Yes, the ants owned slaves. They bought them from traders. Heaven was powerless against a mine full of ants, but a trader caravan was vulnerable.
So I met that rapier gaze as steadily as I could. “I have a very low opinion of angels, Jat, very low!” Again I was being truthful. “You ever trade in slaves, Jat?”
Amused, he shook his head. “Not so far. It’s a mean way to make a living. But if I’m ever crossing the grasslands and a starving loner crawls up to me—I suppose I’d feed him. Then he’d owe me, wouldn’t he? It would be like having a plump doe drop dead on your campfire. Hard to refuse.”
“Let him starve! It would be kinder. But as far as I know, there are no slaves in your train nor in any of the others. If an angel comes by, I won’t make trouble. I’m very grateful to all of you. I won’t start cuddling up to angels.”
The little man nodded in unusual silence. I did have a strong suspicion, though, that one of the other wagons held slaves—I had seen some youths being exercised once, in the far distance. And I knew for certain that one of Misi’s storage chests had held a gun, because I had snooped, early in my recuperation. It had not been there the next time I looked, but it would be around somewhere. Angels would certainly want to know about that gun and where it had come from.
“So?” Misi said. “Not Heaven. Where do you want to go, Knobil?”
I had not been long enough out of the mine for my wits to have healed. I knew I must return to the grasslands, and I still vaguely believed that that was because I had business with the Heavenly Father there—but I also knew that I no longer believed in any of the myriad gods and goddesses I had heard worshipped in the slave compound. My logic needed more work, but my intent was clear. Back to scenes of my childhood I must go.
“If I can some how earn a horse of my own, then I shall head for the grasslands,” I said. “Being a seaman on the March Ocean was pleasant. The cold seas of Saturday don’t attract me.”
“Be a herdman?” Jat snorted in disbelief.
Misi pouted doughy lips. “That’s no life! They’re animals! You learn to ride and then stay with us! We’ll make a trader of you.”
She turned her attention back to the hippos as if the matter were now settled. Jat grinned at the passing scenery and said nothing. He was perhaps thinking, as I was, of Knobil and Misi as cab partners. My reaction had perhaps shown on my face.
I promised to consider Misi’s suggestion. I was quite sure that Jat had some other end in view for me, but I could do nothing until I got my legs back, except continue my attempts to seduce Misi Nada.
In retrospect, that conversation ought to have warned me that I had grievously underestimated Misi. How stubborn the human brain is, how reluctant to change any of its own opinions! I should have seen the evidence. A moron could not have hauled me from death’s gut as Misi had. A moron could not play apothecary and healer to the whole caravan, as Misi did. A moron would certainly not have been allowed to trade with the slashers.
We were now approaching the most fertile part of Vernier, where the inhabitants follow a form of agriculture called slash-and-burn. The women raise crops, harvest them, and then move west to where the men have already cleared new ground. After the planting and its associated rites, the men gradually slip away again westward to start the next clearing. In Heaven I met several slashers, and at least one had obvious trader blood in him. In theory, though, the male traders stayed away from the slasher women’s villages and sent in their own women to bargain. When Misi was chosen for this duty a second time, I at last began to wonder.
Part of my blindness certainly sprang from pride. Ever since Jat had explained the traders’ customs to me, I had been trying my wiles on Misi, the skills I had developed so highly in the seafolk’s grove. Whenever the two of us were alone, I expressed my desire by word and eye and hand. Misi’s reaction was one of complete incomprehension, leaving me baffled. I peevishly concluded that she could understand nothing more subtle than an outright business offer, and I had no trade goods. To admit that there was a mind inside that big head would be to admit that it had outsmarted me.
And when Misi began removing my splints for short periods, my suspicions became hard to ignore. I did not want to exercise my knees, for even the smallest bend produced fearful agony. Misi insisted, standing over me, threatening to use force. Cursing and screaming by turns, I would obey—but only because I believed her threats. And when I was incapable of bearing more, she would gently tie the planks to my legs again and wipe my streaming brow.
But she only did this when we were alone. When Jat asked how I was progressing, she told him straight lies. I was surprised, but I did not contradict her. So perhaps I had guessed.
In the end it was the shirt that convinced me. Ever since I had known her, Misi had been working on that shirt. Now bright thread hid every scrap of the underlying silk. It was obviously a man’s garment and, I assumed, intended for Jat. But traders gave nothing away, in spite of Jat’s tales of freeing slaves to bring good luck.
Taking advantage of some smooth terrain, I had been sleeping. I awoke to the sound of voices. For a moment I thought they were discussing me. When I opened my eyes, however, I saw Jat wearing the new shirt. Another lay discarded at my side, beside his leather coat. He was preening mightily, admiring as much of himself as he could contort into the little mirror. If one’s taste ran to such ostentation, then that shirt was the treasure of a lifetime. Even I could see that it was a masterpiece.
The dealing had started. Misi was sitting on one of the chests, set outside on the step, and had now turned around to plant her big feet flat inside the cab. Her meaty hands rested on her knees, and her eyes had shrunk back into sinister caverns of fat.
“Not one more twenty-seventh!” Jat said over his shoulder. “Pick something else, anything else but—oh, hi Knobil. Anything else at all.”
Misi’s pout became a glare.
“Fourteen sacks of phosphate?” Jat suggested, earning a loud snort. “Well, how about the dapple foal? Kan wants it. Nine-eighteenths of the copper pots?”
She seemed to like none of his ideas. She shrugged hugely. “The rest of the bronze pelts?”
Jat’s attention went to his fingers. “Nineteen thirty-thirds of my twenty-two thirtieths?”
“The molasses and your share of the oats?”
“Thirteen twenty-fourths of the wool and the bag of agates?”
“All the wool and two-thirds of the agates?”
“The bleach, the sickles, and the glass beads?”
They kept this up for some time, while I listened in amazement. I had seen Jat bargaining with Lon and even with some of the other men—it was their favorite occupation. But I never heard it done faster, with less hesitation, or with more authority. Offer and counteroffer went leaping around the cab like a herd of roos; speed was part of the technique. Misi apparently knew the details and values of Jat’s holding as well as he did.
Usually such session ended with an agreement, a handshake, and a repeat of the terms before a witness and in sunshine. But not this one. “Leave it, then,” Misi growled, and she swung around once more to attend to the team.
Angrily Jat pulled off the overpriced garment, threw it down, and flounced off like a sulky child. He was still fastening buttons as he cantered away.
Stunned, I stretched out to catch hold of the discarded shirt. I lifted it and had begun to fold it when I saw that Misi had twisted around to glare her grotesque face in my direction.
“Work those knees more, Knobil!”
“Yes, Misi,” I said humbly. “I will.”
If she had fooled me for so long, which one of us was the smarter?