Treason Page 0,46

most of the men somber and some shamelessly in tears. I think that was when they finally let him die, by giving him an, arrow in the heart. A strange people, at once cruel and kind, strong and weak, and so quick to change from one extreme to the other that I could not predict what they would do.

Except the captain, who was an island of strength amid the confusion. He was a father to a shipful of children, hearing their complaints patiently, mediating their quarrels, forgiving their sins, teaching them their tasks, and making all but their most trivial decisions for them. I marveled at him, for I rarely heard him angry, and then only momentarily, for effect; he never wavered, never broke. I always knew his footsteps on the deck. Step, step, step, in perfect rhythm. It was as if even the sliding deck held firm for him, and he did not have to compromise with the rolling sea. He reminded me of my father, and I longed to go home.

But there is a limit to how much sympathy a slave can have for his owners. After a while the darkness caved in on me, and I resented having to wake up, resented having to go to sleep, and above all dreamed of sunlight. I was a horseman, not a seaman. My idea of travel is with surging flesh between my legs, or my own feet slapping the ground underneath me, not bounding from side to side and up and down and back and forth with the roll, pitch, and yaw of the boat at sea.

Besides, the effects of my visit among the Nkumai were not over. The massive regenerative effort of my body that resulted in the creation of my erstwhile double did not end with the amputation. Instead, my body seemed determined to regenerate every part of me. Within a few weeks of the start of my captivity, the arm sprouting from my shoulder was long enough and developed enough that I could scratch my back with it as it dangled. Other limbs quickly sprouted, other growths began. And while there was plenty of food to sustain the growth, I had no chance for exercise; all the energy I took in only had one outlet. Growth.

The heat had been unbearable for days when I finally realized that I was losing my mind. I found myself lying in the grass by Cramer River, watching the light fishing boats skim upstream with the wind. Beside me was Saranna, her robe falling open carelessly (though I knew she was aware of just how much arousal each centimeter of exposure produced), her finger tickling me unbearably while I pretended not to feel it. I saw all this, I was doing this, while wide awake, curled in a ball on the floor of my steaming hot prison.

I was doing this while the fifth leg to grow from my hips began twitching awkwardly, beginning to come to life. That was the reality. The sweat dripping on my breasts. The darkness. The destruction of my body. The loss of freedom.

This is how the rads in the pens endure it, I realized. They live another life. They are not wallowing in dirt or grass, feeding at troughs-- their bodies are sound and whole again, and they he by riverbanks preparing to make love to a lover who, in reality, dares not now remember that they live.

But as soon as I realized that such madness was my only means of escape, I determined not to use it. I determined, instead, to keep my mind awake in this present reality, unbearable as it was.

I have a good memory. Not a phenomenal one-- I can't conjure up written pages one by one-- but I began to use my time to put together all I had learned while reading history in Mwabao Mawa's farthest room.

Mueller-- genetics.

Nkumai-- physics.

Bird-- high society.

These stuck easily in my mind. But again and again I forced myself to go back, let the trance of madness take me somewhere useful, until I remembered others. Not all, but others.

Schwartz, lost to all human contact on the desert-- she had been a geologist. Wasted on this world without hard metals.

Allison-- theology. Much good it had done them.

Underwood-- botany. And now in the high mountains, what flowers did his children hopelessly grow?

Hanks-- psychology, the treatment of the mad. No help for me.

Anderson-- the useless leader of the rebellion, whose only gift was politics.

Drew-- dreams and their interpretation.

Who had