Treason

Chapter 4 -- Lanik and Lark

I awoke lying on a platform so that with my head on the platform my feet dangled off it. I felt rather than saw that I was still dressed. It was beyond belief that they had not discovered my body's secret-- surely they had searched me for weapons-- yet I still felt some hope that a sense of generous modesty had preserved the secret of Mueller.

Two Nkumai guards were standing nearby. When they saw that I was awake, they quickly threaded their way to me along narrow branches. We were so high that leaves were thick around us, and I could see patches of sky. The branches were so slender that my platform bounced wildly as the guards walked toward me.

When they were standing on the branch that passed under my platform, they reached out hooks and snagged two ropes dangling from even higher, thinner branches. On the ends of the ropes were the most ingenious manacles I had ever seen. Instead of the clumsy and quick-to-rot wooden manacles we used in Mueller, these were made of glass bound in rope. Two half-cylinders of glass were slipped around my wrists. They did not quite meet on either side. Then the rope was tied tightly around them, held in place by a groove in the glass. When the guards were through tying the ropes, the glass half-cylinders met tightly.

As a parting gesture in our wordless interplay, the guards jerked the manacles on my arms. The guard on the fight pulled the manacle down, toward my elbow. The other pulled his manacle up, toward my hand. The pain was sharp and immediate. I looked at them in surprise. They smiled grimly and left.

Around my right forearm and around my left hand the manacles had cut deep enough to draw blood. The glass had been ground or chipped to have a sharp edge. It was easy enough to get out of these manacles-- as long as you were willing to lose half a hand in the process, and even if you were, it would make climbing down from the tree rather difficult.

The manacles were also tied just far enough apart that I couldn't strike them against each other or anything else, not even my head. There was no way to shatter them. Furthermore, because they were tied to branches with a great deal of spring, when I pulled them down, they had a tendency to spring back, cutting me. As it was, there was such constant tension on them that any movement at all sliced me a little. I couldn't lie down-- couldn't even kneel.

They didn't want me to get away, and they didn't want me to enjoy staying with them. I've visited with hosts like that before and since, but none who were so obnoxious about it.

I looked around. It was early evening-- the sun was still visible, low amid the leaves to the west, shining under the clouds that were rolling in from the northwest. I must have been out for hours.

My platform rested on a single branch, but it was connected to or rested on many others, making one intertwining network. I bounced lightly on my platform. Immediately the guards felt the movement and looked around.

There were other platforms near me, none occupied. Farther away I thought I could see someone else standing in manacles, but I couldn't be sure. Leaves kept me from seeing very far.

It began to rain. I was immediately soaked; and here, where, fewer leaves and branches could dissipate the storm, the heavy drops battered me savagely. Worse, it fell with such force that every gust of wind jerked and jiggled the branches, and it felt like the first time I had walked on a rope bridge-- worse than seasickness. During the rain I could see that the guards huddled under two small roofs, watching no one.

My plan formed quickly and easily, but it would only get me away from this prison area. How I would get to the ground alive-- and from there, how I would get through the forest to safety (and where was that?) --those were matters too arcane to be investigated right then.

"Lady Lark," said a distant voice I recognized. Mwabao Mawa was making her way along the network of small branches. The guards stood and nodded to her as she approached me.

"Mwabao Mawa," I said. "I've changed my mind. I'd rather continue living with you after all."

She pursed her lips, then said, "We've had the full report from our informants. They're a rather treacherous pair-- mercenaries from Allison-- and they had the mistaken notion that we'd continue to pay more and more for every bit of information they eked out. I hope you don't have any such mistaken notion, Lark, or whoever you are. We will do no bargaining, except for your life."

I smiled, but I'm sure I didn't look particularly jovial.

"Lady Lark, you are not from Bird. Not only that, but the absurd stones you told us about that Family's culture were so far from the truth as to imply that you have never even been there. Nevertheless, it's obvious from your accent that you are from the Rebel River plain. It's also plain from the iron coin you used that you are from a Family that uses money. And since the iron could not have come from us, it must have come from some other Family that has something to sell to the Ambassador. Who is it?"

I smiled more widely.

