02. Empires of Flux and Anchor (30 page)

"Then you would leave them to this?" Kasdi asked, appalled.

"In quarantine. The knowledge of what happened here must be limited to a very few. Nobody will believe Coydt's claims; they'll be dismissed as outrageous and unbelievable. The empire will invent a good excuse for the quarantine. Empires are good at getting people to swallow what they want. But you won't get a quarantine with Coydt and the wizards running the show."

"Huh? I'm losing where you're going."

"I know this place is being run like the heads should all be locked up as crazy, and that's probably true. But if you sat back, you'd see that all systems are crazy, some just slightly more crazy than others. In the empire, old or new, for example, the sexes are still divided. Men and women don't dress for utility; they dress in totally different clothes. Oh, the underwear's different because different places need to be supported, but why dresses for one and not the other? Why is a lot of makeup terrible on a man but flattering on a woman? Why are women well qualified for government and administration prevented from going into those areas? Why are men who are sincerely religious and want to serve through the Church forbidden to do so? Why does a woman, to have real power and authority, have to give up sex and property? Why does society consider the man the primary bread winner under the law, even if his wife earns more? To an outsider, it's
all
insane."

"And you're an outsider," Suzl remarked dryly.

"Yes," he agreed. "I am. Men and women dress alike for utility in the guild. Position, power, prestige, money—they're all based on your own intelligence, quick wit, and talents, and nobody cares whether you're male or female on the job. In stringing, everybody's equal until
they
prove
themselves
different."

"And you have to be born into that guild and have the sight to see the strings," Suzl retorted. "What works for a small, inbred family monopoly wouldn't be practical on a big scale. It gets too complicated too quickly. You still need the power to really get anywhere, too."

"I have very little power and I rode string for fifteen years," he pointed out. "Power doesn't mean that you're smarter or quicker or cleverer than the one without it. It's true, though, that anybody who struck at one stringer would bring all the stringers and stringer wizards down on them—if that strike were in the line of duty. We look after our own."

"You've got something cooking in that brain of yours about this problem," Kasdi said. "Let's hear it completely."

"We have to break this, or it's good-bye to everything we know. World will be in continual revolution, and deaths will be massive, while the new systems the new rulers will cook up will make this one or a Fluxland look tame. We're looking at the breakdown of society all over the planet here. Hell even with the gates closed. That's why the stringers themselves participate in putting down these kind of things. So it has to be stopped, to prevent its spread. But you can't invade and wipe it out, because you'll also destroy an Anchor and its people and have all the other Anchors selfishly closing up and going into self-defense, and so you lose your empire anyway. So we deal. We punch our hole, establish our beachhead, and stop. We deal with the bosses here. They will be allowed to keep what they have and run it the way they want, but they will be technically within the empire. Everybody stays out, and they stay in, but their sovereignty is assured. They'll go for it. They'll fight to the death if we invade—remember, Cass, what you said you'd do to them? But they don't want to die. They'll buy it."

"That's easy for you to say. You're a man," Suzl noted. "Spirit can't go back to Flux. Are you suggesting we apply for our tattoos and tights and find ourselves a good man to own us?"

"No, but you're not that limited if I understood you right. There are four Anchors in the cluster, and it applies to all of them. Go back through the gate, but don't enter Flux; go out to one of the other three."

"I'm interested in this," Kasdi put in. "What sort of terms do you think they'd accept?"

"Anything that guarantees their safety and positions. We'll still dictate the other terms. We want those machines and we want control of them. The empire itself will keep them going. We will also control the temple as a garrison to protect the Hellgate access, but won't otherwise interfere. Experts from all over, all of them approved by empire security, will study what happens here."

"And Coydt will go for this?" Spirit asked, joining in herself.

He shook his head. "No. Co-opting this revolution here will be the one thing he won't buy. Nor will the other wizards, but they're only being held together by Coydt. To make it work, Coydt is going to have to be eliminated permanently."

