Phthor

by Piers Anthony

  “Except at Ragnarok,” Morning Haze murmured.

  “Ah, yes. Chthon...”

  “Nevertheless, it does seem to have a tonic effect,” the minion added. “You are moving more spryly than hitherto.”

  “Yes! By such expression of hostilities I might extend my life indefinitely, were it not to end well within the hour regardless.”

  “This one would like to comprehend,” the Xest signaled. “This concept of inevitable destruction—it relates to our mutual destiny.” The cube before it was melting.

  “Since this is proper occasion for the exposition of the unfortunate,” the minion said, “I shall explain about Ragnarok while my friend beats my mother.”

  Parent?” the Xest inquired. “One had supposed she was your mate, such as one comprehends the term.”

  “She is. Mate and mother—and, for many fortunate minions grandmother and on up the ancestral line. In the normal course she would also be my daughter-in-law, mate to my son, and so on down the line. After my demise, of course. This is the way it is on my planet.”

  “Then you reproduce by fission!” the Xest signaled, as it were a great light dawning. “Your individuality continues from generation to generation, as does ours.”

  “Congratulations,” Benjamin gasped, made breathless by his rather ineffective exertions with the whip. “Man of Minion, you have at last made clear the riddle of the centuries: the Nature of Human Reproduction.” He chuckled, bringing up morsel of spittle. “Fission!”

  The Xest paused, contemplating its dissolving cube. “But why, then your two aspects?”

  “Two sexes,” Morning Haze said patiently.

  “Two species?”

  “Two variations, male and female. Both unite to form a new individual.”

  “Yes,” the Xest agreed, understanding anew. “As do the EeoO! Yet your female aspect is continuous, parent, mate, offspring. This is fission, as well as fusion.”

  “Marvelously well stated,” Benjamin said.

  The minion shook his head. “Surely the sexed species have been over this ground with your sexless species many times! Perhaps it would help if you explained your own system of reproduction—and how the Taphid relates to it.”

  “Gladly. We fission involuntarily, as when an appendage is accidentally severed. It regenerates a new Xest. So there are two where there was one. Since we are overpopulated, a debt to society is incurred. We do not enjoy debt. So we employ the Taphid.”

  Benjamin was getting the hang of the whip, despite his debilitation and advancing state of intoxication. Strips of cloth were falling from the minionette, bringing her splendid body into view. Her hair was turning red, as though a flame were playing in it.

  “It is hard to believe you are over eighty years old!” Benjamin murmured.

  “I am older than you,” Misery said. “I birthed three sons before Pink Rock. He broke the chain by turning awful before I could conceive by him, and my tribe had to terminate him for his carelessness. Thus I was widowed. Had Stone Heart not come at that time—”

  “Amazing!” Benjamin gasped. “Your face, your breast—a human girl in your condition would be a full century your junior.”

  “Do not neglect the whip,” she reminded him.

  “Sorry.” He cracked her again, exposing a bit more of that torso he so admired. “What a crime I am committing—sadist and voyeur! And I too far gone to utilize any of her, were it permitted.”

  “In our experience,” Morning Haze said meanwhile to the Xest, “the Taphid only consumes. Plastic, flesh, wood—anything remotely edible. What is the specific use you make of it?”

  “The same,” the Xest replied. “The Taphid is the most efficient consumer we have located—better than anything native to our planets. Therefore it is in great demand and accounts for the majority of our trade with other galactic species.” It examined the cube again, passing one leg over it. “The grubs will emerge soon.”

  “Do not tax yourself unduly, sir,” the minion said to Benjamin. “We do want you with us at the finale.”

  “Perhaps that is best,” the old man agreed, turning over the whip. “This is marvelously restorative, but there are limits. Most of my pacers are now in their warning zones.”

  Morning Haze lifted the whip and efficiently cracked off the remnants of the minionette’s clothing. She had a breathtakingly (in a convenience of speaking, for the Xest did not breathe) voluptuous figure: neither slender nor exaggerated, but crafted as though by a master artisan to represent the feminine ideal.

