The Lani People Part 21

"Good! I hoped you'd say that. I'm getting tired of these dirty old cards." She stood up and sidled past the desk. Kennon resisted the impulse to slap as she went past, and congratulated himself on his self-control as she looked at him with a half-disappointed expression on her face. She had expected it, he thought gleefully. Score one for morality.

He smiled. Whatever the other Lani might be, Copper was different.

Quick, volatile, intelligent, she was a constant delight, a flas.h.i.+ng kaleidoscope of unexpected facets. Perhaps the others were the same if he knew them better. But he didn't know them--and avoided learning. In that direction lay ulcers.

"We'll go to Olympus," he said.

Copper looked dubious. "I'd rather not go there. That's forbidden ground."

"Oh nonsense. You're merely superst.i.tious."

She smiled. "Perhaps you're right. You usually are."

"That's the virtue of being a man. Even if I'm wrong, I'm right." He chuckled at the peculiar expression on her face.

"Now off with you--and get that lunch basket packed."

She bowed. "Yes, master. Your slave flies on winged feet to execute your commands."

Kennon chuckled. Copper had been reading Old Doc's romances again. He recognized the florid style.

Kennon landed the jeep in a mountain meadow halfway up the slope of the peacefully slumbering volcano. It was quiet and cool, and the light breeze was blowing Olympus's smoky cap away from them to the west.

Copper unpacked the lunch. She moved slowly. After all, there was plenty of time, and she wasn't very hungry. Neither was Kennon.

"Let's go for a walk," Copper said. "The woods look cool--and maybe we can work up an appet.i.te."

"Good idea. I could use some exercise. That lunch looks big enough to choke a horse and I'd like to do it justice."

They walked through the woods, skirting scant patches of underbrush, slowly moving higher on the mountain slopes. The trees, unlike those of Beta, did not end abruptly at a snow line, but pushed green fingers upward through pa.s.sages between old lava flows, on whose black wrinkled surfaces nothing grew. The faint hum of insects and the piping calls of the birdlike mammals added to the impression of remoteness. It was hard to believe that scarcely twenty kilometers from this primitive microcosm was the border of the highly organized and productive farmlands of Outworld Enterprises.

"Do you think we can see the hospital if we go high enough?" Copper said. She panted a little, unaccustomed to the alt.i.tude.

"Possibly," Kennon said. "It is a long distance away. But we should be able to see Alexandria," he added. "That's high enough and big enough."

He looked at her curiously. "How is it that you're so breathless?"

he asked. "We're not that high. You're getting fat with too much soft living."

Copper smiled. "Perhaps I'm getting old."

"Nonsense," Kennon chuckled. "It's just fat. Come to think of it you are plumper. Not that I mind, but if you're going to keep that sylphlike figure you'd better go on a diet."

"You're too good to me," Copper said.

"You're darn right I am. Well--let's get going. Exercise is always good for the waistline, and I'd like to see what's up ahead."

Scarcely a kilometer ahead they came to a wall of lava that barred their path. "Oh, oh," Kennon said. "We can't go over that." He looked at the wrinkled and shattered rock with its knifelike edges.

"I don't think my feet could take it," Copper admitted.

"It looks like the end of the trail."

"No--not quite," Kennon said. "There seems to be a path here." He pointed to a narrow cleft in the black rock. "Let's see where it goes."

Copper hung back. "I don't think I want to," she said doubtfully. "It looks awfully dark and narrow."

"Oh, stop it. Nothing's going to hurt us. Come on." Kennon took her hand.

Unwillingly Copper allowed herself to be led forward. "There's something about this place that frightens me," she said uncomfortably as the high black wails closed in, narrowing until only a slit of yellow sky was visible overhead. The path underfoot was surprisingly smooth and free from rocks, but the narrow corridor, steeped in shadows, was gloomy and depressingly silent. It even bothered Kennon, although he wouldn't admit it. What forces had sliced this razor-thin cleft in the dense rock around them? Earthquake probably. And if it happened once it could happen again. He would hate to be trapped here entombed in shattered rock.

Gradually the pa.s.sage widened, then abruptly it ended. A bleak vista of volcanic ash dotted with sputter cones opened before them. It was a flat tableland, roughly circular, scarcely half a kilometer across, a desolation of black rock, stunted trees and underbrush, and gray volcanic ash. A crater, somewhat larger than the rest, lay with its nearest edge about two hundred meters away. The rock edges were fire polished, gleaming in the yellow suns.h.i.+ne, and the thin margin of trees and brush surrounding the depression were gnarled and shrunken, twisted into fantastic shapes.

"Hey! what's this?" Kennon asked curiously. "That crater looks peculiar, like a meteor had struck here--but those stunted plants--hmm--there must have been some radioactivity too." He looked at the crater speculatively. "Now I wonder--" he began.

Copper had turned a sickly white. "No!" she said in a half-strangled voice--"oh, no!"

Kennon looked at her. "You know what this is?" he demanded.

"No," Copper said. But her voice was unsteady.

"You're lying."

"But I don't know." Copper wailed. "I'm only guessing. I've never seen this place before in my life! Please!--let's get out of here!"

"Then you know about this," Kennon demanded.

"I think it's the Pit," Copper said. "The redes don't say where it is.

But the description fits--the Circle of Death, the Twisted Land--it's all like the redes say."

"Redes?--what are redes? And what is this business about circles of death? There's something here that's peculiar and I want to know what it is."

"It's nothing. Truly. Just let's go back. Let's leave this place. It's no good. It's tabu."

"Tabu? You've never used that word before."

"Forbidden."

"Who forbids it?"

"The G.o.ds--the Old Ones. It is not for Lani. Nor for you." Her voice was harsh. "Come away before it is too late. Before the Silent Death strikes you down."

"I'm going to have a look at this."

"You'll be killed!" Copper said. "And if you die, I die too."

"Don't be foolish. There's nothing here that can hurt me. See those trees and plants growing right up to the crater's edge. If they can take it permanently, I can stand it for a few moments. If there's any radioactivity there, it's not very much."