Phthor

by Piers Anthony

  He had to smile at that. Jealousy in zombies?

  Then Torment smiled. The myxo flaked off, a very shallow layer. “Love me some more, Chthon!” she cried. “I am in ecstasy!”

  And abruptly the myxo siege halted.

  Arlo stared. The minionette had fought off Chthon!

  Torment opened her eyes. She spat out a lump of yellowish pus. “We believed we would be effective against the cavern entity because of our nature. Obviously it used telepathy, and we—” she shrugged. “This is the reason Life’s army has been largely recruited from Planet Minion. It is good to have this confirmation. It would be sad to destroy so loving a sentience.”

  “You must not!” Arlo cried.

  “It is either us or it,” She said. “We are of the living, it is of the dead—and Ragnarok is at hand. All living sentients support our effort, human and nonhuman alike. The Xests and Lfa and—”

  “Not Hvee!” Arlo cried. “Not the Family of Five!”

  “Your granduncle Benjamin commands this task force,” she said. “And your brother Morning Haze pilots our ship.”

  “I have no brother!”

  “You have more than you know’ she said. She paused momentarily. “Actually, I misremember. A Xest is the Pilot; Morning Haze commands the backup troops.”

  Her very mismemory argued strongly for her sincerity—yet she was speaking nonsense!

  “Please return to me my weapons,” she said.

  Numbly, Arlo handed back her sword and knife. Again parts of his dream haunted him, for it had involved Benjamin and Morning Haze. Had it really been a dream, or was it in fact a vision? Could Torment have read his mind and fed his fancies back to him as supposed facts? Yet this vision had indicated that Ragnarok was long over, and that Chthon had been victorious. If it were false, she should hardly have advertised it; if it reflected truth, why should he be concerned?

  “Keep the blowgun,” she said. “You may need it.”

  “Blowgun?” He looked at the tube.

  “You blow hard in this end. The dart shoots out to strike the target. Careful—it’s poisoned.”

  “Poisoned?” Events had dazed him.

  “Pseudo-curare. Will stun a creature your size in seconds, kill in minutes if not antidoted. Here—You’ll want some more darts, and here is the nullifying agent.” She brought out several more and pressed them into his head, along with a little cube. “Oh—you don’t have anywhere to carry them, do you!”

  “In my mouth,” he said.

  She laughed musically. “What a delicious thought! You’ll carry them right to heaven that way! In approximately five seconds. Your saliva would dissolve the protective coating on the tips, releasing the poison.”

  “In my hand, then.” His brow wrinkled. “With this—you could have killed me.”

  “None of us would kill you, cave boy,” Torment said. “You are our ace in the hole.”

  “What?”

  “Archaic slang. These verbalisms continue so long as they are useful. Look it up in LOE.”

  Arlo realized that this beautiful woman was not only stronger than he, she was smarter. He turned to go.

  A dozen other minionettes blocked the passage behind him. Each was exactly like Torment: firm, round legs made alluring by the shadows of the short skirts, projecting breasts, fire-smoke hair, lovely, even facial features. It was as though copies had been made. He could not have told any of them from Torment, had he met them alone.

  They parted to let him through, smiling as they picked up his dismay. Disconcerted, Arlo left.

  • • •

  Near his home region, Arlo spied a young chipper about his own size. On a sudden notion he raised the blowgun, took a breath, aimed and blew. There was a satisfying release of pressure, a swish, and the dart was sticking in the furry back of the animal.

  The chipper turned to him, surprised at the slight pain of the dart. Then it fell over.

  Arlo went to it. “Hey, chip—I didn’t mean to hurt you,” he said. “Get up.”

  But the animal was dying.

  Arlo looked at the blowgun, then at the darts. He shuddered. He contemplated the little curative cube, wondering how it worked. It had nothing but a button on one side. Finally he set the cube against the flank of the animal and pushed down the stud.

  There was a ping! from the cube, and it jerked slightly in his hand. Arlo dropped it. But nothing happened, and after a moment he picked it up again.

  The chipper revived. It raised its head, then hauled itself to its feet. Evidently the cube had done its job; the victim would live.

