside Ex for a long time, mulling over what his father had said, watching to see if the girl got better.

Finally Doc Bedside came. ''So you have made peace with Chthon,' he observed. 'Let me see to the child.'

Now it was all right. Arlo let the man remove the vines and leaves and explore the great wound. 'She has astonishing vitality,' Bedside remarked. 'And marvelous good fortune. No internal organs ruptured, bleeding minimal, considering. A few stitches and Chthon's beneficence will see her through, I suspect.'

'But why did Chthon want to kill her?' Arlo asked. Aton had suggested a reason, but now the notion of sacrificing a living human being merely to prevent her from being a companion seemed less credible. Surely there were less strenuous ways!

'Chthon's ways are inscrutable. But you have made your bargain; Chthon will honor it. No creature of the caverns will harm her so long as you and Chthon are one.'

'What does Chthon want with me?' Arlo cried.

Bedside studied him in his disquieting fashion. 'I am mad. By that I mean I do not conform to the norms of your society, though I can approximate them when necessary. Your father is half-mad. You are sane. You are Chthon's chosen. Your destiny is huge.'

'Chosen for what?'

But Bedside only smiled.

Ex recovered. It was amazingly rapid, considering the severity of her injury, but it did take time. Arlo brought her food that Coquina made: glow-bread, fermented vine sap, dried chipper meat. He carried her regularly to a narrow, deep crack above flowing water so that she could defecate cleanly. He supported her as she practiced walking. And he talked with her.

Arlo told her all about the caverns: the rivers, the potwhales, the ice tunnels, the caterpillars, the forests, the chimera, and Chthon. He told her how his father mined gold and precious garnets and other stones to make beautiful rings that Doc Bedside took outside to trade for civilized goods: clothing, tools, books.

She in turn told him of the great outside world. How the wonderful ">§ spaceship traveled from Earth all over the human sector of the galaxy and even traded with sentient alien species: the Xests, Lfa and EeoO. (She had to pronounce those strange names several time for him: zzest, fla only with the L and F reversed, one syllable, and EE-e-o-O with accents on the first and last syllables, the whole run together so that it sounded more like an exclamation than a name.) How mankind had fragmented into planetary sub-species, each adapted for its particular world in subtle ways though all looked completely human and could interbreed. (Interbreed? Arlo inquired, interested. How is that done? But she seemed not to hear him.) How the stars came out at night, just as described in LOE: pinpoints of light too numerous to count, especially in the 'Milky Way' region of the planetary sky. How there were rocks floating in orbit about individual stars, called 'planetoids'- some only a few miles in diameter, so that a visitor could hardly cling to their surfaces. 'But excellent for mining rare ores,' she said. 'Because the deep strata are all exposed and accessible. Gold, iridium - all sorts of things just there for the taking, and almost no energy required to get them into space. Ore-shuttling is a big space business.'

'It must be,' Arlo agreed, entranced with this vision. LOE had nothing like this!

'And some of them are made into holiday stopovers. Spotels. Sealed in, completely private, with all the comforts of home.' She winked confidentially. 'I was conceived in a spotel.'

'But how-'

'My father's dead now. So's my mother. Must've been some romance, though, while it lasted!'

That balked further question about the nature of human breeding. But the two became intertwined in Arlo's imagination: ore-mining, planetoids, and romance.

They didn't talk all the time. They played games ranging from hot-hands to chess. Ex was good at all of them, as she had excellent physical and mental coordination. For a young girl, she knew a surprising amount.

As she grew stronger a strange thing happened. Her body, thinned drastically by the rigor of the injury, filled out to more than its original from. Her legs grew rounder, especially in the upper thighs. Her chest swelled into two humps. Hair grew under her arms and between her legs, concealing that cleft that had so intrigued Arlo. Her body came to resemble, to some degree, that of Verthandi the Norn. And her face changed subtly, becoming less childlike. She was, in short, a golden-haired little beauty.

But her manner changed most of all. She remained highly irritating, but she also became highly suggestive. And, oddly, it was when she was most infuriating that she was most intriguing.

'Where do these lead?' Ex asked, gesturing toward an irregular series of openings in the wall. She was almost better now, and eager to go everywhere.

