But I knew I wouldn't try to kill him. Removing Dinte wouldn't put me in his place; it would only mean a savage dispute over the succession-- or worse: Ruva might be allowed to spawn some hideous offspring with half my father's genes in it to take his place. No matter what, a rad like me could never hope to govern in Mueller. Besides, rads rarely lived into their thirties, and it was illegal for them-- no, for me-- to interbreed with ubermen. I felt a sudden pang as I realized what this would do to poor Saranna. The women would take the child out of her now, and destroy it. She would find herself now the former concubine of a monster instead of the potential first wife of the father of the Family. On the day the women chose me to be her breeding-partner she had set her foot on the road of glory; now the road was crumbling under her feet. Not just my future was destroyed, but hers also.
"Do I see the thoughts of a strangler in your eyes, Lanik?" Father asked. He thought I was still thinking about Dinte.
"Never, Father," I assured him.
"Poison, then. Or deep water. I think my heir is not safe with you here in Mueller."
I glared at him. "Dinte's worst enemy is himself. He needs no help from me to end in disaster."
"I've read Family history, too," Father said. "Every Mueller who was too sentimental to send his radical regenerative offspring to the pens regretted it soon after."
"Then have me killed with dignity, Father." It was as close as I would come to pleading. Yet silently I begged him: Don't let them feed and harvest me, reaping limbs and organs from me the way wool is sheared from a lamb, or milk pulled down from a cow, or silk spun out of a spider.
"I'm too affectionate," said Father. "I don't want to kill you. So I'm sending you on an embassy, a long one and far away, so that I have a reasonable hope of keeping Dinte alive."
"I'm not afraid of him," Dinte said scornfully.
"Then you are a fool," Father said sharply. "Teats or no teats, Lanik is more than a match for you, boy, and I won't trust you with my empire until you show me that you're at least half as clever as your brother."
Dinte was silent then, but I knew that my father had written my death sentence in Dinte's mind. Deliberately? I hoped not. But it occurred to me that Father might have decided that the best test for Dinte's fitness to rule was seeing how well he managed my murder.
"An embassy to what nation?" I asked.
"Nkumai," he answered.
"A kingdom of tree-dwelling savage blacks far to the east," I said, remembering my geography lessons. "Why should we send emissaries to animals?"
"Not animals," Father said. "They've lately been using steel swords in battle. They conquered Drew two years ago. Allison is falling easily while we're talking here."
I felt my anger rise to think of tree-dwelling blacks conquering the proud stonecarvers of Drew or the backwater religious folk of Allison. Hadn't we just conquered Cramer, and taught them the true place of blacks in the world by enslaving them? "Why are we sending embassies instead of armies?" I asked angrily.
"Am I a fool?" Father asked in return. "If I wanted mindless bigotry I could call a moot and listen to the nobility."
I found it at once encouraging and painful that he expected me to think like the Mueller and not like some common soldier who had no responsibility. So I answered him truly now. "If they have hard metal, it means that they've found something that the Offworld will buy. We don't know how much metal they'have; we don't know what they're selling. Therefore my embassy is not to make a treaty, but rather to find out what they have to sell and what the Ambassador is paying for it."
"Very good," Father said. "Dinte, you may go."
"If these are affairs of the kingdom," Dinte said, "shouldn't I be here to hear them?"
Father didn't answer. Dinte got up and left. And then Father waved a hand at the Turd, who also left the room, waggling her hips insolently.
"Lanik," Father said when we were alone, "Lanik, I wish to God there were something I could do." His eyes filled with tears and I realized with some surprise that Father cared enough to grieve for me. But not really for me, I thought. For his precious empire, which Dinte could not possibly hold together.
"Lanik, never in the three thousand years of Mueller has there been a mind like yours, in a body like yours, a man truly fit to lead men. And now the body is ruined. Will the mind still serve me? Will the man still love his father?"
"Man? If you saw me on the street you'd want to take me to your bed!"
