Treason

I mumbled acquiescence, content to enjoy the warmth of her conversation and the security of the floor. She talked on, and sang me some songs. I remember almost nothing of the conversation. I remember even fewer details of the songs, but, although I understood no lyrics and detected no particular melody, the songs carried me off into my imagination, and I could almost see the things she sang of though how I knew what she was singing of I don't know. Though terrible things have happened since, and I myself silenced Mwabao's music, I'd give up much to be able to hear those songs again.

That night she lit a torch outside her main door and told me that guests would come. I later learned that a torch meant that a person was willing to receive guests, an open invitation to all who might see the glowing in the night. It was a measure of Mwabao Mawa's power over other people (or, less cynically, their devotion to and delight in her) that whenever she put the torch outside, it was only a matter of an hour before her house was full, and she had to douse the outer light.

The guests were mostly men-- not uncommon, either, in Nkumai, since women rarely traveled at night, being generally burdened with the care of children, who didn't have the balance for safe walking at night. The talk was mostly small, though by listening carefully I learned a bit. Unfortunately, Nkumai courtesy forced the guests to spend as much time talking to me as they spent talking to each other. It would have been nicer, I thought at the time, if they had shared Mueller's custom of letting a guest sit in silence until he wished to join a conversation. Of course, Nkumai's custom keeps a guest from learning as much; I was certainly kept from learning anything I thought significant that night.

I learned only that all her guests were men of education-- scientists of one kind or another. And I got the feeling from the way they talked and argued that these were men little concerned with science as Mueller used it, as a means to an end. Instead, science was the end in itself.

"Good evening, Lady," a small, softspoken man said. "I'm Teacher, and I'm eager to be of service to you."

A standard greeting, but at last I gave in to my curiosity and asked, "How can you be named Teacher, and also three other men in this room, and also the guide who led me here? How can you tell one another apart?"

He laughed, with that superior laugh that already irritated me and which I soon learned was a national custom, and said, "Because I'm myself, and they are not."

"But when you talk about each other?"

"Well," he patiently explained, "I hope that when men talk about me, they call me Teacher Who Taught the Stars to Dance, because that's what I did. The man who guided you here this morning, he's Teacher of True Sight. That's because he made that particular discovery."

"True sight?"

"You wouldn't understand," he said. "Very technical. But when someone wants to talk about us, he refers to our greatest accomplishment, and then everybody who matters knows who he's talking about."

"What about someone who hasn't made a great discovery yet?"

He laughed again. "Who would want to talk about such a person?"

"But when you speak of women, they all have names."

"So do dogs and little children," he said, so cheerfully I could almost believe he hadn't intended to be insulting. "But no one expects great accomplishments from women, at least not while they're fully engaged in the work of conceiving, bearing, and rearing children. Don't you think it would be coarse to speak of a woman by referring to her greatest gifts? Imagine calling someone 'Blanket Dancer with the Huge Buttocks' or 'Cook Who Always Scorches Soup.' He laughed at his own joke, and several others, who had been vaguely listening in, suggested other titles. I thought they were hilarious, but as a woman I had to pretend to find them insulting, and in fact I was a bit a

"How would you know to call me that?" I asked archly. I was a

"I don't know it," answered a man named Stargazer-- the same name as two others in the room. "But I'd be willing to find out."

It was something I hadn't really been prepared for. Rapists on the road I could cope with by killing them. But how does a woman say no to a man in polite company without offending? As a king's son, I was not used to hearing women say no. As Sara

Fortunately, I didn't have to answer at all.

"The Lady from Bird is not here to find out what's hidden under your robe," Mwabao Mawa said, "especially since most of us know how little it conceals." The laughter was loud, especially from the man insulted, but they moved away from me for a short time, and I was allowed a few moments to myself, to observe.

There was, amid all the chatter of science and court gossip-- more of the latter than of the former, of course-- a detectable pattern that amused me. I watched as one man at a time took Mwabao aside for just a moment of quiet, unheard conversation. And one of them I overheard. "At noon," he said, and she nodded. Little enough to generalize on, but I was willing to believe that they were making appointments. For what? I could think of several obvious purposes. She might be a whore, though I doubted it, both because of her lack of beauty and because of the obvious respect these men had for her, never leaving her out of their conversations or ignoring a remark she made. Or she might really be a mistress of the king, in which case she could be selling influence-- though again I doubted it, because it seemed so unlikely that an emissary would be placed with a woman who had that kind of power.

A third possibility was that she was somehow involved with a rebellion or a secret party, at least. This didn't contradict either fact or logic, and I began to wonder if there was something there that might be exploited.

But not that night, at least. I was tired. Though my body had long since healed from the strain of climbing to Mwabao Mawals house-- and, for that matter, from the beating of the Nkumai soldiers only a short time before-- I was still emotionally drained. I needed to sleep. I dozed for a moment and woke to find the last of the men leaving.

"Oh," I said, startled. "Did I sleep so long?"

"Only a few moments," Mwabao Mawa told me, "but they realized it was late, and went. So you could sleep."

She went to a corner, dipped her hand into a barrel, and drank.

I would have done the same, but as I thought of water a horrible realization came over me. In prison I had had privacy to eliminate wastes, and while traveling with Teacher he had delicately let me take care of those needs on the other side of the carriage, forbidding anyone to watch. But alone here in the house with another-- another?-- woman, there might be no such fastidiousness.

"Is there a room particularly for--" For what, I wondered. Was there a delicate way of putting it? "I mean, what are the other three rooms of your house used for?"

She turned to me and smiled slightly, but there was something other than a smile behind her eyes. "That I will tell to those who have a practical reason for such knowledge."

Didn't work. And worse, I had to watch as Mwabao Mawa casually took off her robe and walked naked across the room toward me.

"Aren't you going to sleep?" she asked me.

"Yes," I said, not bothering to hide how flustered I was. Her body was not particularly attractive, but it was the first time I had ever seen such a large woman undressed, and that, combined with her blackness and my long deprivation, made her exotic and intensely arousing. It made it all the more urgent for me to figure out a way to keep from getting undressed myself, since my modesty was essential to my survival in a nation which took me for a woman.