Our first stop was at the Office of Social Services.
"I want to see the king," I said, after explaining who I was.
"Wonderful," said the ancient Nkumai who sat on a cushion near the. corner pole of the house. "I'm glad for you."
That was all, and apparently he meant to say no more. "Why are you so glad?" I asked.
"Because it's good for every human being to have an unfulfilled wish. It makes all of life so poignant."
I was nonplussed. At this point in Mueller, if I had been in Teacher's position, taking an emissary to a government office, I would have ordered that such a recalcitrant official be strangled on the spot. But Teacher just stood there, smiling. Thanks for the help, friend, I said silently, and proceeded to ask if this was the right place.
"For what?"
"For getting permission to see the king."
"Persistent, aren't you?" he asked.
"Yes," I answered, determined to play the game by his rules, if necessary, but to win whatever the rules might be.
So it went all morning, until finally the man grimaced and said, "I'm hungry, and a man as poor and underpaid as I must take every opportunity to put some meager snack into his belly."
The hint was clear, and I took a gold ring from my pocket. "By chance, sir," I said, "I was given this as a gift. But I couldn't bear to own it, when a man such as you would make so much better use of it."
"I couldn't take that," he said, "poor and underpaid though I am. Yet part of my work is to feed those even less fortunate than I, in the name of the king. So I will accept your gift in order to pass it along to the poor."
Then he excused himself and went to another room to eat lunch.
"What do we do?" I asked Teacher. "Do we go? Do we wait? Did I just waste a perfectly good bribe?"
"Bribe? " he asked suspiciously. "What bribe? Bribery is punishable by death."
I sighed. Who could understand these people?
The official came back into the room, smiling. "Oh, my friend," he said to me, "dear Lady, I have just thought of something. Even though I can't help you, I know a man who can. He lives over there, and he sells carved wooden spoons. Just ask for Spooncarver Who Made the Spoon You Can See Light Through."
We left, and Teacher patted me on the shoulder. "Very well done. It only took you one day."
I was a bit angry. "If you knew this Spooncarver was the one I had to see, why did you bring me here?"
"Because," he said, smiling patiently, "Spooncarver won't talk to anyone who wasn't sent by Officer Who Earns Foreign Exchange."
Spooncarver Who Made the Spoon You Can See Light Through didn't have time to see me that day, but urged me to return tomorrow. As I followed Teacher through the maze of trees, he showed me a birdnet being strung among the trees. "In a week or so it'll be fully in place, ready to unfurl. It looks thick enough while it's rolled up, but when it's unrolled among the trees, the net is so fine it can hardly be seen." He showed me how the gaps in the net were just wide enough for a bird's head to pass through, and just small enough that unless the bird withdrew its head exactly backward, which was impossible for most birds, it would break its neck or strangle. "And at the end of the day, we draw up the net and distribute the food."
"Distribute?" I asked.
Then I got a lecture about how in Nkumai, everything belonged to everybody, and no money was ever used because nobody was ever paid.
However, I learned quickly that in fact everybody was paid. I could go to Spooncarver, for instance, and ask for a spoon, and he would readily agree, promising it to me within a week. But at the end of the week, he would have forgotten, or had so much other work to do that he just couldn't get to mine yet. He would keep promising and keep putting me off, until I did him a favor of equivalent value-- out of the goodness of my heart.
Mwabao Mawa's favor, which won her living, was that every now and then she stood at the edge of her house and sang morningsong, or eveningsong, or birdsong, or who knows what else. It was enough-- she was never hungry, and often had so much food and so many possessions she gave many things away.
The poor were those who had nothing of value to give. The stupid. The untalented. The lazy. They were tolerated; they were fed-- barely. They were not, however, considered to have any importance in life. And they all had names.
I was in Nkumai almost two weeks, long enough that the life was beginning to seem normal to me, when I finally got to see someone who had real power. He was Official Who Feeds All the Poor, and Teacher actually bowed slightly to him when we entered his house.