"Oh well," she said. "I can guess with confidence that you're from Mueller. Precisely who you are I will know within a week, from more reliable spies than the pair of Allisons we used before. Let's get to more practical things. What are your people selling to the Ambassador?"

"Air," I answered, "from the swamps at the mouth of the Rebel River."

She glared at me. "I truly did like you."

"And I truly did like you, " I responded. "My liking for you, however, ended night before last, when I found out how widely our sexual tastes diverge." An out-and-out lie-- we both liked women.

"I still like you, Lark," she said. "I'm not a sadist, and you aren't here out of spite. So you'll understand if I don't stay to watch."

When she was gone, the guards came and lifted me into the air. I thought at first they would simply drop me, letting the manacles do the work. But apparently not-- if they accidently cut off a major portion of my hand, manacles couldn't hold me anymore. Instead, as I was in the air, they spoke for the first time and urged me to take hold of the ropes, which were now slack enough for me to do so.

I held on to the ropes as they swung my feet forward. In that position I couldn't let go of the ropes without slashing my wrists on the manacles, and the ropes were tied to such bouncy branches that I couldn't get leverage to kick at the guards. They proceeded to carve up my feet in a delightful criss-cross pattern about an inch deep, getting to bone in several places. It was agonizing, of course, but I had gone through worse in traming. Still, I knew what was expected of me and moaned and screamed. I must have given a convincing performance, because they soon stopped cutting, lifted me again, told me to let go of the ropes, and set me gently down.

On my feet, of course, and the manacles still forced me to stand. I thought of what happened to spies in the dungeons of Mueller, and decided that in that aspect of civilization, Nkumai and Mueller were about even. Mueller had a higher technology for inducing pain, but Nkumai understood how to evoke despair.

Thinking about that, I forgot to scream for a moment or two, but once I remembered that I was supposed to be suffering, I moaned a lot. They went away.

In half an hour the simple cuts on my feet were gone, and the pain and the tickle of healing quickly ended, too. However, the trouble with healing so fast was that my would-be tormentors would surely notice it, and there would be no further need for me to hide what it was that Mueller sold to the Ambassador.

I began to pray for rain. Or at least wish for it, since my pantheon didn't include anyone in charge of weather.

It came an hour after nightfall. The clouds rolled across the sky, blotting out the stars and the light of Dissent. The wind came up, bouncing the platform around. That was my signal to begin; with the branches already bouncing, they wouldn't notice my movements.

I began pulling against the manacles, to slice off part of my hand. The hardest thing was keeping the pressure on the manacles strong enough in the right direction so that the two outermost fingers on each hand were ripped off by the glass, and not the thumb.

I needed the thumb for climbing.

There was a horrifying moment when both hands came free at once, right when a gust of wind jerked the platform under me. I fell flat on my face-- but luck was kind to me that day, and I fell on the supporting branch rather than into empty space.

I lay there for a moment, dripping blood from my -maimed hands, as the rain began to pour.

Only a few minutes left until the storm died down. Between the clouds, the rain, and the darkness of night, I could see nothing at all. Yet I had to move, had to get away from the prison before my motion became detectable again. The pain was nothing, but conquering my fear of falling and my fear of moving in the darkness was the hardest thing I ever had to do in my life until then, with the greatest personal risk. Even now as I think about it, I wonder at what kind of madness caused me even to attempt it. But I was still young then, and life didn't have quite the high price on it that it has now.

The wood was slippery, and I crawled and climbed and staggered far faster than was safe, I tried to stay on the branches in the direction they forked from, knowing that eventually I would find a thicker branch with firm footing. I mostly kept my eyes closed, feeling ahead of me with my hands, because even in the pitch darkness, as long as my eyes were open, my mind kept wanting to see, and tended to panic when it couldn't.

Once I came to a platform, and was afraid for a moment it might be occupied. It wasn't, and from that platform to solid wood was only a matter of moments. I still didn't get up and run, however. I had no guide, and the wood was slick. But it was a relief not to be tossed back and forth, and I let myself descend into the darkness.

The rain stopped. The wind stopped. And just as I sighed in relief, the path I was following suddenly became very steep, and I lost my hold and fell. For a moment I thought that this was my death,j but almost immediately I landed on a platform.

