Treason

Chapter 3 -- Nkumai

"Would you like to rest?" he asked, and for once I was glad that I appeared to be a woman, because the platform was an island of stability in an absurd world of swinging rope ladders and sudden gusts of wind. The Mueller's son could never have admitted he wanted to rest. But a lady emissary from Bird lost no face by resting.

I lay down on the platform so that for a few moments I could see only the still-distant roof of green above me and pretend I was on steady ground.

"You don't seem very tired," my guide commented. "You aren't even breathing very heavily."

"Oh, I didn't want the rest because of the exertion. I'm simply unaccustomed to such heights."

He casually leaned back over the edge of the platform and looked at the ground. "Well, we're only eighty meters off the ground right now. A long way to go."

I stifled a sigh. "Where are you taking me?"

"Where do you want to go?" he countered.

"I want to see the king."

He chuckled, and I wondered if a lady of Bird was supposed to consider it an affront to have someone laugh in her face. I decided to be slightly annoyed. "Is that amusing?"

"Of course you don't really expect to see the king, lady," he said.

He said this with a smirk, but I had had plenty of practice at putting down those who dared to condescend to me. I knew how to make my voice sound like it had been aged all winter on ice. "So your king is invisible. How amusing."

His smile dampened a little. "He doesn't meet with the public, that's all I meant."

"Ah. In civilized countries, emissaries are extended the courtesy of an audience with the head of state. But in your country, I imagine foreign embassies must be content with climbing trees and visiting each other."

His smile was gone now. The condescension was all going the other way, and he didn't like it. "We don't get many embassies. Until recently, our neighboring nations I have regarded us as 'tree-dwelling apes,' I believe is the term. Only lately, as our soldiers have begun to make a little noise in the world, have emissaries begun arriving. So perhaps we aren't acquainted with all the customs of 'civilized' nations."

I wondered how much truth there was to that. On the great Rebel River plain, every nation had exchanged embassies with every other nation ever since the Families first divided up the world. But if Nkumai had turned outward enough to go a-conquering, surely they had also learned how to deal with emissaries from many nations.

"We have only three emissaries right now, lady," he said. "We had several others, but of course the emissary from Allison is now a loyal subject of the king, while the emissaries from Mancowicz, Parker, Underwood, and Sloan were sent home because they seemed far more interested in our Ambassador than they were in promoting good relations with Nkumai. Now only Johnston, Cummings, and Dyal have embassies here. And since we're quite economical with living space, we've had to house them together. We're a backwater of the world, I'm afraid. Very provincial."

And you're overdoing it a bit, I commented silently. But however unsubtle he had been, I had got the warning well enough. They were alert to what most emissaries were probably looking for, including, most particularly, myself. So I would have to be careful.

"Nevertheless," said I, "I am here to see the king, and if there is no hope of that, I shall go home and tell my superiors that Nkumai has no interest in good relations with Bird."

"Oh, there's a chance that you can see the king. But you have to make application at the office of social services, and where that will lead you who can say." He smiled faintly. We were not friends.

"Shall we go?" he suggested.

I advanced wanly to the rope ladder that still swung gently in the breeze, moored loosely to the platform by a thin rope tied around a low post.

"Not that," he said. "We're going another way." And he took off running, away from the platform, along one of the branches, if you call them braches-- neither of them less than ten meters thick. I walked slowly to where he had climbed up the branch, and sure enough, there were some subtle handholds that seemed more to have been worn than cut into the wood. I clumsily got myself from the platform to the place where my guide waited impatiently. Where he was the branch had leveled out a little more and now rose more obliquely up into the distance, criss-crossed by branches from other trees.

"All right?" he asked.

"No," I answered. "But let's go on."

"I'll walk for a while," he said, "until you're more accustomed to the treeway." Then he asked me a question that seemed out of place, after so many days, travel together. "What's your name, lady?"

Name? Of course I had prepared myself with a name, back in Allison-- but the occasion had never arisen when I was required to use it, and now it had slipped my mind. I can't remember even now what name I had chosen before. And since my confusion by now was obvious, there was no way I could simply make another one up without arousing his suspicion. So again I resorted to a pretended custom to cover my momentary need. I sincerely hoped the government of Bird did not choose anytime soon to send a real emissary, for I doubted such a woman would wish to follow the script that I had improvised. And if Nkumai was as efficient as Mueller, and sent spies to learn more about a nation that had sent an embassy, my little fabric of lies would soon unweave itself.

"Name, sir?" I said, now covering confusion with haughtiness. "Either you are no gentleman, or you do not think me a lady."

He looked momentarily abashed. Then he laughed. "You must forgive me, lady. Customs vary. In my land only ladies have names. Men are called only for their duties. I am, as I told you, Teacher. But I meant you no disrespect."

"Fine," I said, forgiving him curtly. The game was becoming amusing, trying to assert some superiority over him in a situation in which I couldn't help but be inferior, just as I imagined a genuine female diplomat might find herself forced to do. It almost let me forget the fact that though the path we followed was no more difficult than climbing a steep hill, this hill happened to be a thick tree branch that sloped away quickly on both sides, and if I were to stray from the path I would soon find myself hurtling downward. I dared not look and couldn't guess how far, but, perversely, couldn't resist trying to find out, either. "How many meters to the ground?"

"At this place I would say about a hundred and thirty, lady. But I'm really not sure. We don't measure it much. Once you're high enough to kill yourself falling, it really doesn't matter how far the ground is, does it? But I can tell you how much higher we have to go."

"How much?"

"About three hundred meters."

I gasped. I knew trees could grow to phenomenal heights on Treason-- hadn't I walked through Ku Kuei?-- but surely that high up the branches would be too weak and slender to support us. "Where are we going? Why so high?"

He laughed again, and this time he made no effort to conceal his enjoyment at my dislike of heights. Perhaps his way of getting back at me for the little trouble over names, and all the other slights that I had offered him and his country during our trip. "We're going," he said, "to the place where you're going to live. We thought you'd appreciate visiting the very top. Few outsiders ever have."

"I'm going to live at the top?"

"Well, we couldn't very well keep you with the other embassies, could we? They're men. We are somewhat civilized. So Mwabao Mawa has consented to take you in."

Our conversation was interrupted as he lightly trotted across a rope bridge, only occasionally using his hands. It looked easy, particularly since the tread of the bridge was wooden. But as I stepped on it, it swayed, and the farther out I got, the worse the swaying was. At the apex of each swing, I could see the trunks of the trees dropping down to a ground so distant that I couldn't be sure exactly where it was, in the heavy shade. At last I lost control and vomited, perhaps at the midpoint of the bridge. But then I felt better and made it across the bridge without further incident. And from then on, since I was already utterly disgraced, I made no further attempt to pretend not to feel fear-- and found that it therefore became easier to bear. My guide, Teacher, was more helpful, too, and led me at a slower pace. I was more than willing at times to lean on him.

