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on either side, and the very bone seemed to be compressed but he wrenched free,
sliding out of the constriction.
But Ex was gone. She was now as fleet as he, and she knew the caverns well enough
to hide from him indefinitely. He could not catch her.
Perhaps it was just as well. He had bargained with Chthon to preserve her life, but in
that moment he would gladly have killed her himself.
 The minionette? Coquina repeated, and now the stress lines showed on her face,
making her look older.
 Father said I could ask you now, Arlo said, his muscles tightening nervously. Now, for
once, he was glad of the required clothing that helped conceal the tensions of his
body.  Doc Bedside said the minionette was death like the salamander that they
were parallel, like all his life and death. He 
 Dr. Bedeker is mad, she said.
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r r
 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!
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r r
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 me.
 I m sorry. She was trying to explain something vital, and he had no right to keep
interrupting. He could save his questions for later.
 All the minionettes have names like that. Fury, Agony, Torment, Wrath, Misery 
Arlo started to interrupt again, but turned it into a cough. He had to listen, not argue!
Coquina smiled, and he saw in that expression the aspect that had made his father
love her.  Yes, it seems strange at first. But they are true to their nature, as we are to
ours. You see, the emotions of the minionette are reversed. What we perceive as love,
beauty, and delight, they perceive as hate, ugliness and revulsion and vice versa.
Because they are emotionally telepathic, they receive these emotions directly. A
man s hate is divine love to them, but his love can be fatal. In fact, they are virtually
immortal; hardly anything can kill them, and they remain young-seeming and beautiful
for centuries. They all look alike, too, until you get to know them well. So they live until
someone s love reaches them and then they die. Their names are actually
endearments.
She took a breath, as though marshalling her strength.  The men of Planet Minion are
more nearly normal, but they have learned to hate those they love. They beat their
wives and even try to kill them knowing that only in this way can they preserve them.
So the Minion male has a strong sadistic streak associated with his love. That is why the
planet is proscribed; that kind of love has made too much mischief in the history of Old
Earth and would wreak devastation among the civilized cultures of the galaxy.
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r r
 Malice stayed with Aurelius one year long enough to bear him the child Aton. By
that time Aurelius s grief over the loss of the Daughter of Ten was fading, and he was
coming to love Malice without guilt. He did not understand perhaps did not allow
himself to understand that this was what drove her away. So Aton was raised without
a mother.
 But there is one other thing about the Minion culture. The women live for centuries,
but the men normally die by the age of fifty. Apparently it takes that long for their hate
to turn inevitably to love, for their sadism to weaken, and when that happens, they are
executed by their own kind. It is a sad but honorable demise, known by the [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]