'Only to the big gas crevasse,' Arlo said, 'No way to pass that. 'It's the largest canyon in the caverns, hundreds of miles long.'

'Oh let me see!' she cried, and ran for the nearest hole.

'Wait!' Arlo exclaimed, pursuing her twinkling bottom. Part of his mind noted how much fuller her buttocks were than they had been; perhaps it was because she had sat for so long, recovering. 'It isn't safe!'

But she scurried on through, bending over to clear the low tunnel ceiling. This had the effect thrusting out her posterior further, making it an object of increasing interest to Arlo, though he was aware that there really was nothing there. Still, the immediate danger alarmed him.

'There's a drop-off!' he called. 'No safe way down, from here - and the gas would choke you anyway.'

She scooted on around a bend. He followed. Beyond it was another turn, and here the passage narrowed so far that her hips caught against the sides. He knew the drop was close ahead, so he grabbed her where he could. One hand passed inside her legs, catching the front of the thigh, his fingers sinking into the smooth flesh. 'Stop!' he cried.

'You're doing it!' her voice came back 'Goosing me!' She wriggled, and her hips slid through the construction.

He tried to hold her, but first her thighs pressed tightly against his hand, then spread wide, and his fingers slid out. Again he experienced that mixed excitement and alarm, wanting to hold that thigh because it excited him, and to protect Ex from danger - and losing that hold despite everything.

He dived after her - but now his own hips caught in the construction. He ripped free, scraping skin on both sides, for the rock was very rough. Annoyed by the burning pain, and by her escape, he accelerated again.

'Oh!' she cried ahead, and for a moment he feared she had plunged into the chasm. But she had stopped in time, and now was sitting on the cliff edge, dangling her legs down.

'Why didn't you wait?' he demanded angrily. 'You could've gotten killed that way! I told you it was dangerous!'

She looked out into the mist before them as though nothing had happened. "What is it, Arlo? I've never seen anything like this!'

'It is the gas crevasse, as I said,' he said tightly. 'The gas vapors drop down from the ceiling, there.' He pointed to the distant, lofty roof, not actually visible from this vantage. 'they drift into the bottom, maybe a mile down, maybe more - I don't know how to judge it - and get sucked into tubes. At the other end, way across the caverns, there's fire. It blows into the passages and makes the hot upwind tunnels where the prison is. The wind finally expands and cools and slows and comes back here, to pick up more gas and repeat the cycle.'

She peered down. 'I can't see anything.'

'Course you can't. There's no glow down there.'

'Then how do you know about the gas?'

'My father told me.' On one of those few prior occasions when Aton had talked freely. He was more apt to tell about things than about people.

'How does he know?'

'Fat Hasty must have explained it to him, when they were on the Hard Trek.'

She sniffed. ' That's a myth.'

'What?'

'The Hard Trek. It's just a prison story. There never was any such thing.'

'My father was on it!' Arlo protested hotly. 'They had nothing to eat, so they ate their own dead. The chimera stalked them, and the myxo, and-'

'It's a lovely story, anyway,' she said. 'And you've lovely too.' She leaned over to him where he squatted beside her and kissed him on the mouth.

She had not done that before. The effect was potent. Arlo's whole being seemed to funnel into the meeting of their lips, and he felt as if he were turning, around and around and end over end. It was sheer, confusing bliss. LOE had described kissing many times, often shortly before the ellipses that annoyingly concealed the mechanics of reproduction - but the reality was beyond his expectations.

Suddenly the falling and twisting were literal. Ex pushed herself off the ledge, and almost took him with her. Arlo found himself clinging to the rough rim by the one hand, his other arm about her, while his feet scrambled for some toehold.

In a moement his experienced toes found that lodging, and the terror of his incipient fall abated. 'What were you doing!' he cried in fury.

'I slipped.' Her attitude was blithe.

'You did not! You-'

She scrambled up, treating him to another view of her newly mysterious bottom, and ran down an adjacent passage. Again he pursued, furious.

This tunnel was even tighter than the other. Ex wriggled through just ahead of him and finally emerged in the main passage. But Arlo, flowing too closely, blinded by mixed lust and anger, got jammed again. This time he has really wedged, his hips so tight against the stone that he could neither advance nor retreat without exquisite pain. He was stuck upright, facing into the passage.