And as we finally got to the level where the leaves grew, giant fans as much as two meters broad, the realization sank in that even if I found out what Nkumai was selling to the Ambassador for iron, it would do us little good. How could the landbound, plains-dwelling men of Mueller ever invade, let alone conquer, a people like this? The Nkumai would only pull up their rope ladders and sneer. Or drop deadly rocks. And the fear of heights would surely incapacitate other Muellers besides me. We may have schooled ourselves to separate fear from pain, but falling was another matter entirely. Besides, I had no way of knowing whether a drop from such heights might do more damage to a Mueller than his body could heal in time to save his life. Fish might as well launch a war against the birds as Mueller fight Nkumai here in their home trees.

Unless, of course, we found some way to train Mueller's soldiers to deal with heights. Perhaps they could practice on artificial platforms, or in the tall trees of Ku Kuei. I might have pursued this idea further, if I hadn't been constantly distracted by the need to pick a footing that wouldn't plunge me headlong to the earth.

We finally walked gingerly along a narrow branch to a rather involved house-- though in fact I would have considered it simple back in Mueller. Teacher spoke softly, but penetratingly, saying, "From the earth to the air."

"And to the nest, Teacher. Come in," and the husky but beautiful voice of Mwabao Mawa drew us into the house.

The house was basically five platforms, each one not much different under foot from those I had already rested on, though two of them were quite a bit larger. However, they had roofs of leaves, and a rather complicated system of gathering all the roofwater into barrels in the corners of the rooms.

If they could be called rooms. Each platform was a separate room. And I could detect no hint of a wall anywhere. Only curtains of brightly colored cloth hanging from the roofline to the floor. Breezes opened the walls easily.

I chose to stand in the center of the platform.

Mwahao Mawa was, in a way, disappointing. She should have been beautiful, from her voice, but she was not-- at least not by any standard of beauty I have ever known-- not even by Nkumai standards. But she was tall, and her face, however unlovely, was expressive and lively. When I say tall, the word does not convey: in Nkumai, nearly everyone is at least as tall as I am now, and in Mueller I am much above average. At that time, of course, I was not yet at my full height, and since among the Nkumai, Mwabao Mawa was towering, I saw her as a giant. Yet she moved gracefully, and I didn't feel intimidated. I felt, in fact, protected.

"Teacher, whom have you brought me?"

"She won't give me a name," Teacher said. "A gentleman, it appears, does not ask a lady."

"I'm the emissary from Bird," I said, trying to sound impressive without sounding pompous, "and to another lady I will tell my name." By then, of course, I had chosen a new name, and from then on throughout my stay in Nkumai, I was Lark. It was the closest I could come to Lanik and still be plausible as a woman from Bird.

"Lark," Mwabao Mawa said, making the name sound musical. "Come in."

I thought I already was.

"In here," she said, instantly trying to soothe my confusion. "And you, Teacher, can go."

He turned and left, trotting easily along the narrow branch that had so frightened me. I noticed that he obeyed as if Mwabao Mawa had great authority, and it occurred to me that perhaps a womanly disguise was not the handicap here that it had been for me in Allison.

I followed Mwabao Mawa through the curtain she had entered from. There was no path-- just a space about a meter and a half across to the next room. Miss the jump, and meet the earth. Not exactly a record-setting leap-- but competitive jumping in Mueller offers no further penalty for missing the goal than the scorn of the observers.

This time the wall-curtams were subdued and darker, and the floor was, thank heaven, not one uninterrupted plane. It sank in two steps to a large center arena, which was liberally sprinkled with cushions. When I stepped down, I found that my eyes were willing to believe that I was surrounded by real walls, and I relaxed.

"Go ahead and sit," she said. "This is the room where we relax. Where we sleep at night. I'm sure Teacher showed off all the way up here-- but we're not immune to fear of heights. Everyone sleeps in a room like this. We don't like the thought of rolling off in the middle of a dream."

She laughed, a rich, low laugh, but I didn't join in. I just lay back and let my body tremble, releasing the stored-up tension of the climb.

"My name is Mwabao Mawa," she said. "And I should tell you who I am. You'll doubtless hear stories about me. There are rumors that I have been the king's mistress, and I do nothing to discourage them, since it gives me a great deal of petty power. There are also rumors that I am a murderess-- and those are even more helpful. The truth is, of course, that I'm nothing but a consummate hostess and a great singer of songs. Perhaps the greatest who ever lived in a land of singers. I'm also vain," she said, smiling. "But I believe that true humility consists of recognizing the truth about yourself."

I mumbled acquiescence, content to enjoy the warmth of her conversation and the security of the floor. She talked on, and sang me some songs. I remember almost nothing of the conversation. I remember even fewer details of the songs, but, although I understood no lyrics and detected no particular melody, the songs carried me off into my imagination, and I could almost see the things she sang of though how I knew what she was singing of I don't know. Though terrible things have happened since, and I myself silenced Mwabao's music, I'd give up much to be able to hear those songs again.

That night she lit a torch outside her main door and told me that guests would come. I later learned that a torch meant that a person was willing to receive guests, an open invitation to all who might see the glowing in the night. It was a measure of Mwabao Mawa's power over other people (or, less cynically, their devotion to and delight in her) that whenever she put the torch outside, it was only a matter of an hour before her house was full, and she had to douse the outer light.

The guests were mostly men-- not uncommon, either, in Nkumai, since women rarely traveled at night, being generally burdened with the care of children, who didn't have the balance for safe walking at night. The talk was mostly small, though by listening carefully I learned a bit. Unfortunately, Nkumai courtesy forced the guests to spend as much time talking to me as they spent talking to each other. It would have been nicer, I thought at the time, if they had shared Mueller's custom of letting a guest sit in silence until he wished to join a conversation. Of course, Nkumai's custom keeps a guest from learning as much; I was certainly kept from learning anything I thought significant that night.

I learned only that all her guests were men of education-- scientists of one kind or another. And I got the feeling from the way they talked and argued that these were men little concerned with science as Mueller used it, as a means to an end. Instead, science was the end in itself.

"Good evening, Lady," a small, softspoken man said. "I'm Teacher, and I'm eager to be of service to you."

A standard greeting, but at last I gave in to my curiosity and asked, "How can you be named Teacher, and also three other men in this room, and also the guide who led me here? How can you tell one another apart?"

He laughed, with that superior laugh that already irritated me and which I soon learned was a national custom, and said, "Because I'm myself, and they are not."

"But when you talk about each other?"

"Well," he patiently explained, "I hope that when men talk about me, they call me Teacher Who Taught the Stars to Dance, because that's what I did. The man who guided you here this morning, he's Teacher of True Sight. That's because he made that particular discovery."

"True sight?"

"You wouldn't understand," he said. "Very technical. But when someone wants to talk about us, he refers to our greatest accomplishment, and then everybody who matters knows who he's talking about."

"What about someone who hasn't made a great discovery yet?"

He laughed again. "Who would want to talk about such a person?"

"But when you speak of women, they all have names."

