Kennon wondered if his colleagues in human medicine felt toward their
patients as he did toward the Lani, or if they ultimately lost their
individuality and became mere hosts for diseases, parasites,
and tumors--vehicles for the practice of surgical and medical
skills--economic units whose well-being meant a certain amount of
credits. Probably not, he decided. They were human and their very
humanity made them persons rather than things.
But the possession of individuality was not an asset in the practice of
animal medicine where economics was the main factor and the satisfaction
of the owner the principal personality problem. The normal farm animals,
the shrakes, cattle, sheep, morks, and swine were no problem. They were
merely a job. But the Lani were different. They weren’t human, but they
were intelligent and they did have personality even though they didn’t
possess that indefinable quality that separated man from the beasts. It
was hard to treat them with dispassionate objectivity. In fact, it was
impossible.
And this lack of objectivity annoyed him. Should he be this way? Was he
right to identify them as individuals and treat them as persons
rather than things? The passing months had failed to rob them of their
personalities: they had not become the faceless mass of a herd of cattle
or a flock of sheep. They were still not essentially different
from humans--and wouldn’t men themselves lose many of their human
characteristics if they were herded into barracks and treated as
property for forty generations? Wouldn’t men, too, approach the animal
condition if they were bred and treated as beasts, their pedigrees
recorded, their types winnowed and selected? The thought was annoying.
It would be better, Kennon reflected, if he didn’t have time to think,
if he were so busy he could drop to his bed exhausted each night and
sleep without dreaming, if he could keep on the run so fast that he
wouldn’t have time to sit and reflect. But he had done his work too
well. He had trained his staff too thoroughly. They could handle the
petty routines of minor treatment and laboratory tests as well as he. He
had only the intellectual stimulation of atypical cases and these were
all too rare. The routine inspections were boring, yet he forced himself
to make them because they filled the time. The hospital wards were
virtually empty of patients, the work was up to date, the whole island
was enjoying a carnival of health, and Kennon was still impaled upon
the horns of his dilemma. It wasn’t so bad now that the first shock was
over, but it was bad enough--and showed no signs of getting better. Now
that Copper realized he wanted her, she did nothing to make his life
easier. Instead she did her best to get underfoot, usually in some
provocative position. It was enough to try the patience of a marble
statue Kennon reflected grimly. But it did have its humorous side
and were it not for the fact that Copper wasn’t human could have
been thoroughly enjoyable. That, however, was the real hell of it. He
couldn’t relax and enjoy the contest--his feet were on too slippery
ground. And Copper with her unerring female instinct knew just what to
do to make the footing slipperier. Sooner or later, she was certain that
he would fall. It was only a question of applying sufficient pressure at
the right spot and the right time. Now that she knew he desired her,
she was content to wait. The only thing that had bothered her was the
uncertainty whether he cared or not. For Copper the future was a simple
thing and she was lighthearted about it. But not so Kennon. Even after
the initial shock had passed there still remained the moral customs, the
conditioning, and the prohibitions. But Copper--was Copper--and somehow
the conditioning lost its force in her presence. Perhaps, he thought
wryly, it was a symptom of the gradual erosion of his moral character in
this abnormal environment.
“I’m getting stale,” he confided to Copper as he sat in his office idly
turning the pages of the Kardon Journal of Allied Medical Sciences.
“There’s nothing to do that’s interesting.”
“You could help me,” Copper said as she looked up from the pile of cards
she was sorting. He had given her the thankless task of reorganizing the
files, and she was barely half through the project.
“There’s nothing to do that’s interesting,” he repeated. He cocked his
head to one side. From this angle Copper looked decidedly intriguing as
she bent over the file drawer and replaced a stack of cards.
“I could suggest something,” Copper said demurely.
“Yes, I know,” he said. “You’re full of suggestions.”
“I was thinking that we could go on a picnic.”
“A what?”
“A picnic. Take a lunch and go somewhere in the jeep. Maybe up into the
hills. I think it might be fun.”
“Why not?” Kennon agreed. “At least it would break the monotony. Tell
you what. You run up to the house and tell Kara to pack a lunch and
we’ll take the day off.”
“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 flashing
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 superstitious.”
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 appetite.”
“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 passages 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 altitude.
“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 passage 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 sunshine, 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 Gods--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.”
“But the redes say--”
“Oh, forget those redes. I know what I’m doing. Besides, I’m a Betan and
can stand more radiation than most men. A brief exposure isn’t going to
hurt me.”
“You go and I go too,” Copper said desperately.
“You’ll stay here where it’s safe,” Kennon said flatly.
“I’m going with you,” Copper repeated. “I don’t want to live without
you.”
“I tell you I won’t be hurt. And one quick look isn’t going to bother
whatever’s down there.”
“That’s what Roga the Foolish said when he opened Lyssa’s tower. But
he brought men to Flora. And your little look may bring an even greater
calamity.”
Kennon shrugged, and started Walking toward the crater’s edge.
Copper followed.
He turned to order her back, but the words died on his tips as he saw
the terror and determination on her face. Neither commands nor pleas
would move her. If he went she would follow. The only way he could stop
her would be with violence, and he didn’t want to manhandle her. He felt
an odd mixture of pride, tenderness, and admiration for her. Were their
situations reversed, he doubted whether he would have the courage she
was showing. He sighed. Perhaps she was right. Perhaps he did need an
antiradiation suit.
“All right,” he said. “You win. I’ll get some protective clothing and
look at it later.”
Her knees sagged, but he caught her before she fell, and held her erect
until her strength returned. Belatedly he understood the emotional
strain that had been gripping her. “If you come back later, sir, you’ll
take me with you.” The words were a statement, not a question.
He nodded. “Providing you wear a radiation suit,” he said.
She grimaced with distaste and he chuckled. Clothing and Copper simply
didn’t get along together.
“Well?”
“All right,” she said unhappily.
“And there’s one more condition.”
“What’s that?” she asked suspiciously.
“That you tell me about this place. You obviously know something about
it, and with all your talking, you’ve never mentioned it to me.”
“It is forbidden to talk of these things to men,” Copper said--and then,
perversely, “Do you want me to tell you now?”
“No--it can wait. We have come a long way and I am hungry. I listen
poorly on an empty stomach. Let’s go back to the jeep and you can tell
me later.”
Copper smiled. “That’s good,” she said. “I’d feel better away from this
place.”