But the interview was pointless. Small talk, a discussion of Nkumai's social conscience, questions about my homeland. I had long since invented my own idea of what Bird was like, since I had no other way of answering the questions so many Nkumai put to me about the country. After all the empty chat, he invited me to dinner a few days hence. "When I burn two torches," he said. I left unsatisfied.
I was more unsatisfied when Teacher laughed at me and said that it looked like my climb upward through the government had reached an end. "What favor will you offer him?" he asked. I didn't point out that he was tacitly admitting that I was bribing Nkumai officials after all. I just smiled and showed him one of my precious iron rings.
He only smiled, and pulled open his robe to reveal a heavy amulet of iron hanging from his neck. The sight of so much iron wastefully used, for mere decoration, made my skin tingle.
"Iron?" he said. "We have so much of that. Iron would do with Spooncarver and Birdmaster, but with Official Who Feeds All the Poor?"
"What kind of gift would he appreciate?"
"Who knows?" Teacher answered. "No one's ever given him one that did any good. But you should be proud of yourself, Lady. You spoke to him at all-- which is more than most emissaries have been able to do."
"How wonderful," I said.
I insisted to Teacher that I knew the way back to Mwabao Mawa's house without his help. At last he shrugged and let me go alone. I covered the space quickly, and was pleased to see how well I was doing at traveling among the treetops. I even took a few moments to climb some unmarked branches, for the fun of it, and though I still avoided looking down, I found it a pleasant challenge to conquer a difficult approach. It was nearly dark when I got to Mwabao's house and called to her.
"Come into the nest," she said, smiling. At once she served me supper. "I hear you got to Official Who Feeds All the Poor."
"Someday you have to let me cook you a dinner such as we have in Bird," I said, but she laughed. So I asked her, "Why did you take me in, Mwabao Mawa, if there was never any intention for me to see the King?"
"King?" she asked, smiling. "Intentions? No one has any intentions at all. They asked who would let you live with them, and because I have food enough to spare, I offered. They let me."
I was angry at her, even though I was eating her food. "How can you of Nkumai expect to deal with the world, if you refuse to allow emissaries to see your king?"
She reached out her hand and gently stroked my cheek, to which no beard had come. "We don't refuse you anything, little Lark," she said, and smiled. "Don't he impatient. We Nkumai do things our own way."
I pulled away from her hand, deciding that it was time I let someone see me in a rage. "You all tell me that bribery is forbidden, and yet I've bribed my way through a dozen interviews. You all tell me that you all share everything, and no one has to buy or sell, and yet I've seen purchases and sales just like bartering peddlers. And then you tell me that you don't refuse me anything, but I've met with nothing but impediments."
I stood and walked from her angrily.
She didn't say anything for a while, and I couldn't turn and say more, or I'd lose something, lose the moment of impact. It was an impasse, until she began to sing in a little-girl voice, a voice nothing like the one she used for her real songs:
Robber bird hunts for berries, But only catches bees. She says, "I know how to eat and sleep, But what do I do with these?"
"One follows them," I said, my back still turned, "until one flnds their honey." Then I faced her, and said, "But what are the bees, Mwabao Mawa? Whom do I follow, and where is the honey?"
She didn't answer, just got up and walked out of the room-- but not toward the front room where I had often been. Instead she went into one of the forbidden back rooms, and because she didn't say anything else, I followed.
I found myself-- after a short run along a branch not even a meter thick-- in a brightly curtained room filled with wooden boxes. She had one open, and was rummaging through it.
"Here," she said, finding what she was looking for. "Read this." She handed me a book.