"So do dogs and little children," he said, so cheerfully I could almost believe he hadn't intended to be insulting. "But no one expects great accomplishments from women, at least not while they're fully engaged in the work of conceiving, bearing, and rearing children. Don't you think it would be coarse to speak of a woman by referring to her greatest gifts? Imagine calling someone 'Blanket Dancer with the Huge Buttocks' or 'Cook Who Always Scorches Soup.' He laughed at his own joke, and several others, who had been vaguely listening in, suggested other titles. I thought they were hilarious, but as a woman I had to pretend to find them insulting, and in fact I was a bit annoyed when one of them suggested that I might be called "Emissary with the Freckled Breasts."

"How would you know to call me that?" I asked archly. I was annoyed to discover how easily it came to me to sound arch-- all I had to do was imitate the Turd's speech and then raise one eyebrow-- which I've been able to do since childhood, to the amusement of my parents and the terror of the troops under my command.

"I don't know it," answered a man named Stargazer-- the same name as two others in the room. "But I'd be willing to find out."

It was something I hadn't really been prepared for. Rapists on the road I could cope with by killing them. But how does a woman say no to a man in polite company without offending? As a king's son, I was not used to hearing women say no. As Saranna's lover, I had lately not been used to asking, anyway.

Fortunately, I didn't have to answer at all.

"The Lady from Bird is not here to find out what's hidden under your robe," Mwabao Mawa said, "especially since most of us know how little it conceals." The laughter was loud, especially from the man insulted, but they moved away from me for a short time, and I was allowed a few moments to myself, to observe.

There was, amid all the chatter of science and court gossip-- more of the latter than of the former, of course-- a detectable pattern that amused me. I watched as one man at a time took Mwabao aside for just a moment of quiet, unheard conversation. And one of them I overheard. "At noon," he said, and she nodded. Little enough to generalize on, but I was willing to believe that they were making appointments. For what? I could think of several obvious purposes. She might be a whore, though I doubted it, both because of her lack of beauty and because of the obvious respect these men had for her, never leaving her out of their conversations or ignoring a remark she made. Or she might really be a mistress of the king, in which case she could be selling influence-- though again I doubted it, because it seemed so unlikely that an emissary would be placed with a woman who had that kind of power.

A third possibility was that she was somehow involved with a rebellion or a secret party, at least. This didn't contradict either fact or logic, and I began to wonder if there was something there that might be exploited.

But not that night, at least. I was tired. Though my body had long since healed from the strain of climbing to Mwabao Mawals house-- and, for that matter, from the beating of the Nkumai soldiers only a short time before-- I was still emotionally drained. I needed to sleep. I dozed for a moment and woke to find the last of the men leaving.

"Oh," I said, startled. "Did I sleep so long?"

"Only a few moments," Mwabao Mawa told me, "but they realized it was late, and went. So you could sleep."

She went to a corner, dipped her hand into a barrel, and drank.

I would have done the same, but as I thought of water a horrible realization came over me. In prison I had had privacy to eliminate wastes, and while traveling with Teacher he had delicately let me take care of those needs on the other side of the carriage, forbidding anyone to watch. But alone here in the house with another-- another?-- woman, there might be no such fastidiousness.

"Is there a room particularly for--" For what, I wondered. Was there a delicate way of putting it? "I mean, what are the other three rooms of your house used for?"

She turned to me and smiled slightly, but there was something other than a smile behind her eyes. "That I will tell to those who have a practical reason for such knowledge."

Didn't work. And worse, I had to watch as Mwabao Mawa casually took off her robe and walked naked across the room toward me.

"Aren't you going to sleep?" she asked me.

"Yes," I said, not bothering to hide how flustered I was. Her body was not particularly attractive, but it was the first time I had ever seen such a large woman undressed, and that, combined with her blackness and my long deprivation, made her exotic and intensely arousing. It made it all the more urgent for me to figure out a way to keep from getting undressed myself, since my modesty was essential to my survival in a nation which took me for a woman.

"Then why aren't you undressing? " she asked, puzzled.

"Because in my nation we don't undress to sleep."

She laughed aloud. "You mean you wear clothing even in front of other women?"

I pretended to speak as if I were from a nation whose customs exactly coincided with my present need, though in fact at that time I did not yet know of any such place. "The body is one's most private possession," I said, "and the most important. Do you wear all your jewels all the time?"

She shook her head, still amused. "Well, at least I hope you'll take it off to drop."

"Drop?"

She laughed again (that damned superior laugh) and said, "I guess a soiler would have a different word for it, wouldn't you? Well, you might as well watch the technique-- it's easier to show it than to explain."

I followed her to the corner of the room. She grasped the corner pole and then swung out through the curtain. I gasped at the suddenness of the way she lurched out over the vast distance to the ground. For a moment I wondered if she had leapt out into space and flown away; but there were her hands, still gripping the pole through the curtains, and she sounded calm as she said, "Well, open the curtain, Lark. You can't learn if you don't look!"

So I opened and watched as she defecated over empty space. Then she swung back in and walked over to another water bucket-- not the one she had drunk out of-- and cleaned herself.

"You've got to learn quickly which bucket is which," she said with a smile. "And also, don't ever drop in a wind, especially in a wind with rain. There's nobody directly below us, but there are plenty of houses off at an angle below my home, and they have strong opinions about feces on their roofs and urine in their drinking water." Then she lay down on a pile of cushions on the floor.

I hitched up my robe until the skirt was very short, and then grasped the pole tightly and delicately tiptoed through the curtain. I began to tremble as I glanced down and saw how far below me the few torches still burning seemed to be. But I bowed-- or rather squatted-- to the inevitable, trying to pretend that I was not where I was.

It took a long time to convince my sphincters that they should relax, not clench up in terror. When at last I finished, I came back and walked awkwardly to the water barrel. For a difficult moment, I wondered if I was at the wrong one.

"That's the one," came Mwabao Mawa's voice fzom the cushions on the floor. I inwardly winced to think she had been watching me, though I hope I showed nothing on my face. I cleaned myself and lay down on another pile of cushions. They were too soft, and soon I pushed them aside and slept on the wooden floor, which was more comfortable, though something in between would have been nicer.

Before I slept, though, Mwabao Mawa asked me sleepily, "If you don't undress to sleep, and you don't undress to drop, do you undress for sex?"

To which I just as drowsily replied, "That I will tell to those who have a practical reason for such knowledge." Her laughter this time told me that I had a friend, and I slept peacefully all night.

I awoke because of a sound. In a building where there is not only a north, south, east, and west, but also an up and down, I couldn't tell where the sound was coming from. But it was, I realized, music.

Singing, and the voice, which was distant, was soon joined by another, which was closer. The words were not clear. There may have been no real words. But I found myself listening, pleased by the sound of it. There was no harmony, at least nothing that I could recognize. Instead, each voice seemed to seek its own pleasure, without relation to the other. But there was still some interaction, on some subtleor perhaps merely rhythmic level, and as more voices joined in, the music became very full and lovely.

I noticed a motion, and turned to see Mwabao Mawa looking at me.

"Morningsong," she whispered. "Do you like it?"

I nodded. She nodded back, beckoned to me and walked to a curtain. She drew it aside and stood on the edge of the platform, naked, as the song continued. I held on to the corner pole and watched where she was watching.

