Chthon Read Free Page B

out and came back alone. “All right. I can’t square things with you that way. Only one man I ever saw that could fight like that, and he’s not… available.”
    “Spaceman?” Aton asked with interest.
    “Krell farmer.”
    Aton wondered. The members of the guild that farmed the deadly krell weed had developed the ancient art of karate—kara-ate, the unarmed striking—in a different direction than had their spacefaring cousins. Both struck to disable, maim, or kill; but there was murderous power behind the spaceman’s blow, lethal science behind the farmer’s. Which school was superior? The question had never, to his knowledge, been settled. “Where is he?”
    “Name’s Bossman—down below. It isn’t worth it.”
    “Nothing’s worth it.”
    Tally changed the subject. “I’ll take my loss and forget it. But I want to know one thing, and it isn’t much of my business. I’ll make a trade with you.”
    Aton understood the significance of the offer, in this place where information was more valuable than property. “I want to know something, too,” he said. “Honest answers?” He saw immediately that the question was a mistake. The person who cheated on information would not live long.
    “Let’s match the questions,” Tally said. The bargaining was on.
    “The real Chthon setup.”
    “The reason you passed her up.” Belatedly, Aton understood why Tally had cut off his explanation before. He could not accept free knowledge. Easier to settle the grudge first, untangle the threads later. Here was an honest man, Chthon-fashion.
    “You may not like the answer,” Aton said.
    “I want it straight, all of it.”
    They looked at each other and nodded. “Seemed too quiet for you here?” Tally asked rhetorically. “No wonder. This is only part of Chthon—the best part. We keep only the model prisoners: the harmless neurotics, the politicos, the predictable nuts. We have a pretty easy life because we’re selected, we know each Other, and we have the upper hand. But below—well, there is only one way to get down there, and no way back. Anybody we can’t handle gets dropped down that hole and forgotten. That’s where the mine is; we ship food down, they ship the garnets up.”
    “A prison within a prison!”
    “That’s right. Outside, they think we’re all one big unhappy family, fighting and mining. Maybe that’s the way it is, below. We don’t know. But we like it quiet, here, and we have the same hold on the pit as the outsiders have on us: no garnets, no supplies. We get first pick of the food, and we don’t have to work much, except to keep things running smoothly. We can’t get out but we have a living, and not a bad one at all. Every so often a new man comes down, like you, and makes things interesting for a while, until we get him placed.”
    “No way out,” Aton said.
    “Our caverns are sealed off from below. That keeps us in, and the monsters out. Below—no one knows where those passages end, or what’s in them.”
    Unexplored caverns! There was the only hope for escape. It would mean facing a prison even the hardened inmates feared, mixing with men too vicious to accept any moral restraints. But it was a situation he could exploit.
    “About Silly,” Aton said, taking his turn, knowing his course. “It wasn’t her; it wasn’t you. She’s a good girl; I would have taken her if I could. But something stopped me, something I can’t fight.”
    “Stopped a spaceman at the point? You’re a strange one. You and your damned book.”
    Aton said the word that condemned him: “Minionette.”
    Tally stared. “I’ve heard of that. Stories—you mean you met one? They really exist?”
    Aton didn’t answer.
    Tally backed off. “I’ve heard about what they do. About the kind of man who—” His voice, friendly before, turned cold. “You are trouble. And I sent Silly to you.”
    Tally came to his decision. “I don’t want to know any more. You aren’t one of us, Five. You’ll