Treason by Orson Scott Card Page B

had no inhibition against making love to a woman, and my body, too long deprived, reacted to Mwabao Mawa’s offer as if it were extraordinarily opportune. Fortunately, my inhibition against dying was very strong, and the air hadn’t weakened it a bit. I knew that if I let things go on to their natural conclusion it would lead to discovery of my odd physique. It occurred to me that Mwabao Mawa would not be quite so open-minded about finding a man in her bed as she expected me to be about finding a woman in mine.
    “I can’t,” I said.
    “You will,” she said, and her cold hand slid inside my robe. “I can help you,” she said. “I can pretend to be a man for you, if you like,” and she began humming and singing a soft, strange song. Almost immediately that hand inside the robe became rougher, stronger, and the face that kissed my cheek felt rough and whiskered. All of this seemed to happen through her song. How did she do it, I wondered, even as another part of my mind gratefully noticed that her pretence at maleness would probably help quell my desire for her.
    Except that my breasts reacted like any woman’s, and I began to be very afraid as the song became too rhythmic, pulled me more deeply into a trance.
    “I mustn’t,” I said, and I pulled away. She followed. Or he? The illusion was powerful. I only wished I could do the same, and fool her into thinking I was a woman no matter what evidence her hands and lips and eyes might find. But I couldn’t. “If you do,” I said, “I’ll kill myself afterward.”
    “Nonsense,” she answered.
    “I haven’t been purified.” I tried to sound desperate. It wasn’t hard.
    “Nonsense,” she said.
    “If I didn’t kill myself, my people would,” I said. “They will, if this happens and I haven’t been purified first.”
    “How would they know?”
    “Do you think I would lie to my own people?” I hoped that the huskiness and trembling in my voice sounded like offended honor instead of the rank terror I actually felt.
    Perhaps it did, for she stopped, or rather paused, and asked, “What is it, this purification?”
    I made up a jumble of religious ritual, half stolen from the practices of the people of Ryan and half a product of my need for solitude. She listened. She believed me. And so I made another journey in the dark, and found myself alone in Mwabao Mawa’s room, the one with the chests and boxes. My purpose there, she told me, was to meditate.
    I stayed there for a morning and an evening and a night.
    I had no idea what to do. Mwabao was in the other room, the one we had shared for two weeks, humming softly an erotic song—one that kept me almost constantly aroused.
    I toyed with the idea of cutting off my genitals, but I couldn’t be sure how long regeneration would take, and the healed wound of castration would not be taken for the anatomy of a woman.
    I also thought of escape, of course, but I knew perfectly well that the only escape route lay through the room where Mwabao Mawa cheerfully waited. I cursed again and again—very softly, of course—wondering why I had the miserable fortune to end up imprisoned in a woman’s body with a lesbian for a jailer and hundreds of meters of gravity serving as the bars for my cell.
    At last I realized that my only hope, thin as it was, was to escape, not as a woman, but as a man. Tomorrow night, in the darkness, if I painted myself black I might elude the guards. If I didn’t, and I was taken, all I’d need to do is fall. Drop, I thought ironically. And my identity as a Mueller would be safe.
    Getting past Mwabao? Simple. Kill her.
    Could I do it? Not so simple. I liked her. She had breached diplomatic protocol, but she had done me no real harm. Also, she was well-connected; she would quickly be missed.
    So I wouldn’t kill her. A knock on her head, a breaking of bones, that should be enough. It should silence her for long enough, or at least immobilize her. Though truth to tell, I had no idea how