Seems that last year he got a new girl for the upstairs room from another dive in Anchor Thomb.
Now the stringer Arden told him his chit’s been called, and he’s pulled an abduction to pay up.”
The Sister General frowned. “Damn. Anybody we know?”
“Not on our list, if that’s what you mean. I remembered her when we were checking slots-A real looker, Ranatan says, although she’s got some brains. Wait a moment.” She punched in a code and checked a screen.
“Anybody we can live without?” the Sister General asked hopefully.
48 Jack L. Chalker
“Yeah. Good LQ. and solid aptitudes, but not in anything we aren’t already overstocked in. I guess Page 29
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we can spare her, but Ranatan owes us one now, coming up with this so late. Says he forgot about it until his marker was called.”
“I’ll bet,” the high priestess sneered.
“One problem, though. She has a steady boyfriend, and he woke up from the sapping Ranatan’s boys gave him in a rotten and angry mood. He’s raising holy hell with the local cops right now.
Farmhand type. Not on our list but he could easily be our third soldier.”
The Sister General nodded. “Arrange it. Since there’ll be something of a cover-up necessary to pacify the police and families, better use the tunnel and bring ‘em here. Keep ‘em on ice until after Paring Rite, then just add her in with the crowd and make sure they leave at night. You know the routine.”
The administrator nodded. “What about her and the boy?” By “her” it was clear that this meant Cassie,
“We’ll keep ‘em on ice until Paring Day. Use two of the cells below, ninth level. Somebody can work out cover stories for them staying in town-As for Ranatan’s girl, put her in with this one until then.
We’ll have to check with the stringers and see who’s heading in the right direction to make delivery.”
“Check,” responded the administrator crisply, and that was that.
RITE
The cell was not, strictly speaking, a jail, but it was clear from some of the graffiti on the walls that it had served as one many times. In point of fact, it was the kind of barren cubicle that novices used when living and studying at the Temple. Under other circumstances, Cassie thought ruefully, she might have been in a similar or identical cell in this very place as a priestess-in-training.
The box-like cell was roughly three meters wide and three deep, with old and rotting straw on the floor. The rear of the place contained two fixed wooden “beds” of sorts, one on each side; really nothing more than two rectangular boxes filled with more straw. In front of these were two small shelves mounted on each wall, empty now and probably for some time, although, hanging from a nail in one was a tiny oil lantern that provided some, but not much, illumination. Sitting on the floor near the door was a very old chamber pot that was cold, shallow, and rust-encrusted- The door itself was of solid wood with the hinges on the outside and a tiny window in the middle. The window was not barred, but it was barely large enough to get a hand through. The door, however, was barred, and with a very solid plank.
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The wardens had stripped her completely before 49
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shoving her in, and had warned her that should she cause any problems while there, they would be perfectly willing to bring down some manacles and a gag, too, if need be. She didn’t intend to make any trouble, thoughat least not right now.
Even if she managed a miracle, where could she go and what could she do with both church and state against her? Anchor Logh was a big place, but the Sister General had been right about one thingthe people believed totally in the system because the alternatives were so horrible. She might make it back home for a couple of days, but once her number was picked in the Paring Rite even her own parents, sad and’grieving as they might be, would turn her in.
She felt curiously ambivalent about her future.
The fact was, the high priestess had been correct about her. She had seen too much, arid she had lost her faith. The system was based on the scriptures, and now she had caught the church redhanded circumventing its own system. If the church could do that, it must follow the scriptures only when it was convenient for it to do so, and if the church didn’t really buy those holy writings, how in hell could she?
She wondered again about the stringers who’d invoked such horror in her-It was obvious that they knew it was all a sham, for they participated and even profited by it. Perhaps that explained their callous attitude towards everything and everyone. They knew it was all phony, strictly business and cynically amoral. If you knew that right from the start, as they most certainly did, and you also knew that there wasn’t a damned thing you could do about it, what sort of person might you become? The answer to that one made stringers at least understandable as people, although she still couldn’t agree with or like anyone who assisted so eagerly in perpetuating the fraud for personal gain.