  Arlo inserted a new dart in the tube and went on.

  A stranger sat in the garden: small, short-haired, feminine.

  “Don’t you recognize me Arlo?” she demanded, rising.

  The voice! “Ex!” But she looked so changed! Without her flying golden tresses, her head seemed small, her neck long. Her breasts were suddenly much lower and larger, more like those of the minionette. In fact—

  “Bedside did it,” she said. “He snuck up on me while I was asleep and—”

  “You weren’t asleep!” Arlo cried. “You let him. You threatened to do something to make me sorry, if I went—”

  “All right. I let him. Bedside can’t hurt me, not while you have the pact with Chthon—but he surely doesn’t like me. He thought you’d kick me out if I weren’t so pretty, but I know better. So I accepted his gambit, and—”

  “You—you’re a minionette!” Arlo whispered, seeing the flame and smoke in the ragged stump of her hair, the dawning perfection of her torso, the comeliness of her features. Not a perfect minionette, but a close approximation. Had he not spoken so recently to Torment, seen her identical sisters, and had the vision-dream, he would not have been attuned, not recognized it in Ex. But the traces were unmistakable now that the distraction of the golden hair was gone.

  “Yes, she is a minionette,” a man’s voice said. It was Doc Bedside. “Her name is not Ex, but Vex. They have this intriguing code of nomenclature—but surely you know of that, being the child of Malice. Now what do you think of her, Arlo?”

  Suddenly a mystery was resolved. No wonder Ex had been so perverse, especially at the point of love. Her emotions were reversed! It had not been his latent sadism, but her masochism that brought out the worst in him. She had had to make him hate her, at least temporarily, so that she could love him. Every act of irritation had been her courtship.

  Angered by the man’s assumption, Arlo reacted oppositely. “I think I want to possess her.” And he took her in his arms, his member rising. Let Bedside watch; let the old, mad zombie, murderer of Aesir, suffer open defeat! Arlo had not been repelled by his experience with the warrior minionette Torment, but rather intrigued—and he had his own minionette. So, with mixed lust and ire, he took her down—and she cooperated, chuckling. She didn’t like Bedside either, and in this manner she won her wager.

  “She is twice her apparent age,” Bedside said, unruffled. “She looks twelve—or did, before she bloomed for you. But chronologically she is twenty six—a generous ten years your senior.”

  At the point of entry, Arlo stopped. “You lie,” he muttered. “Ask her.” And now Bedside chuckled. “The minionette cannot lie to her beloved.”

  “It is true,” Ex/Vex admitted. “I was birthed in §400. But it doesn’t make any difference. See, the hvee still glows.”

  “§400!” Arlo cried, his member dwindling.

  “It is the minionette way,” Vex said. “Until we have a man, we remain young. A widowed minionette even regresses somewhat: first her hair fades, then her form diminishes. We are creatures of love, Arlo. Until I loved you, I was a child; and my development is just one of the proofs of my love, along with your blue hvee. Soon I shall be fully beautiful—and it is all for you, my lover, my beloved, my husband, my all.” She shot a momentary snarl at Bedside. “Ask him!”

  “True,” Bedside said, accommodating smoothly to this new aspect of debate. Arlo realized the man
was keeping his hate controlled, to not give Vex any pleasure in it. “The minionette loves only her lover truly, until she bears a son. Then she discards him for that son.”

  “But not before he wishes,” Vex fired back. “While the father lives, the father has priority.”

  “Exactly,” Bedside said. Vex’s eyes went staring for a moment, and her body tensed. Arlo realized that the doctor had in some clever, subtle way scored heavily.

  Still clasping her exciting body, still halfway at the point, Arlo understood that he had become a pawn in the battle between Chthon and the minionettes. The invaders wanted his help, so they had sent in an advance scout to convert him. Chthon had known this and had sought to eliminate her at the outset. Now the fight was verbal, informational, but just as vicious.