"What the hell!" said an angry voice as I got up from the platform. I had knocked somebody down.

"What in the world is falling from the sky these days?" asked a woman's voice, amused.

I doubt they were amused when I took them apart. I had no time to be gentle and persuasive. But I don't think I killed them. Their instincts and my desires coincided far enough that neither of them came close to falling off the platform and, once I had immobilized them, I took a moment to search them for anything I might be able to steal. I had some vague notion of pretending to be a thief, to throw off the chase.

The man did have a knife, and I took it, along with an iron amulet the woman wore around her neck. Even then I had a vague thought that I might need money once I got away from Nkumai-- as if I had a reasonable hope of doing that. Then I found a rope ladder that began at the platform, held my breath, and let myself over the side and down into the darkness.

I descended silently, listening for any tell-tale noise that might come through the night air, telling me that my escape had been discovered, but the night was silent. A dim light began to filter down to my level as the clouds moved away and Dissent came higher into the sky.

As I passed a platform that connected with a rope bridge, I toyed with the idea of getting off the ladder. But I decided to go down at least one more level, putting as much vertical distance between me and my pursuers as possible.

It was a bad decision. I had no sooner passed the platform than the rope ladder began to swing violently, pendulum-fashion. And then it began to rise. They had found me.

My reflexes on the treeway were still slow. It took me a moment to decide to turn around on the ladder, get on the other side, the same side as the platform. By then I was a good three meters above it, and rising fast. I couldn't wait to get the range. I jumped backward when a dead guess told me I should.

I landed on my back and slid in the direction of the grain of the wood, filling my back with splinters. I had so much momentum that I slid right off the platform and down the steep beginning of the rope bridge.

It's one thing to run madly down a rope bridge and up the other side. Sliding down headfirst on your back offers far less control. I spread my feet to try to stop myself by hooking on to the ropes on either side. Unfortunately, my right leg caught first, jerking me in that direction, The side ropes stopped me from falling, but my impact had enough force to tip the entire bridge to the side, spilling me over.

I caught the ropes, and my grip held with a sickening jerk. The bridge was virtually upside down where I hung-- and the situation became worse as the wooden treads fell out of position. One of them struck me in the shoulder, and by reflex that hand let go. I held with the other, and quickly recovered my grip. But I could see no way of righting the bridge-- it was not like a boat that had capsized. There was no water to support me while I turned up the bridge; in fact, the only way to right the bridge was to let go. And that wouldn't help a bit.

I toyed with the idea of going back, hand over hand, to the platform I had left because it was much closer than the other side But I knew that it wouldn,t be long before my followers, undoubtedly guards, were on that platform-- and besides, they controlled the only other escape from it, the rope ladder.

So I began to go hand over hand toward the other end of the bridge. I was grateful for my thumbs. Even though the bleeding from my amputated fingers had stopped, my hands were still sore, and not at their strongest as they tried to heal. But I had a grip. At first, at least. After a while I had to twist an arm into the ropes to help support my weight. It slowed me down more, but I still made fair time.

Toward the end of the bridge, the position of the main hawsers forced the bridge to a more normal level, despite my body weight, and I gratefully pulled myself up onto the treads.

Then I felt a bouncing that was not caused by my own motion-- someone else was coming along the bridge. Now that it was upright again, they'd make good time, except in the section where the treads had fallen out. And sure enough, I heard a cry of surprise and a sudden lurching of the bridge. Did the man fall through, or catch himself in time? I had no way of knowing; even in the dim light I couldn't see more than two meters ahead of me.

Two meters was enough, however, for me to see that the platform I was approaching was occupied. However, they were obviously not part of the chase-- both men were facing away from me. I had no time to waste, and there was no longer any point-- if there ever had been-- in trying to mask the fact that I was escaping. The knife I had stolen found one man's heart as he turned around to face me, even as the other man fell forever into the night from a sharp kick I landed on the small of his back. He made no sound as he fell.

Pulling the knife out of the Nkumai, I looked around for another escape, and discovered that I was at the crotch of a main trunk and a major branch, not two branches. There was no downward slope-- only the straight-down plunge of the trunk. The branch led upward-- not the direction I wanted to go. And the bridge was still bouncing with my pursuers travel. If they hadn't been slowed by the missing treads, they would certainly have reached me by then, accustorned as they were to travel in the dark.