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The church equated disorder with evil. The Seven Who Wait really personified that disorder, and, thus, were depicted as the ultimate evil. Did the Seven, in fact, exist, or were they a convenient invention of the church to scare people with, she wondered? Perhaps it was a grisly sort of joke on all of them, even the church. Perhaps this was not some testing ground but Hell itself, and they were in fact the fallen angels, suffering pain and anguish and being reborn again and again, forever, into eternal punishment, with Heaven so tantaliz-Page 31
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ingly in sight and always totally out of reach, everyone living rigid and mostly unhappy lives because they were working towards ultimate salvation an ultimate salvation that would be forever denied them. Now that made senseand would be the ultimate joke. Perhaps this is the secret the stringers knew, that it was all for nothing and that nothing really counted.
She shivered, only partly from the damp chill of the cell. Well, if that were the way of World, then something, however minor, could and must be done about it. If the angels rebelled against the Holy Mother and created disorder, and if those angels now ran World, then it was time they got a little disorder of their own. It was not in stability that hope lay, but in rebellion. Somehow, some time, she swore to herself, I will help be the instrument of that.
Strong words from someone who knew that she was to be cast into the Flux, a prisoner and slave, in a matter of days, and who was now pacing a tiny cell, stark naked and alone.
How long she was there, alone with uncounted tiny vermin and her own sour thoughts, it was impossible to say, but occasionally the heavy bar that kept her door securely closed would move back and a warden, backed up by another, would enter, leave a bowl of foul-smelling gruel, a cup of 52 Jack L. Chalker
water, and check the chamberpot. She’d also slept, off and on and fitfully, although she was never quite sure for how long. The small oil lamp continued to bum, and she was afraid to turn it off for fear it would remain that way.
Still, three “meals” into her imprisonment, the door opened again, but it was not for food. She just stood there, amazed, as two wardens tossed another naked figure into the cell. “Let your roommate there tell you the rules,” one warden sneered, and the door was slammed shut and barred once more.
Cassie stared at the figure now picking herself up off the floor. “Lani? Oh, Holy Mother of World!
Not you, too”
The other got up, frowned, and stared at her.
Finally something seemed to penetrate the shock.
“Cass?”
Quickly Cassie helped her friend over to one of the beds. “Sit here, or lie back/’ she soothed.
“There’s mites and everything else in here but they’ll get you no matter where you are so you might as well be as comfortable as you can,”
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ing that time was the one thing they had plenty of.
Eventually Lani was able to talk about it, sort of, in small bits and pieces, and the story came out.
The truth was, there wasn’t much to tell. After leaving Cassie at the fairgrounds, she and Dar had headed for the youth hostel. On their way they’d come close to the bright lights and raucous sounds of Main Street, and both had, more or less on impulse, gone over there. It was just curiosity, reallythe area was always denied them in the past, and now that they were The Age it was open to them both. Open, yes, but dangerous. They had finally gone into a bar, just to see what one was like, and had been befriended by this nice young SOUL RIDER: SPIRITS OF FLUX AND ANCHOR 53
fellow working there. He’d been very easy to talk to, and extremely nice and friendly without being anything more than that, and eventually he offered to buy them one drink each just to celebrate their coming of age. It seemed so nice, so reasonable.
…
Nor, in fact, was there much more to the story.
She had more or less awakened in a room much like a hotel room, but she felt too dizzy and sleepy to see much or tell much about it. She was conscious only of being bound, somehow, and of several people coming in and out at various times, some giving her sweet-tasting things to drink that put her out once more, others just standing there and having some sort of conversation or other that she couldn’t follow, although she seemed to think it was about her. Finally somebody came in with a novice’s white robes and bundled her, still drugged, out a back door and down a series of back streets to some sort of tunnel, and through there to here.
She was just coming down from the drugs, and just realizing her status.
“I’ve been abducted!” she suddenly said, sitting up straight. “Oh, Holy Mother protect me from my sins! Abducted!” She started to shake a little, and began sobbing quietly. Cassie felt sorry for her and let her cry it out, giving what comfort she could.
