Free Phthor by Piers Anthony

were parallel, like all his life and death. He—”
    “Dr. Bedeker is mad,” she said.
    “Yes. He says he’s all mad, and that my father is halfmad. Only I don’t think he means the same thing by the word that we do. But Bedside has always spoken truth to me, in his fashion, and he says my father was imprisoned for loving the minionette. Yet he also said my grandmother was a minionette, and I am quarter-minion. How can a man be imprisoned for loving his mother? I love you—”
    Coquina put her hand to the hot wall to steady herself. Arlo grabbed her other arm, afraid she would fall. “What’s the matter?”
    His mother got a grip on herself. “How are things with you and Ex?”
    Coquina had met Ex only once. It had been a disaster. Coquina had shown no jealousy, but instead had extended her arms in welcome—and Ex had run away. Arlo had reacted with familiar fury, but he could not get Ex to return or explain. She associated with Arlo, Aton, and Bedside, making them all angry in little ways—yet Coquina, who had nothing but love to give, was shunned. That was just one of the things that aggravated Arlo—but despite it, he was drawn to Ex with increasing passion. It was as though he liked perversity, as though part of him wanted to hurt and be hurt—and that disgusted him. On the off-chance that something in his heritage could account for this, he had finally gotten up the nerve to put the question to his mother.
    “She’s a damned nuisance,” he said. “But sometimes she’s awfully sweet. Half the time I want to kill her, and the other half—” He hesitated, uncertain how much he should admit. He doubted that Coquina would be pleased to hear about the misadventure of the gas crevasse, for example. Nothing had happened, really; but had he been just a little faster...
    “She is a young female, and you’re a young male,” Coquina said. “It is natural for you to desire her sexually. There is no shame in this.”
    Then why had his mother never told him how to implement the sex act? Obviously there was shame, somewhere. “But I desire her most when I hate her most!” he exclaimed.
    Coquina sat down on her rock chair. Because it was stone, it conveyed the heat of the wall and floor to her body. Arlo was sweating from the ambient temperature, but his mother never sweated. Her whole temperature-control mechanism had broken down, apparently. “Yes, it is time for you to know. But I have to warn you: there is pain in this—for your father, for me, and even for you.”
    “Because I am quarter minion!” he said, catching on.
    “Yes. I had hoped this element would be suppressed, but it seems it is not. So it is best that you know the truth, so that you can deal with it, as your father did.”
    “He loves and hates you?” Arlo asked, horrified. No one could hate Coquina!
    She smiled wanly. “No. He has never hurt me. But until he conquered his chimera, it was very bad. There was much blood on his hands, much that must be forgotten, because he didn’t know. I pray there will be none on yours.”
    “He didn’t know what?” Arlo cried in frustration. At times his parents were as bad as Bedside or the Norns in their obscure answers, tantalizing him.
    “It began with your grandfather Aurelius Five, Aton’s father. Aurelius married a daughter of Ten, by all accounts a wonderful woman the hvee loved. But in two years she died in childbirth, for Planet Hvee is primitive in some ways. In anguish he went to space, and there fell into the power of the minionette. It was his terrible sorrow that attracted her to him—even his guilt at loving her.”
    “I don’t understand! Why should he not have remarried?”
    “Minion is a proscribed planet. He broke galactic law by going there, and broke it again by taking Malice home with him. So—”
    “Malice!” The Norns had used that word! “What kind of a name is that?”
    Coquina put a restraining hand on his shoulder. “This is difficult, son. Bear with