want to kill her?” Arlo asked. Aton had suggested a reason, but now the notion of sacrificing a living human being merely to prevent her from being a companion seemed less credible. Surely there were less strenuous ways!
“Chthon’s ways are inscrutable. But you have made your bargain; Chthon will honor it. No creature of the caverns will harm her so long as you and Chthon are one.”
“What does Chthon want with me?” Arlo cried.
Bedside studied him in his disquieting fashion. “I am mad. By that I mean I do not conform to the norms of your society, though I can approximate them when necessary. Your father is half-mad. You are sane. You are Chthon’s chosen. Your destiny is huge.”
“Chosen for what?”
But Bedside only smiled.
Ex recovered. It was amazingly rapid, considering the severity of her injury, but it did take time. Arlo brought her food that Coquina made: glow-bread, fermented vine sap, dried chipper meat. He carried her regularly jo a narrow, deep crack above flowing water so that she could defecate cleanly. He supported her as she practiced walking. And he talked with her.
Arlo told her all about the caverns: the rivers, the potwhales, the ice tunnels, the caterpillars, the forests, the chimera, and Chthon. He told her how his father mined gold and precious garnets and other stones to make beautiful rings that Doc Bedside took outside to trade for civilized goods: clothing, tools, books.
She in turn told him of the great outside world. How the wonderful § spaceships traveled from Earth all over the human sector of the galaxy and even traded with sentient” alien species: the Xests, Lfa and EeoO. (She had to pronounce those strange names several times for him: zzest, fla only with the L and F reversed, one syllable, and EE-e-o0 with accents on the first and last syllables, the whole run together so that it sounded more like an exclamation than a name.) How mankind had fragmented into planetary subspecies, each adapted for its particular world in subtle ways though all looked completely human and could interbreed. (Interbreed? Arlo inquired, interested. How is that done? But she seemed not to hear him.) How the stars came out at night, just as described in LOE: pinpoints of light too numerous to count, especially in the “Milky Way’’ region of the planetary sky. How there were rocks floating in orbit about individual stars, called “planetoids”—some only a few miles in diameter, so that a visitor could hardly cling to their surfaces. “But excellent for mining rare ores,” she said. “Because the deep strata are all exposed and accessible. Gold, iridium—all sorts of things just there for the taking, and almost no energy required to get them into space. Ore-shuttling is a big space business.”
“It must be,” Arlo agreed, entranced with this vision. LOE had nothing like this!
“And some of them are made into holiday stopovers. Spotels. Sealed in, completely private, with all the comforts of home.” She winked confidentially. “ I was conceived in a spotel.”
“But how—?”
“My father’s dead now. So’s my mother. Must’ve been some romance, though, while it lasted!”
That balked further questions about the nature of human breeding. But the two became intertwined in Arlo’s imagination: ore-mining, planetoids, and romance.
They didn’t talk all the time. They played games ranging from hot-hands to chess. Ex was good at all of them, as she had excellent physical and mental coordination. For a young girl, she knew a surprising amount.
As she grew stronger, a strange thing happened. Her body, thinned drastically by the rigor of the injury, filled out to more than its original form. Her legs grew rounder, especially in the upper thighs. Her chest swelled into two humps. Hair grew under her arms and between her legs, concealing that cleft that had so intrigued Arlo. Her body came to resemble, to some degree, that of Verthandi the Norn. And her face changed
“Chthon’s ways are inscrutable. But you have made your bargain; Chthon will honor it. No creature of the caverns will harm her so long as you and Chthon are one.”
“What does Chthon want with me?” Arlo cried.
Bedside studied him in his disquieting fashion. “I am mad. By that I mean I do not conform to the norms of your society, though I can approximate them when necessary. Your father is half-mad. You are sane. You are Chthon’s chosen. Your destiny is huge.”
“Chosen for what?”
But Bedside only smiled.
Ex recovered. It was amazingly rapid, considering the severity of her injury, but it did take time. Arlo brought her food that Coquina made: glow-bread, fermented vine sap, dried chipper meat. He carried her regularly jo a narrow, deep crack above flowing water so that she could defecate cleanly. He supported her as she practiced walking. And he talked with her.
Arlo told her all about the caverns: the rivers, the potwhales, the ice tunnels, the caterpillars, the forests, the chimera, and Chthon. He told her how his father mined gold and precious garnets and other stones to make beautiful rings that Doc Bedside took outside to trade for civilized goods: clothing, tools, books.
She in turn told him of the great outside world. How the wonderful § spaceships traveled from Earth all over the human sector of the galaxy and even traded with sentient” alien species: the Xests, Lfa and EeoO. (She had to pronounce those strange names several times for him: zzest, fla only with the L and F reversed, one syllable, and EE-e-o0 with accents on the first and last syllables, the whole run together so that it sounded more like an exclamation than a name.) How mankind had fragmented into planetary subspecies, each adapted for its particular world in subtle ways though all looked completely human and could interbreed. (Interbreed? Arlo inquired, interested. How is that done? But she seemed not to hear him.) How the stars came out at night, just as described in LOE: pinpoints of light too numerous to count, especially in the “Milky Way’’ region of the planetary sky. How there were rocks floating in orbit about individual stars, called “planetoids”—some only a few miles in diameter, so that a visitor could hardly cling to their surfaces. “But excellent for mining rare ores,” she said. “Because the deep strata are all exposed and accessible. Gold, iridium—all sorts of things just there for the taking, and almost no energy required to get them into space. Ore-shuttling is a big space business.”
“It must be,” Arlo agreed, entranced with this vision. LOE had nothing like this!
“And some of them are made into holiday stopovers. Spotels. Sealed in, completely private, with all the comforts of home.” She winked confidentially. “ I was conceived in a spotel.”
“But how—?”
“My father’s dead now. So’s my mother. Must’ve been some romance, though, while it lasted!”
That balked further questions about the nature of human breeding. But the two became intertwined in Arlo’s imagination: ore-mining, planetoids, and romance.
They didn’t talk all the time. They played games ranging from hot-hands to chess. Ex was good at all of them, as she had excellent physical and mental coordination. For a young girl, she knew a surprising amount.
As she grew stronger, a strange thing happened. Her body, thinned drastically by the rigor of the injury, filled out to more than its original form. Her legs grew rounder, especially in the upper thighs. Her chest swelled into two humps. Hair grew under her arms and between her legs, concealing that cleft that had so intrigued Arlo. Her body came to resemble, to some degree, that of Verthandi the Norn. And her face changed
Similar Books
