Treason (6 page)

Then the white trees of Allison thinned out, replaced by taller trees, shooting straight upward hundreds and hundreds of meters. At last the road wound among giant trees that made even the oldest ones of Ku Kuei look slight. We no longer stopped at inns, but instead slept beside the carriage, or under it when it rained, which seemed to happen almost daily.

Then one day in early afternoon the Nkumai teacher signaled the driver to stop.

“Here we are,” he said.

I looked around. I could see no difference between this place and any other part of the forest that had seemed so changeless for days of journeying.

“Where is here?” I asked.

“Nkumai. The capital.”

Then I followed his gaze upward and saw the most intricate and clever system of ramps, bridges, and buildings suspended in the trees as far as I could see, upward and outward in every direction.

“Impregnable,” he commented.

“A marvel,” I answered. I didn’t comment that a good fire could wipe the entire thing out in a half hour. I was glad I didn’t. Because within moments the daily deluge came, and this time I was neither inside the carriage nor under it. We were immediately drenched as if we had dived into the sea. The Nkumai made no effort to find shelter, and so neither could I.

After only a few minutes the rain stopped, and he turned to me and smiled. “It comes like this nearly every day, often twice a day. If it didn’t, we might have to fear a fire. But as it is, our only problem is getting peat dry enough to burn for cooking.”

I smiled back and nodded. “I can see that might be a problem.” Obviously he had guessed at my observation about the city’s vulnerability to fire, and wanted me to understand by direct experience exactly how useless a weapon fire would be against them.

The ground was mud six inches deep, which made for very unhealthy walking, and I was surprised they made no effort to corduroy or cobble any sort of path besides the road; but then we found a rope ladder and swung up into the air. I didn’t touch the ground again for weeks.

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

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

“You don’t seem very tired,” my guide commented. “You aren’t even breathing very heavily.”

“Oh, I didn’t want the rest because of the exertion. I’m simply—unaccustomed to such heights.”

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

I stifled a sigh. “Where are you taking me?”

“Where do you want to go?” he countered.

“I want to see the king.”

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

“Of course you don’t really expect to see the
king
, lady,” he said.

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

His smile dampened a little. “He doesn’t meet with the public, that’s all I meant.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Shall we go?” he suggested.

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

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

“All right?” he asked.

“No,” I answered. “But let’s go on.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

“How much?”

“About three hundred meters.”

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

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

“I’m going to
live
at the top?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I chose to stand in the center of the platform.

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

“Teacher, whom have you brought me?”

“She won’t give me a name,” Teacher said. “A gentleman, it appears, does not ask a lady.”

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

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

I thought I already was.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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