Treason Page 0,14

but it was long enough that I saw no end, either north or south. The sun dazzled on the bright water. And yes, it could only be two o'clock in the afternoon.

I lay by the water and slept, and woke the next day at what, seemed to be, the very time I had gone to sleep.

I despaired, but also I hoped. For I had slept, that was certain. My muscles ached, my legs were rubbery under me, but I could move again, I had the fresh vigor that could only mean I had had, if not as much rest as I needed, at least enough to go on. Above all, I was awake. The poisons in the air had not consigned me to die here in my sleep.

Perhaps it was only because I had won free of the trees and collapsed here, where perhaps the open water cleared the air. I felt it was a kind of victory, to have reached this place. I thought back to the map of Treason I held within my head-- one of the things that lingered from school days, the map of the world that dated from the first orbital surveys when our ancestors arrived. There were other lakes, strung out eastward of here. If this was in fact the southwesternmost lake, then striking due east would take me to the largest of the lakes, and by skirting the southern shore and following a large river to the easternmost lake I would be within reach of the borders of Allison.

I knew that the southern tip of the lake was where the woman had told me I should turn south. But Jones was too much in the shadow of Mueller; Dinte might have spies there, and Father certainly would-- there was always the chance that Father might have changed his mind and decided the good of Mueller required my death.

My best hope, now that I had proven I could defeat the menace of Ku Kuei, was to go east, fight my way through to Allison, only one Family to the west of Nkumai. There I could complete the mission Father had given me, and perhaps, by proving my loyalty, earn the right to go home, or at least to live without fear of some agent of Mueller coming to remove a threat to the government.

I went east, toward Nkumai, toward the rising sun-- rising, that is, in former days, when it used to move across the sky. The journey changed not at all. The same confusion, the same exhaustion-- for in each march I seemed to cover so much ground that from the map, I carried in my head it should have taken two full days at a good hard walk, not the few hours it seemed to take by the sun. I invented dozens of new explanations or codicils to the old ones; I wearied of trying to understand, and let imaginary visions of Saranna draw me forward, remembering her insane loyalty to me when there was no hope that we could be together anymore. At least it was only thoughts of murder that could carry me across the last stretch of forest without water to break the poisonous air-- I dreamed of killing Dinte; and, ashamed of such thoughts toward my own brother, I dreamed of killing the Turd. I imagined that once she had sustained her mortal injury, her magical spell would be released, and she would be revealed as a huge writhing slug oozing along the stone, floor of the castle, leaving a trail of thick pus and ichor and glistening slime behind it.

I ate what berries I could find, and my pack was long since empty; my body, which had always been muscular, now became lean, and my womanly breasts, which had grown soft and large on the comfortable diet of Mueller, were now tight and spare and hard, like the rest of me. It made it somehow easier to bear having them, knowing that they had to respond to the same urgencies that drove the rest of my body. Scant rations and hard work affected them along with the rest of me. They were a part of myself. They might have been unwelcome when they first appeared, but it didn't feel strange to have them anymore.

Finally I reached the grey-barked slender ragwit trees that told me I was near:

... white-tree Allison, Of dawn and light among the leaves.

* * *

Almost at once, with the change of woods, the poisons