Finally Lani seemed to realize Cassie’s own situation.
“Youyou’ve been abducted, too!”
Cassie sighed. “Not quite, but I might as well have been.” Quickly she outlined her own story, and why she was now there. “So, you see, I’m above board from their point of view. I’ll be picked in the Paring Rite. You won’t. You’ll justdisappear.”
Lani shook her “head in shock and wonder.
“What’s to become of us after that, Cass? What can we do?” Another thought suddenly struck her.
“Poor Dar! He must be worried sick!”
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“Yeah, just like us,” Cass told her. “He made such a fuss they copped him, too. He’s probably somewhere in a hole like this one until Paring Rite, then they’ll let him out just long enough to get picked. It’s less messy that way.”
Lani still could not quite accept it. “The church in league with stringers and kidnappers. … I’m sorry, Cass, it’s just sohard to accept, even now.
Andwhy me?”
Cassie sighed. “You were handy. You were, sorry to say it, foolish enough to walk into a joint with your bracelet showing, and the bar owner owed a favor to some bar owner in an Anchor far away. I saw them operate. Lani. They put in orders for peoplesize, shape, physical stats, you name it
like they were ordering a horse or new plow.”
“But what would anyone want with me? I mean, was it just because we were the first ones dumb enough or naive enough to walk in there, or what?”
Cass shook her head. She’d been pretty naive herself, and maybe she still was, but she didn’t recall ever being that naive. “Uh, Lani, a bar doesn’t exactly want you for your brains.”
For a moment the other girl looked puzzled; then, slowly, the light dawned, and she seemed to wilt a bit. “Oh,” she managed, sounding shocked.
“Oh, oh, oh. …” She sighed. “What can we do?”
she wailed.
Cassie shrugged. “What can we do? Oh, sure, if you could escape you might kick up a fuss, but nobody would believe the church was involved, so nobody would find me or Dar, and all it means is that they’d get some other girl in your place and your number would be picked like mine and Dar’s will be. They don’t like problems, Lani.”
“I’d make a stink they couldn’t sweep away,”
Lani retorted bitterly.
“If you managed anything, they’d just kill you.
That’s the kind of people they are. Lani. I’ve SOUL RIDER: SPIRITS OF FLUX AND ANCHOR 55
watched them in action. Look on the bright side.
At least you’re going to an Anchor, and you know why and for what. If you’re very lucky, and if they don’t mess with your mind or somethingyou’re smart. You’ll figure something out. You always have a chance at getting them back. MeI don’t know. I’m being sent into the Flux, whatever that means. If I get back I’ll be the first I ever heard of to do it.”
Lani just shook her head sadly and was silent for a moment. Finally she said, “You just don’t know, Cass. My field iswasbiology. I read up Page 34
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on it a lot. Some of the drugs they have … I can even tell you right now the formula for the drug they probably used on me. And the ones they will use on me when I getwhere I’m going. Somehow, when you read about them in cold, scientific language you never think of them being used on people, particularly anybody you know. Particularly not me. …” She seemed to lapse into a sort of impersonal world of horror –
“First they’ll give me a series of doses of aphalamatin.
It’s used on the criminally insane, mostly.
It bums out certain localized areas of the cerebral cortex, leaving you very nice and happy all the time and very, very compliantyou’ll do just about anything to please, like a little kid, and you’re dumb enough you can’t even add without using your fingers. Then, after a tubal of course, they’ll give me massive hormonal injections to get me super-endowed and homy all the time, and …”
“For Heaven’s sake. stop it” Cassie screamed, reaching down and shaking her. “You’ve got to fight them! Fight as long as you can, with whatever you have! Sure, maybe it’s impossible, but, damn it, you fight anyway! Maybe, just maybe, we can do something, anything to get these bastards!”
Lani just sat there and didn’t seem to hear. Cassie finally gave up in disgust and tried pacing 56 Jack L. Chalker
around a bit. Maybe it was possible to be too smart, she thought. Anybody who ever figured the odds on anything radical and believed them probably would never try it. As for her, she couldn’t name a dozen drugs and wasn’t sure what half of them did, except stop a bleeding cut or cure a headache, but she wasn’t about to give up. or count the odds. Her bitterness and hatred was far too strong and too deep for this, and while Lani’s surrender to the inevitable frustrated and disgusted her, it only reinforced her own anger.
