Since I was already being childish right then, I even toyed with the idea of picking pockets, not because I needed any money, but because it was possible to do it and never get caught. There is something about knowing you won't get caught that could tempt the most honest man, and I have never claimed to be unusually honest.
I looked over the crowd to see who might be a likely target. A little way down the road a large wagon was coming-- an Nkumai coach, and judging from the large contingent of mounted Nkumai soldiers, it contained somebody important. It was a warm day; the carriage was open; the sole occupant was a middle-aged man, rather stocky and thoroughly bald. To my surprise, he was white. I immediately supposed he was a Mueller returning from a visit to Nkumai. But the Nkumai don't give mounted escorts to foreigners who are leaving. Either this man deserved unusual honor (in which case, why didn't I know him?) or the Nkumai were letting foreigners high in their own government.
Wondering about him put the idea of picking pockets out of my mind. I slid back to real time, turning to watch the result of my prank. Exactly as I planned, the self-important stranger stepped into the rut I had made and fell headlong into the puddle. The splash was formidable, and he arose sputtering and cursing as all the people nearby laughed at him. Even his coterie of admirers couldn't hide their amusement as they solicitously helped him up. And, for all that the gesture was small, I felt a certain satisfaction, particularly when I looked at the laughing child the man had kicked.
The moment passed. People moved to the side of the road to let the Nkumai troop and carriage pass. I glanced at the carriage and was shocked to see, not the middle-aged man, but Mwabao Mawa.
She seemed only a little older-- it had scarcely been two and a half years-- and she held herself very importantly in the carriage. I briefly wondered why I hadn't noticed her in the carriage before, and where the bald-white man had got to. But at the moment that thought was pushed aside, partly because it didn't admit to any ready explanation, but mostly because I let myself remember my days in Mwabao Mawa's house. It seemed impossible to me now that I had once had breasts and passed for a woman. Been a woman, rather. And for a moment as I involuntarily reached up to my cheat I expected to find softness there, and, for that moment, I was surprised to find it gone.
I glanced down, realized the old habit I had fallen into, cursed myself for a fool, and then looked up to see Mwabao Mawa staring at me, at first in mild interest, and then, as the carriage pulled farther away, with recognition and surprise and, yes, fear. The fear was gratifying, but the recognition could be disastrous.
She turned to give instructions to the driver. I used that moment to step back into the stable and get out of sight. I also pushed into quicktime again-- I had to think, quickly. There was no way I could take my horse in quicktime, since Man-Who-Knows-It-All, despite all his efforts, hadn't been able to teach me to extend, my bubble of time control outside myself. In quicktime I could walk faster relative to the rest of the world than a horse could possibly carry me at a full gallop.
I went to my horse, a huge, stupid beast with all the instincts of a hog but with a price I could afford, and unloaded the saddlebags, selecting as much as I could carry, and taking anything that might give a hint as to my identity. There was little enough of that-- I had never been one for embroidered kerchiefs or blazoned leather. Then, carrying the bags, I slipped out a back door into the corral.
When Mwabao Mawa didn't find me quickly, she would forget. the search and figure she had only seen someone who reminded her of me. I didn't think I had made myself so remarkable that anyone would remember me, except perhaps the innkeeper, and he had reasons of his own for not cooperating with the Nkumai.
I tossed the bags over the fence of the corral, climbed after them and walked off down a side street. I'd have to stay in quicktime for several days, which irritated me, because in quicktime, of course, I aged more quickly relative to the real world. I wouldn't end up like Man-Who-Fell-on-His-Ass, but I resented losing days or weeks off my life. How old was I now, anyway? I had gained days and weeks when I was with Saranna in slowtime; I had lost many more days and weeks in quicktime among the Ku Kuei. Was I anywhere near my calendar age of eighteen? Hardly, even if my body seemed that young and strong. I had been through enough, I figured, to have a middle-aged man's memories. As I strode off through the back roads and started on my way to Robles in the south, I decided that quicktime didn't matter anyway. I had no particular desire to live to be old.
Still, I had no intention of letting the Nkumai catch me and realize who I was.
The worst thing about quicktime was the lonehness. No one is safer than a man who moves so quickly that he can't be seen. But it's a bit tough to carry on a conversation with someone who won't even know you're there unless you stand in the same place for a half hour.
I crossed the Rio de Janeiro into Cummings before I let myself back into realtime. No matter how alarmed Mwabao Mawa was, she wouldn't send troops more than a thousand kilometers to look for someone she had seen only a few meters off that very day.
Why did I go south? I had no particular object in mind. Except that I had lived in a dozen towns under Nkumai control in Jones and Bird during the past six months, and I wanted to get to a place where the enlightened empire of the physicists didn't rule. I didn't want to link up with any rebels gathering in Huss, so I went southeast over the da Silva pass.
There I found that there was no escape from the imperial committees. A few dozen scientists in Gill ruled from Tellerman to Britton, and no one was free.
I might have given up and gone right back to Schwartz then. Or, had my despair been even deeper, I might have gone back to Mueller and faced down Dinte. But I hadn't the weariness yet for retirement from the world, and I hadn't the passion for a dramatic death, and so both Schwartz and Mueller I reserved for the future. Instead I wandered from da Silva to Wood, from Wood to Hanks, from Hanks across the sea to Holt, and finally to Britton, where I found my true home, my true people, and learned what I had to do to keep them.
Chapter 10 -- Britton
The district of Humping was wild country on the borders of a calm sea. In good weather the steep cliffs and jumbled rocks of the coast were met, not by crashing waves, but by ripples that lapped against the stone as gently as aging dogs greet their master. Stones sprouted from the earth, it seemed, on the steep hills and narrow valleys of Humping. A river hunted for a way to the sea, and found it over a forty-foot fall; sheep looked nervous as they picked a safe way to unshorn pastures; and here, a few thousand Humpers tended their sheep and scratched vegetables from the stony ground and lived as independent a life as human beings can live when they still need human company and still must eat.
I didn't need to eat, but the human company was good, for the Humpers asked no questions and gave no answers. It was hard even to find a town in this most isolated section of Britton, for the people tended to congregate in family groups of two or three simple sod houses with thatched roofs. I never found a gathering of more than twenty families within a kilometer of each other.
The isolation was forced by nature, for the meager land could not support many; only the uniformity of want made the people think they were not poor.
Despite the distances between them, however, they clung to each other's company grimly, wordlessly coming to the help of the family whose house was blown over by the storm, anonymously leaving a young he-goat among the herd whose sire died the day before, and occasionally gathering at each other's homes for a night of tall and terrible tales or songs of loneliness and silent longing.