Ex looped back when she found he wasn't chasing her. 'What's the matter?'

'I'm caught. I can't move,' he said hotly.

'Really?' She sounded pleased.

'Well, what does it look like!'

She leaned forward to peer closely at his midsection. Her newly developing breasts assumed more form in this position. In time, he knew, they would resemble those of Verthandi, large and full. Later perhaps, they would become pendulous, like those of the other Norns, and less stimulating. But this nascent quality was now immensely provocative. 'I think it's rising,' she said.

'My hips are what's stuck!' he said. Help me out!'

'Yes, it's definitely getting big.'

'Shut up about that!' he exclaimed in a fury of embarrassment. Though he had scant sexual shame and was proud of the erection he could muster, he did not want it in this particular situation. It tended to show his ignorance, and it reminded him of the touch and interest to the Norns. What had they said about it? 'This rod transfixes... ?'But he had no control.

Ex danced very close, turning and thrusting out her rear so that it almost brushed him. 'Why don't you.... '

Arlo suffered an abrupt clarification of motive. He knew where to put his hardened organ! He lunged at her, uncertain whether he intended rape or mayhem or both. But the rocks held fast, and he got a searing bolt of pain in the flanks. He was so angry he could hardly see her, yet he lusted for her with an intensity he had never known could exist. Yes, he knew what to do - when he had the chance!

'Kootchie-koo!' Ex sang, this time actually touching his member.

Arlo got smart. He twisted instead of pushing straight forward. Skin scraped from him on either side, and the very bone seemed to be compressed - but he wrenched free, sliding out of the constriction.

But Ex was gone. She was now as fleet as he, and she knew the caverns well enough to hide from him indefinitely. He could not catch her.

Perhaps it was just as well, he had bargained with Chthon to preserve her life, but in that moment he would gladly have killed her himself.

'The minionette?' Coquina repeated, and now the stress lines showed on her face, making her look older.

'Father said I could ask you now,' Arlo said, his muscles tightening nervously. Now, for once, he was glad of the required clothing that helped conceal the tensions of his body. 'Doc Bedside said the minionette was death like the salamander - that they were parallel, like all his life and death. He-'

'Dr Bedeker is mad,' she said.

'Yes. He says he's all mad, and that my father is half-mad. Only I don't think he means the same thing by the word that we do. But Bedside has always spoken truth to me, in his fashion, and he says my father was imprisoned for loving the minionette. Yet he also said my grandmother was a minionette, and I am quarter-minion. How can a man be imprisoned for loving his mother? I love you-'

Coquina put her hand to the hot wall to steady herself. Arlo grabbed her other arm, afraid she would fall. 'What's the matter?'

His mother got a grip on herself. 'How are things with you and Ex?'

Coquina had met Ex only once. It had been a disaster. Coquina had shown no jealousy, but instead had extended her arms in welcome - and Ex had run away. Arlo had reacted with familiar fury, but he could not get Ex to return or explain. She associated with Arlo, Aton, and Bedside, making them all angry in little ways - yet Coquina, who had nothing but love to give, was shunned. That was just one of the things that aggravated Arlo - but despite it, he was drawn to Ex with increasing passion. It was as though he liked perversity, as though part of him wanted to hurt and be hurt - and that disgusted him. On the off-chance that something in his heritage could account for this, he had finally gotten up the nerve to put the question to his mother.

'She's a damned nuisance,' he said. 'But sometimes she's awfully sweet. Half the time I want to kill her, and the other half-' he hesitated, uncertain how much he should admit. He doubted that Coquina would be pleased to hear about the misadventure of the gas crevasse, for example. Nothing had happened, really; but had he been just a little faster...

'She is a young female, and you're a young male,' Coquina said. 'It's natural for you to desire her sexually. There is no shame in this.'

Then why had his mother never told him how to implement the sex act? Obviously there was shame, some there. 'But I desire her most when I hate her most!' he exclaimed.

Coquina sat down on her rock chair. Because it was stone, it conveyed the heat of the wall and floor to her body Arlo was sweating from the ambient temperature, but his mother never sweated. Her whole temperature-control mechanism had broken down, apparently. 'Yes, it is time for you to know. But I have to warn you: There is pain in this - for your father, for me, and even for you.'

