I thought of cutting the rope bridge, but the hawsers were far too thick and I didn't try.

Instead, I decided to go up the branch and hope it led to a route I could use. I was starting the climb when I noticed what the two Nkumai had been working on: a birdnet.

They had been securing the end-- the rolled-up net swung out taut into the darkness. At least one other point was secure-- and that might be enough.

I tested their knots-- they were tight. Then I slithered out feet-first onto the thick roll of the netting. It was rough, and provided enough purchase that I didn't fall, or even swing over to hang from the bottom. And as I crept backward along the net, I cut the strings that held the net in a roll.

When I reached the next tie point, I tested, and found to my relief that the net was tied at the point beyond. I could hear-- not very far away-- the sound of footsteps reaching the platform I had just left.

Cutting every string as I passed, I continued backward along the net. I could see the net unfolding, falling open along the route I had just traveled. Would my followers try to follow my path along the net? With it open, they would find it considerably harder. Or would they cut the net? It wouldn't hurt me-- there was a tie point between me and them. And it would make pursuit impossible.

I could almost hear them trying to decide in the darkness and stillness of the Nkumai night.

How far would the net go down? How far, for that matter, had I descended? What good would it do me to unroll the net if, once I clambered to the bottom, there were still a hundred meters between me and the ground?

The net was long, and when I reached the seventh tie point, it occurred to me that guards would probably be waiting at the platform where the net ended, ready for me to back into them and return to captivity. So I laboriously turned around on the net. It was harder, going face first, but I felt more secure about the chances of surprise. And it was a good thing I did. I was at the ninth tie point when I felt a jiggling on the net. It couldn't be coming from behind me-- I would have felt it long ago if someone were pursuing me along the route I had followed. All my training in logic was not required for me to conclude that someone was coming in front of me.

I kept slicing knots in the strings as I proceeded forward. And at the next point, I decided to end my journey along the net. Just beyond the tie I began slicing the net itself. Each string cut easily, even five or six strands together, but there were hundreds in the rolled-up net. And I was so involved that I didn't see my enemy until he was nearly with me.

He had not been cutting knots, of course, and so the net was still thick beneath him, while under and behind me the net fell away, leaving me on a much thinner and so less stable strand. I was halfway or more through cutting the net, but he had a knife, too, and I prudently decided that fighting him had a higher priority than cutting string.

That battle was rather one-sided. In good condition on level ground-- even on a level platform-- I'm sure I could have killed him. easily. But on a net high above the ground, in darkness only faintly relieved by dim and dissipated moonlight, and weakened by loss of blood and the still throbbing amputation of my fingers, I was not in the best of shape. Worse yet, the normal advantage of a Mueller-- that we didn't mind a few mortal wounds in the process of battle-- didn't apply now, since any weakening would force me to let go of the net and plunge so far to the ground that my chances of healing in time were pretty slim.

Worse yet, it was clear that he wasn't trying to capture me alive- apparently they thought my corpse would be useful enough, even though it couldn't be interrogated. The brief battle would have ended summarily when he finally pressed his knife into my bowels, if the top of the net hadn't been within reach.

He passed the knife back and forth in my belly, and the pain was strong enough to make me gasp. We could absorb a few simple cuts, but it wasn't part of the Mueller battle training to stand there while the enemy gutted us like a fallen deer. I cut down at his arm and struck flesh, but a moment afterward his hand was back, the knife again stabbing to disembowel me. It was clear that such a trade-off-- his arm for my guts-- would quickly end with me falling. So instead of attacking him I hacked wildly at the net above, where I had already been cutting. Pain and desperation gave me greater strength, or else the time was actually longer than I thought, but the net soon snapped, and my enemy gave a grunt of surprise as the two halves of the net broke apart, falling away from each other and down. He silently disappeared into darkness, leaving me alone, swinging on the dangling net.

It was now open along the entire remaining length, and I clung to the thin mesh by fingers and toes. The air was cold on my open abdomen. Something hot and wet brushed by my knee, and I realized that some intestine had fallen out.

Disguise of my true sex was hardly important now, and I cut off my black robe at the shoulders, to free me for a scramble down the net. Naked now, and becoming numb to the pain, I began to climb down my remnant of net.

I felt like a crippled spider on a broken web. More than once a strand gave way and I had to grasp for another handhold. Constantly the thin mesh cut into my fingers and toes.

After an eon of descent my foot found nothing under it.

I had reached the bottom of the net, and under it was air.

How much air? Fifty centimeters? Or two hundred meters?

I had no idea how high I had been when I started. Because the net had been cut, the bottom corner, where I now dangled, was lower than the net would have been in its regular open position. The ground might be a single step below me.

But what choice did I have? Weak as I was, my bowels open and dangling, blood still seeping from an impossible jumble of half-healed wounds, I could neither climb up again nor hang on much longer. My only hope of survival was to let go of the net. If the net was low enough, I might be able to land with enough bones intact that I could scramble away in the darkness and find some place to hide while my belly healed. If the net was too high, then they'd find me on the ground in the morning whether I jumped or tried to hang on a little longer.

While I hung there, trying to make a decision, the net began to tear. My weight was too much for a net designed to be invisible to birds. I heard the rapid popping of strands for a moment, and then, my fingers still gripping the strings of the net, I tumbled downward into the black air.

I fell free for a long second. I couldn't even prepare myself to roll, on impact, since I couldn't see the ground. I landed on my back, the breath knocked out of me by the impact. And because I hadn't let go of the net, I got tangled up in it, meter after meter piled on and around me.

I was alive.

For just a moment I lay there, almost stunned, tempted by the welcome release of unconsciousness. But I refused. The fact that I had lived to get to the bottom of the Nkumai forest made me determined to try to make good the escape. How long would it take the Nkumai to reach the bottom, going by ladder? And once down here, how long would it take them to reach me? Not long, I decided, and struggled free of the net.

I left some intestine with the net, and the gut still connected to me tried to lurch forward out of the gaping wound with every step I took. Only a hand constantly pressed to my belly held it in. I staggered off in a direction that would take me, I hoped, to the sea. I had lost all conscious sense of direction; I hoped that my unconscious northsense would lead me aright.

Even though my mind was not functioning well, I remember making at least some attempt to hide my trail. I found a brook, and pausing long enough to rinse my wound, the cold water striking my bowel like a club, I followed it downstream a long way. The drinks I occasionally took seemed to refresh me, until the sickening moment when the water reached the disrupted gut. I soon gave up drinking.