Chapter III

“I’d never have guessed yesterday that I’d be here today,” Kennon said as he looked down at the yellow waters of the Xantline Sea flashing to the rear of the airboat at a steady thousand kilometers per hour as they sped westward in the middle traffic level. The water, some ten thousand meters below, had been completely empty for hours as the craft hurtled through the equatorial air.

“We have to move fast to stay ahead of our ulcers,” Alexander said with a wry smile. “Besides, I wanted to get away from the Albertsville offices for awhile.”

“Three hours’ notice,” Kennon said. “That’s almost too fast.”

“You had nothing to keep you in the city, and neither did I--at least nothing important. There are plenty of females where we are going and I need you on Flora--not in Albertsville. Besides I can get you there faster than if you waited for a company transport.”

“Judging from those empty sea lanes below, Flora must be an out-of-the-way place,” Kennon said.

“It is. It’s out of the trade lanes. Most of the commercial traffic is in the southern hemisphere. The northern hemisphere is practically all water. Except for Flora and the Otpens there isn’t a land area for nearly three thousand kilometers in any direction, and since the company owns Flora and the surrounding island groups there’s no reason for shipping to come there. We have our own supply vessels, a Discovery Charter, and a desire for privacy.--Ah! It won’t be long now. There’s the Otpens!” Alexander pointed at a smudge on the horizon that quickly resolved into an irregular chain of tiny islets that slipped below them. Kennon got a glimpse of gray concrete on one of the larger islands, a smudge of green trees, and white beaches against which the yellow waters dashed in smothers of foam.

“Rugged-looking place,” he murmured.

“Most of them are deserted. Two support search and warning stations and automatic interceptors to protect our property. Look!--there’s Flora.” Alexander gestured at the land mass that appeared below.

Flora was a great green oval two hundred kilometers long and about a hundred wide.

“Pretty, isn’t it?” Alexander said as they sped over the low range of hills and the single gaunt volcano filling the eastward end of the island and swept over a broad green valley dotted with fields and orchards interspersed at intervals by red-roofed structures whose purpose was obvious.

“Our farms,” Alexander said redundantly. The airboat crossed a fair-sized river. “That’s the Styx,” Alexander said. “Grandfather named it. He was a classicist in his way--spent a lot of his time reading books most people never heard of. Things like the Iliad and Gone with the Wind. The mountains he called the Apennines, and that volcano’s Mount Olympus. The marshland to the north is called the Pontine Marshes--our main road is the Camino Real.” Alexander grinned. “There’s a lot of Earth on Flora. You’ll find it in every name. Grandfather was an Earthman and he used to get nostalgic for the homeworld. Well--there’s Alexandria coming up. We’ve just about reached the end of the line.”

Kennon stared down at the huge gray-green citadel resting on a small hill in the center of an open plain. It was a Class II Fortalice built on the efficient star-shaped plan of half a millennium ago--an ugly spiky pile of durilium, squat and massive with defensive shields and weapons which could still withstand hours of assault by the most modern forces.

“Why did he build a thing like that?” Kennon asked.

“Alexandria?--well, we had trouble with the natives when we first came, and Grandfather had a synthesizer and tapes for a Fortalice in his ship. So he built it. It serves the dual purpose of base and house. It’s mostly house now, but it’s still capable of being defended.”

“And those outbuildings?”

“They’re part of your job.”

The airboat braked sharply and settled with a smooth, sickeningly swift rush that left Kennon gasping--feeling that his stomach was still floating above him in the middle level. He never had become accustomed to an arbutus landing characteristics. Spacers were slower and steadier. The ship landed gently on a pitted concrete slab near the massive radiation shields of the barricaded entranceway to the fortress. Projectors in polished dually turrets swivelled to point their ugly noses at them. It gave Kennon a queasy feeling. He never liked to trust his future to automatic machinery. If the analyzers failed to decode the ship’s I.D. properly, Kennon, Alexander, the ship, and a fair slice of surrounding territory would become an incandescent mass of dissociated atoms.

“Grandfather was a good builder,” Alexander, said proudly. “Those projectors have been mounted nearly four hundred years and they’re still as good as the day they were installed.”

“I can see that,” Kennon said uncomfortably. “You ought to dismantle them. They’re enough to give a man the weebies.”

Alexander chuckled. “Oh--they’re safe. The firing mechanism’s safetied. But we keep them in operating condition. You never can tell when they’ll come in handy.”

“I knew Kardon was primitive, but I didn’t think it was that bad. What’s the trouble?”

“None--right now,” Alexander said obliquely, “and since we’ve shown we can handle ourselves there probably won’t be any more.”

“You must raise some pretty valuable stock if the competition tried to rustle them in the face of that armament.”

“We do.” Alexander said. “Now if you’ll follow me”--the entrepreneur opened the cabin door letting in a blast of heat and a flood of yellow sunlight.

