Phthor by Piers Anthony Page A

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 life. There is 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? What had brought Anton, by his own statement, to madness? How did the minionette relate to this? And why had Chthon wanted Anton 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.