The hvee had known. It had not been with him during his madness. It had loved what he once was; but when, after Chthon, it touched his macabre hand...

“This is the reason,” Bedside said, “that you will return to Chthon. There you will be safe—from your fellow man, since you are an outlaw, and from yourself. Chthon will support your sanity more perfectly than you can ever do yourself. Chthon will be your god, and you and I will be brothers—forever secure, forever free.”

It was tempting. Aton saw that his entire adult life had been a destructive nightmare of passion and pain, contaminating everything it touched. The minionette had been part of it, naturally and knowingly. But Coquina—it would be kindest for her if he had the same courage of the minionette before him, and simply stepped out of her life. She would be better off with her own kind. The love he bore her could achieve its finest expression in deprivation.

But the minionette had died to give him human semblance. She had known him well, known of his link with Chthon, and had cried out against it. Malice and Coquina minionette and human, his first and second loves—these two had come together not as rivals but as sincere collaborators for his benefit. They had agreed that he had a chance, and both had staked their lives upon it. Could he betray them now?

Perhaps both were mistaken—but they believed in his recovery, and he owed it to both to make the ultimate effort, to resist the easy way. He could not abolish his crimes by running away from life. He had to live, to atone, to make some effort to balance the scales. He had to face what he was and what he had done—and search for a way to make amends. This, perhaps, was the real battle he had come to participate in: that against the capitulation rendered so attractive by Doc Bedside.

“No,” Aton said.

Bedside’s aspect changed. “I will show you what you are,” he said, his voice sharp, his mouth gaping, teeth exposed like those of the cavern salamander. “You rationalize, you delude yourself with hopes of future goodness. But your true wish is still to kill yourself, because you know you are the partner in a crime against your culture. You tried to blame the minionette, but you are the one that forced the act. Yes, you know what I mean, minion.”

Aton’s attitude was changed subtly as he listened. It was coming now, and he could neither stop it nor tolerate it. Bedside’s blade was on guard. Aton’s space training had prepared him for action against a knife—but not one wielded by the hand of a mad surgeon. Normal reflexes would not be sufficient.