"Lanik!" he cried out. "Can't you believe my grief?"
He pulled out his golden dagger, raised it high, and jabbed it through his left hand, pinning it to the table. When he pulled out the weapon the blood spouted and pulsed from the wound, and he rubbed the hand across his forehead, covering his face with blood. Then he wept, while the bleeding stopped and scar tissue formed across the wound.
I sat and watched him in the ritual of grief. We were silent except for his heavy breathing until his hand was healed. Then he looked at me from heavy eyes.
"Even if this hadn't happened," he said, "I would have sent you to Nkumai. For forty years we've been the only ones in the world, the only ones we knew about, who had enough hard metals to make a difference in war. Nkumai is now our only rival, and we know nothing about that family. You have to go secretly; if they know you're from Mueller they'll kill you. Even if you lived they'd be sure you saw nothing of importance."
I laughed bitterly. "And now I have the perfect disguise. No one would ever believe Mueller would send a woman to do a man's work."
There, I said it, gave myself the name that might keep me from ceasing to exist. But I knew that this was just as impossible; Mueller would no more accept a rad as a woman than as a man. Only outside Mueller could I be taken as human. Father might call it an embassy, or even spying, but we both knew that the true name for it was exile.
He smiled back at me. Then his eyes filled with tears again and I wondered if, after all, his love might be for me.
The interview was over and I left.
I saw to arrangements, setting the grooms to tending my horses and shoeing them for the Journey, instructing the scullers to preparing packs for my journey; getting the scholars to make me a map. When the work was in motion, I left the castle proper and walked through the covered corridors to the Genetics Laboratories.
The news had spread quickly-- all the high-ranking officers avoided me, and only the students were there to open doors and lead me to the place I wanted to see.
The Pens were kept brightly lit day and night, and I looked through the high observation window at the bodies endlessly scattered across the soft lawns. Here and there dust rose from the wallows. All the flesh was nude, and I watched as the noon food was spread into the feeders. Some of them looked like any other men. Others had small growths here and there on their bodies, or defects barely noticeable from a distance-- three breasts, or two noses, or extra toes and fingers.
And then there were those that were ready for harvest. I watched one creature is it lumbered toward the troughs. Its five legs didn't move well together, and it flailed its four arms awkwardly, to keep a balance. An extra head dangled uselessly from its back; a second spine curved away from the body like a sucking snake clinging rigidly to its victim.
"Why have they let this one go so long unharvested?" I asked the student who was near me.
"Because of the head," he said. "Complete heads are very rare, and we didn't dare interfere with the regeneration until it was complete."
"Do we get a good price for heads?" I asked.
"I'm not in merchandising," he answered, which meant that the price was very high indeed.
I looked at the monster as it struggled to bring food to its mouth with unresponsive arms. Could it be Velinisik? I shuddered.
"Are you cold?" asked the student, over-solicitously.
"Very," I answered. "My curiosity is satisfied. I'll go now."
I wondered why I wasn't even slightly grateful that my exile at least saved me from the pens. Perhaps be
cause I knew that if I were sentenced to live there, supplying extra parts for the offworld, I would kill myself. As it was I was still this side of suicide, and so had no retreat from the terrible knowledge of my loss.
Saranna met me in the greeting room of the Genetics Laboratories. I couldn't avoid her.
"I thought I would find you here," she said, "being morbid."
I knew she was trying to cheer me up, trying to pretend that all was still well between us. Under the circumstances, such a pretence was grotesque. Rather I wanted her to grieve for me, to speak to me as if I were only a memory, of one who was dead, for that's what I felt then that I was.
I tried to walk past her. She caught my arm, clung to me and wouldn't let me pull away.
"Do you think it makes any difference to me?" she cried out.
"You're being indecorous," I hissed. Several people were looking at the floor in embarrassment, and the servants were already kneeling. "You're causing us shame."
"Come with me then," she said. To avoid causing any more awkwardness for the others in the room I went with her. As we left I could hear the rods being whipped across the servants' backs because they had seen the highborn acting in a low manner. I felt the blows as if they fell on me.
