Treason (3 page)

With her head on my bosom I found myself wondering if I should feel motherly. Didn’t she realize that her touch was no comfort to me now, only a reminder of all that I had lost? I pushed her away and ran. I stopped at a turn in the corridor and looked back. She was already slitting her wrists and crying out, the blood dripping onto the stone floor. The cuts were savage—the loss of blood would make her sick for hours, with that many lacerations. I went quickly to my room.

I lay on my bed, looking up at the delicate gold inlay on the ceiling. Set in the middle of the gold was a single pearl of iron, black and angry and beautiful. For iron, I said silently. For iron we have bred ourselves into monsters; the “normal” Muellers able to heal from any wound, and the rads serving as domesticated animals, selling their extra parts to the Offworld for more iron. Iron is power in a world with no hard metals. With our arms and legs and hearts and bowels we buy that power.

Put an arm in the Ambassador, and in a half hour a bar of iron appears in the cube of dancing light. Put living frozen sex organs in the cube, and five bars of iron replace it. An entire head? Who knows the price.

At that rate, how many arms and legs and eyes and livers must we give before we have enough iron to make one starship?

The walls pressed in on me and I felt myself trapped on Treason, our planet forming high walls of poverty that tied us down, that kept us from the Offworld, that made us prisoners as surely as the creatures in the pens. And like them, we lived under watching eyes, Family competing madly against Family in order to produce something, anything that the Offworld would buy, paying us in precious metals like iron, aluminum, copper, tin, zinc.

We Muellers had been first. The Nkumai were second, perhaps. A battle for supremacy, sooner or later. And whoever the victor, the pyrrhic prize would be a few tons of iron. Could a technology be built on that?

I slept like a prisoner, tied to my bed by the immense manacles of gravity on our poor prison planet; bound to despair by two full and lovely breasts that rose and fell regularly. I slept.

I woke to darkness in the room, and the rasping sound of labored breath. The breath was mine, and in sudden panic I felt liquid in my lungs and began to cough violently. I threw myself to the edge of the bed, coughing a dark liquid out of my throat, each cough an exquisite pain. My gasping brought the breath in coldly at my throat, not through my mouth.

I touched the gaping wound under my chin. My larynx had been cut out, and I could feel the veins and arteries that were covered with scar tissue as they tried to heal, sending blood into my brain whatever the cost. The wound went from ear to ear. But finally my lungs were clear of blood, and I lay on the bed and tried to ignore the pain as my body’s vigor surged to heal the gash.

But it wouldn’t do it quickly enough, I realized. Whoever had tried so clumsily to kill me would be back to make sure of his work (or her work—Ruva?) and they wouldn’t be so careless next time. So I stood, not waiting to be healed, breath still hissing in and out of the open wound at my throat. At least the bleeding had stopped, and if I moved carefully the scar tissue working gradually inward from the edges of the wound would eventually close it.

I stepped out into the corridor, faint from loss of blood. No one; but the packs I had ordered were stacked outside my room, awaiting inspection. I dragged them in. The strain caused a little bleeding, so I rested a moment while the blood vessels healed again. Then I sorted through the packs and combined the most essential items into one bundle. My bow and the glass-tipped arrows were the only things I took with me from my room; carrying the single pack, I made my way carefully down the corridors and stairways to the stable.

When I passed the sentry stall I was relieved to see that no one was there to challenge me. A few steps later on I realized what that meant and whirled around, drawing my dagger as I turned.

But it was not an enemy who stood there. Saranna gasped when she saw the wound in my throat.

“What happened to you!” she cried out.

I tried to answer, but my body had not yet rebuilt the larynx I had lost, and so all I could do was shake my head slowly and put a finger to her lips, to silence her.

“I heard that you were leaving, Lanik. Take me with you.”

I turned my back and went to my horses, which were standing new-shod at the woodsmith’s bar. Their wooden shoes clumped softly on the stone floor as they moved. I threw the pack over Himmler’s back and saddled the stallion, Hitler, to ride.

“Take me with you,” Saranna pleaded. I turned to her. Even if I could have spoken, what would I have said? So I said nothing, only kissed her and then, because I had to leave in silence and could not hope to persuade her to let me go alone, I struck her sharply with the hilt of my dagger on the back of her head, and she fell softly into the hay and straw on the stable floor. If she hadn’t been a Mueller, the blow might well have killed her. As it was, I’d be lucky if she stayed unconscious for five minutes.

