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.
The state, which would be the most powerful men around with a will to rule, owned everything. The ranking of men in society was quasi-military, with a series of “grades” going from “00” for basic unskilled labor to “50” which was, of course, the head of state. Life would be grim for the lower grades, even the men, who were expected to think as little as possible and follow orders to the letter. All necessities, including food, were rationed and the amount of your ration depended on rank, from food to living quarters. Polygamy was allowed, again based on rank, and unattached women were basically cared for by the state and regularly put on “parade,” as it was called, where men could come, look them over, and “claim” them. Women who were unclaimed for a long period or who failed to “socially adjust to nature,” were taken to Flux and “readjusted” there for a “useful social role.” She had seen the former temple priestesses and guessed what that phrase meant.
They fed her a good, hot meal about an hour later in the cell, and she wolfed it down appreciatively. It was the best meal she’d had in quite some time. Then she settled back on the bed and tried not to think about the future. She could only wonder where Spirit was, who’d never undergone anything like this before, and whether Cass and Matson were punching through the wall or dead in some lonely grove of trees.
After breakfast in the morning, they brought in a woman dressed in a bright green version of what Suzl had been given, bare from the waist up, but wearing lots of makeup and jewelry. “I am Jerane,” she said, “and I have been asked to prepare you for the interrogation.” Suzl noted that Jerane had little tags on her earrings.
The preparation consisted partly of doing Suzl’s hair, teaching her makeup, and an interminable session walking up and down the hall in those shoes. Suzl found the shoes an amazing fit, considering how long she’d gone barefoot, and also found the art of walking on heels came back rather fast. She had always used boots with heels on the trail to increase her height. What she didn’t like were the critiques, and she was ready to blow up if she heard “Wiggle, don’t waddle” one more time.
Still, when she looked at herself in the mirror, she was amazed at the difference. She really
