West of January

I BARELY HAD TIME TO ADJUST TO MY NEW VISION OF MISI WHEN, with no warning at all, there was trouble.

Our train happened to be in the lead. The men had been up ahead on a scouting or hunting expedition. Now they came cantering back with bows strung, with horses steaming and prancing. They were all good horsemen, those trader males, but they were shouting a lot and I could see that some of their mounts were giving trouble, as if anxiety was infectious. When Jat scrambled onto the platform, I saw that his eyes and nostrils were dilated as if he were spooked himself. Then he turned to Misi and began to whisper urgently in her ear.

The country was patchy woodland, rolling in large hills and ridges under dismal low clouds. The rain had stopped, but the air was still full of the feel of it. Odd movements of wind stirred gusts of mist amid the copses, and the twisted white tree trunks hovered like flocks of ghosts on the edges of reality.

Often, as now, I huddled in a blanket for warmth. The sun, when visible, had fallen halfway down the sky, lower than I had ever seen it, and shadows stretched eerily out to the east. I sorely missed the constant cloudless blue of the grasslands.

For several sleeps we had been skirting a large river to the south of us. Jat had spoken of deep jungle beyond it. To the north bare spines of rock rose faintly, higher than anything I had seen since we had left the Andes. Long ago burned off by High Summer, those would now be incapable of growing anything, even when watered. So this might be a natural pass, a narrowing of the borderlands, an obvious place to ambush traders. There was danger—I could smell it.

I could stand on my feet now, but only briefly and not without pain. Walking was still beyond my powers, and I was happier wearing my splints. Whatever lurked ahead of us, I could not flee it at any speed greater than the snail crawl of the hippos, for I could not even sit astride a horse yet.

Of course trader women never rode and would never abandon their wagons. The men, I suspected, might. If the danger was some predatory animals—or men—then I could expect to take part in a collective defense. I had not shot an arrow since I joined the seafolk, but even a sitting man can use a bow.

Or I might be the danger. Jat straightened up and looked back at me again. He smiled automatically, but for once his jauntiness failed him, and his smile was obviously as utterly false as I had always suspected it to be. He jumped down and hurried over to the other men, who had dismounted and were walking their horses, arguing fiercely.

So the trouble did concern me. I laid away my sewing, untied my splints, and began some leg exercises. Misi was keeping her eyes on the team and had not looked around.

Angels?

Slave trading was a forbidden violence. If there was an angel waiting up ahead, then the traders had only three choices—turn back, kill the angel, or dispose of the evidence. I was helpless. Dreams of jumping out the window and running for the woods must remain only dreams.

Jat and the other men were standing in a group just ahead, holding their horses’ reins and still arguing. Lon Kiv cantered up and dismounted also.

Puffing and bedraggled from sleep, Pula scrambled onto the platform to relive Misi, who clambered down, painfully awkward, and plodded forward to join the discussion. The talkers stopped to form a circle in a sheltered spot, the train drawing slowly away from them.

All the trader men had gathered, with only the one woman?

That confirmed my guess: Knobil was the problem. I wondered if I dared hang my head out the window to watch, and I decided that I would be wiser to pretend to be unconcerned. That was not easy.

I lay back, grunting with pain as I gripped and bent each leg in turn. The amount of movement I could tolerate was pitiful, and even short exercise sessions still left the joints puffed and sore. I felt as helpless as I had when Hrarrh had loosed his horrors upon me. I hoped that traders granted quick deaths. A sword thrust would be better than being tossed aside in the bushes and left to die.

The talk lasted a long time. I worked my knees until I thought they would smoke. I even lurched over to sit on the front bench, near to Pula, and tried talking to her, but that was always hopeless. Misi was certainly much smarter than she pretended, but I had not yet discovered whether Pula had a brain at all.

Then Misi returned, wheezing from unaccustomed exertion. She heaved her great bulk up on the platform, evicted her daughter, and took the reins again. Pula dismounted without a word.

“Misi, what’s going on?” I was beside her, still on the chest—barely—but facing backward. Her feet were out on the platform and mine inside, on the floor.

She chewed her usual wad of paka for a while, until she caught her breath. “Nothing.”

“Rubbish! Is it angels?”

That earned no detectable reaction.

