Jack Chalker - Empires of Flux & Anchor

“Oh, Goddess! My father!” Kasdi gasped, and reached for the glasses.

“You won’t tell anything from this distance about ’em,” Matson assured her. “Even up close they’d be pretty tough to identify now. They’ve been there for some time, I think.”

“Those vermin!” she hissed. “When we get through with them and I have the survivors in Flux, the living will envy the dead! Those men will find out what us ‘girls’ can do when we have all the power!”

“Take it easy,” Matson cautioned her. “Remember, I’m a man, and so’s your dad, your grandson, and all those poor devils out there.”

She sighed. “You’re right, of course. But if this is an example of the male ego in charge, I want none of it.”

“Let’s get some sleep,” Matson suggested. “I’ll take first watch, and anybody who snores even a peep gets second.”

Even at a distance and through binoculars, watching the new order go by proved to be quite an education. The main road was regularly patrolled at randomly timed intervals, although the longest gap was under fifteen minutes. There was, however, little other traffic, and all of the common folks seemed to be either walking or in open wagons. Only a few women were glimpsed on the road, always bare from the waist up, always walking a step or two behind a man.

More sights, sounds, and smells were closer at hand. The smell of cooked food wafting into their hideout was maddening as they munched their concentrated rations, but crews checked and replenished the cow troughs in the same old way, and there were sounds of work from the smithy and of horses being exercised in the corral. Every once in a while people could be seen walking between the farm buildings as well. This was strictly the livestock side, so it was far less populated than the administrative area several kilometers west, and farmers working in cultivated fields were also elsewhere. From the few closeups they saw, it appeared that men were being required to wear hats outside, for some reason, and all seemed to be growing beards.

“I have to know about my parents,” Spirit told them. “I have to tell them that I’m whole again and see that they’re not on posts somewhere.”

Kasdi felt a jealous pang, considering both her real parents were there, but she understood, too. Matson tried hard to talk her out of it, but on this she wouldn’t budge. Finally he said, “All right, but not all of us. If anything happens, we most likely won’t be able to pull you out of there, and the less they know of who and how many we are, the better it’ll be.”

“I’ll go,” Kasdi said. “Alone. I’ll deliver your message, Spirit, and give you a complete report. But there’s no use in risking two when one will go, and right now I’m the most expendable of the bunch.”

There was some argument, but finally it was agreed. Matson cautioned her again that they would leave on the first sound of trouble, and added, “We’re southwest. Let’s agree that if nothing happens on this journey to blow our cover, we head for the nearest one. If anybody gets separated, any time, for any reason, we’ll rendezvous at the closest place of concealment near the secondary target. Got it?”

They nodded, and Kasdi kissed them all and left. It felt very odd to be an armed individual sneaking into such a familiar and friendly place with the knowledge that discovery might mean death, but she took nothing and no one for granted. Darkness had fallen but the cloud cover had not lifted, so there was an extra measure of darkness for her, although a slight and slippery drizzle had also begun.

A mounted patrolman turned off the main road and came down all the way to the buildings themselves. He was pretty relaxed, and he rode past the blacksmith’s and right past Kasdi, stopping near the large cow barn. A figure there greeted the patrolman and walked out of the barn carrying a rifle. They talked and exchanged a few laughing comments, and then the patrolman turned on his horse and rode back. Kasdi was grateful for him; she would have missed the man in the barn without him.

Keeping to the shadows, she made her way to the apartment complex, a structure of cubes on top of cubes, each slightly offset from the row below, where those who worked on this side of the farm lived. She thanked heaven that Cloise and Dannon lived on the ground level. She stopped, facing the building while still hidden, and saw lights inside just about every apartment. It was particularly bright because, it seemed, they had had to take their front curtains down allowing anyone to peer inside at least the living room. She could see people moving about, although most seemed to have abandoned the living room as a usual place for very obvious reasons. It was a good thing, she thought, that the one-room studios were on the top—the sixth—level.

She saw no one, but did an extra-careful check, even tossing a few stones in different directions to see if there was any reaction. There was not, and she decided to chance it, although she hated being illuminated so well. Perhaps, she thought, my looks will get me confused for a man in the dark. It didn’t matter. If she was going, she had to go now, and there was no back door.

She approached the steps to the porch from the side and ducked low beneath the open windows. Finally she reached the familiar door and stood, peering in the window. She knocked softly, and in a moment Cloise came and opened the door. When she saw who it was, she gasped, pulled Kasdi inside, and shut the door fast. “Quick! Into the back bedroom before the patrolman sees you!” she hissed, and they went back.

Once there, they both relaxed a bit, although Cloise looked nervous. More than nervous. Also pretty odd in full makeup, ring-type earrings, bare to the waist, and below it wearing a very tight-fitting green body stocking that was see-through close-up.

“What are you doing here?” Cloise wanted to know.

“Delivering the mail, mostly,” Kasdi told her. “Boy! You look like one of the women on Main Street minus the bra.”

“It’s easy when everybody has to do it. They confiscated all our clothes and issued new ones. You don’t know what it’s like. You can’t !”

“I got an idea from some of the people we captured and some of the proclamations we read.”

“We?”

She nodded. “Spirit’s here. And she’s well. She can speak and wear clothes and is almost back to normal.” She decided not to mention Suzl. It might be one shock too many for the poor woman.

Cloise sat down in a chair. “Well, thank somebody for that! But I wish it were anyplace but here.” She paused a moment. “Uh—you know about your father?”

Kasdi’s stomach did a turn. “No. Tell me. I have to know.”

“When they… came… not everybody just sat back. Your father and a number of others formed a group, jumped some of them, and stole their weapons. It didn’t do any good. They got them all pretty quickly and made examples out of them.”

Her heart sank. “Then one of those bodies out there is… him?”

She nodded, and named a long string of other men’s names, many familiar. Her fury, which she didn’t think could get worse, grew, but she remained calm. “Where’s Dannon, or is he…?”

“Oh, no. In fact, he’s been promoted to chief mechanic. He has special permission to be out late on the farm to check on things. You had better be gone when he gets back.”

She frowned. “You sound like you’re cooperating with these butchers.”

“A fat lot you understand the situation! They have complete control. The government officials they didn’t kill or who didn’t see it their way were taken off and came back in uniforms as dedicated soldiers of the Kingdom. The enforcers carry a. kind of whip that is terribly painful and hurts for days but doesn’t leave a mark on you. They use it for the least infraction. But they reward cooperation handsomely. Everything is tightly rationed, but those who cooperate get more. People are seeing the light. They’re going along.”