'Because I am quarter minion!' he said, catching on.

'Yes. I had hoped this element would be suppressed, but it seems it is not. So it is best that you know the truth, so that you can deal with it, as your father did.'

'He loves and hates you?' Arlo asked, horrified. No one could hate Coquina!

She smiled wanly. 'No. He has never hurt me. But until he conquered his chimera, it was very bad. There was much blood on his hands, much that must be forgotten, because he didn't know. I pray there will be none on yours.'

'He didn't know what?' Arlo cried in frustration. At times his parents were as bad as Bedside or the Norns in their obscure answers, tantalizing him.

'It began with your grandfather Aurelius Five, Aton's father. Aurelius married a daughter of Ten, by all accounts a wonderful woman the hvee loved. But in two years she died in childbirth, for Planet Hvee is primitive in some ways. In anguish he went to space, and there fell into the power of the minionette. It was his terrible sorrow that attracted her to him - even his guilt at loving her.'

'I don't understand! Why should he not have remarried?'

'Minion is a proscribed planet. He broke galactic law by going there, and broke it again by taking Malice home with him. So-'

'Malice!' The Norns had used that word! 'What kind of a name is that?'

Coquina put a restraining hand on his shoulder. 'That is difficult, son. Bear with me.'

'I'm sorry.' She was trying to explain something vital, and he had no right to keep interrupting. He could save his question for later. 'All the minionettes have names like that. Fury, Agony, Torment, Wrath, Misery-'

Arlo started to interrupt again, but turned it into a cough. He had to listen, not argue!

Coquina smiled, and he saw in that expression the aspect that had made his father love her. 'Yes, it seems strange at first. But they are true to their nature, as we are to ours. You see, the emotions of the minionette are reversed. What we perceive as love, beauty and delight, they perceive as hate, ugliness, and revulsion - and vice versa. Because they are emotionally telepathic, they receive these emotions directly. A man's hate is divine to them, but his love can be fatal. In fact, they are virtually immortal; hardly anything can kill them and they remain young-seeming and beautiful for centuries. They all look alike, too, until you get to know them well. So they live until someone's love reaches them - and then they die. Their names are actually endearments.'

She took a breath, as though marshalling her strength. 'The men of Planet Minion are more nearly normal, but they have learned to hate those they love. They beat their wives and even try to kill them - knowing that only in this way can they preserve them. So the minion male has a strong sadistic streak associated with his love. That is why the planet is proscribed; that kind of love has made too much mischief in the history of Old Earth and would wreak devastation among the civilized cultures of the galaxy.

'Malice stayed with Aurelius one year - long enough to bear him the child Aton. By that time Aurelius's grief over the loss of the Daughter of Ten was fading, and he was coming to love Malice without guilt. He did not understand - perhaps did not allow himself to understand - that this was what drove her away. So Aton was raised without a mother.

'But there is one other thing about the Minion culture. The women live for centuries, but the men normally die by the age of fifty. Apparently it takes that long for their hate to turn inevitably to love, for their sadism to weaken, and when that happens, they are executed by their own kind. It is a sad but honorable demise, known by the euphemism "carelessness." But the minionette is not widowed; she takes her son as her next husband.'

'She what?' Arlo exclaimed. All that he had learned of human culture indicated that incest was taboo.

'It is their system, natural for them,' Coquina continued, though he could see that she herself suffered fundamental misgivings. Coquina was a Daughter of Four, Planet Hvee, innately conservative, a child of the land. Yet she had adapted to her extraordinary situation - for love of the half-minion Aton. She had mastered tolerance. 'The minionette is wife to her son, and after him her grandson who is also her son, and all her male descendants, though she is the literal mother to them all. She bears only boys until at last she grows old; then she bears the girl who will replace her.'

'But if my grandfather-' The implication almost over - whelmed him.

'Aurelius was human, not Minion. He could not accept the Minion system. But Malice came in quest of her son, Aton.' She paused as if gathering strength again, and this time Arlo well understood why. 'You have to understand. She had the aspect of a young beautiful woman, and she came as a lover not a mother, and he did not know-'

Young and beautiful. That abated his revulsion somewhat. But the other matter could hardly be similarly dissipated. 'My father Aton - married his - mother?'

