"I can't," I said.
"You will," she said, and her cold hand slid inside my robe. "I can help you," she said. "I can pretend to be a man for you, if you like," and she began humming and singing a soft, strange song. Almost immediately that hand inside the robe became rougher, stronger, and the face that kissed my cheek felt rough and whiskered. All of this seemed to happen through her song. How did she do it, I wondered, even as another part of my mind gratefully noticed that her pretence at maleness would probably help quell my desire for her.
Except that my breasts reacted like any woman's, and I began to be very afraid as the song became too rhythmic, pulled me more deeply into a trance.
"I mustn't," I said, and I pulled away. She followed. Or he? The illusion was powerful. I only wished I could do the same, and fool her into thinking I was a woman no matter what evidence her lands lips and eyes might find. But I couldn't. "If you do," I said, "I'll kill myself afterward."
"Nonsense," she answered.
"I haven't been purified." I tried to sound desperate. It wasn't hard.
"Nonsense," she said.
"If I didn't kill myself, my people would," I said. "They will, if this happens and I haven't been purified first."
"How would they know?"
"Do you think I would lie to my own people?" I hoped that the huskiness and trembling in my voice sounded like offended honor instead of the rank terror I actually felt.
Perhaps it did, for she stopped, or rather paused, and asked, "What is it, this purification?"
I made up a jumble of religious ritual, half stolen from the practices of the people of Ryan and half a product of my need for solitude. She listened. She believed me. And so I made another journey in the dark, and found myself alone in Mwabao Mawa's room, the one with the chests and boxes. My purpose there, she told me, was to meditate.
I stayed there for a morning and an evening and a night.
I had no idea what to do. Mwabao was in the other room, the one we had shared for two weeks, humming softly an erotic song-- one that kept me almost constantly aroused.
I toyed with the idea of cutting off my genitals, but I couldn't be sure how long regeneration would take, and the healed wound of castration would not be taken for the anatomy of a woman.
I also thought of escape, of course, but I knew perfectly well that the only escape route lay through the room where Mwabao Mawa cheerfully waited. I cursed again and again-- very softly, of course-- wondering why I had the miserable fortune to end up imprisoned in a woman's body with a lesbian for a jailer and hundreds of meters of gravity serving as the bars for my cell.
At last I realized that my only hope, thin as it was, was to escape, not as a woman, but as a man. Tomorrow night, in the darkness, if I painted myself black, I might elude the guards. If I didn't, and I was taken, all I'd need to do is fall. Drop, I thought ironically. And my identity as a Mueller would be safe.
Getting past Mwabao? Simple. Kill her.
Could I do it? Not so simple. I liked her. She had breached diplomatic protocol, but she had done me no real harm. Also, she was well-connected, she would quickly be missed.
So I wouldn't kill her. A knock on her head, a breaking of bones, that should be enough. It should silence her for long enough, or at least immobilize her. Though truth to tell, I had no idea how hard I'd have to hit a normal person to knock her unconscious without killing her, how many bones to break without crippling her for life. With Muellers, it was never an issue. And I had never heard of a Mueller striking a foreigner without the intent to kill or maim. Still, I'd do my best to leave her whole.
All that remained was to hide who I was. The blacking of my skin could come later, after I finished with Mwabao. But the other preparations would be good for shock value.
I began searching quietly through her boxes, hoping to find a knife. With it I would cut off my breasts. They'd grow back, of course, but by tonight the scar tissue would only have turned back into normal flesh, and the breasts would still not have begun noticeably to grow. It was the closest thing to a change of sex. that I could hope to accomplish, I realized bitterly.
I didn't find a knife. Instead I found several more books, and a moment's curiosity led me to a half-hour's concentration.
It was a history of Treason. I had read our history of the planet, of course, but this was more complete in some ways. In some very important ways, and I began to realize that I had been almost completely fooled. And yet it was so obvious.
What Mueller's history left out, and what Nkumai's history dwelt on, was the entire group. It was an account of not just one family, but all the members of the conspiracy who were exiled to this metalless planet as a horrible example to the rest of the Republic of what happened to people who tried to establish a government of the intellectual elite. The long-dead issues that had brought the Families here always seemed laughable to me, and still do. Who should rule whom? The answer was always, eternally, "I should." Whoever "I" might be, "I" would seek power.
But the Nkumai history went over the roster of names. I hunted for Mueller, and found it. Han Mueller, a geneticist specializing in the hyperdevelopment of human regeneration. I found others. But of course the one most interesting to me at that moment was Nkumai. Ngago Nkumai, who had adopted a pseudo-African name as a gesture of defiance, had made his name in the development of theoretical physical constructs of the universe. Making new ways of looking at the universe that would enable men to do new things.
It all came together at once, each part so flimsy that alone it proved nothing, but all the events of the weeks I had spent in Nkurnai fit so well that I couldn't doubt my conclusion.
The smelly air above the swamp was nothing, was a decoy, was Mwabao Mawa's device for getting the slim, pretty blond girl from Bird into bed. But other things were true. There was no king, for instance. Mwabao had told the truth: a group governed this place. But it was not a group of politicians. It was a group whose profession was the same as the founder, Ngago Nkumai. They were scientists who made up new ways of looking at the universe-- scientists who invented things like True Sight and Making the Stars Dance. They used Mwabao Mawa as their liaison with what official government workers Nkumai had. Whom did they use as liaison with the army? With the guards? It hardly mattered. And why did all the common Nkumai believe there was a king? There undoubtedly had been-- or perhaps there still was-- a figurehead. Again, it hardly mattered.
What mattered was that Nkumai wasn't selling smells to the Ambassador at all. It was selling physics. It was selling new ways of looking at the universe. It was selling, of course, faster-than-light travel, as Mwabao Mawa had so blandly let slip and then covered so well. And other things. Things worth far more to the Watchers than arms, legs, hearts, and heads that were carved off the bodies of radical regeneratives.
Each Family would, if it had any hope of creating anything to sell to the Ambassador, try to develop what its founder had known best: Mueller, human genetics. Nkumai, physics. I looked up Bird and laughed. The original Bud had been a wealthy socialite, a woman with few marketable skills and abilities at all, except her knack for bending others to her will. The matriarchy was her only legacy. In the competition for iron that gave them no advantage. Yet, like all the others, she had passed on to her Family her knowledge of what she was best at.