The fact was, she couldn’t really blame the girl.
Like herself, Lani had been brought up very secure in the system and was a solid true believer. Unlike her, Lani had not witnessed the total betrayal of that system firsthand. Lani was here because she was pretty; Cassie was here because she knew too much. It was a major difference. Secure in her knowledge that the system was rigged, a total sham, she had no qualms whatsoever about betraying it.
Lani, on the other hand, faced her unpleasant future still shackled with the beliefs of her upbringing, beliefs shaken only by Cassie’s admittedly biased account and by no real supporting evidence-Lani had only Cassie’s word they were in the Temple.
Lani, then, had surrendered to the total fatalism that the church and scripture brought, and as the hours wore on she seemed to wrap herself more and more in the comfort of those beliefs.
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“It is the will of the Holy Mother,” Lani pronounced at last, and relaxed a bit. “It was my own past sins that led me to go to Main Street, and this is my payment. Well. I will do it. I will be the best damned stripper, dancer, whore, or whatever they will me to be. The Holy Mother’s will be done!”
Cassie could do nothing but sigh and get more disgusted. This, of course, was the trouble, and why things worked so well for the people who ran SOUL RIDER: SPIRITS OF FLUX AND ANCHOR 57
it. They probably wouldn’t have to use a single drug on Lani, or much of anything else. /
That, in fact, discouraged Cass the most. A rebellion was impossible if only one rebel existed. Lani in fact showed just how formidable a task rebellion was, and why it was unheard of in Anchor Logh. What could a liberator do when the slaves of the system would fight like hell against the rebels for their right to remain slaves?
Still, perhaps unwittingly, the Sister General had offered some slight hope. There had been rebellion elsewhere, in other Anchors-The old bitch as much as admitted it. And, by their conversation, it was certain that there was more than nothingness in the Flux. There were, in fact, real places with real rulers and real names, although just what sort of place would be ruled by somebody who thought herself a goddess was hard to imagine.
Well, let the sheep be led to the slaughter if they wanted. She, Cassie, would have none of it. She would probably die or suffer terribly; even she was logical enough to realize this. But she’d die or suffer fighting, and if there was any chance, any chance at all, for something more she would have what revenge she could.
They came for her after what seemed like an eternity. At first she had welcomed Lani’s company, but by now the poor girl was far gone into her own fantasy rationalization, practicing being sexy and alluring and seemingly looking forward to her fate with a near messianic fanaticism that Cass found bizarre in the extreme. Separation was now a relief.
Of course, Cassie and Dar had to be produced for the Paring Rite, for the same reason Lani had to stay hidden. They took Cass out of the cell and upstairs to a comfortable dressing area, where she found all her clothes neatly cleaned and pressed. She put them on and gave the wardens no trouble. If 58 Jack L. Chalker
nothing else had, Lani had convinced her that whatever future she had was not in Anchor Logh, but out there, somewhere, in the terrible Flux. The system was simply too good for easy solutions.
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Revenge, and revolution, must come from without, for it would certainly never come from within.
That she knew now with a certainty equalling the certainty that her name would-be picked today in the Paring Rite. In a way, she was like Lanishe’d stopped bemoaning her fate and actually welcomed getting it over with.
Anything rather than go back to that damned, cursed cell with its other occupant.
They kept her in the ante-room while things started up outside. She could see their plan, and it was really pretty clever. No matter who was outside, or what family had attended, she was to be released just before the “lottery,” out a side entrance. She’d be out there, free, but pinned in one location by the crowd and with no time at all to do much of anything before being called. It would look very convincingand there was absolutely nothing she could do about it, damn them.
Outside, the great square was filled with people, overflowing down the side streets as far as the eye could see. Speakers had been set up all over town so that the sacred rite and its result would be known to all, and at exactly mid-day it all began with the grand processional.