It was the east; the hymn was to the imminent sun. As I watched, Mwabao Mawa opened her mouth and began to sing. Not softly, as she had yesterday, but with full voice, a voice that rang among the trees, that seemed to find the same mellow chord that had originally been tuned into the wood, and after awhile I noticed that silence had fallen except for her music. And as she sang an intricate series of rapid notes, which seemed to bear no pattern but which, nevertheless, imprinted themselves indelibly in my memory and in my dreams ever since, the sun topped a horizon somewhere, and though I couldn't see it because of the leaves above me, I knew from the sudden brightening of the green ceiling that the sun had risen.

Then all the voices arose again, singing together for a few moments. And then, as if by a signal, silence.

I stood, leaning on the pole. It occurred to me that once I had shared Mueller's delusion that people with black skins were fit only to be slaves. One thing, at least, I'd learned from my embassy here, and one thing I would take away: a memory of music unlike any other ever known in this world. I leaned there, unmoving, until Mwabao Mawa closed the curtains.

"Morningsong," she said, smiling. "It was too good an evening last night not to celebrate today."

She cooked breakfast-- the meat of a small bird, and a thin-sliced fruit of some kind.

I asked; she told me that the fruit was the fruit of the trees the Nkumai lived in. "We eat it as soilers eat bread or potatoes." It had a strange tang. I didn't like it, but it was edible.

"How do you catch birds?" I asked. "Do you use hawks? If you shot a bird, it would fall forever to the ground."

She shook her head, waiting to answer until her mouth was empty. "I'll have Teacher take you to where the birdnets are."

"Teacher?" I asked.

As if my question had been his cue, a moment later he was standing outside the house, calling softly, "From the earth to the air."

"And to the nest, Teacher," Mwabao Mawa answered. She walked out of the room, on to the next room where Teacher would be waiting. Reluctantly I followed, making the short jump to the other room, and then, without even a good-bye, followed Teacher away from Mwabao Mawa's house. No good-bye, at first because I had no idea how women who barely knew each other should say it, and then because she was already gone from the curtain before I finally decided to turn and say something.

Up was terrible, but down was infinitely worse. Coming up a rope ladder, you reach the platforms with your hands first, pulling yourself to security. But going down you have to lie on your stomach and extend your feet downward, hunting for a rung with your toes, knowing that if you go too far you won't be able to pull yourself up.

I knew that achieving my purpose in Nkumai depended on my ability to get from place to place, and so I refused to let my fear rule me. If I fall, I fall, I told myself. Then I ignored my peripheral vision and trotted along after Teacher.

He, for his part, didn't try to show off as much today as yesterday, so the going was easier. I discovered that maneuvers that were difficult and frightening when done slowly were much easier-- and much less frightening-- when done quickly. A rope bridge is steady enough when you lightly run across it-- but when you walk timidly it sways at every step.

When Teacher took a suspended rope with a knot in the end and swung easily from one platform to another, across an abyss that no one in his right mind would ever cross, I simply laughed, caught the rope he threw at me, and swung across just as quickly. At the other end, I pretended that I had jumped no farther than across a small stream, and let go, landing on the platform on my feet. It wasn't hard after all, and I said so.

"Of course not. Glad you're learning so fast."

But as we trotted along a sloping branch, it occurred to me to ask, "What would have happened if I hadn't reached the other platform? If my aim had been wrong or if I hadn't swung hard enough?"

He didn't answer for a moment. Then he said, "We would have sent a boy down from the top, swinging all the way, to get the rope back to one platform or another."

"Could the rope support two people, doing that?" I asked.

"No," he answered, "but we wouldn't do it right away."

I tried not to think of myself swinging helplessly over nothing as dozens of Nkumai waited impatiently for me to let go and drop (though that word no longer had the same meaning for me) so that they could get their highway working.

"Don't worry," Teacher said at last. "A lot of those swings have a guy rope on them, so they can be pulled back."

I believed him at the time, but I never saw a swing with a guy rope. Must have been in another part of Nkumai.

Our first stop was at the Office of Social Services.

"I want to see the king," I said, after explaining who I was.

"Wonderful," said the ancient Nkumai who sat on a cushion near the. corner pole of the house. "I'm glad for you."

That was all, and apparently he meant to say no more. "Why are you so glad?" I asked.

"Because it's good for every human being to have an unfulfilled wish. It makes all of life so poignant."

I was nonplussed. At this point in Mueller, if I had been in Teacher's position, taking an emissary to a government office, I would have ordered that such a recalcitrant official be strangled on the spot. But Teacher just stood there, smiling. Thanks for the help, friend, I said silently, and proceeded to ask if this was the right place.

"For what?"

"For getting permission to see the king."

"Persistent, aren't you?" he asked.

"Yes," I answered, determined to play the game by his rules, if necessary, but to win whatever the rules might be.

So it went all morning, until finally the man grimaced and said, "I'm hungry, and a man as poor and underpaid as I must take every opportunity to put some meager snack into his belly."

The hint was clear, and I took a gold ring from my pocket. "By chance, sir," I said, "I was given this as a gift. But I couldn't bear to own it, when a man such as you would make so much better use of it."

"I couldn't take that," he said, "poor and underpaid though I am. Yet part of my work is to feed those even less fortunate than I, in the name of the king. So I will accept your gift in order to pass it along to the poor."

Then he excused himself and went to another room to eat lunch.

"What do we do?" I asked Teacher. "Do we go? Do we wait? Did I just waste a perfectly good bribe?"

"Bribe? " he asked suspiciously. "What bribe? Bribery is punishable by death."

I sighed. Who could understand these people?

The official came back into the room, smiling. "Oh, my friend," he said to me, "dear Lady, I have just thought of something. Even though I can't help you, I know a man who can. He lives over there, and he sells carved wooden spoons. Just ask for Spooncarver Who Made the Spoon You Can See Light Through."

We left, and Teacher patted me on the shoulder. "Very well done. It only took you one day."

I was a bit angry. "If you knew this Spooncarver was the one I had to see, why did you bring me here?"

"Because," he said, smiling patiently, "Spooncarver won't talk to anyone who wasn't sent by Officer Who Earns Foreign Exchange."

Spooncarver Who Made the Spoon You Can See Light Through didn't have time to see me that day, but urged me to return tomorrow. As I followed Teacher through the maze of trees, he showed me a birdnet being strung among the trees. "In a week or so it'll be fully in place, ready to unfurl. It looks thick enough while it's rolled up, but when it's unrolled among the trees, the net is so fine it can hardly be seen." He showed me how the gaps in the net were just wide enough for a bird's head to pass through, and just small enough that unless the bird withdrew its head exactly backward, which was impossible for most birds, it would break its neck or strangle. "And at the end of the day, we draw up the net and distribute the food."

"Distribute?" I asked.

Then I got a lecture about how in Nkumai, everything belonged to everybody, and no money was ever used because nobody was ever paid.

However, I learned quickly that in fact everybody was paid. I could go to Spooncarver, for instance, and ask for a spoon, and he would readily agree, promising it to me within a week. But at the end of the week, he would have forgotten, or had so much other work to do that he just couldn't get to mine yet. He would keep promising and keep putting me off, until I did him a favor of equivalent value-- out of the goodness of my heart.