I read it that night. It was a history of Nkumai, and it was the strangest history I had ever read. It was not long, and there were no stories of war in it, were no records of invasions or conquests. Instead it was a list of Singers and their life stories-- of Woodcarvers and Treedancers, of Teachers and Housemakers. It was, in fact, a record of names and their explanations. How Woodcarver Who Taught the Tree to Color Its Wood got his name. How Seeker Who Saw the Cold Sea and Brought It Home in a Bucket earned his. And as I read the brief stories, I began to understand the Nkumai. A peaceful people who were sincere in their belief in equality, despite their tendency to despise those with little to offer. A people who were utterly at one with their world of tall trees and flitting birds.
And as I read. in the light of a thick candle, I began to sense contradictions. What could such a people possibly have developed to sell to the Ambassador? And what caused them to come down from the trees and go to war, using their iron to conquer Drew and Allison, and perhaps more by now?
As I thought these things, I began to think of other contradictions. This was the capital of Nkumai, and yet no one seemed aware or even interested in the fact that a war had just been won. There were no slaves from Allison or Drew making their way carefully among the trees. There was no sudden wealth from the tribute and taxes. There wasn't even any pride in the accomplishment, though no one denied it when I mentioned their victories.
"You're still reading?" Mwabao Mawa whispered in the darkness.
"No," I said. "Thinking."
"Ah," she answered. "Of what?"
"Of your strange, strange nation, Mwabao."
"I find it comfortable." She was amused; her voice hinted at a smile.
"You've conquered an empire larger than most other nations, and yet your people aren't military, aren't even violent."
She chuckled. "Not violent. That's true enough. You're violent, though. Teacher tells me that you killed two would-be rapists on a country road in Allison."
I was startled. So they had been tracing my travels. It made me uneasy. How far would they go? I should have said I was from Stanley, at the other end of the world from Nkumai-- but only Bird had women for rulers. Then I remembered that a tall black Nkumai could no more get through Robles or Jones to make inquiries in Bird than I could jump from Mwabao's house and land running.
"Yes," I admitted. "In Bird women are trained to kill in secret ways, or men would soon have power over us. But Mwabao, why have the Nkumai gone to war?"
It was her turn to be silent for a moment, and then she said simply, "I don't know. No one asked me. I wouldn't have gone."
"Where did they find the soldiers, then?"
"From the poor, of course. They have nothing to offer that anyone wants. But I suppose the war has allowed them to give the only thing they have. Their lives. And their strength. War is easy, after all. Even a fool can be a soldier."
I remembered the strutting, too-brave men of Nkumai. Armed with iron and quick to abuse the cowering populace of Allison. Of course. The worst of Nkumai, those used to being despised by all, at last in a position of power over others. No wonder they abused it.
"But that isn't what you want to know," said Mwabao Mawa.
"Oh?"
"You came here for something else."
"What?" I asked, feeling that sickening fear that children feel when they are just about to be found in hide-and-go-find.
"You came here to find out where we get our iron."
The sentence hung there in the air. If I said yes, I could imagine her crying out in the darkness of night, and a thousand voices hearing her, and my being cast off the platform into the darkness that led to the ground . But if I denied it, then would I be missing a chance, perhaps the only chance to learn what I wanted to know? If Mwabao was indeed a rebel, as I had suspected, she might be willing to tell me the truth. But if she was working for the king (her lover?) she might be leading me on to trap me.
Be ambiguous, my father always taught me.
"Everyone knows where you get the iron," I said easily. "From your Ambassador, from the Watchers, just like everyone else."
She laughed. "Clever, my girl. But you have a ring of iron, and you thought it had great value" --did she know everything I had said and done these two weeks?-- "and if your people are getting iron, in however small a quantity, you must be eager to find out what we're selling to the Ambassador."
"I've asked no one any questions about such matters."
She chuckled. "Of course not. That's why you're still here."
"Of course I'm curious about many things. But I'm here to see the king."
"The king, the king, the king, there you go like everyone else, always chasing after lies and empty dreams. Iron. You want to know what we do to get iron. Why, so you can stop us? Or so you can do it yourselves, and get as much iron as we?"