The horses were quiet as I brought them out of the stable, and there was no further incident as I led them to the gate. The high collar of my cloak hid the wound in my throat as I passed the guards. I half expected to be challenged there, but no. And I wondered why it made so much difference to Dinte whether I was dead or left Mueller. Either way I would not be there to plot against him; and I knew that if I ever tried to return, a hundred hired assassins would wait for me behind every corner. Why had he bothered trying to kill me?

As I mounted Hitler and led Himmler along in the faint light of Dissent, the quick moon, I almost laughed. Only Dinte could have botched so badly the attempt to kill me. But in the moonlight I soon forgot Dinte, and remembered only Saranna, white with loss of blood in grief for me as she lay on the floor of the stable. I let the reins fall and plunged my hands into my tunic to touch my breasts and so remember hers.

Then the slow moon, Freedom, rose in the east, casting a bright light over the plain. I took the reins again, and urged the horses on, so that daylight would find me far from the castle.

Nkumai. What would I find there? And did I even care?

But I was a dutiful son of Ensel Mueller. I would go, I would see, so that Mueller might, with luck, conquer.

Behind me I saw lights come on in the castle; torches ran along the walls. They had discovered I was gone. I could not count on Dinte being bright enough even now to realize that killing me would be pointless. I dug my heels into Hitler’s flanks. He galloped off, and I clung to the reins with one hand as with the other I tried to ease the pain of the horse’s violent footfalls, each one jarring my chest until I realized that I felt no pain in my breasts. Nor in the wound in my throat. The pain was deeper in my chest and in the back of my throat, and I wept as I sped eastward—not toward the highway as they would surely, knowing my mission, suppose; not toward the surrounding enemies who would be glad to give shelter to a possible tool in their struggle against Mueller imperialism. I went eastward, to the forest of Ku Kuei, where no man went, and so where no man would think to look for me.

The well-farmed plain broke into small canyons and grassy plateaus, and sheep began to be more common than people. Freedom was still low in the west and the sun was well into morning. I was hot.

I was also trapped. Though I could see no one on the trail behind me, I knew where the pursuers were, if there were any (and I had to assume there were): to the south and east of me, guarding the borders with Wong, and to the north of me, patrolling the long hostile border with Epson. Only to the east were there no guards, because no guards were necessary there.

Now the plateaus turned to cliffs and ridges, and I followed the eastward trail carefully. The tracks of a hundred thousand sheep had worn these trails, and this one was easy enough to follow. But sometimes the trail narrowed between a cliff rising on the left and a cliff falling away on the right, and at those times I dismounted and led Hitler along, with Himmler following docilely.

At noon I came to a house.

A woman stood at the door with a stone-tipped spear. She was in her middle age, her breasts sagging but still full, her hips wide, her belly protuberant. There was fire in her eyes.

“Off the horse and away from my house, ye dammid interloper!” she cried out.

I dismounted, though I found no threat in her silly spear. I was hoping to convince her to let me rest. My legs and back ached from riding.

“Sweet lady,” I said in my most unthreatening, gentle voice, “you have nothing to fear from me.”

She kept the spear pointed at my chest. “Half the people in these High Hills have been robbed of late, and of a sudden all the troopers have took their bowen off north or south chasing the king’s son. How kin I ken ye’ve no weapon and plan to steal?”

I dropped away my cloak and spread my arms wide. By now the scar on my neck would be nothing but a white line, which would disappear by noon. As I spread my arms my breasts rose under my tunic. Her eyes widened.

“I have all I need,” I said, “except a bed to rest on and proper clothes. Will you help me?”

She moved the point of the spear and shuffled closer. Suddenly her hand darted out and squeezed my breast. I cried out in surprise and pain.

She laughed. “Why come ye to the house of honest folk all dissembling undressed? Come in, lady, I’ve a pallet for ye, if ye like.”

I liked. But even though it had fooled this woman and earned me a bed, I still found myself darkly ashamed of my transformation. I was a wolf, being let into the house because they took me for a friendly dog.

The house was larger inside than it looked from outside. Then I realized it was built right into a cave. I touched the rock wall.

“Ya, lady, cave keeps it right cool all summer, stops the wind good enow in the winter.”

“I imagine,” I agreed, deliberately letting my voice get even softer and higher. “Why are they chasing the king’s son?”

“Ach, child, the king’s son’s done sommat terrible bad, I guess. Word comes like the wind this morrow early, must be taking all the troopery of this country here.”

I was astonished that Father would let Dinte pursue me so long, and openly enough to say it was the king’s son they were chasing. “Don’t they fear the king’s son might come this way?”

She darted me a quick glance. I thought for a moment she guessed who I was, but then she said, “I thinked for a moment here you were having your little fun. Don’t ye know not two mile of here starts the forest of Ku Kuei?”

