made no difference. When she found wounds that looked days instead of minutes old, all bets would be off. Even in the unlikely event that they had heard no rumors of Muellers' regenerating powers, they'd know something strange was up. There'd be a complete examination, and even if I castrated myself first, they'd realize my anatomy was at least somewhat confused.
The girl spoke once more, and I ordered her away, telling her this time that woman of Bird no foreign man or woman to touch her blood.
Again, I was improvising some sort of cultural folderol to meet my present need, but I had studied folkways and rituals in school and pursued it somewhat more than the curriculum required-- enough to get a sense, perhaps, of what kinds of things were sacred or tabu in other places. Women's blood-- primarily menstrual, but extending to all female blood-- was more likely to be invested with holiness or dread than even the bodies of the dead.
Whether it was a local tabu about bleeding women or the hysteria in my voice, the girl went away, and again I waited in the stifling room. The tickling of my back told me that my wounds were completely healed now, scabbed or scarred. I began searching for ways to escape without using the door, trying to remember the layout of the village outside the room so I could plot the quickest possible dash for freedom.
The door creaked open on its heavy wooden hinges, and a black man in a white robe come in. He carried no unguent, so apparently, I had carried that point. He held out to me another robe, a light blue one.
"Please," he said, "come out."
I took the robe. He turned away and closed the door.
I stripped away the trashy-looking Allison clothes I had been wearing, drew the robe on over my freshly healed back and shoulders, and bound it in front of me. I felt more confident now, less vulnerable. I opened the door and stepped outside, blinking in the light. The man in the white robe stood two paces back from the door.
"I demand that I be set free," I said.
"Of course," he answered, "and I hope that you will continue on your journey to Nkumai."
I made no effort to conceal my disbelief in the sincerity of his invitation.
"I was afraid you'd feel that way," he said, "but I beg you to forgive our ignorant soldiers. We pride ourselves on our learning in Nkumai, but we know very little about nations beyond our borders. The soldiers know far less, of course, than we do."
"We?"
"I am a teacher," he said. "And I have been sent to beg your forgiveness and ask you to continue on your way to our capital. When the captain applied for permission to put you to death for maiming one of our soldiers, he told us that you claimed to be an emissary from Bird. To him the idea of a woman on an embassy is absurd. He is from lower down the tree, where a woman's true potential is not always recognized. But I know that Bird is governed by women, very wisely I am told, and I realized at once that your story must be true."
He smiled and spread his hands. "I cannot hope to undo what our officer has, in ignorance, done. He has, of course, been stripped of rank, and the hands that actually beat you have been cut off."
I nodded. That was probably the least they could do and still appear to be serious about punishment. But I also knew that I had done some damage, too. "The man I kicked," I said. "I believe he has been punished enough."
He raised an eyebrow. "He didn't think so," he said. "You must understand-- to be castrated by a single kick from a bound woman-- he couldn't bear to live with that story in his name."
Again I nodded as if I understood completely.
"And now," he said, "please let me escort you to Nkumai, where perhaps your embassy can still be offered."
"I wonder," I said, "if our desire to procure alliance with Nkumai was wise after all. We had heard of you as civilized people."
He looked pained for a moment, but then smiled helplessly. "Not so," he answered. "We are not yet civilized. But we are at least trying, which is more than can be said of many peoples here in the East. In the West, I am sure, things are different."
At this point I thought I