"Then we must face Coydt
before
we open the shield," Kasdi said. "How do you propose to do that? Nobody even knows where he is."

"Oh, he's here, someplace. I can feel him. Smell him. His odor permeates Anchor Logh. How we're

going to draw him out, though, is the real problem, I—"

Suddenly all were frozen as the sounds of many horsemen approached. Soldiers on horseback, carrying torches, seemed suddenly everywhere around them, officers and noncoms shouting instructions.

"Free ride's over," Matson whispered. "Looks like they know we're here. We're going to have to fight our way through from this point."

"Remember," they heard an officer shout, "no firing unless fired upon! We want them alive if possible!" They were spreading out forward, and the foursome could hear the sounds of more coming on foot through the woods in back.

Matson thought furiously as the human net formed. "We're going to have to split in two sections. One will bulldoze its way through with all it's got, drawing the rest. Then the other can slip through the hole."

Suzl looked over at him. "Who takes the heat?"

"Cass and I will. It's more important to get that Soul Rider to the border than either of us, but we'll have a chance, too. Don't you fire at all unless you're seen and in danger of being taken. Give us half a minute after the shooting starts, then break for the best route."

The two women nodded grimly but said nothing. Matson looked at Cass, who unshouldered her weapon, and they slipped off to the left and were soon lost to the woods.

As soon as they were well away of the others, Matson looked to pick his spot. He saw it and almost didn't believe it. There were two mounted officers and four troopers walking in, all nicely illuminated by small burning torches that sizzled as the light rain hit. He looked at Kasdi. "You take the ones on foot; I'll take the two horsemen. As soon as everybody falls, you run like hell through that opening. If those horses don't bolt, we'll take them, too."

She nodded and readied her weapon. She felt only the normal tension; she had faced down great wizards in their own lairs many times. The only difference this time was that she really
wanted
to shoot some of those men, wanted to see them die, for the first time in her life.

"Now!" Matson shouted, and both stood and opened fire on their respective targets. Matson shot high, the force of the slugs knocking the two mounted men off their horses. The horses neighed and bolted forward a bit, but seemed confused and didn't run off. Kasdi opened up on the four infantrymen, and they seemed to simply fold and collapse like pricked balloons as more than sixty large caliber slugs fanned out in their direction in the space of less than a second.

And then they were running towards the horses. Both were experienced riders and mounted almost simultaneously; they were away as the others were just reacting to the sounds of the shooting. Scattered shots were fired after them, but they were wild and not in large numbers. The soldiers were unsure if their orders not to kill except in self-defense applied here, and most opted to chase rather than shoot.

After the firing began, the men nearest Suzl and Spirit turned and began to run towards the spot where everything was happening. They took the opportunity and ran out and across to the next grouping of trees, then continued to thread their way along the edge of the woods. Men were yelling and running about, some shooting wildly, and more horsemen roared into the gap and began shouting orders. Four horsemen took off after the already vanished pair, but at least one of the officers was taking no chances and started fanning out the infantry up and down the opposite side of the woods. Foot soldiers began to go into the woods where Spirit and Suzl were, forcing them deeper into the extremely dark and damp vegetation. The soldiers were coming in fast, and they began to run.

Suddenly Spirit tripped on a vine and went sprawling. Suzl, behind her, avoided the vine and ran to help her up. She started to get up, then grimaced in pain. "I've twisted the ankle, damn it!"

"Then get down in the brush!" Suzl hissed. "I'll try and lead them away and circle back!"

She started off again, but did not go far before stopping and checking. It had been a vain hope anyway that they would overrun Spirit, and she saw a bunch of grim-faced men pointing rifles down at the woman.

"You in the woods!" somebody shouted. "You have five seconds to come back here unarmed, hands in the air, or I'll shoot your pretty friend through the head here and now."

