In time, every surviving member of the party was eating—by definition. Those who had been unable to surmount their scruples, starved.
Scruples were not for the Hard Trek.
During the fourth march the attacks began. Stragglers screamed and were found with their innards strewn. A clean-up crew was organized to salvage usable portions. But the main party was not approached, and the chimera remained unseen by any eyes not inside it.
For the fourth sleep Bossman found a use for their traitor. He bound Framy to a projection a little beyond the camping area. “Sing out if you see the chimera,” he advised. “Sleep if you want to.”
* * *
Aton listened.
“…I know I done wrong. I lied all the time. Aton, he was smart, he only lied when it counted. Must’ve figured we’d both get canned if they knew. I wonder who found that other chunk of blue? Somebody picked it up and smuggled it up the hole. But I guess I’m paying for all them little lies now. ’Cause I can’t make up for the real ones, they’re part of me. But I know I got to pay, and the only way I can do it is that way he showed me, by taking it out on something else, like Garnet did. I got to be punished for the lie I didn’t tell, and maybe that makes good the ones I did tell and can’t take back.
“Who’s that? I hear you, you can’t hide from me, I hear good.
“Don’t try to fool me. I hear the—the tread of your foot, and—and the bellow of your breath and the swish of your tail and…”
The choking screams brought the men running from the main group, to stand sickened at the sight of what remained. Blood dripped from empty sockets and from a mouth where a tongue had been and down between scratched legs.
Bossman studied the living body and hefted his ax. One blow severed the cords of the neck. “I made him feel a little easier,” he said, apologizing for his weakness.
Another man cut the corpse free from the projection. “Maybe that’s what separates the men from the chimera,” he said. “We kill before we take the delicacies.”
Do we? Aton wondered. Do we really?
* * *
Early in the sixth march they encountered the river, perhaps a hundred miles from their starting point. Narrow, but deep and swift, the clear water cut across the wind cavern, forming a small chasm of its own. It was the first flowing water they had seen in Chthon, and the sight was miraculous.
“The lots,” Bossman said. “If we can drink this—”
The collected garnets were produced and shuffled. Hastings handled the routine. He plunged both hands into the skin of stones and withdrew two closed fists while Bossman shaped the others into a rough line. Hastings put his fists under the nose of the first person, a dour woman. She slapped the left one; it opened to reveal an ordinary red garnet. She took it and flipped it disdainfully back into the cache and drifted away unchallenged.
Hastings returned the empty hand to the bag and brought it out again, closed. The next person in line selected the same fist: a second red garnet. He also left, relieved.
Aton was third in line. He chose the same hand—and the fatal blue fragment was his.
“One,” Bossman said. “Better take one more, to be sure.”
A woman stepped out of line and came up. It was Garnet. “I’ll do it,” she said. “Might as well move up my turn.” Bossman frowned, but let it stand.
The line disbanded. It would reform at the next crisis, with the man following Aton at the head, in fixed order, until every person in the party had drawn. After that it would begin again. The garnets were put away.
Bossman pointed to the stream. “Drink,” he said. “Good and deep. Fill your skins, too.” He spoke to the others. “Stay on the ’denser. We ain’t sure yet.”
The others needed no warning. The water could be poisonous, or there could be minute marine creatures deadly to living flesh. Or larger ones, waiting for the first unwary entry into the water. Chthon was never innocent.
Aton and Garnet drank. The water was not cold, but it tasted fresh and sweet compared to that extracted from the air. If the two of them lived, the others would know that this source was safe.
“If we traveled the river,” Hastings pointed out, “we might not need the ’denser at all. Or the skins.”
Bossman looked at him. “Which way do we go—up or down?”
Hastings spread his hands. “I see your point.”
“I don’t see it,” Aton’s friend with the black hair cut in. “We go upriver, we have water, and we’re heading for the top. What’s the matter with that?”
“We go upriver,” Hastings said calmly, “and we may find nothing but a layer of porous rock with the moisture percolating through and dripping down until it collects enough to make the river.”
“Follow it down, then,” she said with affected indifference.
“How fast do you think we’ll reach the surface if we travel down?”
She looked at him suspiciously. “You fat tub. We got to go one way or the other.”
“We follow the caverns,” Bossman said, cutting off the argument. “They go up, and the wind proves they go somewhere.”
The party, not as large as it once had been, forded the river carefully and moved on. The tunnels continued to rise and expand. The glow from the walls diminished, bringing shadow; the front and rear of the column were attacked more persistently by unseen predators. Aton and Garnet walked together near the center, a little apart from the others, who gave them leeway on either side. Their position was not coincidental: the water test would be invalid if they were to fall prey to the chimera instead. They were protected by their position, but until sufficient time elapsed, close association was not desired by the others. An illness spawned by the water would find these prisoners with very little natural defense.
“You don’t curse me much, any more, Garnet,” Aton remarked.
“There’s no point, Aton. I lost.”
“Why did you cover for me?” he asked, needling her.