"How could you do that?" I asked her.
"And how could you stay away from me for all these days?"
"Not that long."
"Longer! Lanik, do you think I didn't know? Do you think my love for you was just because you were the Mueller's heir?"
"What do you plan to do?" I demanded. "Go in there with me? Let yourself be harvested, too?"
She pushed herself away from me, horror in her eyes.
"Next time be luckier," I said. "Next time love a human being."
"Lanik!" she cried, and then put her arms around me and pressed her head to my chest. When she leaned against soft breasts instead of hard muscle, she pulled her head away for a moment-- then resolutely held to me even tighter.
With her head on my bosom I found myself wondering if I should feel motherly. Didn't she realize that her touch was no comfort to me now, only a reminder of all that I had lost? I pushed her away and ran. I stopped at a turn in the corridor and looked back. She was already slitting her wrists and crying out, the blood dripping onto the stone floor. The cuts were savage-- the loss of blood would make her sick for hours, with that many lacerations. I went quickly to my room.
I lay on my bed, looking up at the delicate gold inlay on the ceiling. Set in the middle of the gold was a single pearl of iron, black and angry and beautiful. For iron, I said silently. For iron we have bred ourselves into monsters; the normal muellers able to heal from any wound, and the rads serving as domesticated animals, selling their extra parts to the Offworld for more iron. Iron is power in a world with no hard metals. With our arms and legs and hearts and bowels we buy that power.
Put an arm in the Ambassador, and in a half hour a bar of iron appears in the cube of dancing light. Put living frozen sex organs in the cube, and five bars of iron replace it. An entire head? Who knows the price.
At that rate, how many arms and legs and eyes and livers must we give before we have enough iron to make one starship?
The walls pressed in on me and I felt myself trapped on Treason, our planet forming high walls of poverty that tied us down, that kept us from the Offworld, that made us prisoners as surely as the creatures in the pens. And like them, we lived under watching eyes, Family competing madly against Family in order to produce something, anything that the Offworld would buy, paying us in precious metals like iron, aluminum, copper, tin, zinc.
We Muellers had been first. The Nkumai were second, perhaps. A battle for supremacy, sooner or later. And whoever the victor, the pyrrhic prize would be a few tons of iron. Could a technology be built on that?
I slept like a prisoner, tied to my bed by the immense manacles of gravity on our poor prison planet; bound to despair by two full and lovely breasts that rose and fell regularly. I slept.
I woke to darkness in the room, and the rasping sound of labored breath. The breath was mine, and in sudden panic I felt liquid in my lungs and began to cough violently. I threw myself to the edge of the bed, coughing a dark liquid out of my throat, each cough an exquisite pain. My gasping brought the breath in coldly at my throat, not through my mouth.
I touched the gaping wound under my chin. My larynx had been cut out, and I could feel the veins and arteries that were covered with scar tissue as they tried to heal, sending blood into my brain whatever the cost. The wound went from ear to ear. But finally my lungs were clear of blood, and I lay on the bed and tried to ignore the pain as my body's vigor surged to heal the gash.
But it wouldn't do it quickly enough, I realized. Whoever had tried so clumsily to kill me would be back to make sure of his work (or her work-- Ruva?) and they wouldn't be so careless next time. So I stood, not waiting to be healed, breath still hissing in and out of the open wound at my throat. At least the bleeding had stopped, and if I moved carefully the scar tissue working gradually inward from the edges of the wound would eventually close it.
I stepped out into the corridor, faint from loss of blood. No one; but the packs I had ordered were stacked outside my room, awaiting inspection. I dragged them in. The strain caused a little bleeding, so I rested a moment while the blood vessels healed again. Then I sorted through the packs and combined the most essential items into one bundle. My bow and the glass-tipped arrows were the only things I took with me from my room; carrying the single pack, I made my way carefully down the corridors and stairways to the stable.