I thought of cutting the rope bridge, but the hawsers were far too thick and I didn't try.

Instead, I decided to go up the branch and hope it led to a route I could use. I was starting the climb when I noticed what the two Nkumai had been working on: a birdnet.

They had been securing the end-- the rolled-up net swung out taut into the darkness. At least one other point was secure-- and that might be enough.

I tested their knots-- they were tight. Then I slithered out feet-first onto the thick roll of the netting. It was rough, and provided enough purchase that I didn't fall, or even swing over to hang from the bottom. And as I crept backward along the net, I cut the strings that held the net in a roll.

When I reached the next tie point, I tested, and found to my relief that the net was tied at the point beyond. I could hear-- not very far away-- the sound of footsteps reaching the platform I had just left.

Cutting every string as I passed, I continued backward along the net. I could see the net unfolding, falling open along the route I had just traveled. Would my followers try to follow my path along the net? With it open, they would find it considerably harder. Or would they cut the net? It wouldn't hurt me-- there was a tie point between me and them. And it would make pursuit impossible.

I could almost hear them trying to decide in the darkness and stillness of the Nkumai night.

How far would the net go down? How far, for that matter, had I descended? What good would it do me to unroll the net if, once I clambered to the bottom, there were still a hundred meters between me and the ground?

The net was long, and when I reached the seventh tie point, it occurred to me that guards would probably be waiting at the platform where the net ended, ready for me to back into them and return to captivity. So I laboriously turned around on the net. It was harder, going face first, but I felt more secure about the chances of surprise. And it was a good thing I did. I was at the ninth tie point when I felt a jiggling on the net. It couldn't be coming from behind me-- I would have felt it long ago if someone were pursuing me along the route I had followed. All my training in logic was not required for me to conclude that someone was coming in front of me.

I kept slicing knots in the strings as I proceeded forward. And at the next point, I decided to end my journey along the net. Just beyond the tie I began slicing the net itself. Each string cut easily, even five or six strands together, but there were hundreds in the rolled-up net. And I was so involved that I didn't see my enemy until he was nearly with me.

He had not been cutting knots, of course, and so the net was still thick beneath him, while under and behind me the net fell away, leaving me on a much thinner and so less stable strand. I was halfway or more through cutting the net, but he had a knife, too, and I prudently decided that fighting him had a higher priority than cutting string.

That battle was rather one-sided. In good condition on level ground-- even on a level platform-- I'm sure I could have killed him. easily. But on a net high above the ground, in darkness only faintly relieved by dim and dissipated moonlight, and weakened by loss of blood and the still throbbing amputation of my fingers, I was not in the best of shape. Worse yet, the normal advantage of a Mueller-- that we didn't mind a few mortal wounds in the process of battle-- didn't apply now, since any weakening would force me to let go of the net and plunge so far to the ground that my chances of healing in time were pretty slim.

Worse yet, it was clear that he wasn't trying to capture me alive- apparently they thought my corpse would be useful enough, even though it couldn't be interrogated. The brief battle would have ended summarily when he finally pressed his knife into my bowels, if the top of the net hadn't been within reach.

He passed the knife back and forth in my belly, and the pain was strong enough to make me gasp. We could absorb a few simple cuts, but it wasn't part of the Mueller battle training to stand there while the enemy gutted us like a fallen deer. I cut down at his arm and struck flesh, but a moment afterward his hand was back, the knife again stabbing to disembowel me. It was clear that such a trade-off-- his arm for my guts-- would quickly end with me falling. So instead of attacking him I hacked wildly at the net above, where I had already been cutting. Pain and desperation gave me greater strength, or else the time was actually longer than I thought, but the net soon snapped, and my enemy gave a grunt of surprise as the two halves of the net broke apart, falling away from each other and down. He silently disappeared into darkness, leaving me alone, swinging on the dangling net.

It was now open along the entire remaining length, and I clung to the thin mesh by fingers and toes. The air was cold on my open abdomen. Something hot and wet brushed by my knee, and I realized that some intestine had fallen out.

