Free Phthor by Piers Anthony Page B

her. I knew her. What she was, what she did, was in her genes and in her culture. We are all creatures of our ancestry! There is no right and wrong, objectively.”
    “There has to be,” Arlo said.
    “I have never known a more intelligent, lovely, competent and loving woman, apart from that ironic inversion of emotion. What I see today in Aton is that half-share he possesses of the minionette, and I love him as much for that as for his human side—which is also excellent.” Again she paused. “Yet I would love him regardless...”
    “But he would not have married you, if she had lived,” Arlo cried. “How can you—”
    “It is no bad thing to be the second love,” she said. Arlo felt a tingle, remembering the very similar thing his father had said. These two, so different on the surface, had a certain community of nature underneath, and were well matched. “First love may be wild, inadvised, difficult; second love is based on experience. I regret only that the minionette had to die to make our marriage possible.”
    “He would not marry you until his mother died? I will kill him!” Arlo cried, shaking with fury, yet knowing it was bravado. He had neither the power nor the real desire to kill his father; he had merely to express his support for Coquina. Actually, he was getting repetitive—but the idea of requiring one’s mother to die to make way for one’s wife had an unholy fix on his mind.
    “You are quarter-minion,” she said.   “To kill one’s father—that, too, is the way of the minion. The men who live too long are killed by their sons, who are impatient to assume their conjugal duties.”
    That stopped Arlo cold. All his recent furies and passions came into focus now: the minion blood in him craved sadistic love. No wonder his romance with Ex had been turbulent! He would have to change that.
    “I hope there is more of Aurelius in me than of the minionette,” Arlo said. “I would have liked to know that bold old man.”
    “His brother Benjamin still lives. Doctor Bedeker still has occasional dealings with him. He is very like Aurelius.”
    “Oh?’’ That was most interesting! “Will I ever get to meet Benjamin?”
    “You would have to leave the caverns, or he to enter them. Either is unlikely.”
    True. Intriguing as it was, it was a dead end. Arlo returned to the primary matter: “Still, you should have been Aton’s first choice, not his second.”
    “No. It was an arranged marriage between us. First son of Eldest Five, Third Daughter of Eldest Four. Highly expedient, socially—but we had never met, and did not meet until after his liaison with the minionette. And of course he had known her since his childhood. She was his first—and I would have been satisfied to have been his hundredth, so long as I was his last. After knowing her, he chose me—that is the greatest compliment of my existence.”
    Coquina would not speak against the minionette! “Who killed her?”
    “Aton did.”
    Once again, Arlo was stunned. “He killed his wife—his mother? Why? How?”
    “By loving her.”
    Arlo sought out Ex, wanting to explain, to apologize. But she avoided him. Her golden tresses flew out behind her as she ran down the cavern passages. No doubt she thought he was going to hit her again. She feared no creature of the caverns since his pact with Chthon, but Arlo himself could hurt her.
    “Wait! Wait!” he called. But she would not listen.
    He pursued her far beyond the garden, across the great river whose finned predators would have torn apart anyone else, and into the chill ice caverns. He seldom ventured there because the footing was treacherous, and he quickly became uncomfortably cold. But he could not relent until he made her listen.
    Ex swung around a stalagmite. “Whee!” she cried as the warmth of her hand melted its sheen of ice and eliminated her support. Her feet went out from under her and she took a graceful fall, unhurt. “Whee!” she repeated, as she slid on down