  Benjamin watched, sipping more wine. “I begin to understand why my brother took up with Malice,” he said. “had I been subjected to such temptation, I would not have remained celibate. Yea, even though I knew the doom that awaits those who become enamored of her kind!”

  “The doom that awaits all minions,” Morning Haze said. “Except this one, for a reason uniquely galactic. Now let me see—how can I climax her in the most humiliating manner?”

  “That requires no intense concentration,” Benjamin said. “Remember my nephew.”

  “How could I forget? I am your nephew.”

  Benjamin sighed. “Ah, it is indeed the time of the unveiling of ancient secrets! But yes, let the record be acknowledged before the end! You are my kin, and the heir to the fortune of Eldest Five.”

  The minionette moaned.

  Benjamin smiled. “See how our gladness hurts her! Are we not sadistic?”

  “If one may inquire,” the Xest signaled. “In what manner may the two of you be related? One becomes confused again.”

  “Humans have foolish pride,” Benjamin explained. “When we transgress our social bylaws, we attempt to conceal it, thinking to protect the reputation of our families. Disloyalty to our legal mates is one such transgression.”

  Morning Haze looked across. “The minionette never transgresses,” he said. “She is always loyal to her inherent mate, of whatever generation. Even the whipping you gave her, she tolerated only at my directive, and only in my presence.”

  “True, nephew, true! Though I wonder at times what would happen if one of them thought her natural mate dead, so took another—than discovered her natural one alive after all. How would she resolve such inadvertent transgression?”

  “The most natural mate is always preemptive. The intruder would have to step aside.”

  “Even if he were legally, galactically married to her, or shared a blood relation?”

  “In such a case, the two mates would have to meet in mortal combat—”

  “But normal humans are not always so strong. My nephew Aton, betrothed or married in his fashion to Malice, sought information by visiting Planet Minion in §401. There he tarried with a recently widowed native girl—”

  “Stone Heart!” Misery cried, smiling brilliantly.

  “Perhaps that is what he termed himself.,” Benjamin agreed. “And so he impregnated you, Misery, and departed the planet. In due course you birthed Morning Haze, who matured to become your husband. And so he is my grandnephew, and his quarter-human blood is the blood of the great Family of Five. This is the secret reason I sought him out, and facilitated his entry into the galactic culture. Though I violated our law in the doing of it. I have not been disappointed!”

  “How fortunate your nephew Aton was able to impregnate her so readily,” the Xest signaled, though obviously it was using a term it was still vague about, and hardly agreed with the “fortune’ of such ready replication.

  “No fortune,” Misery said. “We conceive when love is strongest. Stone Heart’s love was more powerful than any I have known.”

  “Even than mine?” Morning Haze inquired wryly. “remember, I am kin to you, as my father was not.”

  “He had supreme emotion,” she insisted. “He very nearly killed me with the violence of his passion. If only he had stayed—”

  Morning Haze struck her in the face with his fist. “I would have killed him, to possess you, bitch that you are!”

  “Ah, now you
almost approach his love,” she murmured, pleased.

  Benjamin turned to the Xest. “So your kind has a problem of surplus goods?”

  “No. Our problem is a chronic brevity of resources.”

  “But then why the Taphid, this efficient consumer?”

  “You must understand our debt system. Each entity must maintain a favorable balance, returning as much or more to the species as one consumes. If one fissions recklessly, one multiplies one’s debt.”

  “Even when fission is involuntary? The leg-regenerating-the-individual sort of thing?”

  “Correct. Such accidents are disastrous. We cannot permit promiscuous multiplication of entities, whatever the pretext. Therefore, the Taphid.”

  Benjamin shook his head. “I am inebriated and my reasoning powers are minimal. Somehow it seems that the efficient consumption activity of the Taphid would only aggravate your problem.”

  “Not so. It’s essential that fission-control be practiced.”

  Benjamin shook his head. “No doubt all will come clear in due course.”

