below, and the temple was suddenly plunged into darkness. The soldiers with their specially adapted eyes had the run of the place.
Kasdi had fired at the men in the corridors with the others, and although she had a sore hip from bracing the weapon and firing it, she felt much better.
The front and back entrances were well covered. Barricades and even some artillery had been brought up by the invaders, and weapons were trained on the front street-level entrance from temple square. The back exit opened on a narrow street, though, and all they could do was seal off the street and put firepower at both ends.
They examined the remains of some of the rooms on the street level and were surprised to see them pretty much outfitted as rooms with beds. They had taken no chances and gone after anything that moved, and some innocent had been killed with the invaders. They
Some of the men had been in a state of undress, and there had been women in the rooms as well.
They turned over and examined the body of one young woman, killed by a grenade. The concussion had done it; her body was definitely lifeless, but seemingly unmarked. She was wearing heavy makeup, had been as heavily perfumed, and was naked from the waist up. From the waist down she wore some sort of fishnet-like pantyhose that concealed nothing and ended at the ankles, and she had on very high-heeled shoes.
“They turned this temple into a combination charnel house and whorehouse,” she said disgustedly. “This Coydt is beyond mere insanity. Look—what’s that on her behind, there?”
Macree pulled down the fishnetting, which was secured by elastic. “It’s a number and a word in purple. It’s a tattoo, like they used to have in the old days of the Paring Rite.”
It was, in fact, the same sort of tattoo, and after all these years Kasdi could still feel the sting of getting hers in this very temple and remember how she hadn’t felt truly free until her own sorcery had wiped it away. “She’s too young for that, and that would imply they were bringing in people from Flux. No, the number’s wrong. It’s not a Paring Rite number. By the angels! It’s a registry number!”
“Huh?”
“It’s the file system used for the master records in the temple. See? That’s the code for native born to Anchor Logh. You wouldn’t recognize it because it’s strictly temple code and confidential. And under is her name, see? Johbee 19. That would be her riding number in the files.”
Matson had gone off, but now he returned and listened to the conversation. Finally he said, “Well, we got over to the gym on the other side. It was pretty well guarded, too, but not inside. We finally have some live prisoners in good shape, but I’m not sure we’re gonna get anything useful from them.”
They followed him around and through a back hall to the other side where the huge gymnasium was. In the old days, this was where you got processed after being picked and enslaved in the Paring Rite, and now it was what it usually was in any era—a place to play and relax for temple personnel.
It was now filled with bedding and at least a hundred women, all made up and dressed in the same fashion as was Johbee, but these were very much alive. “Bear with me,” Matson whispered to Kasdi, then looked over at one of the closest women. “You! Come here!”
The woman smiled and walked very sexily over to him on her high heels. “Yes, sir?”
“What’s your name?”
“I am called Tabby, sir.”
“Well, Tabby, what is it you do? What’s your job?”
“To serve men, sir, and minister to their needs. We live only to serve as the Lord commands us.”
He nodded. “Which lord is that?”
“Why, the Lord High God who created World, sir.” She spotted Kasdi standing there. “You are dressed in a blasphemous manner, my sister.”
Matson turned. “Look around at them. Look at their faces.” She looked around, not quite understanding where he was going with this and feeling as sickened by this as she had from the dead bodies below. Suddenly she saw one face and gasped. It was an absolutely beautiful face, attached to a supernaturally gorgeous body. Matson saw Kasdi’s reaction and called the woman over. She was so beautiful that it was almost impossible to keep his mind on business,.but his job and his discipline won out. “They won’t answer to you, so—what’s your name, girl?”
She smiled and bowed her head slightly. “I am called Marigail, my lord.”
“Sister Marigail! Don’t you recognize me?” Kasdi cried out, but in response she only got, “You blaspheme in that rag, old woman.”
Matson turned to Kasdi. “Get it? These are all the priestesses in the temple who survived the initial attack. And they still are in a way. It’s just that their definitions have been changed.”
Kasdi frowned and shivered “Drugs?”
“I doubt it. They’re too knowledgeable, too alert for that. And, frankly, they’re uniformly better built than they should be. Besides their vows were bound by spell in their minds. Even a drug would have-trouble overcoming that. Those spells had to be broken or rewritten.”
“Marigail always looked this good, but I see what you mean. Flux, then. But how?”
“Well, as a guess, I’d say they marched each one down to the hole and did it in the Hellgate one at a time. It’s a lot weaker, of course, but they didn’t need much. A better guess is that they trucked the whole batch out to the Flux apron and had a job done on ’em
“It’s disgusting!”
He felt a little ashamed of himself, but he had mixed feelings on that looking at Marigail. Still, it worried him. “You see what it means? First they march in and quickly secure each riding as a military district. Then they take the capital and chop up each little bit of resistance. The rest of them, mostly farmers and townspeople with no weapons and no real experience in this, give in and go along for now. Maybe they torture and exhibit the bodies of some of the smart mouths and rebels to give ’em a reminder. That was the first stage, and while it might still be going on in some places, it was probably mostly done in the first ten days. Now, little by little, using the records they got from the temple, they’re taking the people out into Flux where they’re being remade to order. Pretty soon the first riding’s all done, and they can move all their forces to the next. I’ve seen the pattern used when a young wizard took over an old wizard’s Fluxland.”
“And they’re turning everybody into—this?”
“Not hardly. If they plan to stay, they’ll need folks who know how to grow things, how to make things, and so forth. No, you won’t have to do it to everybody, just enough to create a real example. The rest of the folks will fall into line and fall all over themselves doing whatever they’re told to do. You forget these folks’ fear of Flux. They have all the records, too. They can hold husbands, wives, kids’ lives over ’em. No, they’ll go along because they’ll be afraid not to. And the longer the new way stays, the more normal it’ll feel. Folks don’t like to be different than everybody else, especially when it’s not healthy.”
The standoff outside continued, with the forces of the invaders sealing off the temple while not firing into it. They could blow the doors, but they’d still have to attack across open areas. Their artillery would do little to break down the tremendously thick and tough material from which the temples were made, a material that had not been duplicated, even in Flux, for there was no way to break off a piece and get it to Flux.
A sweep of the temple got some more prisoners, both transformed priestesses and even a few of the invaders, now rather meek and pretty scared in the dark, not daring to light torches. From them, and from those sent back to Flux, the story of the invasion of Anchor Logh emerged.
12
FEASIBILITY STUDY
There had been no warning. The entire thing had been carefully planned out to the last detail, with Coydt directly in charge. It was, he told his followers, a scientific exercise, a “feasibility study” of several new theories and techniques in war and political control, as well as social theories he wished to test out and demonstrate. Most of