I did not wait for the ruminated response. “Misi, I won’t tell! I’m very, very grateful to you. You saved my life! Trust me!”

Pula had somehow found her way into the middle of the team and was doing something with the harness. Misi yanked on the traces, which are attached to the hippos’ ears, reportedly their only tender part and certainly the only place any attachment could be made on their vast brown smoothness. I once tried to steer a team of hippos. It took all the strength I possessed, and much more patience, for if hippos are smarter than woollies, then the victory is narrowly won. They remember no signal for longer than a man could draw a breath. To make a team stand still for more time than that is impossible.

Misi halted the rear pair. The front two continued to plod ahead, bearing their great yoke. In a moment the rear pair began to move again, but now they were pulling the train by themselves. The loose pair advanced more quickly, with Pula following, holding the traces and gradually turning them in a slow arc to the left.

“Trust you to do what, Knobil?”

“Trust me not to tell the angel that I’m a slave.”

Chew…chew…“You’re not a slave, Knobil.” Chew…“What angel?”

I considered trying to strangle her, but my hands would not have girdled her neck. She would have swatted me like a bug anyway.

And she was right not to trust me. One glimpse of an angel and I would start screaming at the top of my lungs, yelling for rescue.

She began to turn the train to the right. We were going back, then? But why divide the team? Seething with mingled anger and worry, I could do nothing but wait and watch. Eventually we had turned to retrace our path, and I saw that the train itself had been divided also. Pula was guiding the loose hippos toward the now-stationary rear wagon. Jat and Lon were throwing open doors, pulling out goods. Now I could guess what had been decided during the long debate—the various partnerships had been dissolved.

Later, when all the rearranging was complete, I found myself riding with Misi and Pula in the cab of a very short one-wagon train and still heading back to the west. All the others had vanished eastward with Jat and Lon driving the other half of what had once been the joint rig, although I had never before seen men handling a team. Apparently Misi and Pula had traded one of their wagons for two of the men’s hippos. Certainly other merchandise had been involved in the transaction, including me.

Among traders, anything was negotiable.

My two huge companions sat on the bench at the front of the cab. I was stretched out again on the bed, at the back, and almost ready to weep from frustration. Which woman did I belong to? Or did they each own a part of me? Six clay pots for his right arm… I should be grateful they had not shared me out with a saw. I was certain now that the traders had heard word of angels up ahead, and now I was being borne away from them and from my only hope of rescue.

The rain had started again. Misi and her daughter seemed to converse during their long silences by means unknown to man, for without warning Pula rose and closed the shutters on the north side. Then she hauled a leather cape from one of the chests, swathed herself in it, and went out on the platform to take over the driving.

Misi came in and shut the front shutters. She stared down at me for a moment in silence and without expression. I was wearing a blue wool tunic and a pagne, for breeches would not go over my splints, but I also had a blanket pulled over my legs, and now I instinctively tucked it tighter around me, disconcerted by this calculating study.

My nerves were the weaker—I spoke first.

“How much of me do you own now?”

After a moment she made her peculiar woofing chuckle. “We’re partners now, Knobil.”

I was about to ask what sort of partners, and then I didn’t dare.

Misi stooped to rummage in one of the cubical chests, stretching brown cotton over hips as wide as hippos’ backs. Once I would have reached out automatically to pat or pinch. Now that her pretense of idiocy had failed, I had abandoned any pretense of wanting Misi Nada. Incredible as it seems to me now, at that time I felt a powerful physical revulsion when I looked at heir—her bloated obesity, her coarse greasy skin, her lank gray hair. Herdmen preferred their women small, even tiny, and perhaps that was the origin of my distaste, although Sparkle had been built on generous lines.

I had turned away to stare broodingly at the scenery. Then Misi flopped down heavily at my side as the cab rolled. She was holding two pottery beakers.

“Drink to our new partnership!” she boomed in her deep harsh voice. She curled her mustache in a smile.

I accepted a beaker with poor grace. “I’m no trader, Misi. I can’t ride or hunt…or scout or cook. I can’t even walk yet. I certainly couldn’t haggle—”

“You’re a better man than Jat!” she said and tossed off her drink. Then she looked at me expectantly.