Mwabao Mawa's favor, which won her living, was that every now and then she stood at the edge of her house and sang morningsong, or eveningsong, or birdsong, or who knows what else. It was enough-- she was never hungry, and often had so much food and so many possessions she gave many things away.

The poor were those who had nothing of value to give. The stupid. The untalented. The lazy. They were tolerated; they were fed-- barely. They were not, however, considered to have any importance in life. And they all had names.

I was in Nkumai almost two weeks, long enough that the life was beginning to seem normal to me, when I finally got to see someone who had real power. He was Official Who Feeds All the Poor, and Teacher actually bowed slightly to him when we entered his house.

But the interview was pointless. Small talk, a discussion of Nkumai's social conscience, questions about my homeland. I had long since invented my own idea of what Bird was like, since I had no other way of answering the questions so many Nkumai put to me about the country. After all the empty chat, he invited me to dinner a few days hence. "When I burn two torches," he said. I left unsatisfied.

I was more unsatisfied when Teacher laughed at me and said that it looked like my climb upward through the government had reached an end. "What favor will you offer him?" he asked. I didn't point out that he was tacitly admitting that I was bribing Nkumai officials after all. I just smiled and showed him one of my precious iron rings.

He only smiled, and pulled open his robe to reveal a heavy amulet of iron hanging from his neck. The sight of so much iron wastefully used, for mere decoration, made my skin tingle.

"Iron?" he said. "We have so much of that. Iron would do with Spooncarver and Birdmaster, but with Official Who Feeds All the Poor?"

"What kind of gift would he appreciate?"

"Who knows?" Teacher answered. "No one's ever given him one that did any good. But you should be proud of yourself, Lady. You spoke to him at all-- which is more than most emissaries have been able to do."

"How wonderful," I said.

I insisted to Teacher that I knew the way back to Mwabao Mawa's house without his help. At last he shrugged and let me go alone. I covered the space quickly, and was pleased to see how well I was doing at traveling among the treetops. I even took a few moments to climb some unmarked branches, for the fun of it, and though I still avoided looking down, I found it a pleasant challenge to conquer a difficult approach. It was nearly dark when I got to Mwabao's house and called to her.

"Come into the nest," she said, smiling. At once she served me supper. "I hear you got to Official Who Feeds All the Poor."

"Someday you have to let me cook you a dinner such as we have in Bird," I said, but she laughed. So I asked her, "Why did you take me in, Mwabao Mawa, if there was never any intention for me to see the King?"

"King?" she asked, smiling. "Intentions? No one has any intentions at all. They asked who would let you live with them, and because I have food enough to spare, I offered. They let me."

I was angry at her, even though I was eating her food. "How can you of Nkumai expect to deal with the world, if you refuse to allow emissaries to see your king?"

She reached out her hand and gently stroked my cheek, to which no beard had come. "We don't refuse you anything, little Lark," she said, and smiled. "Don't he impatient. We Nkumai do things our own way."

I pulled away from her hand, deciding that it was time I let someone see me in a rage. "You all tell me that bribery is forbidden, and yet I've bribed my way through a dozen interviews. You all tell me that you all share everything, and no one has to buy or sell, and yet I've seen purchases and sales just like bartering peddlers. And then you tell me that you don't refuse me anything, but I've met with nothing but impediments."

I stood and walked from her angrily.

She didn't say anything for a while, and I couldn't turn and say more, or I'd lose something, lose the moment of impact. It was an impasse, until she began to sing in a little-girl voice, a voice nothing like the one she used for her real songs:

Robber bird hunts for berries, But only catches bees. She says, "I know how to eat and sleep, But what do I do with these?"

"One follows them," I said, my back still turned, "until one flnds their honey." Then I faced her, and said, "But what are the bees, Mwabao Mawa? Whom do I follow, and where is the honey?"

She didn't answer, just got up and walked out of the room-- but not toward the front room where I had often been. Instead she went into one of the forbidden back rooms, and because she didn't say anything else, I followed.

I found myself-- after a short run along a branch not even a meter thick-- in a brightly curtained room filled with wooden boxes. She had one open, and was rummaging through it.

"Here," she said, finding what she was looking for. "Read this." She handed me a book.

I read it that night. It was a history of Nkumai, and it was the strangest history I had ever read. It was not long, and there were no stories of war in it, were no records of invasions or conquests. Instead it was a list of Singers and their life stories-- of Woodcarvers and Treedancers, of Teachers and Housemakers. It was, in fact, a record of names and their explanations. How Woodcarver Who Taught the Tree to Color Its Wood got his name. How Seeker Who Saw the Cold Sea and Brought It Home in a Bucket earned his. And as I read the brief stories, I began to understand the Nkumai. A peaceful people who were sincere in their belief in equality, despite their tendency to despise those with little to offer. A people who were utterly at one with their world of tall trees and flitting birds.

And as I read. in the light of a thick candle, I began to sense contradictions. What could such a people possibly have developed to sell to the Ambassador? And what caused them to come down from the trees and go to war, using their iron to conquer Drew and Allison, and perhaps more by now?

As I thought these things, I began to think of other contradictions. This was the capital of Nkumai, and yet no one seemed aware or even interested in the fact that a war had just been won. There were no slaves from Allison or Drew making their way carefully among the trees. There was no sudden wealth from the tribute and taxes. There wasn't even any pride in the accomplishment, though no one denied it when I mentioned their victories.

"You're still reading?" Mwabao Mawa whispered in the darkness.

"No," I said. "Thinking."

"Ah," she answered. "Of what?"

"Of your strange, strange nation, Mwabao."

"I find it comfortable." She was amused; her voice hinted at a smile.

"You've conquered an empire larger than most other nations, and yet your people aren't military, aren't even violent."

She chuckled. "Not violent. That's true enough. You're violent, though. Teacher tells me that you killed two would-be rapists on a country road in Allison."

I was startled. So they had been tracing my travels. It made me uneasy. How far would they go? I should have said I was from Stanley, at the other end of the world from Nkumai-- but only Bird had women for rulers. Then I remembered that a tall black Nkumai could no more get through Robles or Jones to make inquiries in Bird than I could jump from Mwabao's house and land running.

"Yes," I admitted. "In Bird women are trained to kill in secret ways, or men would soon have power over us. But Mwabao, why have the Nkumai gone to war?"

It was her turn to be silent for a moment, and then she said simply, "I don't know. No one asked me. I wouldn't have gone."

"Where did they find the soldiers, then?"

"From the poor, of course. They have nothing to offer that anyone wants. But I suppose the war has allowed them to give the only thing they have. Their lives. And their strength. War is easy, after all. Even a fool can be a soldier."

I remembered the strutting, too-brave men of Nkumai. Armed with iron and quick to abuse the cowering populace of Allison. Of course. The worst of Nkumai, those used to being despised by all, at last in a position of power over others. No wonder they abused it.

"But that isn't what you want to know," said Mwabao Mawa.

"Oh?"

"You came here for something else."

"What?" I asked, feeling that sickening fear that children feel when they are just about to be found in hide-and-go-find.