That close. I pretended ignorance. “And what does that mean?”

She shook her head. “They tells it that no man or woman goes into that forest and comes out again alive.”

“And I suppose just as few come out dead.”

“They don’t come out at all, lady. Have a splash of soup, smells like sheep dung, but it’s true mutton, killed a ewe a week gone and this be simmering ever yet.”

It was good and strong. It did, however, smell like sheep dung. After a few swallows I felt ready enough for sleep and slid from the table, went to the cot she pointed out in the corner.

I woke in darkness. A dim fire crackled in a hearth, and I saw the woman’s shape moving back and forth in the room. She was humming a low tune with a melody as monotonous and beautiful as the sea.

“Has it words?” I asked. She didn’t hear me, and I fell back asleep. When I woke again there was a candle in my face, and the old woman was gazing intently at me. I opened my eyes wide, and she moved back, a little embarrassed. The cold night air made me realize my tunic was open, my breasts bare, and I covered myself.

“Sorry, wee lady,” the woman said. “But a soldier came, he did, looking for a young man of sixteen years named Lanik. I told him none such had been this way, and that only here was me and my daughter. And because your hair is so close-cropped, lady, I had to show him proof ye were a girl, didn’t I? So I let your tunic to fall open.”

I nodded slowly.

“I thought ye might not want to be known by the soldier, lady. And another bit of news. I had to turn your horses loose.”

I sat up quickly. “My horses? Where are they?”

“Soldier found them down the road, a long way, all empty. I hid your things under my own bed.”

“Why, woman? How can I travel now?” I felt betrayed, though even then I suspected the woman had saved my life.

“Have ye no feet? And I think ye’ll not be wanting to go far now where horses can go.”

“And where do you think I’m going?”

She smiled. “Ach, ye’ve a lovely face, lady. Pretty enough to be a boy or girl, and young, and fair, like a king’s child. Happy the woman to have you for a daughter, or the man to have you for a son.”

I said nothing then.

“I think,” she said, “that there be no place for you now but the forest of Ku Kuei.”

I laughed. “So I can go in and never come out?”

“That,” she said with a smile, “be what we tell outlanders and lowlanders. But
we
be knowing right enow that a man can go in a good few leagues and gather roots and berries and other fruit and come out safe. Though odd things do happen there, and a wise man skirts the edge.”

I was wide awake now. “How did you know about me?”

“Ye’ve got royalty in every move ye make, every word ye say, boy. Or girl. Which be ye? I care little. I only know I have little love for the godlike men of the plain who think they rule all Muellerfolk. If ye be running from the king, ye have my blessing and my arm of help.”

I had never suspected that any citizens of Mueller would feel that way about my father. Now it was helpful, though I wondered how I’d feel about her attitude if I were still heir.

“I’ve packed ye a bundle easy enough to heft,” she said. “And fooded and watered it, hoping ye like cold mutton.”

I liked it better than starving.

“Don’t eat the white berries on oaky-looking bushes in the forest, they’ll drop ye dead in a minute. And the fruit with wrinkly bulges, don’t even touch that, and be careful not to step on a smoky-yellow fungus, or it’ll plague you for years.”

“I still don’t even know if I’m going into the forest.”

“And where else, then, if not there?”

I got up and walked to the door. Dissent was high and dim, with clouds across her face. Freedom hadn’t risen yet. “How soon must I leave?”

“As soon as Freedom come,” she said. “Then I lead you afoot to the edge of the forest, and there ye stay until just before sunrise. Then off and in. Head east but about a third to the south till ye touch a lake. Then they say the true road to safety is due south, into Jones. Follow no paths. Follow no manshape or woman shape ye see. And pay no heed to day and night.”

She brought out woman’s clothing from a trunk and held it up to me. It was shabby enough, and old, but modest and virginal.

“My own,” she said, “though I misdoubt I ever did fit it on my old corpse, what’s swoll up with fat these last year and ten.” She laughed, and put it in my pack.

Freedom rose, and she led me out the door and along a path leading due east from her house, and not much traveled by. She chattered as we went.

“What be the need of troopery at all, ask I? They flash a bit of hard metal, dip it in another’s blood, and then what? Is the world all changed? Do men now fly Offworld, are we of Treason now freed by all the bloodshed? I think we be like dogs that fight and kill over a bone, and what has the winner got? Just a bone. And no hope of any more after that. Just the one bone.”

Then an arrow swicked out of the darkness and into her throat and she dropped dead in front of me.

Two soldiers stepped into the moonlight, arrows ready. I ducked just as one let fly. He missed. The second hit me in the shoulder.

