Treason Page 0,36

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.

I closed the book. Now it was even more urgent that I escape, because this particular discovery could be the key to a Mueller victory over Nkumai. And I could-- I was sure of it-- train a Mueller army to be able to fight in the trees. And we could-- I had hope for it-- win a victory and capture at least some of those minds, or at least control their Ambassador and block them from using it. After all, the basic population of Nkumai was ill-equipped for fighting, but the basic population of Mueller was raised to the knife and the spear and the bow. We could do it.

We had to do it. Because Nkumai was getting metal faster, and when they had enough of it, they would have the technology to build a ship and get off-planet. Not a sleepship, but a ship that traveled faster than light itself. They would get off Treason-- and Mueller had no hope of that. Then, once the Nkumai had reached the Republic and settled old scores, they would come back with all the metal their ships could carry, and then no Family could hope to stand against them. They would rule.

I had to stop them.

I put away the book and searched again for a knife. I was searching when the curtains parted and five Nkumai guards came into the room.

"Our spies just got back from Bird," one of them said.

I killed two and maimed another. They couldn't subdue me. They had to strike a blow to my head that would have killed an ordinary man. It did so much damage that I was unconscious for hours.

Chapter 4 Lanik and Lark

I awoke lying on a platform so that with my head on the platform my feet dangled off it. I felt rather than saw that I was still dressed. It was beyond belief that they had not discovered my body's secret-- surely they had searched me for weapons-- yet I still felt some hope that a sense of generous modesty had preserved the secret of Mueller.

Two Nkumai guards were standing nearby. When they saw that I was awake, they quickly threaded their way to me along narrow branches. We were so high that leaves were thick around us, and I could see patches of sky. The branches were so slender that my platform bounced wildly as the guards walked toward me.

When they were standing on the branch that passed under my platform, they reached out hooks and snagged two ropes dangling from even higher, thinner branches. On the ends of the ropes were the most ingenious manacles I had ever seen. Instead of the clumsy and quick-to-rot wooden manacles we used in Mueller, these were made of glass bound in rope. Two half-cylinders of glass were slipped around my wrists. They did not quite meet on either side. Then the rope was tied tightly around them, held in place by a groove in the glass. When the guards were through tying the ropes, the glass half-cylinders met tightly.

As a parting gesture in our wordless interplay, the guards jerked the manacles on my arms. The guard on the fight pulled the manacle down, toward my elbow. The other pulled his manacle up, toward my hand. The pain was sharp and immediate. I looked at them in surprise. They smiled grimly and left.

Around my right forearm and around my left hand the manacles had cut deep enough to draw blood. The glass had been ground or chipped to have a sharp edge. It was easy enough to get out of these manacles-- as long as you were willing to lose half a hand in the process, and even if you were, it would make climbing down from the tree rather difficult.

The manacles were also tied just far enough apart that I couldn't strike them against each other or anything else, not even my head. There was no way to shatter them. Furthermore, because they were tied to branches with a great deal of spring, when I pulled