  “Your own situation,” the Xest asked politely. “How did you come by it? You seem to be well on the way to complete cancellation of debt.”

  Benjamin stared into his drink. Most of the indicators on his pacers had reverted to near normal, but he was obviously not in ideal condition. “The situation is galactic. My own part in it originated with my brother Aurelius, who bore a son by a minionette, as we have already noted.” He glanced up. “We did note it? My ancient brain fogs—”

  “It is understood,” the Xest said diplomatically.

  “When that son Aton took up with his mother—this is referred to as the Oedipus complex in our annals, as contrasted with the Electra complex in which a girl takes up with her father—he was in due course discovered and sent to the terminal prison Chthon. He escaped, but in the process discovered the cavern entity Chthon, a mineral intelligence, which maintained an abiding antipathy to all living things. It became apparent that this chthonic entity intended to eliminate all life in the galaxy. To prevent this, we mounted a preemptive attack against Chthon, using our base on the surface of Chthon-Planet, called Idyllia. Fitting symbolism, that: Heaven above, Hell below, both warmed by the same fiery winds. As though there is no concrete distinction between the two...but I drift. I—where was I?”

  “Preemptive attack,” Morning Haze called.

  “Thank you, nephew. I found myself there in the front ranks, as it were. At least, I was on the surface of that planet because I was considered to have the best chance to reach my nephew Aton and convert him to our side. And because the distant Earth-government did not take the threat seriously enough, I had to act myself. I believed I succeeded, or would have—but I found myself enmeshed in mortal combat with the insane Dr Bedeker.”

  “Surely there was more than that!” Morning Haze objected. He had tired of whipping Misery, and now was banging her face against the wall, using her luxuriant hair as a handhold. She looked more beautiful than ever, and her happiness seemed to radiate from her. Benjamin, drunk as he was, found this masochism fascinating; never had such loveliness been so brutally treated!

  “Of course there was more; I did not realize it was of interest.” He glanced at the Xest as he signaled, and saw the grubs emerging from the thaw. Quickly he returned his gaze to the nude woman, noting how her breasts moved up and down as her head was forced back. She offered no resistance to any of this.

  “My nephew Aton, half-minion, killed his mother, then took up with his arranged bride, a daughter of Four named Coquina. Coquina the shell. A lovely girl—lovely.” But it was Misery the minionette he saw, not the Hvee girl. “However, she came down with the chill, and he had to take her to Chthon caverns, where controlled environment could preserve her life.” He paused again. “There must have been more to it that that. They tried heated chambers before, during earlier chill sieges, and that didn’t work. I—now wait, I can find my own place this time! I—I was present when Dr Bedeker made the contract. “ I will pray to your god,” Aton said, “If only she lives.” And they took Coquina away.”

  Benjamin closed his eye. “There was nothing I could do. But I had seen my nephew—a man of incalculable potential and unbreakable will, who could stand up to the chthonic power itself—I had seen him broken. Bedeker had won. In that awful victory he made me his enemy, and I swore to myself that I would kill him. But I had no way to reach him—and even if I could, Aton and Coquina were hostage. And so my hate for the destroyer of the great Family of Five consumed me, from that moment in §403 until the war of §426.

  “Yet it was my enemy Bedeker who kept me informed, for he alone had free access to Chthon. I never betrayed him to the authorities, for then I would have lost all contact with my nephew and his wife. I learned that Aton had two sons, Aesir and Arlo; the first died young and the second lived to about fifteen, when Ragnarok came and all life on and in that planet was exterminated. I, virtually alone escaped. If you could call it escape.”

  Benjamin paused for yet another drink. “This is not as much fun as I had hoped,” he said, setting the first glass down. “I can’t get high enough to forget what I remember! Well, all that was thirty-four years ago. I was seventy-four at the time, Bedeker perhaps a decade younger. It was a phantasmagoric battle, there at the fringe of the nether caverns; there were monsters like none known to man. But I knew somehow that if I killed Bedeker, nothing else would touch me.