I shrugged and swallowed mine—then gagged at one of the worst tastes I had ever met. Misi leered and pursed her lips so that I might seal our agreement with a kiss. I pretended not to understand. “I’m not a better man than Jat for what you want,” I said, hoping that I was wrong about what she wanted.

“He’s a coward! Trouble makes every one of his parts run.”

“Afraid of angels, is he?”

She heaved her great shoulders in a shrug, took my beaker, and threw it out of the one open window. She tossed her own beaker after it, in what seemed an oddly extravagant gesture. “You’re my partner now.”

“Partner? In business? But I have no skills and no goods—”

“I paid Jat. I’ll pay you,” she said complacently and slid a giant hand under the blanket to feel my left knee. She frowned, for it was hot.

“I was exercising.”

She threw off the cover and began tightening the straps on my splints with quick deft movements, the normal pretense of stupidity now discarded. Her touch brought goose bumps up on my skin. She noticed and chuckled again. She stroked a finger along my thigh, tracing one of the thin red scars.

My heart was pumping furiously. “Misi, why do traders buy wetlanders? And don’t throw manure about luck!”

She smiled mockingly. “Wetlanders are great lovers.”

“That’s not true!! Hrarrh told me you buy men and women, both. And you don’t care what sort of shape they’re in—”

“What sort of shape are you in, Knobil?”

I was sweating. I wiped my forehead. “I’m not… I’m… Misi—what was in that drink you gave me?”

She nodded thoughtfully and patted my leg. “It comes from the jungle. Makes tall tree grow in forest.”

Yes, it certainly did that. A wild shivering seized me, a strange excitement. “Misi…when I’m better…when my knees have healed, then I’d like—”

“Not till then, Knobil?”

“Well… I suppose I could try—yes, now!”

Pulling away from my grasp, she rose and hauled her great tentlike garment over her head, revealing the bulging form that I had only guessed at before. Her belly was as broad as the Andes, and hairier. Her breasts were even more enormous than I had expected or had imagined a human frame could bear. As I reached for them, she stepped away to slam the shutters shut on the third window and to dismantle the bench, hauling those chests across to add to the bed and make it wider. Blood roared in my ears, and my whole body throbbed. I heard my tunic rip, although I had not been aware of trying to remove it. Gasping with eagerness, barely able to speak, I stretched out my arms to her in the gloom. “Now, Misi! Now!”

She straightened, putting her fists on her hips. I could not see the expression on her face, but it was there in her voice—mockery and contempt. “Ready for that kiss, Knobil?”

“Oh yes! Please, Misi! Please…”

—2—

THEY CALL IT THE VIRGIN’S WEB.

Long afterward, in the archives in Heaven, I was shown a treatise written nine or ten cycles ago by a man identified only as Saint Issirariss. With a name like that, he was probably a forest dweller himself, and his account was so detailed that he must have had firsthand experience of the web. I was asked to add some notes of my own to the records.

The greatest jungles of Vernier are not found, as one might expect, in the hot areas near to High Summer. Farther east the trees are older, the forest thicker, and the undergrowth denser. Where the topography favors heavy rainfall, the true deep forest is a cool twilight of perpetual damp, and it is there that the darkfolk live. As Kettle was fond of pointing out, heavy pigmentation is an adaptation to jungle life, and while it is possible that the dark races are descended from original black ancestors, more probably their pigmentation has been increased by natural selection. The seemingly sinister name refers only to their color, for of course the darkfolk as a whole are neither worse nor better than any other folk. It is among them that a spinster may arise, but any race can produce a villain when opportunity is present.

The basis of the elixir, Issirariss wrote, is a brew prepared according to a secret recipe, thought to consist of roots, herbs, insect eggs, and spider venom. In that form, he referred to it as nuptial beer and stated that some of the forest tribes use it in their wedding ceremonies. When the dancing and feasting reach a climax, the young bride and groom share a bowl of the concoction and then retire to the marriage chamber, there to find climaxes of their own, no doubt. Nuptial beer is relatively harmless and socially beneficial, or so Issirariss claimed.

He speculated that the drug known as the virgin’s web is prepared from nuptial beer by simple concentration. Long simmering over a slow fire, he thought, might be sufficient. The process cannot be very difficult, because spinsters seem to have no difficulty in obtaining an adequate supply for their evil purposes, yet the secret is jealously kept.