Disguise of my true sex was hardly important now, and I cut off my black robe at the shoulders, to free me for a scramble down the net. Naked now, and becoming numb to the pain, I began to climb down my remnant of net.

I felt like a crippled spider on a broken web. More than once a strand gave way and I had to grasp for another handhold. Constantly the thin mesh cut into my fingers and toes.

After an eon of descent my foot found nothing under it.

I had reached the bottom of the net, and under it was air.

How much air? Fifty centimeters? Or two hundred meters?

I had no idea how high I had been when I started. Because the net had been cut, the bottom corner, where I now dangled, was lower than the net would have been in its regular open position. The ground might be a single step below me.

But what choice did I have? Weak as I was, my bowels open and dangling, blood still seeping from an impossible jumble of half-healed wounds, I could neither climb up again nor hang on much longer. My only hope of survival was to let go of the net. If the net was low enough, I might be able to land with enough bones intact that I could scramble away in the darkness and find some place to hide while my belly healed. If the net was too high, then they'd find me on the ground in the morning whether I jumped or tried to hang on a little longer.

While I hung there, trying to make a decision, the net began to tear. My weight was too much for a net designed to be invisible to birds. I heard the rapid popping of strands for a moment, and then, my fingers still gripping the strings of the net, I tumbled downward into the black air.

I fell free for a long second. I couldn't even prepare myself to roll, on impact, since I couldn't see the ground. I landed on my back, the breath knocked out of me by the impact. And because I hadn't let go of the net, I got tangled up in it, meter after meter piled on and around me.

I was alive.

For just a moment I lay there, almost stunned, tempted by the welcome release of unconsciousness. But I refused. The fact that I had lived to get to the bottom of the Nkumai forest made me determined to try to make good the escape. How long would it take the Nkumai to reach the bottom, going by ladder? And once down here, how long would it take them to reach me? Not long, I decided, and struggled free of the net.

I left some intestine with the net, and the gut still connected to me tried to lurch forward out of the gaping wound with every step I took. Only a hand constantly pressed to my belly held it in. I staggered off in a direction that would take me, I hoped, to the sea. I had lost all conscious sense of direction; I hoped that my unconscious northsense would lead me aright.

Even though my mind was not functioning well, I remember making at least some attempt to hide my trail. I found a brook, and pausing long enough to rinse my wound, the cold water striking my bowel like a club, I followed it downstream a long way. The drinks I occasionally took seemed to refresh me, until the sickening moment when the water reached the disrupted gut. I soon gave up drinking.

I was too mind-numbed to realize what it meant when the sound of the brook got so loud. When the waterfall tumbled off into darkness, I fell with a huge splash into the river below. Again I almost lost consciousness there, and might have drowned except that the current was swift and I was able to keep awake and afloat long enough to reach the other shore. In the river I lost the knife I had managed to keep in the fall. I cared little about that at the time, and slept on the far side of the river, in plain sight on the bank.

I woke with the sun shining dimly through the leaves at the top of the forest, and stayed awake long enough to crawl into some thick brush, where I couldn't be seen from above.

I woke again in darkness, panting with thirst, and though I remembered the agony of the last drink I had taken, I knew that to have any hope of healing, I had to have water in my body. I slid painfully down to the river, my intestine trailing limply behind me, and drank the murky water there. It did not turn to torture in my bowel; apparently my Mueller body was coping even with that massive a wound, and had closed a connection somewhere that let the water through. The connection had bypassed much of my former intestine, however. It still slopped and dragged in the grass and dirt. I was too tired to try to clean it.

Again in daylight the sun roused me. This time I heard talking and calling. Feet ran by on the other side of the river. The Nkumai, so silent and sure in the high trees, were not good at reading groundsigns, or they would have immediately spotted the place where I crawled to the river to drink the night before. I remained quiet and unmoving in the thicket where I lay hidden, and my pursuers soon passed on. I slept again, and again that night I slid down to the water and drank. It felt like the dangling intestine was larger and more awkward to drag with me than before, but it probably felt that way because I was so weary, and so I slept again.

The water was not pure. I began vomiting early that morning, and from the first I was puking blood. I didn't open my eyes, just writhed in agony and panicked as I feared that my fever would lead to delirium, and delirium would call my would-be killers.