  Still, the hvee showed Vex’s love was true, and he did not object to her being a minionette. Even her age became irrelevant: she had bloomed for him. And he still could spite Bedside by completing his act of love in the man’s presence. In fact, it would be best that way, for Bedside’s hate and frustration would cancel out Arlo’s love and keep Vex sweet. His member stiffened again. Oh yes, he knew why she was cooperating so nicely, and he was glad of it! She even felt his background anger at the situation, that it should have to be this way, and enjoyed that too. What a complex of adversities, combining to build a positive structure!

  Her legs spread wider, and she wriggled to accommodate him.

  “I’m glad you know,” she whispered. Now we can really do it. Love

  me!”

  Viciously he thrust, trying to make her hurt.

  “She called you her lover, her beloved, her husband, her all,” Bedside remarked. “But she omitted something. She should have added—”

  “Shut up!” Vex screeched, pulling Arlo’s face down to her.

  “Kin.”

  “Don’t listen to him!” Vex whispered fiercely in Arlo’s ear. She half-smothered him with frantic kisses.

  “Don’t worry,” Arlo reassured her. “Nothing he can say can—”

  “She is also your sister,” Bedside continued imperturbably.

  “She—!” Arlo froze in mid-stroke, shocked. The ban against brother-sister relations pervaded LOE.

  “Damn!” Vex murmured as she smiled beatifically and moved to take him in. “You feel so new and wonderful.”

  Suddenly his confusion resolved. “All minionettes are sisters,” he said. “It is a convention between them. I am quarter-minion, so in that sense—”

  “Ooo, you hurt!” Vex protested, reacting to his resolution of conflict. She tried to withdraw, but he held her tight.

  “Via the human connection, no figure of speech,” Bedside said.

  Intellectual dialogue was difficult in the present circumstance. “I have no sister!” Arlo snapped, and felt Vex soften and warm, inside and out, as his ire manifested. Yet what had the Norns said? This hardening rod...” Only a brother—and he’s dead.”

  “More precisely, half-sister,” Bedside continued. “The truth is, Aton Five has three living children by three separate women.”

  “He is loyal to Coquina!” Arlo flared. What oddities of dialogue had he gotten into, amidst this attempted act of love? “I know all about it. Malice is dead.”

  “You are the youngest, birthed in §410,” Bedside said. “By the minionette Misery he conceived Morning Haze, birthed in §402 on Planet Minion, heir to the Eldest Five fortune. At such time as his status is acknowledged—which may be never, for he is a bastard, a crossbreed of two cultures, both of which disapprove bastardy.” Bedside scowled, thinking of Benjamin, his abiding enemy. “But do not be concerned: it was but a momentary dalliance.”

  “So maybe I do have a half-brother,” Arlo said, for this coincided with his vision and therefore became believable. “He is illegitimate. I am the named heir to Eldest Five; I bear the A designation.”

  “But you are legally dead, as is your father. Aton died in §400, in eyes of Galactic Law. The dead do not inherit.”

  “Neither do they conceive bastards,” Arlo muttered. But he found he did not care for this technicality. “Then let Morning Haze inherit! He is a good man, kind to his minionette. I have things to occupy me here.” And he resumed operations with willing Vex.

  “By his mother /lover, the minionette Malice, Aton conceived his firstborn, birthed while he was in prison in §400,” Bedside continued. “This one was legitimate.” He held up a hand to forestall Arlo’s outburst. “Stay your wrath—Aton did not know of this child either. Malice had no real chance to inform him before he killed her. But the infant was returned to Planet Minion by your granduncle Benjamin, to protect the name of Five, and I have blackmailed him since. He is the very model of discretion; never once has he spoken of this matter to any outsider, and he never will. But there are no secrets from Chthon. Now, If you do not behave, I shall inform Aton.”

  “He will never credit such lies!” Arlo said.

  “Is it a lie? Ask Vex whose child she is, then.”

  Arlo, his attention split between the bitter dialogue and the most stimulating physical interaction with the girl, had not made the obvious connection before. “Not—?” he demanded with dawning horror.

  “I am the child of Aton and Malice,” Vex said. “I am daughter and granddaughter to that minionette.”

  Stunned, Arlo tried to reject it. “The minionettes bear only boys!”

  “Not so, else their line would perish,” Bedside said. “When a minionette is old, or sees herself near death, she births a girl. Malice knew she would die when Aton came to her again, for he lacked the discipline of a native minion. So—”

  “Impossible! A woman can’t control—” Arlo said.