Only very rarely can any outsider obtain the web. Misi’s sample had been handed down from her grandmother or perhaps from some more distant ancestor, but it had not lost its power with time. From the effect it had on me, I suspect that it may even have grown more potent.

The human race has a long history of seeking aphrodisiacs, putting faith in many—all, according to Issirariss, either ineffectual or dangerous. The virgin’s web is certainly not ineffectual. Moreover, it has several properties peculiar to itself, not found in any other.

It acts on persons of either sex, which is rare. Of course, Misi had only pretended to drink, for she would have defeated her purpose had she taken the drug herself. That was fortunate, I suppose, because Misi roused to the same sort of insane fit as I was in would have killed me. It was I who almost killed her.

Poor Misi! She had known by hearsay what effect the web would produce, but she could not have expected the manic strength it induced in me, or the insatiable violence of my reaction, or the long ordeal she would have to endure until the effects wore off. She must have believed that her greater size would let her remain in control, but no one could have resisted my frenzy. In my fruitless striving for release, my frantic quests for variety, my cataclysms of mindless ecstasy, I tossed her around as if she weighed nothing.

Oblivious to pain, I hurt myself also. Early in my madness, I ripped off my splints. Later we found the broken planks and snapped bindings. My knees were not ready for vigorous exercise. The half-healed bones were cracked, the weakened tendons strained, and any chance that I might walk properly again was lost. Yes, I hurt Misi, but fortunately I inflicted no broken bones or permanent injury on her, only innumerable bruises, and probably much terror.

Dear Misi! In spite of that terror, she never cried out or tried to disable or kill me. At least, I do not think she did; I probably would not have noticed if she had. She endured and even cooperated, not that she really had any choice.

According to Issirariss, a second peculiarity of the virgin’s web is that it will not provoke a general orgy. Once I had fixed on Misi as the victim of my lust, then the cab could have been invaded by an army of the world’s most desirable women and I should have ignored all but her. That, he wrote, is a greater danger for a woman who takes the potion, for no normal man can satisfy her need and she will go mad with frustration.

I was not frustrated. Once I started, Misi could not resist me and I was incapable of stopping until the madness wore off. Again and again I struggled to a climax, but the relief was momentary, being succeeded at once by even greater urgency. Driven by my frenzy, I could not have done otherwise than I did, so I feel little guilt, yet I regret most bitterly that I hurt her and frightened her. Eventually the effects waned or my strength gave out. After uncounted orgasms my arousal vanished as suddenly as it had come, and I collapsed into a deep coma-like sleep.

The virgin’s web had a third unique property, one I did not appreciate or comprehend until much later.

My unconsciousness probably did not last very long, for I awakened howling at the pain in my knees, which were black and hugely swollen. I was sprawled naked on the floor of the cab, surrounded by shreds of bedding, lit by a cruel sunlight streaming through a broken shutter, sweat-soaked and shivering in spasms of feverish reaction. Misi, equally bare, was trapped below me, battered and bruised and bloody, half-stunned still by her long ordeal.

After a few moments, I recalled how I had maltreated her. While I had been experiencing unending deliriums of rapture, she had been hurting. Then I forgot my own troubles. I wept. I stroked her cheek. I struggled to move out of the way so that she could rise, for we were crushed together in a very small space, and I was incapable of rising. Meanwhile I apologized a thousand times.

I told her over and over how sorry I was, and how much I loved her.

Oh, my beloved Misi!

For I did truly love her—beyond measure, beyond expression. I cherish her memory still. No other woman ever has, or ever can, mean to me what Misi Nada did and still does.

Issirariss called that the imprinting effect.

—3—

MY GUESS HAD BEEN CORRECT. Heaven had set up a roadblock at a natural narrowing of the borderlands in the east of January, middle of Thursday. The angels were still there when Misi and Pula and I returned, long after my experience with the virgin’s web. Now I could walk, after a fashion, keeping my knees straight. We had detoured very far back westward, waiting on my recovery.

That was a strange journey. Misi and Pula had to trade in little settlements for food and even do the cooking. They were appallingly horrible cooks, both of them, never having cooked before. I was in great pain at first and could do little to help, but the thought of taking over the cooking myself was a big incentive for me to heal.