"You came here to find out where we get our iron."

The sentence hung there in the air. If I said yes, I could imagine her crying out in the darkness of night, and a thousand voices hearing her, and my being cast off the platform into the darkness that led to the ground . But if I denied it, then would I be missing a chance, perhaps the only chance to learn what I wanted to know? If Mwabao was indeed a rebel, as I had suspected, she might be willing to tell me the truth. But if she was working for the king (her lover?) she might be leading me on to trap me.

Be ambiguous, my father always taught me.

"Everyone knows where you get the iron," I said easily. "From your Ambassador, from the Watchers, just like everyone else."

She laughed. "Clever, my girl. But you have a ring of iron, and you thought it had great value" --did she know everything I had said and done these two weeks?-- "and if your people are getting iron, in however small a quantity, you must be eager to find out what we're selling to the Ambassador."

"I've asked no one any questions about such matters."

She chuckled. "Of course not. That's why you're still here."

"Of course I'm curious about many things. But I'm here to see the king."

"The king, the king, the king, there you go like everyone else, always chasing after lies and empty dreams. Iron. You want to know what we do to get iron. Why, so you can stop us? Or so you can do it yourselves, and get as much iron as we?"

"Neither, Mwabao Mawa, and perhaps we shouldn't speak of such things," I said, though I was sure she would go on, was eager to go on.

"But that's where it's all so silly," she said, and I heard a mischievous little girl in her voice. "They take all these precautions, keep you imprisoned either with me or with Teacher all day, every day, and yet it's so impossible for you anyway, either to stop us or to duplicate what we do."

"If it's impossible, why do you worry?"

She laughed-- giggled, this time, like a child-- and said, "Just in case. Just in case, Lady Lark." She stood up suddenly, though she had already undressed for bed, and strode out of the room, back toward the room with the chests of books and other things. She was after other things. I followed her, and arrived just in time to catch a black robe she threw at me.

"I'll leave the room so you can dress," she said.

When I got back to the sleeping room, she was waiting-- impatiently, walking up and down, humming softly to herself. When I came in, she came to me, and put her hands on my cheeks. Something warm and sticky was on them, and she giggled when she looked at me.

"Now you're black!" she whispered, and proceeded to decorate my hands and wrists, then my ankles and feet. As she painted my feet, she ran one hand up the inside of my leg past the knee, and I stepped back abruptly, frightened that in playfulness she might find out not-too-playful facts.

"Careful!" she cried out. I looked behind me, and realized that I was standing right at the lip of the platform. I stepped forward.

"Sorry," she said. "I won't offend your modesty again! Just playing, just playing."

"What's going on?" I asked. "Why are you doing this?"

"I can travel at night like this," she said, spinning her naked body around in front of me, "and no one sees from very far away. But you-- lily-white and hair so light, Lady Lark-- you they could see from six trees away." She pulled a snug black cap over my head and took me by the hand to the edge of her house.

"I'm taking you," she said, "and if you like what you see, you must do me a favor in return."

"All right," I said. "What's the favor?"

"Nothing hard," she said, "nothing hard." Then she stepped off into the night. I followed.

It was the first time I had tried to travel in the darkness, and suddenly my old panic returned. Now on the broad branches I was too frightened to run-- what if I veered only slightly from the path? How could I see to jump with the swinging ropes? How could I hope to keep my footing anywhere?

But Mwabao Mawa led well, and on the hard places she took my hand. "Don't try to see," she kept whispering. "Just follow me."

She was right. The light, which was only starlight and the dim light of Dissent, did more harm than good, diffused as it was by the leaves. And the lower we got, the darker it became,

There were no swings. For that I was grateful.

And at last we came to a place where she told me to stop. I did, and then she asked me, "Well?"

"Well what?" I responded.

"Can you smell it?"

I hadn't thought to smell. So I breathed slowly, and opened my mouth, and tasted the air through my nose and tongue, and it was delicious.

It was exquisite.

It was a dream of lovemaking, with a woman I had wanted forever but never hoped to have.

It was a memory of warfare, with the lust of blood and the joy of surviving through a sea of dancing spears and obsidian axes.

It was the essence of rest after a long journey at sea, when land smells welcome and the grain waving on the plains seems to be another sea, but one you could walk on without a boat, one you could drown in and live, and I turned to Mwabao Mawa and I know my eyes were wide with astonishment, because she laughed.

"The air of Nkumai," she said.

"What is it?" I asked her.

"Many things combined," she said. "The air rising from a noxious swamp below us. The falling fragrance of the leaves. The smell of old wood. The last vestiges of rain. Spent sunlight. Does it matter?"

"And this is what you sell?"

"Of course," she answered. "Why else would I bring you? Only the smell is much stronger in daylight, when we capture it in bottles."

"Smells," I said, and it seemed funny. "Smells from a gassy swamp. Can't the Watchers synthesize it?"

"They haven't yet," she said. "At least they keep buying it. It's funny, Lady Lark, that mankind can speed between the stars faster than light itself, and yet we still dont know what causes smells."

"Of course we know," I said.

"We know what different things smell like," she answered, "but no one knows all that travels from the substance to the olfactory nerves."

There was no arguing that, since I didn't yet know olfactory from occipital.

Another thing she had said intrigued me. I picked up on what she said about men traveling faster than light. "Any schoolchild knows that's impossible," I said. "Our ancestors were brought to Treason in starships that took a hundred years of sleep to arrive."

"So mankind was crawling then," she said. "Did you think they would stop learning, just because our ancestors left them? In three thousand years of isolation, we've missed the great things of humanity."

"But faster than light," I said. "How could they have done that?"

She shook her head, a faint grey in the grey of night moving faintly. "I was just talking," she said. "Just chattering on. Let's go back."

We retraced our steps. We were halfway up a rope ladder when a voice above us whispered faintly in the night.

"Someone's on the ladder."

Mwabao Mawa ahead of me froze, and I did the same. Then I felt the rope jiggle slightly, and her foot came down near my face. I assumed we were going down, and would have descended at once except that her foot twisted and hooked under my arm, stopping my descent. So I waited until she climbed down the opposite side of the ladder to be at the same height as me-- her feet on the rung below mine, and so her lips not far below my ear.

The sound wouldn't have been audible three feet away. "First platform. Wash face. Going to visit Official Who Feeds All the Poor. Two Torches."

So we went on climbing, and reached the first platform, which by chance-- lucky chance, too, since it was not common-- had a barrel of water. I washed my face as silently as possible, while Mwabao Mawa kept climbing up and down the same three meters of rope ladder, so that anyone observing the strand in the night wouldn't know we had stopped.

I got my face as clean as possible, and also my hands and feet. Then I climbed on the ladder behind her.

"No," she whispered, and then we were both standing on the platform, as she demanded, quietly of course, that I give her my robe.

"I can't," I whispered.

"You're wearing clothing underneath, aren't you?", she asked, and I nodded. "Well, I can't be caught naked on the treeways. I can't."

But still I refused, until finally she said, "Then give me your underclothing." I agreed to that, and reached under the robe to strip off the pants and halter. The pants were too tight for her hips, but she struggled into them anyway. The halter, however, fit nicely-- one more sad proof of exactly how buxom I had become.

