kled. 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."

CHAPTER XIII

"I was a poor learner of the redes," Copper confessed. "And I'll have to
skip the Mysteries. I never even tried to learn them. Somehow I was sure
I'd never be a preceptress." She settled herself more comfortably on the
tawny grass and watched him as he lay on his back beside her.

"Eh?" Kennon said, "Preceptress?"

"The guardians of our traditions. They know the redes and mysteries by
heart."

"And you have kept your religion alive that way all these years?"

"It isn't exactly religion," Copper said. "It's more like history, we
learn it to remember that we were once a great race--and that we may
be again. Someday there will come a male, a leader to bring us out of
bondage, and our race will be free of dependence on men. There will
be pairings again, and freedom to live as we please." She looked
thoughtfully at Kennon. "You might even be the one--even though you are
human. You're different from the others."

"You're prejudiced." Kennon smiled. "I'm no different. Well--not very
different at any rate."

"That is not my thought," Copper said. "You are very different indeed.
No man has ever resisted a Lani as long as you have."

Kennon shook his head. "Let's not go into that now. What are these
redes?"

"I do not remember them all," Copper apologized. "I was--"

"You've said that before. Tell me what you do know."

"I remember the beginning fairly well," she said. "It goes back to the
time before Flora when everything was nothing and the Master Himself was
lonely."

Without warning her voice changed to a rhythmic, cadenced chant that
was almost a song. Her face became rapt and introspective as she rocked
slowly from side to side. The rhythm was familiar and then he recognized
it--the unintelligible music he had often heard