Treason Page 0,38

and the ropes were tied to such bouncy branches that I couldn't get leverage to kick at the guards. They proceeded to carve up my feet in a delightful criss-cross pattern about an inch deep, getting to bone in several places. It was agonizing, of course, but I had gone through worse in traming. Still, I knew what was expected of me and moaned and screamed. I must have given a convincing performance, because they soon stopped cutting, lifted me again, told me to let go of the ropes, and set me gently down.

On my feet, of course, and the manacles still forced me to stand. I thought of what happened to spies in the dungeons of Mueller, and decided that in that aspect of civilization, Nkumai and Mueller were about even. Mueller had a higher technology for inducing pain, but Nkumai understood how to evoke despair.

Thinking about that, I forgot to scream for a moment or two, but once I remembered that I was supposed to be suffering, I moaned a lot. They went away.

In half an hour the simple cuts on my feet were gone, and the pain and the tickle of healing quickly ended, too. However, the trouble with healing so fast was that my would-be tormentors would surely notice it, and there would be no further need for me to hide what it was that Mueller sold to the Ambassador.

I began to pray for rain. Or at least wish for it, since my pantheon didn't include anyone in charge of weather.

It came an hour after nightfall. The clouds rolled across the sky, blotting out the stars and the light of Dissent. The wind came up, bouncing the platform around. That was my signal to begin; with the branches already bouncing, they wouldn't notice my movements.

I began pulling against the manacles, to slice off part of my hand. The hardest thing was keeping the pressure on the manacles strong enough in the right direction so that the two outermost fingers on each hand were ripped off by the glass, and not the thumb.

I needed the thumb for climbing.

There was a horrifying moment when both hands came free at once, right when a gust of wind jerked the platform under me. I fell flat on my face-- but luck was kind to me that day, and I fell on the supporting branch rather than into empty space.

I lay there for a moment, dripping blood from my -maimed hands, as the rain began to pour.

Only a few minutes left until the storm died down. Between the clouds, the rain, and the darkness of night, I could see nothing at all. Yet I had to move, had to get away from the prison before my motion became detectable again. The pain was nothing, but conquering my fear of falling and my fear of moving in the darkness was the hardest thing I ever had to do in my life until then, with the greatest personal risk. Even now as I think about it, I wonder at what kind of madness caused me even to attempt it. But I was still young then, and life didn't have quite the high price on it that it has now.

The wood was slippery, and I crawled and climbed and staggered far faster than was safe, I tried to stay on the branches in the direction they forked from, knowing that eventually I would find a thicker branch with firm footing. I mostly kept my eyes closed, feeling ahead of me with my hands, because even in the pitch darkness, as long as my eyes were open, my mind kept wanting to see, and tended to panic when it couldn't.

Once I came to a platform, and was afraid for a moment it might be occupied. It wasn't, and from that platform to solid wood was only a matter of moments. I still didn't get up and run, however. I had no guide, and the wood was slick. But it was a relief not to be tossed back and forth, and I let myself descend into the darkness.

The rain stopped. The wind stopped. And just as I sighed in relief, the path I was following suddenly became very steep, and I lost my hold and fell. For a moment I thought that this was my death,j but almost immediately I landed on a platform.

"What the hell!" said an angry voice as I got up from the platform. I had knocked somebody down.

"What in the world is