"Neither, Mwabao Mawa, and perhaps we shouldn't speak of such things," I said, though I was sure she would go on, was eager to go on.
"But that's where it's all so silly," she said, and I heard a mischievous little girl in her voice. "They take all these precautions, keep you imprisoned either with me or with Teacher all day, every day, and yet it's so impossible for you anyway, either to stop us or to duplicate what we do."
"If it's impossible, why do you worry?"
She laughed-- giggled, this time, like a child-- and said, "Just in case. Just in case, Lady Lark." She stood up suddenly, though she had already undressed for bed, and strode out of the room, back toward the room with the chests of books and other things. She was after other things. I followed her, and arrived just in time to catch a black robe she threw at me.
"I'll leave the room so you can dress," she said.
When I got back to the sleeping room, she was waiting-- impatiently, walking up and down, humming softly to herself. When I came in, she came to me, and put her hands on my cheeks. Something warm and sticky was on them, and she giggled when she looked at me.
"Now you're black!" she whispered, and proceeded to decorate my hands and wrists, then my ankles and feet. As she painted my feet, she ran one hand up the inside of my leg past the knee, and I stepped back abruptly, frightened that in playfulness she might find out not-too-playful facts.
"Careful!" she cried out. I looked behind me, and realized that I was standing right at the lip of the platform. I stepped forward.
"Sorry," she said. "I won't offend your modesty again! Just playing, just playing."
"What's going on?" I asked. "Why are you doing this?"
"I can travel at night like this," she said, spinning her naked body around in front of me, "and no one sees from very far away. But you-- lily-white and hair so light, Lady Lark-- you they could see from six trees away." She pulled a snug black cap over my head and took me by the hand to the edge of her house.
"I'm taking you," she said, "and if you like what you see, you must do me a favor in return."
"All right," I said. "What's the favor?"
"Nothing hard," she said, "nothing hard." Then she stepped off into the night. I followed.
It was the first time I had tried to travel in the darkness, and suddenly my old panic returned. Now on the broad branches I was too frightened to run-- what if I veered only slightly from the path? How could I see to jump with the swinging ropes? How could I hope
to keep my footing anywhere?
But Mwabao Mawa led well, and on the hard places she took my hand. "Don't try to see," she kept whispering. "Just follow me."
She was right. The light, which was only starlight and the dim light of Dissent, did more harm than good, diffused as it was by the leaves. And the lower we got, the darker it became,
There were no swings. For that I was grateful.
And at last we came to a place where she told me to stop. I did, and then she asked me, "Well?"
"Well what?" I responded.
"Can you smell it?"
I hadn't thought to smell. So I breathed slowly, and opened my mouth, and tasted the air through my nose and tongue, and it was delicious.
It was exquisite.
It was a dream of lovemaking, with a woman I had wanted forever but never hoped to have.
It was a memory of warfare, with the lust of blood and the joy of surviving through a sea of dancing spears and obsidian axes.
It was the essence of rest after a long journey at sea, when land smells welcome and the grain waving on the plains seems to be another sea, but one you could walk on without a boat, one you could drown in and live, and I turned to Mwabao Mawa and I know my eyes were wide with astonishment, because she laughed.
"The air of Nkumai," she said.
"What is it?" I asked her.
"Many things combined," she said. "The air rising from a noxious swamp below us. The falling fragrance of the leaves. The smell of old wood. The last vestiges of rain. Spent sunlight. Does it matter?"
"And this is what you sell?"
"Of course," she answered. "Why else would I bring you? Only the smell is much stronger in daylight, when we capture it in bottles."
"Smells," I said, and it seemed funny. "Smells from a gassy swamp. Can't the Watchers synthesize it?"
"They haven't yet," she said. "At least they keep buying it. It's funny, Lady Lark, that mankind can speed between the stars faster than light itself, and yet we still dont know what causes smells."
"Of course we know," I said.
"We know what different things smell like," she answered, "but no one knows all that travels from the substance to the olfactory nerves."
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