Part 6 (2/2)

”Suppose you meet Seri,” she said. ”You almost did. Will he not tell?”

”Don't you worry about it,” Kettrick said, and turned aside from the main track into a narrower one.

Trees pressed closer on either side, making deep shadows shot with glanc-ing copper light that moved with the movement of the branches. Very quickly the path began to climb, toward a line of hills that thrust above the jungle.

Nillaine let go of his hand and walked a while in silence, a bright blue b.u.t.terfly dancing down the shadow tunnel ahead of him.

”Seri won't tell,” Kettrick said. ”He's my friend, you know that.”

”Oh, yes.”

”I won't tell on him, either.”

She paused, ever so slightly. ”About what?””About what he does here.”

Nillaine stopped and turned, standing beside a crimson-flowered vine that was slowly and beautifully strangling a tree.

She said blandly, ”But Johnny, he trades. Like you.”

”Not like me. Or there would have been nothing left for me.”

She laughed. ”That's true.”

”What is it, then? Narcotics? Pretty little girls who want to see faraway worlds?”

She came close to him, her amber eyes alight. ”I'm not supposed to tell.”

”Oh. And what do I have to do to make you?”

”I'm greedy.” She bent her head to one side and stretched out her arms. ”I want to glitter and s.h.i.+ne, and make music when I walk.”

”I will deck you,” said Kettrick, ”as no other woman was ever decked before. I will make every girl in every village hate you.”

She laughed again. ”I will love that!” She caught his hand, all mischievous child again. ”Come on, then. I'll show you. But you have to promise not to tell my father.”

He promised, and they went on to a place where the path forked. Here Nillaine turned aside, leading the way into a narrow gorge that presently offered no path at all but the water-worn rock that floored it. The gorge climbed steeply, and widened, and then they were clambering up a broad slope with the forest thinning on it and the top of the jungle solid as a floor below them.

The sun struck hot at their shoulders, and a wind blew. Once or twice Kettrick thought he saw movement among the trees, and twice or more he thought he heard a sound, as though more than they two were on that slope. But he could not be sure.

They came at length to a high place held privately in a cup of the hills. It was very still there, walled with forest and the higher peaks on three sides so that even the wind was cut off. The floor of the cup had been made level, and paved with many-colored stones set in a kind of mosaic that seemed to have no pattern, and yet Kettrick knew there was one. Dotted about this level floor, apparently at random, were tall slim carvings of wood set upright.

Kettrick stopped at the edge of the floor.

”Why have you brought me here?” he asked.

Nillaine turned and looked at him, standing by one of the tall pillars. ”You know where you are?”

”This is the Woman Place, isn't it?”

She said, ”Yes,” and leaned against the pillar. The pillar had arms and hands. These held a sheaf of grain between two swelling b.r.e.a.s.t.s.

He moved carefully back from the colored stones. ”Why, Nillaine?”

”You'll have one chance, Johnny. We could not do less.”

”The chance Wh.e.l.lan started to give me on the first night?”

Her bright head bobbed against the pillar. The wood was polished and very dark. ”Wh.e.l.lan's a man, and trusting. He didn't realize that you were lying.”

”Lying?”

”About coming back to trade. Just now I gave you a chance to tell me the truth, but you lied again.”She smiled. ”We know a little of the law here, we know something of how it is done.”

”Very well,” said Kettric. ”Suppose I did lie. How could it concern you?”

”We love you, Johnny. We want you to live.” The sun shone on the polished wooden b.r.e.a.s.t.s above her head. The fingers of the carven hands held the sheaf of grain with infinite tenderness. ”Stay here with us a while. You'll be quite safe. And after it's over, you'll be free.”

Kettrick said slowly, ”After what is over?” And his tongue was dry in his mouth.

Angrily she cried out, ”I'm grown now, I'm a woman, not a child! Don't treat me as one, because I'm smaller than you! You know. You must know. You followed Seri. You wanted me to show you what he did here. He warned us that someone might follow, he told us that men were trying to stop what is to come. Another man we would have killed outright, but you...”

The sun was hot on Kettrick's back. He could feel the sweat run, and wondering how it could be so cold on his hot skin. He shook his head and said, ”But you're wrong, Nillaine. I only asked about Seri be-cause I was curious. And I lied about why I came back because I was afraid you might give me away without mean-ing to, if the I-C should happen to come.” He pointed sky-ward. ”My business is out there, at the White Sun. The same business they arrested me for, and sent me away from the Cl.u.s.ter. I don't care what Seri's doing. I wouldn't care if he had the Doomstar in his pocket...”

He saw her eyes flare bright as fire in the sunlight, and he hurried on, pretending not to notice.

”I'm only interested in finis.h.i.+ng my deal. Money, Nillaine. A million credits. And then I'm gone from the Cl.u.s.ter for-ever.”

”Money,” she said, and laughed. ”I almost believe you. Well, then, and so you don't care if Seri has the Doomstar in his pocket. Then wait, Johnny. The White Sun will wait. Ev-erything will wait. And afterward you can go where you will and the I-C won't stop you.”

She stepped toward him, away from the pillar. ”Will you stay?”

She was pleading with him. Her eyes were fond and hopeful, her hands outstretched. He smiled, a stiff and sickly coun-terfeit, and shook his head.

”No.”

He turned to walk away from the paved floor and the pillars. He did not see, behind him, what gesture she made. Perhaps the only one needed was his own gesture of de-parture. In any case, he stopped, because suddenly all the slopes and the edges of the woods were alive with tiny figures among the trees.

The women of the village, with flowers in their hair, and each one holding in her right hand a little s.h.i.+ning knife.

10.

They came scuddering like bright leaves on a'wind, up the slope, out from the trees. Kettrick retreated before them.

”This is not the sacrifice time,” he said. Each year, he knew, the women chose a victim from among the young men and hunted him to this place and did to him what they felt was necessary, so that trees should again bear fruit and fields produce their grain. But that was in the spring, and it was now late summer, though in this golden place all sea-sons were much the same.Nillaine answered, ”This is not a sacrifice, not yet, though perhaps it will come to be one.” She stood again by the pillar, her small face sober and pitiless. ”This is something we could not trust to the men.

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