We were fortunate that no unscrupulous men or hungry animals took advantage of us, two women and a cripple wandering defenseless in the borderlands. Yet I remember that long loop west and then back east again as the happiest time of my life. I was with Misi, and nothing else mattered. I would have joyfully journeyed at her side forever—even if that meant continuing to eat her cooking.

Where a great spur of mountain reached close to the wide river, we came within sight of an encampment of four tents and three angel chariots. The landscape was spotted with thickets of white-trunked trees amid glades of the greenest grass I had ever seen. A soft rain was falling.

As our hippos munched their lazy way along the narrow plain, a solitary long-legged angel came stalking through the woods to meet us. His stripes showed him to be Black-white-red. There must have been others around, staying out of sight.

I was sitting on the bench, just inside the front window, with my feet out on the platform. Misi was at my side, driving.

Black was well named, being as black as anyone I have ever met. Most of the forest races are short, but he was very tall and very lanky. He wore no hat and his frizzled crown of jet hair shone with diamond sparkles. I was looking down at him as he strolled alongside the cab, which is why I noticed his hair especially. His nose was broad, but the rest of him was as elongated as a fishing pole. He wore the fringed leathers of an angel, and he carried a long gun. He was very young.

So even the angels looked young to me now?

He studied me carefully, peering up with deep black eyes that seemed to brim with melancholy. “May good fortune attend you, trader,” he said formally.

“May Our Lady Sun shed her blessing on you also, sir. I am Nob Bil.” I did not introduce Misi.

I was very nervous, and the angel’s steady scrutiny was rapidly making me more so. I was also in pain, for although my legs were stretched out before me, I could not keep them completely straight without looking unnatural, and they were howling at the slight bend I had imposed on them. Agony and fear together were soaking me in sweat. I could only hope that the rain was disguising that.

“You are brave to travel alone, trader.”

“There are four other trains right behind us, sir.”

That statement was true so far as it went, but the others were not associated with us and might even be unaware that we were now ahead of them. We had followed their convoy eastward and then outrun it with our single, and almost empty, wagon.

“And your horses are with them, Nob Bil?”

“They are, sir. I have twisted my knee and cannot attend to them myself at the moment.”

Black frowned glumly at that tale. Misi had coached me well, but I decided to take the offensive in the hope of diverting more questions. “And what brings you gallant angels to these parts? Not danger, I hope?”

The angel’s eyes continued to examine me morosely. “We have been passing a warning to traders. Have you heard of it?”

“No sir.”

He sighed. “You traders are as bad as herdmen!”

“I am told that herdmen slaughter one another on sight,” I said reprovingly. But I was remembering one of Violet’s old jeers, that herdmen smelled different. I was a herdman half-breed—had this angel seen through my disguise already?

“True. I only meant that traders do not cooperate at all.”

“Give away information, you mean?” I tried to sound shocked. Despite my pain and the quiverings of my normal cowardice, I was starting to enjoy the game. I wished I dared look at Misi.

“I suppose that sounds immoral to you? Well, here is the problem. You are between jungle and desert, of course, but the west end of the borderlands is now cut off by the Andes and the Great River. That’s an impossible barrier for traders. We can guide people and their livestock across the canyon, but not wagons. Or chariots. And the barrier is moving east, obviously.”

Jat had long since vanished from my life, but I could recall his geography lessons. “You mean we must head north, across the desert?”

Black nodded, sparkling all the jewel drops on his hair. “We have arranged a truce. And we provide escorts,” he added, before I could say whatever he expected me to say.

“How urgent is this?” I asked, worried about my inability to defend my beloved Misi and her daughter, recalling vague yarns about the fierce red-haired men of the desert.

“Not very,” the angel confessed. “You have time for a trip or two back to the mountains. Before you bounce grandchildren on your knee, though, you must cross the desert to the north borderlands. You may stay there or come south again across the grasslands as you wish—just don’t say you weren’t warned! And don’t wait too long or there will be no one left to trade with. We hear there is a spinster at work.”

