I waited until night, then walked under the Nkumai city to the sea. I kept to the border of the forest and walked a couple of kilometers up the coast from the wharf. I could watch for ships from there, and if I could still swim as well as I used to, I could get aboard with no trouble.

Secure in my hiding place, I slept.

I woke at midday, panting and sweating. I had dreamed that I-- but it was not I, it was the childself I had killed in the forest-- I dreamed that I had come to kill me, and I had wakened as knives flashed, as both I and my mirror image stabbed deep and found each other's hearts.

I vaguely remembered being wakened from the dream by a cry, and wondered if I had called out in my sleep. But when I crept from hiding and looked toward the sea, I saw a ship passing near shore, and the cries were coming from men who were trimming the sails.

The ship put into the port, and for the two days it stayed I tried to calculate how I could attract the attention of the sailors without calling the Nkumai from the city to find me.

I found a rotted branch and tested it in the water. It would float. Even if I was too weak to make the distance, I would have the branch to support me. The water was cold on my naked skin, but as I saw the ship pull away from the wharf and turn northeast, toward me, I splashed out into the water, and then, lying on the log as if I already needed it, paddled awkwardly out past the gathering breakers into the gentle swells of a calm sea.

Someone on the ship shouted, "Man in the sea! Man!"

I raised a hand and waved.

In a short time I was picked up from the water, and sat shivering under a blanket in a small boat heading for the ship.

"Thank you," I said.

One of the oarsmen grinned. Not a particularly genial smile. And the rudderman said, "Fine. Take you to captain."

"What nation are you from?"

They seemed reluctant to answer. I wondered whether they had understood.

"What Family? What Family does your ship come from?"

Grudgingly the rudderman replied, "Singer."

The island people from the great North Bay-- who had been conquering in Wing when I left Mueller. The emissary from Wankier had asked my father for troops, knowing his nation would be next, but he had gone away with our sympathy and little else. But at least these sailors were not Nkumai, and they had enough humanity to pull me from the water. I might live.

The captain looked little kinder than his crew, and after I was taken aboard, he spent little time in interviewing me. "Nation?" he asked, and because I thought it prudent not to tell the truth, I said, "Allison. I just escaped from an Nkumai prison camp"

He nodded reflectively, then made a motion. A few sailors came and tore the blanket from me."

"My God," said the captain, "what are those bastards doing to prisoners these days?"

I didn't answer. Let him think what he liked, I thought defiantly. But I was afraid.

"Which is it? Man or woman? Which is real?"

"Both, now," I said truthfully, and he shook his head.

"Impossible," he said. "This makes things very difficult. How will I know how to price you?"

Rice me? And then I remembered something else the Wankier emissary had said. That Singer had a thriving business going. In human flesh.

"Amusement," another officer said. "Put him in a cage and charge money."

"Good," said the captain. "And I think the best market is Rogers. They have circuses. Drop him."

The command had barely been given when I was picked up and carried to a hatch. They opened it and thrust me down. I landed heavily. The hatch closed above me.

There was no light. There was little air. But I was alive. It hadn't occurred to me to resist. What mattered was that I had value to them. Only the dead have no hope.

But Rogers was at the southwest corner of the continent. The trip would take months. Would it then be too late for me to get my information about Nkumai to my father? I didn't know. And it didn't matter. There was little enough I could do about it until I got out.

Had they noticed the extra arm growing from my shoulder? In the bright sunlight, perhaps not; staring at my breasts and genitals, they were distracted. But now the arm flexed involuntarily, tickling me on the back. It was going to be a long trip.

Chapter 5 -- Monster

It was hard to amuse myself, locked alone in utter darkness, stark naked, with about two square meters of floor space. Sleep took up a large amount of my time, of course, but was hardly restful-- it was impossible to straighten my body all at once. As the ship sailed north, cold seeped in; as it went south again, the cell became a sweatbox, with not just my body but also the walls dripping with my sweat. The smell of salt was always with me.

Yet it could have been worse. While I did not see the sun for nearly five months, I was fed, and I learned to appreciate the subtle flavors of wormy meat and moldy bread. The bucket was lowered to me each morning, filled with water; each evening, filled with food. When I had emptied the bucket, I refilled it, determined to keep the cell as clean as I could without being able to see. I think they rinsed it in sea water before putting my food and drink in it again. Even the cruelest farmer takes care that his cattle don't get sick.

There were sounds. My only contact with other people came from noises above me, below me: the cries of the men in the spars, the snapping of sailcloth in the wind; the morning and evening prayers as the crew sang and chanted hauntingly, and some men wept their confessions to the captain; the curses, the quarrels, the jokes, the fumbling attempts at seduction by men who had been so long at sea that other men began to look beautiful to them. I came to, know all their names. Roos and Nose-up had a running quarrel that sounded like friendly banter to me, until one night someone had a knife and Roos died right over my hatch. The blood dripped through before they washed the deck, and I heard Nose-up plead for mercy before they hanged him by his thumbs and fired arrows into his limbs until he bled to death. Funny-- he wept and begged until the first arrow. Then he seemed to realize that this was exactly as bad as the pain would get, that they could do no more to him. He began to tell jokes and throw gibes at the archers, and just before he died he told a sentimental story about his mother that had 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.