I had a worse realization, however, at the same time. The halter, as I slipped it off my shoulder inside my robe, had snagged on something on my shoulder. There should have been nothing there to snag on. Which meant that something new was growing.

An arm? Then I had less than a week before I'd have to cut it off, and it wasn't in a good position for me to get at alone. How could I go to an Nkumai surgeon (were there any Nkumai surgeons?) and ask him to remove an extra arm?

But the momentary alarm that gave me turned into relief as I realized that of course I didn't have to stay here for a week,, or even another day. I had all that I needed, all I had hoped for. I could now make a great show of leaving Nkumai in disgust at their failure to let me see the king. I could return to my father and tell him what the Nkumai sold to the Ambassador.

Smelly air.

I might have laughed, except that we were climbing the ladder again. And as I realized how close I had come to laughing, it occurred to me that whiffs of Nkumai forest air above noxious swamps could be dangerous. Self-restraints that I could normally count on, disciplined reflexes that had always been sure, didn't function as well here, not this night.

Finally we reached the platform where the guards were watching.

"Stop," said the sharp whisper, and then hands grabbed my wrist and pulled me toward the platform. Unfortunately, I wasn't ready for the movement, and it was only with luck that I kept my feet on the rope ladder. As it was, I hung over the abyss, my feet on the ladder and my one arm suspended in the firm grasp of a guard.

"Careful," said Mwabao. Careful, she's a soiler, she might fall."

"Who are you?"

"Mwabao Mawa and Lady Lark, the soiler emissary from Bird."

A grunt of recognition, and I found myself being pulled toward the platform, until my shin struck the edge. I stepped clumsily onto the wood, falling to one knee.

"What are you doing, wandering in the dark like this?" the voice insisted. I decided to let Mwabao answer. She explained that she was leading me to meet with Official Who Feeds All the Poor.

"Nobody has torches out now," said the voice.

"He will."

"Will he now?"

"Two torches," she insisted. "He is expecting a guest."

Whispers, and then we waited while quiet feet scampered off. A guard-- or two, I realized, as the breathing patterns broke up-- stayed with us, while another ran to check. It wasn't long before he returned and said, "Two torches."

"All right then," said the voice. "Go on. But in the future, Mwabao Mawa, carry a torch. You are trusted, but not infallible."

Mwabao mumbled her thanks, and so did I, and we were on our way again.

When two torches shone in the distance, Mwabao Mawa said good-bye.

"What?" I said, rather loudly.

"Quiet," she insisted. "Official must not know that I brought you."

"But how do I get there from here?"

"Can't you see the path?"

I couldn't, so she took me closer, until the dim light of the torches illuminated the rest of the way. I was glad that Official didn't have the same penchant for narrow approaches that Mwabao did. I felt safe enough following the path in the dark, as Mwabao Mawa slipped off into the night of the trees.

I came to the door and said, very softly, "From the earth to the air."

"And to the nest, come in," said a soft voice, and I stepped through the curtains. Official sat there looking very, well, official in his red robe in the flickering light of two candles.

"You came at last," said Official.

"Yes," I said, and added truthfully, "I'm not very good at traveling in the dark."

"Speak softly," he said, "for the curtains conceal little, and the night air carries sounds a long way."

So we spoke softly as he asked me questions about why I wanted to see the king and what I wanted to accomplish. What could I say? No need to see the old boy now, Official, already got what I wanted. So I answered all his questions, until at last he sighed deeply and said, "Well, Lady Lark, I've been told that if you passed my screening, I was in no way to impede you from further approach to the king."

Yesterday I would have been delighted. But tonight-- tonight I Just wanted to take my deformed body with the new arm it was growing and get out of Nkumai.

"I'm grateful, Official."

"Of course you don't go straight from me to him. A guide will come and take you to the very highly placed person who gave me my instructions, and that very highly placed person will take you higher."

"To the king?"

"I don't know exactly how highly placed this person is," Official said, not smiling. How could they conduct government this way, I wondered.

But a boy appeared when Official snapped his fingers, and led me off another way. I followed gingerly, and this time there was a swing-- but the boy lit a torch at the other end, and I made it, though I landed clumsily and twisted my ankle. The sprain was mild, and it healed and lost its soreness in a few minutes.

The boy left me at a house which had no light, and he told me to say nothing. So I waited in front of the house, until finally a low whisper said, "Come in," and I went in.

The house was absolutely dark, but once again I was asked questions, and once again I answered, not having any idea who I was speaking to or even where, precisely, he was. But after a half hour of this, he finally said, "I will leave now."

"What about me?" I asked idiotically.

"You'll stay. Someone else will come."

"The King?"

"The person next to the king," he said, even more softly, and left through the gap in the curtains I had entered by.

Then I heard soft steps in another direction, and someone came in and sat beside me. Close beside me. And then chuckled softly.

"Mwabao Mawa," I said, incredulous.

"Lady Lark," she whispered back to me.

"But they told me--"

"That you would meet the person closest to the king."

"And it's you?"

She chuckled again.

"So you are the king's mistress."

"In a way," she said. "If only there were a king."

That one took awhile to sink in.

"No King?"

"No one king," she answered, "but I can speak for those who rule as well as anyone. Better than most. Better than some of them."

"But why did I have to go through all of this? Why did I have to-- bribe my way up to you? I was with you all along!"

"Softly," she said. "Softly. The night listens. Yes, Lark, you were with me all along. I had to know that I could trust you. That you weren't a spy."

"But you showed me the place yourself. Let me smell the smells."

"I also showed you how impossible it was to stop us, or duplicate it. Near the ground, Lark, the air smells foul. And your people could never climb our trees, you know that."

I agreed. "But why did you show me anyway? It's so useless."

"Not useless," she said. "The smell has other effects. I wanted you to breathe that air."

And then I felt her hand pull the cap off my hair. She gently pulled at a single lock of it. "You owe me a favor," she said, and suddenly I felt my own death approaching.

Her breath was hot on my cheek and her hand was stroking my throat when I finally thought of a way out of this. At least a way to postpone it. Perhaps the perfumed air was enough to loosen the sexual tabus of the people of Nkumai. Perhaps it would have been enough of a dose to weaken a normal woman's inhibition against making love to another woman. But I had no inhibition against making love to a woman, and my body, too long deprived, reacted to Mwabao Mawa's offer as if it were extraordinarily opportune. Fortunately, my inhibition against dying was very strong, And the air hadn't weakened it a bit. I knew that if I let things go on to their natural conclusion it would lead to discovery of my odd physique. It occurred to me that Mwabao Mawa would not be quite so open-minded about finding a man in her bed as she expected me to be about finding a woman in mine.

"I can't," I said.

"You will," she said, and her cold hand slid inside my robe. "I can help you," she said. "I can pretend to be a man for you, if you like," and she began humming and singing a soft, strange song. Almost immediately that hand inside the robe became rougher, stronger, and the face that kissed my cheek felt rough and whiskered. All of this seemed to happen through her song. How did she do it, I wondered, even as another part of my mind gratefully noticed that her pretence at maleness would probably help quell my desire for her.