I don't know how many days after that I was feverish and unconscious. But I was vaguely aware that I recovered strength enough to walk, always in a stupor, staggering through the forest. Only the ignorance of the Nkumai saved me-- I wasn't aware enough to be careful. Perhaps I walked at night. Perhaps they had given up the search. I don't know. But I moved from the river to cleaner brooks, and drank; the trees were an endless brown blur; the sun was merely a bright spot in the green from time to time; I knew nothing of what was transpiring.

And I dreamed that as I traveled I was not alone. I dreamed that someone traveled with me, someone to whom I spoke softly and explained all the wisdom of my fevered brain. I dreamed I held a child in my arms. I dreamed I was a father, and unlike my father, I would not, did not, disinherit my worthiest son because of some crime beyond his control. I dreamed, and then tried one day to set the child down so I could drink.

But the child would not leave my arms. And gradually, as I struggled to push the child away, I realized that birds were singing, the sun was shining, sweat was dripping from my chin, and I was not asleep.

The boy was whimpering.

The boy was real.

I remembered now how the child had cried out in hunger. I remembered now how I had deliriously crooned to him as, I walked along, how we had slept snuggled together. It was all so clear-- except where he had come from.

It took little investigation to discover. He was joined to me at the waist by a bridge of flesh. Gut to gut, and his food must have been whatever strength he could draw from my body. His legs dangled to within a foot of the ground when I stood erect; his head was only a little shorter than my own; and as I looked into his eyes, I realized they were mine.

Radical regenerative. I could heal anything. And when half my guts were torn away, connected to my body only by arteries and veins, my body just couldnt decide which was the real me, which part of me to heal. So it healed both halves, and I stood looking into the eyes of my perfect duplicate, who smiled timidly at me like a stupid but sweet-tempered child.

No, not a child. He had grown quickly, and a faint down of hair around the cheeks and lips hinted at oncoming adolescence. He was thin, starved; his naked ribs protruded. So did mine. My body, unsure which of us to save, had raided my body to give strength to his, and now struggled for a balance.

I did not want a balance.

I remember the monstrous rad I had seen lurching toward the troughs in the laboratories, and imagined myself there, ready to be harvested. But I had created, not a mere head, but an entire body. And when I was ripe for the plucking, and they cut the bodies apart, which would be me, and which would they send?

At this moment there was still no doubt which of us was the original Lanik Mueller. I had breasts; I had a tiny arm growing out of my shoulder, already with fingers that clasped and curled. It had not grown at all since I escaped from the Nkumai prison; I bitterly congratulated my body on having its priorities straight, healing my gut wound before bothering with a surplus arm. Good job.

Was the new me alive? Human? Intelligent? I didn't think to ask. I only knew that I would not live with two of me.

I was naked and had no knife. But the connection between us was still only the thin folds of tissue, rich with arteries, that had kept him alive during his gestation.

It. That had kept it alive. If I let the creature become him in my mind, then it was only a short shift to thinking of him as me. As it was I could hardly bear thinking of me as me.

Its hair grew as mine did, the same curls and twists, wild and tangled. I tore at the hair, tried to push it away. Of course it could not go. But it could not stay, either. It was myself, exactly myself, as I had been only a few months ago, before my body had changed to make room for a woman who did not belong there, a woman they insisted was myself.

Without a weapon, the operation of severance was filthy and painful. The creature awoke as I hacked at our connection with a sharpened stone. It wept, tried feebly to stop me. But it did not speak.

We both bled as the skin broke, as I ripped us apart, as I carved my freedom from the burden of bearing myself.

At last we were separated. My body was weak from having created him, but with all the strength I had I brought the stone down on his head, again and again. Its head. It stopped crying, and the broken skull poured brains. I was sobbing from the exertion, from seeing myself die. I threw down the stone and fled into the forest.

I ate what I could find, trying to gather strength. I saw no more signs of my pursuers-- they must have given up the hunt long ago. But that didn't help me escape. If they found me again, my fate would be quick. From where I was, all directions led deeper into Nkumai territory-- all but one. From the sun's position I calculated a rough northwest and headed that way.

