Thus Aton rationalized, now but not in the past—and found that even this was not enough. His imagination was fighting desperately to protect him from full realization. His mind had blanked the entire episode from memory as long as it could, and now gave ground unwillingly. He had to search out the evil, knowing it was there, knowing that he was not yet mature enough to face it.

The spotel episode had not been concluded. The two of them had to play it out, past and present, until the full reason for his torment lay exposed.

The secret was out: Aton was in love with his mother. Start with that, and go back. Relive it—if you can.

Back—as she had known he would, he reacted to the news with anguished indecision. The thing he had dreamed of could not be. Sweet as his emotion might be to her perception, brightening her lovely hair, it was a hollow luxury. He would go and never meet her again. He would spare her.

How little he understood the minionette!

Nude, as she remained after he had doffed the space suit, she beckoned him. “Aton,” she said. She was absolutely beautiful.

He came to her, as he always had, embarrassed for his thoughts as much as for the situation. It hurt him terribly to lose her, for she had lived—as a woman—in his fond imagination since the first forest encounter.

“Aton,” she repeated. “On Minion”—this, at the spotel, had been the first time he had heard the name of her home planet, and the name alone had stayed with him—“on Minion our culture is not like yours. I was wrong to go away with the outworlder, but I was young then and did not understand.” She took his hands in the familiar gesture. “Aton—on Minion the women live a long time, many times the life span of the men. The minionette outlives her first mate, if he is not soon executed, and then belongs to her closest of kin. By him she will bear another kin, and later yet another, from one generation to the next, until at last she is too old and has to birth a daughter. This is our way.”

Aton kneeled dumbly before her, his two hands prisoners to hers. What was she trying to tell him?

“Aton, you are half minion, and you are my kin.”

The horror of it began to force itself upon him, then. “You are my mother—”

“Yes. That is why this must be. That is the reason I came to you so early in the forest and gave you the melody and the hvee—so that you would know in your spirit what you could not know from your book. That you are minion, born to possess the minionette. You must do this, and your son after you, because it is in your culture and in your blood—your minion nature.”