Except that my breasts reacted like any woman's, and I began to be very afraid as the song became too rhythmic, pulled me more deeply into a trance.

"I mustn't," I said, and I pulled away. She followed. Or he? The illusion was powerful. I only wished I could do the same, and fool her into thinking I was a woman no matter what evidence her lands lips and eyes might find. But I couldn't. "If you do," I said, "I'll kill myself afterward."

"Nonsense," she answered.

"I haven't been purified." I tried to sound desperate. It wasn't hard.

"Nonsense," she said.

"If I didn't kill myself, my people would," I said. "They will, if this happens and I haven't been purified first."

"How would they know?"

"Do you think I would lie to my own people?" I hoped that the huskiness and trembling in my voice sounded like offended honor instead of the rank terror I actually felt.

Perhaps it did, for she stopped, or rather paused, and asked, "What is it, this purification?"

I made up a jumble of religious ritual, half stolen from the practices of the people of Ryan and half a product of my need for solitude. She listened. She believed me. And so I made another journey in the dark, and found myself alone in Mwabao Mawa's room, the one with the chests and boxes. My purpose there, she told me, was to meditate.

I stayed there for a morning and an evening and a night.

I had no idea what to do. Mwabao was in the other room, the one we had shared for two weeks, humming softly an erotic song-- one that kept me almost constantly aroused.

I toyed with the idea of cutting off my genitals, but I couldn't be sure how long regeneration would take, and the healed wound of castration would not be taken for the anatomy of a woman.

I also thought of escape, of course, but I knew perfectly well that the only escape route lay through the room where Mwabao Mawa cheerfully waited. I cursed again and again-- very softly, of course-- wondering why I had the miserable fortune to end up imprisoned in a woman's body with a lesbian for a jailer and hundreds of meters of gravity serving as the bars for my cell.

At last I realized that my only hope, thin as it was, was to escape, not as a woman, but as a man. Tomorrow night, in the darkness, if I painted myself black, I might elude the guards. If I didn't, and I was taken, all I'd need to do is fall. Drop, I thought ironically. And my identity as a Mueller would be safe.

Getting past Mwabao? Simple. Kill her.

Could I do it? Not so simple. I liked her. She had breached diplomatic protocol, but she had done me no real harm. Also, she was well-connected, she would quickly be missed.

So I wouldn't kill her. A knock on her head, a breaking of bones, that should be enough. It should silence her for long enough, or at least immobilize her. Though truth to tell, I had no idea how hard I'd have to hit a normal person to knock her unconscious without killing her, how many bones to break without crippling her for life. With Muellers, it was never an issue. And I had never heard of a Mueller striking a foreigner without the intent to kill or maim. Still, I'd do my best to leave her whole.

All that remained was to hide who I was. The blacking of my skin could come later, after I finished with Mwabao. But the other preparations would be good for shock value.

I began searching quietly through her boxes, hoping to find a knife. With it I would cut off my breasts. They'd grow back, of course, but by tonight the scar tissue would only have turned back into normal flesh, and the breasts would still not have begun noticeably to grow. It was the closest thing to a change of sex. that I could hope to accomplish, I realized bitterly.

I didn't find a knife. Instead I found several more books, and a moment's curiosity led me to a half-hour's concentration.

It was a history of Treason. I had read our history of the planet, of course, but this was more complete in some ways. In some very important ways, and I began to realize that I had been almost completely fooled. And yet it was so obvious.

What Mueller's history left out, and what Nkumai's history dwelt on, was the entire group. It was an account of not just one family, but all the members of the conspiracy who were exiled to this metalless planet as a horrible example to the rest of the Republic of what happened to people who tried to establish a government of the intellectual elite. The long-dead issues that had brought the Families here always seemed laughable to me, and still do. Who should rule whom? The answer was always, eternally, "I should." Whoever "I" might be, "I" would seek power.

But the Nkumai history went over the roster of names. I hunted for Mueller, and found it. Han Mueller, a geneticist specializing in the hyperdevelopment of human regeneration. I found others. But of course the one most interesting to me at that moment was Nkumai. Ngago Nkumai, who had adopted a pseudo-African name as a gesture of defiance, had made his name in the development of theoretical physical constructs of the universe. Making new ways of looking at the universe that would enable men to do new things.

It all came together at once, each part so flimsy that alone it proved nothing, but all the events of the weeks I had spent in Nkurnai fit so well that I couldn't doubt my conclusion.

The smelly air above the swamp was nothing, was a decoy, was Mwabao Mawa's device for getting the slim, pretty blond girl from Bird into bed. But other things were true. There was no king, for instance. Mwabao had told the truth: a group governed this place. But it was not a group of politicians. It was a group whose profession was the same as the founder, Ngago Nkumai. They were scientists who made up new ways of looking at the universe-- scientists who invented things like True Sight and Making the Stars Dance. They used Mwabao Mawa as their liaison with what official government workers Nkumai had. Whom did they use as liaison with the army? With the guards? It hardly mattered. And why did all the common Nkumai believe there was a king? There undoubtedly had been-- or perhaps there still was-- a figurehead. Again, it hardly mattered.

What mattered was that Nkumai wasn't selling smells to the Ambassador at all. It was selling physics. It was selling new ways of looking at the universe. It was selling, of course, faster-than-light travel, as Mwabao Mawa had so blandly let slip and then covered so well. And other things. Things worth far more to the Watchers than arms, legs, hearts, and heads that were carved off the bodies of radical regeneratives.

Each Family would, if it had any hope of creating anything to sell to the Ambassador, try to develop what its founder had known best: Mueller, human genetics. Nkumai, physics. I looked up Bird and laughed. The original Bud had been a wealthy socialite, a woman with few marketable skills and abilities at all, except her knack for bending others to her will. The matriarchy was her only legacy. In the competition for iron that gave them no advantage. Yet, like all the others, she had passed on to her Family her knowledge of what she was best at.

I closed the book. Now it was even more urgent that I escape, because this particular discovery could be the key to a Mueller victory over Nkumai. And I could-- I was sure of it-- train a Mueller army to be able to fight in the trees. And we could-- I had hope for it-- win a victory and capture at least some of those minds, or at least control their Ambassador and block them from using it. After all, the basic population of Nkumai was ill-equipped for fighting, but the basic population of Mueller was raised to the knife and the spear and the bow. We could do it.

We had to do it. Because Nkumai was getting metal faster, and when they had enough of it, they would have the technology to build a ship and get off-planet. Not a sleepship, but a ship that traveled faster than light itself. They would get off Treason-- and Mueller had no hope of that. Then, once the Nkumai had reached the Republic and settled old scores, they would come back with all the metal their ships could carry, and then no Family could hope to stand against them. They would rule.

I had to stop them.

I put away the book and searched again for a knife. I was searching when the curtains parted and five Nkumai guards came into the room.

"Our spies just got back from Bird," one of them said.

I killed two and maimed another. They couldn't subdue me. They had to strike a blow to my head that would have killed an ordinary man. It did so much damage that I was unconscious for hours.