My spine tingled. Black had thrown in that unrelated remark in the hopes of eliciting a reaction. Obviously I was supposed to know what a spinster was, but I didn’t. Was it dangerous? In all her lessons, Misi had not thought to mention spinsters, so they must be rare. I could not ask her for help, for she was playing moron again. But Misi was no moron. She had steered the team into a stand of small trees, heavier growth than she would normally have chosen. They slowed us, of course, but the noise of crunching was much louder than usual, making conversation difficult. Moreover, Black was being squeezed between the side of the cab and the sides of the cut we were making, and he had to constantly step over stumps and fragments of trunk. This made it harder for him to keep his eyes on me. The slash also made the cab bounce and lurch repeatedly, jarring hot irons through my knees.

But if hard work gains rewards, then I ought to pass scrutiny. Misi and Pula had made me a leather jacket and breeches in trader style. They had tried to use an old set of Jat’s, but I was much too large for those. My coat was unfastened to display the fine floral shirt that Jat had coveted—actually it was only the front, for Misi had taken it to pieces to fit my wider chest. The cuffs showed, although the top of the sleeves did not reach my shoulders. I sported the appropriate curved-brim hat; my hair and beard and eyebrows had been dyed, my face and hands darkened also. We had not been able to do anything about my eyes.

I looked like a trader—unusually large for a male, but a trader nonetheless.

Spinster? “Where?” I asked, playing for time.

Black’s expression grew even more lugubrious. “If we knew that we wouldn’t be here, now would we?”

“I suppose not.”

The conversation lagged for a while. The hippos continued to browse their noisy way through the trees, and Black continued to study me. I stared back down at him with all the confidence I could feign. I had promised Misi I would get her safely past the angels, and I was going to do everything in my power to keep my promise.

“You have seen no slaving, then?” Black asked suddenly.

I shook my head, attempting to display disapproval.

“Wetlanders in particular, of course.” He watched my reaction very carefully.

“No blonds here, sir. Nor in the other trains.”

“You will not mind opening your wagon for me, though, trader?”

Misi had warned me that he would ask, and we had agreed that this was the tricky part, for I could still barely walk.

“I would not mind, sir”—I waved at the trees crowding in around us—“but we can’t open the doors in this.”

“There is a clearing.” Black pointed ahead and to the left.

I frowned, as if not wanting to divert from my road, but in truth we should have to veer very little to reach the clearing and to refuse would only prolong the ordeal. I shrugged and turned to Misi, yelling at her and pointing. She played stupid for a while, but the clearing was a large one, and we could not keep up the pretense for long enough to slip by it. Eventually she nodded and began turning the team toward the gap.

Black was still sauntering beside me. His manner reeked of suspicion.

“Tell me, sir,” I inquired jocularly, “whatever will you do if you open my wagon and a wetlander jumps out at you?”

He frowned. I had to wait awhile for his answer, but he could not hold a silence as long as Misi could. “Save him, of course.”

I wanted to ask what would happen if the wetlander did not want to be saved, but I dared not reveal more ignorance. Then we were out of the trees and the wagon doors could be opened.

“Pula!” I shouted. “Show the angel what we carry.”

Black’s eyebrows rose. “You will not do me the courtesy of taking me yourself, Nob Bil?”

“My regrets, angel. My knee… Walking is painful for me.”

Evidently he was suspicious of my knee story, but Pula jumped from a side window and led him back to look at the stock Had I been able to accompany him, he might well have asked questions about Misi’s trade goods that I should have been unable to answer. Pula was at least genuine and would know about them, if he could get a response from her. The goods were becoming depleted. We had been living off them for some time.

Then Black returned. We were almost across the clearing, heading toward more timber.

“Well, I found no slaves, trader.”

“I hardly expected you to, sir.”

He indulged himself in more staring. I became even tenser. Obviously he could tell that something was wrong. Would he let us go?

“You will forgive this inconvenience, though?” he said. “As an honest trader, you must be revolted by the inhuman practice of slaving.”

“Absolutely. I deplore it.” I was being truthful there.

“And slaving itself is nothing compared to the barbarous obscenities of a spinster.”

I shrugged noncommitally. “If one believes all the tales.”

“Oh, they are true! It would be disgusting enough to treat even a dumb animal as a spinster treats her victims. To use human beings so is beyond all understanding.”