  “A minionette can,” Vex said. “Her body can choose between the male and female seed of her lover, accepting only the appropriate type. Soon I shall conceive a son by you, unless death approaches me. Then I would give you a girl to replace me.”

  “Electra!” Arlo said recognizing another concept from LOE. Then: “My sister!” Actually, Chthon would not let her conceive, but that hardly changed the picture.

  “Isn’t it beautiful?” Vex asked. “The mad doctor thought the truth would drive you away from me, like the cutting of my hair, and I feared it too, but our love remains true. Doesn’t it?” And she made a flexing motion inside that brought Arlo to an unwilling, guilty, but powerful climax.

  “My sister!” he gasped, horrified by the reality of Minion’s system and the prediction of the Norns. In that moment he hated Vex—yet he loved her, too. He knew he would be unable to resist her blandishments in future—for however angry he became, her love would always match it. And the guilt of the association carried its own spur; forbidden fruit was attractive. He was quarter-minion, she three quarters, and the trap had sprung.

  Now at last he understood what had motivated his father to such acts of desperation and incest.

  • • •

  The war proceeded. Day by day the minionettes advanced along the passages spreading out from their base at the old prison. Resistive to the myxo and ever more sophisticated about the assorted menaces of the caverns, they routed out the underworld creatures Chthon sent against them. One specimen of each was sent to the surface of the planet for study.

  “I don’t think I like this,” Arlo said to Vex as they relaxed in the garden. “Those animals are innocent; they should not be wiped out.”

  “Caterpillars? Potwhales? Dragons? Chimeras?” she retorted derisively. “Innocent? What about that wolf thing that laid me open?” She paused, reflecting. “Actually, that was sort of fun. You know, we minionettes are almost unkillable by normal means, but that thing—I’d like to meet it again.”

  Arlo remembered the massive malevolence of the wolf. “You have a death wish,” he said. “Bitch or bride, I don’t want you dead. I’ll help the Amazons track it down and kill it.”

  “As you wish,” she said diffidently.

  He reached for her, but she avoided him
, responsive to his positive emotion. “Remember, I’m your sister!” she reminded him teasingly. “Your culture says you shall not raise your penis to me.”

  “Hell with the culture, sister!” he cried, grabbing for her leg.

  “Sister!” It was Aton’s voice.

  Aton and Doc Bedside stood at the entrance to this bright inlet, blinking in the daylight illumination of the high gas jets. Arlo had never expected such a visitation—but of course Bedside could guide Aton in safely, if it were Chthon’s will. There was about to be another facet of the Chthon/minionette struggle.

  “As I informed you,” Bedside said to Aton. “Your daughter—by your mother.”

  Aton stared—and Vex stood up straight, smoothing her flanks, inhaling. Her figure had filled out completely now, and except for her short hair and certain human touches, she was every inch a minionette. Even the hair showed it, for it formed a crown of rolling flame.

  “My daughter...” Aton said, his eyes fixed on Vex. “So like Malice...”

  Arlo stood still, watching it unfold. What was his father going to do? Kill the minionette? Arlo could not allow that. Obviously, Bedside had done it to get rid of Vex. The revelation of her relation to Arlo had not eliminated her, so now the battle had been widened to include Aton, who had killed Vex’s mother. By loving her.

  “An abomination!” Aton said. “That she should come here to tempt my son—”

  Arlo raised his blowgun, uncertain whether he had the courage to use it against his father. But Vex took more direct action. She walked across the path into Aton’s arms. “Father!” she said passionately.

  Arlo saw his father’s hands clench as though to crush her. Again he raised the blowgun. But he remembered how very difficult the minionette was to kill. Barehanded, Aton could not do it. The stronger his hate, the less chance he stood.

  Then Aton kissed his daughter. Vex kissed him back. By appearance alone, they were an ideal couple, and Arlo knew in that moment how Aton had been with Malice. This was as close a duplication as possible.

  Doc Bedside appeared at Arlo’s side. “You realize, of course, where this will lead,” he said.