She closed her eyes, navigating by the sound of massed footsteps, as everyone could do now. The question needed no answer, but she spoke to the intent behind it. “Because you are like him.” This was her first reference to her life before Chthon. “Not in appearance, but in your rocklike heart. Such men, such demons as you, there is no pity in you, only purpose.”
“And you loved him, and you killed him, because he wouldn’t love you,” Aton said. “And now you love me.”
“I tried to fight it. I knew what you were the first time I saw you.”
Oh, Malice, Malice, do you taunt me as I do this lonely woman? Why must I hurt her?
“Don’t you know that I will never be yours? I will never kiss you. I will never love you.”
“I know,” she said.
“Are you going to kill me, too?”
She marched on, unable to speak.
“Or yourself, this time?”
Revenge was bitter; he no longer cared for it. Garnet had been a pawn in his game, no more. She had alibied him from association with the blue garnet by agreeing that they had been making love at the critical time. It was a more pleasant memory than the truth: that he had raped her once and found her wanting. Now she shared the blame for Framy’s death, and knew it.
“There is no escape,” he said, talking as much to himself as to her. “I tried to break her hold, but she reached across the light-years to strike me down.” Why did he tell his secrets to this woman? he wondered. Had he really captured Garnet for revenge, or merely because he needed a foil, a property, even in Chthon? Did he understand any part of his own motives?
11
Two more marches brought them to really spacious caverns. The ceiling towered into a lofty gloom, and passages were a hundred feet across. The wind was no more than a fading whisper, and it was cool: distinctly disconcerting, in Chthon. There was a feeling, an expectation; the caverns could not continue much longer. The steady rise must already have brought them very near the surface.
The walls peeled back abruptly. They s
tood on the brink of the passage termination: an enormous chasm, so wide that the farther shore was lost in dark obscurity, so deep that toppling pebbles never returned the sound of their landing.
They gathered apprehensively, two hundred men and women milling at the brink. On either side the floor ended; there was no way around.
“Fire a torch,” Bossman snapped.
One of the rare brands was lighted, sputtering its yellow light with unfamiliar brilliance. Holding it aloft, Bossman stood at the edge and looked down.
“They ain’t supposed to burn that way,” someone muttered. “That’s too fierce.”
“How would you know?” another said. “Three years since you saw real light, ain’t it?”
The ceiling of the chasm became visible as the light flared up. It was nearer than Aton had thought, within fifty feet, a mass of depending porous formations like an undersea landscape, from which streamers of opaque vapor drifted down. There was something ominous about it. What vapor was heavier than air? But the far side was still out of sight, and the depths into which the mist descended were murky.
Bossman shouted, and the echo took ten seconds.
“There’s one way to find out how deep this thing is,” a man suggested.
Bossman smiled.
“No!” Hastings, exclaimed, jumping ponderously to stop him. But he was too late. Bossman had flung the torch into the gulf.
Hastings stared in horror. “That’s gas, you fool,” he said. “It’ll burn.”
Fascinated, the group watched the glowing stick go down. As it fell it grew brighter, illuminating the sharply slanting canyon wall beneath their feet. The brilliance was extraordinary; the light became a minor nova. Now it was reflected from below, from a whitish cloud filling the foot of the crevasse. The near wall was featureless.
The torch struck the nether cloud, and suddenly there was light, flashing silently, like sheet lightning, and then vanishing. Again the flash, revealing the splendor of Chthon in neon radiation.
Aton peered down, and saw the face of Malice, in the fire and the depth, flickering on and off, on and off, in a beckoning smile. “Kiss me,” the silent image said. “Here is the other side of the song.”
Strong hands pulled him back. “You don’t want to die that bad,” Garnet said.
At last the glowing failed, and the abyss was dark again.
“Not dense enough,” Hastings said, the cold sweat running off his body. “Praise Chthon you didn’t blow us all to hell. Can’t you see what this is?”
Bossman accepted the reprimand. “What is it?”
“The fire cycle,” Hastings said. Faces stared blankly at him. “Look, the vapor drops from the ceiling there, some kind of natural gas. It settles in a pool at the bottom. Probably there are many crevices and rifts that suck the mixture through to the flames. Miles of tubing, similar to what we have been traveling through, only much farther down. The while thing is a gigantic blowtorch (if you remember the primitive term), spewing fire and super-heated air out the other end, heating the caverns. As that air travels and expands, it cools, until it arrives back here and brushes those saturated formations above, picking up more fuel.”
“What do you know,” Bossman said in amazement.
This meant, Aton realized, that this was a closed cycle. Water vapor, oxygen, combustibles—all seeped through porous rock, allowing no physical exit. There could be no escape this way, even if they found a way to cross the main chasm. The draft went nowhere, and they were still trapped.
* * *
The party slept: men and women sprawled in all attitudes across the floor, gathering strength and courage for the march back to the river. In the “morning” those unable or unwilling to continue would be slaughtered and prepared; this was already routine, and no lots had been necessary so far for the performance of this ultimate service. Some few volunteers kept guard upwind, though in the overriding fatalism the chimera had lost much of its terror. If it came, the first scream would precipitate a savage chase—for the meat on its body.