When I passed the sentry stall I was relieved to see that no one was there to challenge me. A few steps later on I realized what that meant and whirled around, drawing my dagger as I turned.
But it was not an enemy who stood there. Saranna gasped when she saw the wound in my throat.
"What happened to you!" she cried out.
I tried to answer, but my body had not yet rebuilt the larynx I had lost, and so all I could do was shake my head slowly and put a finger to her lips, to silence her.
"I heard that you were leaving, Lanik. Take me with you."
I turned my back and went to my horses, which were standing new-shod at the woodsmith's bar. Their wooden shoes clumped softly on the stone floor as they moved. I threw the pack over Himmler's back and saddled the stallion, Hitler, to ride.
"Take me with you," Saranna pleaded. I turned to her. Even if I could have spoken, what would I have said? So I said nothing, only kissed her and then, because I had to leave in silence and could not hope to persuade her to let me go alone, I struck her sharply with the hilt of my dagger on the back of her head, and she fell softly into the hay and straw on the stable floor. If she hadn't been a Mueller, the blow might well have killed her. As it was, I'd be lucky if she stayed unconscious for five minutes.
The horses were quiet as I brought them out of the stable, and there was no further incident as I led them to the gate. The high collar of my cloak hid the wound in my throat as I passed the guards. I half expected to he challenged there, but no. And I wondered why it made so much difference to Dinte whether I was dead or left Mueller. Either way I would not be there to plot against him; and I knew that if I ever tried to return, a hundred hired assassins would wait for me behind every corner. Why had he bothered trying to kill me?
As I mounted Hitler and led Himmler along in the faint light of Dissent, the quick moon, I almost laughed. Only Dinte could have botched so badly the attempt to kill me. But in the moonlight I soon forgot Dinte, and remembered only Saranna, white with loss of blood in grief for me as she lay on the floor of the stable. I let the reins fall and plunged my hands into my tunic to touch my breasts and so remember hers.
Then the slow moon, Freedom, rose in the east, casting a bright light over the plain. I took the reins again, and urged the horses on, so that daylight would find me far from the castle.
Nkumai. What would I find there? And did I even care
?
But I was a dutiful son of Ensel Mueller, I would go, I would see, so that Mueller might, with luck, conquer.
Behind me I saw lights come on in the castle; torches ran along the walls. They had discovered I was gone. I could not count on Dinte being bright enough even now to realize that killing me would be pointless. I dug my heels into Hitler's flanks. He galloped off, and I clung to the reins with one hand as with the other I tried to ease the pain of the horse's violent footfalls, each one jarring my chest until I realized that I felt no pain in my breasts. Nor in the wound in my throat. The pain was deeper in my chest and in the back of my throat, and I wept as I sped eastward-- not toward the highway as they would surely, knowing my mission, suppose; not toward the surrounding enemies who would be glad to give shelter to a possible tool in their struggle against Mueller imperialism. I went eastward, to the forest of Ku Kuei, where no man went, and so where no man would think to look for me.
Chapter 2 -- Allison
The well-farmed plain broke into small canyons and grassy plateaus, and sheep began to be more common than people. Freedom was still low in the west and the sun was well into morning. I was hot.
I was also trapped. Though I could see no one on the trail, behind me, I knew where the pursuers were, if there were any (and I had to assume there were): to the south and east of me, guarding the borders with Wong, and to the north of me, patrolling the long hostile border with Epson. Only to the east were there no guards, because no guards were necessary there.
Now the plateaus turned to cliffs and ridges, and I followed the eastward trail carefully. The tracks of a hundred thousand sheep had worn these trails, and this one was easy enough to follow. But sometimes the trail narrowed between a cliff rising on the left and a cliff falling away on the right, and at those times I dismounted and led Hitler along, with Himmler following docilely.
At noon, I came to a house.
A woman stood at the door with a stone-tipped spear. She was in her middle age, her breasts sagging but still full, her hips wide, her belly protuberant. There was fire in her eyes.
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