'Yes. There was no ceremony, for she had to conceal her identity from the authorities. Technically, he was betrothed to me, but-'

'I will kill her myself!' Arlo cried, filled with a new kind of range.

'No. She is long dead - and she was not a bad woman. I met her. I knew her. What she was, what she did, was in her genes and in her culture. We are all creatures of our ancestry! There is no right and wrong, objectively.'

'There has to be,' Arlo said.

'I have never known a more intelligent, lovely competent and loving woman, apart from that ironic inversion of emotion. What I see today in Aton is that half-share he po0>ssesses of the minionette, and I love him as much for that as for his human side - which is also excellent.' Again she paused. 'Yet I would love him regardless... '0>

'But he would not have married you, if she had lived,' Arlo carried. 'How can you-'

'It is no bad thing to be the second love,' she said. Arlo felt a tingle, remembering the very similar thing his father had said. These two, so different on the surface, had certain community of nature underneath, and were well matched. 'First love may be wild, inadvised, difficult; second love is based on experience. I regret only that the minionette had to die to make our marriage possible.'

'He would not marry you until his mother died? I will kill him!' Arlo cried, shaking with fury, yet knowing it was bravado. He had neither the power nor a real desire to kill his father; he had merely to express his support for Coquina. Actually, he was getting repetitive - but the idea of requiring one's mother to die to make way for one's wife had an unholy fix on his mind.

'You are quarter-minion,' she said. 'To kill one's father-that too, is the way of the minion. The men who live too long are killed by their sons, who are impatient to assume their conjugal duties.'

That stopped Arlo cold. All his recent furies and passions came into focus now: the minion blood in him craved sadistic love. No wonder his romance with Ex had been turbulent! He would have to change that.

'I hope there is more of Aurelius in me than of the minionette,' Arlo said. 'I would have liked to know that bold old man.'

'His brother Benjamin still lives. Doctor Bedeker still has occasional dealings with him. He is very like Aurelius.'

'Oh?' That was most interesting! 'Will I ever get to meet Benjamin?'

'You would have to leave the caverns, or he to enter them. Either is unlikely.'

True. Intriguing as it was, it was a dead end. Arlo returned to the primary matter: 'Still, you sould have been Aton's first choice, not his second.'

'No. It was an arranged marriage between us. First son of Eldest Five, Third Daughter of Eldest Four. Highly expedient, socially - but we had never met, and did not meet until after his liaison with the minionette. And of course he had known her since his childhood. She was his first - and I would have been satisfied to have been his hundredth, so long as I was his at last. After knowing her, he chose me - that is the greatest compliment of my existence.'

Coquina would not speak against the minionette! 'Who killed her?'

'Aton did.'

Once again, Arlo was stunned. 'He killed his wife - his mother? Why? How?'

'By loving her.'

Arlo sought out Ex, wanting to explain, to apologize. But she avoided him. Her golden tresses flew out behind her as she ran down the cavern passages. No doubt she thought he was going to hit her again. She feared no creature of the caverns since his pact with Chthon, but Arlo himself could hurt her.

'Wait! Wait! he called. But she would not listen.

He pursued her far beyond and garden, across the great river whose finned predators would have torn apart anyone else, and into the chill ice caverns. He seldom ventured there because the footing was treacherous, and he quickly became uncomfortably cold. But he could not relent until he made her listen.

Ex swung around a stalagmite. 'Whee!' she cried as the warmth of her hand melted its sheen of ice and eliminated her support. Her feet went out from under her and she took a graceful fall, unhurt. 'Whee!' she repeated, as she slid on down the winding river of ice on her bare bottom, feet and hands lifted, spinning slowly around.

Arlo flopped on his belly and followed. A thin layer of water flowed over the ice, making it frictionless. The heat of his run made the chill contact stimulating. Seeing Ex rotating blithely with elevated but attractively disposed limbs stimulated him another way. First he would explain: Then-

The ice river debouched into an ice lake. Hairy cavern ice- fowl fluttered out of sight as the two humans shot into the center. Broken ice stalactites littered the surface. Arlo swept them out of the way with hands and feet, and watched them skate in their fashion until they crashed tinkling against the vertical ice-slick rock of the shor