Suzl quickly tried to assess her chances of shooting all of them, but realized that with Spirit's ankle it would just bring the rest down on them firing to kill. She removed her rifle and let it drop, then shouted, "All right! Don't shoot! I'm coming out!"

They were taken back, manacled, to the communal farm of their birth, but to the other side where the administration building was, and then they were taken inside. A doctor or some kind of medic gave Spirit a shot in her lower calf that numbed it below, allowing her to walk on it with great difficulty. It was only a mild sprain, though, not a break, and they weren't very concerned by it.

Once in the building, they were taken separately into a small room where a man in the mud-brown uniform of the conquerors checked their faces and prints against a film reader record. Then they were stripped, given showers, and taken into another room where Suzl found a device she hadn't seen in almost nineteen years. Then, having been chosen for the Paring Rite, she'd been seated in a chair much like that one—perhaps that very one, from the look of it—and a technician had dialed in something on a small control panel just like now. The tattooing hurt more this time; she wasn't drugged now.

She was ordered to stand and they examined it. She could see in a full-length mirror what they'd done, and it was very large. A long number, her temple registration most likely, and underneath, SUZLETTE-C-04. Area C, Riding 4—here.

She was then issued a pair of skimpy underwear, what looked to be a pair of thin, brown pantyhose so transparent the tattoo was easily read through them, and a pair of ridiculous-looking sandal-like shoes with thick heels easily fifteen centimeters high. Then they pierced her ears and actually soldered large rings to close the earrings permanently. She would later discover that whatever man "claimed" her would attach two small charms that would bear his I.D. on one and his rank in society on the other. She felt like she was back in the Paring Rite for real.

Suzl was not one to go along meekly with things, but she was a streetwise survivor who could count the odds. There was simply no purpose to do or say anything antagonistic at this point. Waiting for an opening was the first guiding principle in the survivor's handbook.

Finally they took her to one of the smaller rooms on the top floor of the administration building. Records and valuables had always been stored here, on the theory that it was difficult for a thief to make six stories of a sheer building. As a result, there were barred gates at both the fifth and sixth floor stairwells which required different keys, and the only windows were high-up slits, not large enough to let a bird through but just enough for ventilation. Lighting was by gas from an external tank, so it was quite bright in the hallway. Finally they reached a door, unlocked it, and told her to go inside.

The room surprised her. There was a comfortable real bed and clean bedding, a pillow, a table and chair with a large vanity mirror, and a pull-out portable potty. The guard asked, "Can you read, girl?"

She swallowed hard and resisted the put-down response she wanted to make. "Yes, sir."

"There is a manual of rules and regulations over there. Read them through. An interrogator will be here tomorrow. Failure to comply with any of the regulations will be painfully punished." And, with that, he closed and locked the door.

Suzl had never put much stock in makeup or other fancy stuff, and she was so out of practice that she might as well have never used them at all. Still, she examined the vanity and began reading the manual. It was worse than she'd imagined, and it contained not only the basic regulations but also the theory of this new kingdom.

She had called it a military state, and it was one in fact. The leaders of Anchor Logh, it seemed, were all former military men both from Anchor and Flux. There was much about the value of "perfect discipline" and "natural order and superiority" in it. In Flux, nature determined who had the power and how much one had. In Anchor, it argued, nature had been perverted by the growth of the Church. The argument seemed to run something like: men were on the average larger and stronger than women, and were the sexual aggressors. Women on the average were weaker and smaller, but were specifically designed for sexual pleasure and for child-bearing and rearing, something men could not do. Therefore, Anchor nature determined that men should dominate, and their job was to protect and provide for women and children. The woman, being basically passive and maternal, had created a culture through the Church which was basically passive, and therefore stagnant, and had tended to treat all citizens as children. They were restoring a male aggressive society based on natural power and natural sexual roles, as they saw it.

This, then, was Coydt's basic outlook on society and the sexes, and he had chosen his administrators well for their experience and compatibility with his views.