Isle Of The Dead   ::   Zelazny Roger

A mile out stood my Isle of the Dead, still unchanged--stark, and ominous asa shadow with nothing to cast it. I leaned forward and tested the water with my finger. The lake was hot, quite hot. Far out and to the east, there was a second light. It seemed as if a smaller cone were growing there.

"I came to shore about a quarter mile to the west of here," said Green Green.

I nodded and continued to stare. It was still morning and I felt like contemplating the prospect. The southern face of the isle--the one I looked upon--had a narrow strip of beach following the curve of a cove perhaps two hundred feet across. From there, a natural-seeming trail zigzagged upwards, reaching various levels and, ultimately, the high, horned peaks.

"Where do you think he is?" I asked.

"About two-thirds of the way up, on this side," said Green Green, "in the chalet. That is where I had my laboratory. I expanded many of the caves behind it."

A frontal approach was almost mandatory, as the other faces of the isle possessed no beaches and rose sharply from the water.

Almost, but not quite.

I doubted that Green Green, Shandon or anybody else was aware that the northern face could be climbed. I had designed it to look unscalable, but it was not all that bad. I had done it just because I like everything to have a back door as well as a front door. If I were to employ that route, it would require my ascending all the way and coming down toward the chalet from above.

I decided I would do it that way. I also decided that I would keep it to myself until the last minute. After all, Green Green was a telepath, and for all I knew, the story he'd given me could be a line of _rouke_ manure. He and Shandon could be working together, and for that matter there might not even be a Shandon. I wouldn't have trusted him worth a plugged nickel, back when they still had nickels to plug.

"Come on," I said, rising and flipping my cigarette into the cesspool my lake. "Show me where you left the boat."

So we made our way to the left, along the shoreline, to the place where he remembered beaching the thing. Only it was not there.

"Are you sure this is the place?"

"Yes."

"Well, where is it?"

"Perhaps it was loosened by one of the shocks and drifted away."

"Could you swim as far as the isle, bad shoulder and all?"

"I am a Pei'an," he replied, which meant he could damn well swim the English Channel with two bum shoulders, then turn around and go back again. I'd only said it to irritate him.

"... But we won't be able to swim to the isle," he added.