But by then my pack was to the ground, and I buried my dagger in the first man’s heart, then kicked the other to the ground. There were ways of fighting that they never taught the troops.

When they were both still I cut off their heads so there was no hope of their regenerating and telling what they knew. I took the better of their two bows and all the glass-tipped arrows, then went back to where the woman lay. I pulled the arrow from her throat, but saw that she wasn’t healing at all. One of the oldest branches of the family, then, that was too poor to stay in the chain of genetic advancement that had resulted in masterworks of self-preservation like the royal family, like the royal troops.

And genetic monsters like the people in the pens. Like me.

I gave her grief, letting the blood drip from my hand onto her face. Then I put the arrow that had struck my shoulder into her hand, to give her power in the next world, though I doubted privately that there was such a thing.

The packstraps chafed my wounded shoulder, and the pain was bad, but I had been trained to endure pain, and I knew that soon enough it would heal, like the wound in my hand. I walked eastward, following the trail, and soon came into the shadow of the black trees of Ku Kuei.

The forest was as sudden as a storm, from the bright light of Freedom into utter darkness. The trees looked eternal, right from the edge, as if five hundred years ago (or five thousand, the trees are that large) some great gardener had planted an orchard just
so
, with the edges neat and crisp along the property line.

The forest had already been like this, though, three thousand years ago when the ships of the Republic (the lying name for the foul dictatorship of the servile classes, said the histories) took the great rebels and their families and dumped them on the useless planet called Treason, where they would be exiled until they had ships enough to come out. Ships, they said with a laugh, with silver the strongest workable metal on the planet.

Metal we could only buy, and then by selling something that they wanted. For centuries upon centuries every Family would put something in the bright cube of their Ambassador; for centuries upon centuries the Ambassador took it—and returned it. Until we stumbled upon a way to exploit the agony of the radical regeneratives.

But some of the Families did not take part in the rush to trade with our captors. The Schwartzes stayed secretly on their desert, where no one went; the Ku Kuei lived somewhere in the bowels of their dark forest, never leaving it and never being troubled by outsiders, who feared the mysteries of the world’s most impenetrable forest. The edge of the forest had always been Mueller’s eastern border; and only in that direction did my father and his father never try to conquer.

It was cold and silent. Not a birdsound. Not an insect, though there were flowers enough in the open brush. Then the sun rose and so did I, setting off into the depths of the trees, going east but one-third south.

At first there was a morning breeze, but then that died, and the leaves hung absolutely still. Birds were rare, and when I saw any they were as if asleep in high branches, motionless. No small animals moved underfoot, and I wondered if this were the secret of Ku Kuei—that nothing but plants lived here.

I could not see the sun, and so marked my direction by noting the trees that went in a line, correcting now and then. East and one-third south, I said again and again, trying not to hear it in the woman’s voice—why did I grieve for her, whom I did not know?

I walked for hours and hours, it seemed, and still it was only morning from the vague direction of the brightest light, where I supposed the sun must be. Paths ran left and right, but I followed again the voice of the old woman in my memory, saying, “Follow no paths.”

I became hungry. I chewed on mutton. I found berries and ate them, but not the white ones.

At last my legs were so weary I couldn’t set one in front of the other, and yet it was still day. I didn’t understand my tiredness. In my training I had often been required to walk briskly from sunrise to sunset, until I could do it with little strain. Was there, then, some element in the forest air, some drug that weakened me? Or had the healing of all my recent wounds taken more from me than I expected?

I didn’t know. I set down the pack beside a tree and slept without waking, long and hard.

So long that when I awoke it was daylight again, and I got up and pushed on.

Again a day of walking, then weariness while the sun was still high. This time I forced myself to go on, farther and farther, until I became a machine. I was alert enough to avoid entangling roots, to pick my way through thick places, to scramble over rocks, to slide carefully down the slopes of hollows and ravines, then clamber up the other side, but I was so numb with the effort just to stay awake that I wasn’t conscious of any of this, not really; an obstacle was forgotten the moment it was out of view. I felt as if I had been walking for days, and yet the sun was still high.

At first my weariness in so short a time made me feel a deep dread, that the complex of symptoms that marked a radical regenerative included a kind of general dystrophy—but that couldn’t be it, for I had found the strength to go on and on, hadn’t I? I wasn’t weakening, for surely I had covered some ground, at least. But perhaps rads were plagued with the sudden onset of bouts of almost uncontrollable sleepiness. Yet I
was
controlling it, wasn’t I? And the rads in the pens, while they moved with the languor of despair, did not seem to
sleep
more often than other men, or at least no one ever said they did.