found what to export? I didn't know. But surely in my father's library were the books that would tell what I couldn't remember; books that would fill in the gaps and give us hints of what projects were secretly being worked on in other Families. Some, of course, would have given way to despair, having nothing that on this world could possibly be of value to the Ambassador-- the engineers, for instance, Cramer and Wizer. They had been easy to conquer farmers now, having forgotten lore that could never be put to adequate use on this world. And Ku Kuei, a philosopher whose ideas obviously had no wide audience in the Republic-- he had never lived to found a family. Perhaps in his wisdom he determined that his last act of rebellion was to disappear, to die, so that his children would not be prisoners on Treason forever.
But iron had come at last to Nkumai and Mueller. Physics and genetics. They with ideas, we with products. Our products would never run out; would their ideas? It didn't matter, not if they were getting paid so much iron for each idea that they could overwhelm us quickly.
I would never make it to Mueller in time.
Resist it though I did, I doubt I held off the madness altogether. Because I remember, as if it were real, a creature like myself who came and laughed at me in my cell. He could have been Lanik as I remembered me, from mirrors in my early adolescence, except that the side of his head was bashed in and his brains kept sloughing out. Yet he carried on a pleasant conversation and only at the end did he try to kill me. I strangled him with four arms, tore him apart. I remember it clearly.
I also remember my brother, Dinte, visiting me. He cut me into little pieces, and each grew up into a little Lanik, so small at adulthood that Dinte had great fun smashing them with his boots. Perhaps I screamed then-- Dinte fled when someone beat on the hatch above me.
Ruva came, too, her mouth full, but bragging to me as she chewed that she had got my father's testicles at last, had got them and was chewing them up, and I was next. She had a hideous little boy with her, wearing a mockery of my father's face. At the age of-- what, ten? --he still drooled. His wet chin shone in the light. Yet I knew it could not be real, because there was never light in my cell except a dazzle for a moment as the bucket was lowered or raised.
And, an old woman from the high hills of Mueller kept bringing me arrows, until I was half-buried in them.
These mad waking dreams I remember as clearly as I remember my father teaching me to cut down a man from horseback or giving me grief and wiping the blood on his face as he told me my fate. In retrospect I have learned to distinguish which of my memories were real from those that could not have been. At the time it was not so clear.
One day I heard a new sound. It was not unusual in intensity, but I realized I was hearing new voices. The ship had not put into any port. No one had come alongside. Obviously, then, they were letting slaves out of the cells and onto the deck. This meant we were nearing port-- atrophied muscles must now be awakened so the slaves would make a good showing in the markets of Rogers and Dunn and Dark.
But that first day no one let me out, and I wondered why.
By the second day I reasoned that because I was not to be sold for labor, it didn't matter if I seemed strong. I was to be a freak. I wondered grimly what my owners would think of me now. A new nose was growing alongside and partly joined to the old. On the left side of my head, three ears protruded from my shaggy hair. My body was a hodgepodge of arms and legs that had never been taught to walk or grasp. They thought they had a curiosity before. I would be a one-man circus now.
Above me, other slaves were walking, could see, could feel the sun and the wind. And I could not.
I began shouting. My voice was unaccustomed to speaking, and my mind had lost its command of words. I made little sense,