“Great Arthur Fleming!” Kennon exploded. “This place is a furnace!”

“It’s hot out here on the strip,” Alexander admitted, “but its cool enough inside. Besides, you’ll get used to this quickly enough--and the nights are wonderful. The evening rains cool things off. Well--come along.” He began walking toward the arched entrance to the great building some hundred meters away. Kennon followed looking around curiously. So this was to be his home for the next five years? It didn’t look particularly inviting. There was a forbidding air about the place that was in stark contrast to its pleasant surroundings.

They were only a few meters from the archway when a stir of movement came from its shadow--the first life Kennon had seen since they descended from the ship. In this furnace heat even the air was quiet. Two women came out of the darkness, moving with quiet graceful steps across the blistering hot concrete. They were naked except for a loincloth, halter, and sandals and so nearly identical in form and feature that Kennon took them to be twins. Their skins were burned a deep brown that glistened in the yellow sun light.

Kennon shrugged. It was none of his business how his employer ran his household or what his servants wore or didn’t wear. Santos was a planet of nudists, and certainly this hot sun was fully as brilliant as the one which warmed that tropical planet In fact, he could see some virtue in wearing as little as possible. Already he was perspiring.

The two women walked past them toward the airboat. Kennon turned to look at them and noticed with surprise that they weren’t human. The long tails curled below their spinal bases were adequate denials of human ancestry.

“Humanoids!” he gasped. “For a moment I thought-”

“Gave you a start-eh?” Alexander chuckled. “It always does when a stranger sees a Lani for the first time. Well--now you’ve seen some of the livestock what do you think of them?”

“I think you should have hired a medic.”

Alexander shook his head. “No--it wouldn’t be reason able or legal. You’re the man for the job.”

“But I’ve no experience with humanoid types. We didn’t cover that phase in our studies--and from their appearance they’d qualify as humans anywhere if it weren’t for those tails!”

“They’re far more similar than you think,” Alexander said. “It just goes to show what parallel evolution can do. But there are differences.”

“I never knew that there was indigenous humanoid life on Kardon,” Kennon continued. “The manual says nothing about it.”

“Naturally. They’re indigenous only to this area.”

“That’s impossible. Species as highly organized as that simply don’t originate on isolated islands.”

“This was a subcontinent once,” Alexander said. “Most of it has been inundated. Less than a quarter of a million years ago there was over a hundred times the land area in this region than exists today. Then the ocean rose. Now all that’s left is the mid continent plateau and a few mountain tops. You noted, I suppose, that this is mature topography except for that range of hills to the east. The whole land area at the time of flooding was virtually a peneplain. A rise of a few hundred feet in the ocean level was all that was needed to drown most of the land.”

“I see. Yes, it’s possible that life could have developed here under those conditions. A peneplain topography argues permanence for hundreds of millions of years.”

“You have studied geology?” Alexander asked curiously. “Only as part of my cultural base,” Kennon said. “Merely a casual acquaintance.”

“We think the Lani were survivors of that catastrophe--and with their primitive culture they were unable to reach the other land masses,” Alexander shrugged. “At any rate they never established themselves anywhere else.”

“How did you happen to come here?”

“I was born here,” Alexander said. “My grandfather discovered this world better than four hundred years ago. He picked this area because it all could be comfortably included in Discovery Rights. It wasn’t until years afterward that he realized the ecological peculiarities of this region.”

“He certainly capitalized on them.”

“There was plenty of opportunity. The plants and animals here are different from others in this world. Like Australia in reverse.”

Kennon looked blank, and Alexander chuckled. “Australia was a subcontinent on Earth,” he explained. “Its ecology, however, was exceedingly primitive when compared with the rest of the planet. Flora’s on the contrary, was--and is--exceedingly advanced when compared with other native life forms on Kardon.”

“Your grandfather stumbled on a real bonanza,” Kennon said.

“For which I’m grateful,” Alexander grinned. “It’s made me the biggest operator in this sector of the galaxy. For practical purposes I own an independent nation. There’s about a thousand humans here, and nearly six thousand Lani. We’re increasing the Lani now, since we found they have commercial possibilities. Up to thirty years ago we merely used them for labor.”

Kennon didn’t speculate on what Alexander meant. He knew. For practical purposes, his employer was a slave trader--or would have been if the natives were human. As it was, the analogy was so close that it wasn’t funny.

They entered the fortress, passed through a decontamination chamber that would have done credit to an exploration ship, and emerged dressed in tunics and sandals that were far more appropriate and comfortable in this tropical climate.

“That’s one of Old Doc’s ideas,” Alexander said, gesturing at the door from which they had emerged. “He was a hound for sanitation and he infected us with the habit.” He turned and led the way down an arched corridor that opened into a huge circular room studded with iris doors.