  “Well, I killed him. But in his expiration he wounded me, and infected me with some chthonic malady, a botulism-type infection or something remotely akin to it, not quite familiar to our medical science. It ravaged my nervous system and God knows what else. You see me now! Oh, I had very the best medical care—but after all, Chthon had won, and all they could do was extend my life artificially. It has not been a pleasure—and now I am glad to let it go.”

  “Forgive my insistence,” Morning Haze said as he labored over a reverse lock on one of Misery’s elbows. Such pressure should have broken a normal woman’s arm, but had no apparent effect on her. “But I feel that there is yet more to this matter, and I am of a mind to plumb all secrets. There was an emotional intensification when you spoke of Aton’s sons. I lack the sensitivity my wife has, yet—”

  “Yes,” the minionette agreed. “He has not yet expressed his full love. It is very deep and large, yet from a small avenue, like a great lake filling a caldera, fed by a tiny stream.”

  Benjamin chuckled ruefully. “By “Love” you mean “hate.” Yes. Very fetching imagery, that stream-fed caldera, suggestive as it is of some prior volcanic eruption. It is the time of deepest confession. Yes, Bedeker told me of Aton’s two sons. The first was Aesir, named after Norse mythology. The Aesir were the gods of—but that is irrelevant. By the mad doctor’s account, Aesir was a thoroughly charming lad. I believe Bedeker spoke truly, for he delighted in tormenting me, and he knew the truth was the most cutting weapon of all. How I hated him!

  “He told me how Aesir, a bright, friendly boy even as a toddler, captivated the entire caverns. He was, if I may use the expression, favored of Chthon. No creature would hurt him—not even the demonic salamander, whose venom meant certain and almost instant death. Hitherto only Bedeker had possessed immunity from cavern danger, thanks to his affiliation with the cavern sentience of Chthon. Apart from what he termed the zombies, that is; I believe those were mindless women. I never grasped their purpose in that scheme. At any rate, Bedeker was insanely jealous—no pun! And resolved to eliminate the child. Oh, yes—he told me this and I believed him. I still believe...

  “He could not kill Aesir directly because the lad was Chthon’s chosen tool, destined to do what Bedeker could not. Because, unlike Bedeker, Aesir was wholly sane. The only sane, intelligent entity able to communicate directly with Chthon, to do the cavern entity’s will willingly. Bedeker was completely dependent on the mineral entity; had he antagonized Chthon directly, he would have died. So he schemed...

 
“I don’t know how he arranged it, deceiving Chthon as well as the lad’s parents—but Bedeker did kill Aesir. All others thought it was an accident. Me he told, for he had to brag to someone. I alone knew the dreadful secret—as much as anyone but Bedeker himself knew. I alone had motive for revenge. But I, too, was limited.

  “And so I bound him to his deep cave. I used certain connections I had to put a galactic intercept on all his available assets. He could not make any purchase, draw any credit, without immediate alert and arrest. That meant his coded spaceship was useless. In fact, he was effectively barred from space.”

  Benjamin smiled, and the minionette smiled with him. “Bedeker was, as he termed it, half-mad—but the sane, or shall we say human portion of him, longed for galactic society. He used to travel to Earth just to browse around the planetary library or gaze upon the ancient oceans. He was an educated man, a scholar in his fashion. He understood artistic things; perhaps one has to be made to have that ability! I deprived him of all that. Only with my collaboration could he emerge from his caverns, and only where and when specified. Then he had to bring the beautiful handcrafted bracelets and rings my nephew crafted, accepting in trade my gifts to Aton and Coquina. He was my messenger boy, my servant! And so I was avenged for Aesir, though I never knew the boy directly.”

  “Beautiful!” Misery said. “Such love...”

  The minion looked up from his project. He was trying to blind the minionette by poking out her eyeballs with his fingers, but she seemed invulnerable. “So that was the true manner of our meeting! I had supposed you were merely recruiting competent personal for the campaign against the mineral entity—”

  “I was, I was!” Benjamin agreed.