I learned only that all her guests were men of education-- scientists of one kind or another. And I got the feeling from the way they talked and argued that these were men little concerned with science as Mueller used it, as a means to an end. Instead, science was the end in itself.
"Good evening, Lady," a small, softspoken man said. "I'm Teacher, and I'm eager to be of service to you."
A standard greeting, but at last I gave in to my curiosity and asked, "How can you be named Teacher, and also three other men in this room, and also the guide who led me here? How can you tell one another apart?"
He laughed, with that superior laugh that already irritated me and which I soon learned was a national custom, and said, "Because I'm myself, and they are not."
"But when you talk about each other?"
"Well," he patiently explained, "I hope that when men talk about me, they call me Teacher Who Taught the Stars to Dance, because that's what I did. The man who guided you here this morning, he's Teacher of True Sight. That's because he made that particular discovery."
"True sight?"
"You wouldn't understand," he said. "Very technical. But when someone wants to talk about us, he refers to our greatest accomplishment, and then everybody who matters knows who he's talking about."
"What about someone who hasn't made a great discovery yet?"
He laughed again. "Who would want to talk about such a person?"
"But when you speak of women, they all have names."
"So do dogs and little children," he said, so cheerfully I could almost believe he hadn't intended to be insulting. "But no one expects great accomplishments from women, at least not while they're fully engaged in the work of conceiving, bearing, and rearing children. Don't you think it would be coarse to speak of a woman by referring to her greatest gifts? Imagine calling someone 'Blanket Dancer with the Huge Buttocks' or 'Cook Who Always Scorches Soup.' He laughed at his own joke, and several others, who had been vaguely listening in, suggested other titles. I thought they were hilarious, but as a woman I had to pretend to find them insulting, and in fact I was a bit annoyed when one of them suggested that I might be called "Emissary with the Freckled Breasts."
"How would you know to call me that?" I asked archly. I was annoyed to discover how easily it came to me to sound arch-- all I had to do was imitate the Turd's speech and then raise one eyebrow-- which I've been able to do since childhood, to the amusement of my parents and the terror of the troops under my command.
"I don't know it," answered a man named Stargazer-- the same name as two others in the room. "But I'd be willing to find out."
It was something I hadn't really been prepared for. Rapists on the road I could cope with by killing them. But how does a woman say no to a man in polite company without offending? As a king's son, I was not used to hearing women say no. As Saranna's lover, I had lately not been used to asking, anyway.
Fortunately, I didn't have to answer at all.
"The Lady from Bird is not here to find out what's hidden under your robe," Mwabao Mawa said, "especially since most of us know how little it conceals." The laughter was loud, especially from the man insulted, but they moved away from me for a short time, and I was allowed a few moments to myself, to observe.
There was, amid all the chatter of science and court gossip-- more of the latter than of the former, of course-- a detectable pattern that amused me. I watched as one man at a time took Mwabao aside for just a moment of quiet, unheard conversation. And one of them I overheard. "At noon," he said, and she nodded. Little enough to generalize on, but I was willing to believe that they were making appointments. For what? I could think of several obvious purposes. She might be a whore, though I doubted it, both because of her lack of beauty and because of the obvious respect these men had for her, never leaving her out of their conversations or ignoring a remark she made. Or she might really be a mistress of the king, in which case she could be selling influence-- though again I doubted it, because it seemed so unlikely that an emissary would be placed with a woman who had that kind of power.
A third possibility was that she was somehow involved with a rebellion or a secret party, at least. This didn't contradict either fact or logic, and I began to wonder if there was something there that might be exploited.
But not that night, at least. I was tired. Though my body had long since healed from the strain of climbing to Mwabao Mawals house-- and, for that matter, from the beating of the Nkumai soldiers only a short time before-- I was still emotionally drained. I needed to sleep. I dozed for a moment and woke to find the last of the men leaving.
"Oh," I said, startled. "Did I sleep so long?"
"Only a few moments," Mwabao Mawa told me, "but they realized it was late, and went. So you could sleep."
She went to a corner, dipped her hand into a barrel, and drank.
I would have done the same, but as I thought of water a horrible realization came over me. In prison I had had privacy to eliminate wastes, and while traveling with Teacher he had delicately let me take care of those needs on the other side of the carriage, forbidding anyone to watch. But alone here in the house with another-- another?-- woman, there might be no such fastidiousness.
"Is there a room particularly for--" For what, I wondered. Was there a delicate way of putting it? "I mean, what are the other three rooms of your house used for?"
She turned to me and smiled slightly, but there was something other than a smile behind her eyes. "That I will tell to those who have a practical reason for such knowledge."
Didn't work. And worse, I had to watch as Mwabao Mawa casually took off her robe and walked naked across the room toward me.
"Aren't you going to sleep?" she asked me.
"Yes," I said, not bothering to hide how flustered I was. Her body was not particularly attractive, but it was the first time I had ever seen such a large woman undressed, and that, combined with her blackness and my long deprivation, made her exotic and intensely arousing. It made it all the more urgent for me to figure out a way to keep from getting undressed myself, since my modesty was essential to my survival in a nation which took me for a woman.
"Then why aren't you undressing? " she asked, puzzled.
"Because in my nation we don't undress to sleep."
She laughed aloud. "You mean you wear clothing even in front of other women?"
I pretended to speak as if I were from a nation whose customs exactly coincided with my present need, though in fact at that time I did not yet know of any such place. "The body is one's most private possession," I said, "and the most important. Do you wear all your jewels all the time?"
She shook her head, still amused. "Well, at least I hope you'll take it off to drop."
"Drop?"
She laughed again (that damned superior laugh) and said, "I guess a soiler would have a different word for it, wouldn't you? Well, you might as well watch the technique-- it's easier to show it than to explain."
I followed her to the corner of the room. She grasped the corner pole and then swung out through the curtain. I gasped at the suddenness of the way she lurched out over the vast distance to the ground. For a moment I wondered if she had leapt out into space and flown away; but there were her hands, still gripping the pole through the curtains, and she sounded calm as she said, "Well, open the curtain, Lark. You can't learn if you don't look!"