Garnet did not sleep. She stood overlooking the sheer drop, silent and still. Her hefty body had slimmed with the lean marching. Soon it would be too slim—but right now she was a handsome figure.
Aton came up behind her. “I could push you over, now.” Would it never end?
“I guess the water’s safe,” she said.
“Turn around.”
Garnet turned with a sullen half-smile. Aton put a hand on her collarbone, fingers touching her neck, the heel of it just above and between her breasts. He exerted slow pressure. “Your body will tumble into that mist,” he said. “Over and over until it thuds against the bottom with no sound for human ears, and lies there, mistress to the rock and gas until it rots and sublimates into food for the sacrificial flame. A pyre for Garnet. You’ll like that, won’t you?”
“We both drank, and nothing happened. Must be good water.”
“Perhaps I will make love to you first,” he mused. “Then you would have to die. Everything I touch has to die.”
“Yes.”
He nudged her, but Garnet did not flinch. “It is deep behind you,” he said. “Deep as a well.
“I never knew quite how she traveled,” Aton continued, his hand sliding down to press against her breasts, but keeping her poised at the brink. “I left her on the asteroid, locked in the spotel, and I took the shuttle myself, so that she had either to remain or reveal her identity and location to outsiders. I went home, and then to Idyllia, but somehow she never left me… and I found her again on Hvee. She was in the forest with her song—the song she never finished. I knew then that I had to kill her.”
Garnet’s bare heels rested on the verge.
“But there was no cliff, no mountain, there near the farm. It had to be that special way, you see. I took her to the forest well, so narrow, so deep. Let the fall kill her as it killed my second love, as it broke the shell.”
He stepped close, bending his elbows, placing a hand on each of Garnet’s shoulders. “Because death made love an illusion. ‘Kiss me, Aton,’ she said, there on the mountain, there at the well. And then the song came up.” He shook her. “Say it.”
Garnet’s eyes were closed. “Kiss me, Aton.” Death was as close to her as his lips.
“The crime that budded in effigy had to blossom in reality. I touched her lips.” He kissed her, carefully. “And I hurled her—”
Garnet’s feet left the edge as Aton’s brutal strength lifted her out. She swung beyond the drop, and sank, and fell, and came to rest beside him, lying on the floor.
He stroked her hair. “And she said, ‘I knew you could not do it, Aton—not when it was real.’ And I could not. And love made death an illusion.”
He held her there, still and mute. “There is no song about you, Garnet,” he said. “But if I were to love you, the song would come, and you would perish, for only the minionette rules me.”
“The minionette,” Garnet whispered.
He held her, feeling her terror. “And my planet, my home, my Hvee world, it sold me to Chthon, because I loved her. Now I return.”
“We’ll all die, Aton.”
“I have no choice, you see,” he said, and kissed her again on face and breast and left her.
12
The Hard Trek, Aton thought, the Trek has taken us from the world of the rushing winds where we tarried so long in what we did not know was comfort. It has shown us the world of the furnace heart, where the generative gasses fling their essence into the wider system, as Earth herself flings hers, without abatement and without compassion, to flame briefly and flicker out and return at last, tired, only to be blasted forth again. And now it shows us the last of its mighty elements, the world of water.
He stood at the edge of the river, looking into it and dreaming. It had been spurned before; would it now, like a woman, show them its vengeance?
Miles below, downstream, the party had gathered and was resting while two men reconnoitered, one upstream,
the other downstream. Each would leave tokens behind, marking his trail; the rest would follow the one who did not return. This was logical: what man, finding freedom, would venture again into the caverns? What man would risk the loss of a hopeful path by turning back? Only defeat would make him welcome his fellows.
Thus Aton found himself alone, tracing the source, because his urge to escape was the strongest. He was armed, and he had a pack with rich red meat, and he had a vision. Bedside had come this way, perhaps, and Bedside had escaped. Somewhere there would be a sign.
The glow was brighter, here by the water. Aton stooped to dip his fingers in the clear liquid and touch the shining fringe at his feet. The surface of the path was smooth and a trifle slimy. His passing contact left patches of darker stone, as though he had crushed the vegetable beacons eating at the rock. The green luminescence came up through the water, casting its energies into his face with surrealistic beauty.
There was a narrow channel along one side of the stream, a kind of raised pathway about eighteen inches deep that clung to the upright wall. Aton followed it, since it was uncommonly convenient. The alternative was to wade waistdeep through the swift flow, trusting his naked feet to whatever lurked beneath.
He took the path, but did not trust it. Never yet had Chthon offered a gambit that was safe to accept. The walkway had to be used by something, and that thing was bound to be inimical. He moved quickly, not so much because time was short—though this might easily be the case, if the distance to the surface were far—as to confound any stalking creature behind him. Or surprise anything lurking ahead.
A mile passed, and more, but there was nothing. No vicious pit animal barred the way. No sudden precipice appeared. The patch continued, firm and level, and the water flowed beside it passively. At length the walls began to spread, allowing the river to slip over its marble banks to decorate a tumbling landscape. The path remained, winding steadily over and around rivers of stone, and occasional debris.
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