I remembered Hrarrh’s dark hints and shivered. But I had promised Misi that I would save her from the angels. She had professed a great fear of what the angels might do if they discovered I was a wetlander. Even though I was no longer a slave, she had said, and even if I were to tell them so myself, they would guess that I had been one originally. Then they would be hard on her, perhaps even burning her goods and wagons. I loved Misi. I trusted her, and here was my chance to show her she could trust me. Given a chance for rescue, I was staying with her by choice. I was proving that I loved her.

“Oh, I agree,” I said.

The angel nodded reluctantly. “Then good fortune, trader.”

“And good hunting, angel.”

We had made it! As soon as the angel was out of sight, I threw my arms around Misi and kissed her.

Wary of treachery, I intended to retain my trader disguise until we were well past the angel roadblock, but as soon as I felt we were reasonably safe, I turned to Misi with determination.

“Now you know you can trust me!” I said. “So I want to know why! Why do traders buy wetlanders?”

She had three techniques she used to avoid answering my questions. Sometimes she played the moron again, although that was hardly credible now. Sometimes she wept, and that always reduced me to tears myself, for I was tortured by the memories of having manhandled her in my drugged frenzy and I could not bear the thought of making her surfer any more. Her third evasion, always the most effective, was merely to join me on the bed. That never failed.

This time I was not on the bed. Misi smiled and patted my shoulder. “Because wetlanders are great lovers.”

“That’s not the reason!”

“Yes it is—I’ll show you!”

She picked me up and carried me inside.

In my long life I had known many women, far more than my fair share, but none could ever rouse me faster or more frequently than Misi with her enormous hands and her great soft body. In none did I ever find greater joy.

As I was to refuse to admit long afterward to Cherub Beef in Cloud Nine, Misi was very hot stuff.

More important, though—I loved her.

Now we were facing unknown country. I could barely walk and we had no horses. I could neither scout nor hunt, the two main duties of a trader male. Once the caravan behind us was also safely past the roadblock, Misi doubled back to meet it.

The negotiating session was very long, and I was not present. At one point she brought three or four of the men to meet Pula, who was driving, and I began to guess what sorts of things were being discussed. They also wanted to talk to me, for they could not believe that we had managed to smuggle a wetlander by the angels. My hair was still dark with dye, but the paleness of my legs convinced them. They all laughed as I described the conversation with Black-white-red. They congratulated me on being a fine trader, and Misi beamed proudly at me.

Eventually a deal was struck, and we joined the caravan. We even acquired a new man, a youngster named Mot Han. He was just reaching adulthood, and his father had contributed some wealth to set him up on his own. Horses and hippos were included, and a second wagon. It must have been a very complicated agreement.

The new wagon was hooked up to Misi’s, and Mot and Pula set up home in it, for Pula was also a party to the deal, and a very willing one. In almost the only remark she ever volunteered to me, she admitted that Mot was a much more interesting cab partner than old Lon Kiv had been. She expressed great surprise at this discovery, almost excitement. I sometimes think that maybe Pula really was no smarter than she seemed.

Mot was a pleasant enough kid, so small and fresh-faced that I had trouble believing his mustache was real. As for his beard, I had seen better on old cheese. He in turn tended to avoid me, and he had an annoying habit of not meeting my eye when we did talk. Nevertheless, the little guy was a wily hunter and a superb cook. Our fare improved greatly.

Part of a community once more, we continued to wend our way east and south. We forded rivers, gradually penetrating deeper into the great jungle. As their forage became denser, the hippos’ progress became slower. I was too ignorant to realize that traders normally shunned such terrain.

I could stagger around stiff-legged, and Mot taught me to ride a horse and also to cook, after a fashion. I regained my old skill with a bow and tried hunting. My hair grew in, and many cuttings made me a blond once more. Being a trader was even more enjoyable than being a seaman, because Misi was there.

The men scouted our path, and of course, they went trading. They must have made inquiries about the spinster, although I did not know that then. They gathered information and they passed the word. It was the lure of the spinster that was pulling our path so far into the heavy jungle. Misi could have obtained such cooperation only by contributing some portion of me to the whole caravan. She would have been able to afford it, for a wetlander delivered to the right quarters represents the most valuable cargo a trader ever sees.

I had no inkling of any of that. When I was sold, I was asleep, dreaming of my love. I awoke to find the cab full of stocky, dark brown men armed with spears.