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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
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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 contin-
ued 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 room-
mate 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,"
It took some time for the small, attractive girl to get a grip on herself, but
Cassie was patient, know-
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,
really the 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 of-
fered to buy them one drink each just to celebrate their coming of age. It
seemed so nice, so reason-
able. . . .
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 con-
scious only of being bound, somehow, and of sev-
eral 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 situa-
tion. "You you'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
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board from their point of view. I'll be picked in the Paring Rite. You won't.
You'll just disap-
pear."
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!"
54 Jack L. Chalker
"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 so hard to accept, even now.
And why 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 people size, 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 [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]