Travel was hard, for I wasn't strong, but at least now I was conscious. I took the trip in easy stages, each day a little closer, following a brook to a river, the river to, eventually, the sea.

Of course, there was an Nkumai city by the rivermouth, but it was in the trees, except for a few buildings by a rough wharf. They were not sea people, I realized; they had not adapted as we of Mueller had. I remembered the huge fleet that had sailed out the Sleeve from Mueller, carrying thousands of troops that conquered Huntington in less than a month. From Nkumai no ships would sail.

But ships from other lands might come. And such a ship was my only hope of getting out of Nkumai and eventually getting word to Father about what the Nkumai sold to the Ambassador.

I waited until night, then walked under the Nkumai city to the sea. I kept to the border of the forest and walked a couple of kilometers up the coast from the wharf. I could watch for ships from there, and if I could still swim as well as I used to, I could get aboard with no trouble.

Secure in my hiding place, I slept.

I woke at midday, panting and sweating. I had dreamed that I-- but it was not I, it was the childself I had killed in the forest-- I dreamed that I had come to kill me, and I had wakened as knives flashed, as both I and my mirror image stabbed deep and found each other's hearts.

I vaguely remembered being wakened from the dream by a cry, and wondered if I had called out in my sleep. But when I crept from hiding and looked toward the sea, I saw a ship passing near shore, and the cries were coming from men who were trimming the sails.

The ship put into the port, and for the two days it stayed I tried to calculate how I could attract the attention of the sailors without calling the Nkumai from the city to find me.

I found a rotted branch and tested it in the water. It would float. Even if I was too weak to make the distance, I would have the branch to support me. The water was cold on my naked skin, but as I saw the ship pull away from the wharf and turn northeast, toward me, I splashed out into the water, and then, lying on the log as if I already needed it, paddled awkwardly out past the gathering breakers into the gentle swells of a calm sea.

Someone on the ship shouted, "Man in the sea! Man!"

I raised a hand and waved.

In a short time I was picked up from the water, and sat shivering under a blanket in a small boat heading for the ship.

"Thank you," I said.

One of the oarsmen grinned. Not a particularly genial smile. And the rudderman said, "Fine. Take you to captain."

"What nation are you from?"

They seemed reluctant to answer. I wondered whether they had understood.

"What Family? What Family does your ship come from?"

Grudgingly the rudderman replied, "Singer."

The island people from the great North Bay-- who had been conquering in Wing when I left Mueller. The emissary from Wankier had asked my father for troops, knowing his nation would be next, but he had gone away with our sympathy and little else. But at least these sailors were not Nkumai, and they had enough humanity to pull me from the water. I might live.

The captain looked little kinder than his crew, and after I was taken aboard, he spent little time in interviewing me. "Nation?" he asked, and because I thought it prudent not to tell the truth, I said, "Allison. I just escaped from an Nkumai prison camp"

He nodded reflectively, then made a motion. A few sailors came and tore the blanket from me."

"My God," said the captain, "what are those bastards doing to prisoners these days?"

I didn't answer. Let him think what he liked, I thought defiantly. But I was afraid.

"Which is it? Man or woman? Which is real?"

"Both, now," I said truthfully, and he shook his head.

"Impossible," he said. "This makes things very difficult. How will I know how to price you?"

Rice me? And then I remembered something else the Wankier emissary had said. That Singer had a thriving business going. In human flesh.

"Amusement," another officer said. "Put him in a cage and charge money."

"Good," said the captain. "And I think the best market is Rogers. They have circuses. Drop him."

The command had barely been given when I was picked up and carried to a hatch. They opened it and thrust me down. I landed heavily. The hatch closed above me.

There was no light. There was little air. But I was alive. It hadn't occurred to me to resist. What mattered was that I had value to them. Only the dead have no hope.

But Rogers was at the southwest corner of the continent. The trip would take months. Would it then be too late for me to get my information about Nkumai to my father? I didn't know. And it didn't matter. There was little enough I could do about it until I got out.

Had they noticed the extra arm growing from my shoulder? In the bright sunlight, perhaps not; staring at my breasts and genitals, they were distracted. But now the arm flexed involuntarily, tickling me on the back. It was going to be a long trip.