Changewinds 03 - War of the Maelstrom

by Jack L. Chalker

  "Uh-huh. Hurry up and wait as usual. Seems to me, though, that we got in here real easy. If this local sorcerer is against us and if they now know Charley's not me, it might be a lot harder gettin' out."

  "Searching everyone who comes into and out of a hub is difficult," Etanalon noted. "Concentrating just on those leaving is far easier and more efficient. From this point the hubs are in hands friendly to your enemies and the colonies are heavily infiltrated. I agree, though, that caution outweighs everything else and that you must leave and quickly. I can not really use much sorcery on you since that would disturb the aura of the Storm Princess that is the key to all this. There are a lot of people who fit your general description, so perhaps subtlety, doing just a few minor things, might be far more effective than an elaborate disguise."

  The racial restrictions of the hub system and the nature of Covanti's economy made for some unusual and exceptional sights for an Akhbreed hub region. Periodically, when the grapes in the small private vineyards were ready for harvesting, a fair number of agricultural workers were needed. In the colonies, where most of Covanti's wine and all its export was grown, this was no problem, but only those of an Akhbreed race could enter the hub. Grape harvesting was not unskilled laborer, specially when specialty grapes and the royal vineyards were involved. And few of the Akhbreed race had ever bothered to learn anything so menial as grape picking'

  Out of this need had grown the tradition of the clan call, in which leaders of family clans would call upon the women members of that clan to come aid the harvest in the name of clan unity. Such a gathering of the females of the Abrasis clan was even now in its final stages at one of the clan estates near the border, and it was there that Etanalon sent them, after suitable preparation. The harvest and subsequent stompings and the like involved hundreds of women, many from different colonial worlds who knew each other not at all, although all were at least very distant cousins.

  Small spells that did not involve any sort of molecular transformation would not have any real effect on Sam, and they were rather simple for one such as Etanalon. It was a rural tradition in Covanti that a woman's hair might be trimmed but not cut. Hence, a small spell that caused her hair to grow right down to her ass overnight was in order. Sam had always preferred very short hair because it was almost effortless to care for, but she accepted this both out of need and because she knew it could always be cut later. The hair was also darkened to inky black, but with some white steaks that were a particular characteristic of the Abrasis clan. Not everybody had them, of course, but it was more common than not. More irritating to her, at least at the start, were the very long teardrop-shaped silver earrings that were fixed permanently to her earlobes. The only time she'd ever really worn earrings was after Charley had convinced her to get her ears pierced at the mall, but they had been little fake gold and pearl things and she'd eventually taken them off. These things weighed a ton and weren't removable.

  But it was another Covantian custom, and she accepted the discomfort as part of die disguise. She did have to admit to herself that the very long hair and the long earrings did in fact suit her fat face and form pretty well.

  Finally, some very bewitched eyeglasses that really changed her general appearance more than she expected them to. When she wore them, they were clear transparent glass, of no real effect except as a nuisance. But, if they were removed and someone else looked into them, they would present a convincingly distorted and blurry picture as if she had serious eye problems- It was one of those neat little touches a major sorceress could give you.

  Covanti hub was both peaceful and pretty, but it was carefully guarded. A check of the border showed regular patrols by civil guardsmen and a fairly thorough scrutiny by militia at the border posts of anyone leaving. Clearly somebody had put two and two together and concluded that perhaps she was indeed within the hub.

  Sam had spent most of the civilized part of her life since being dragged to Akahlar in Tubikosa, a rather strict and somewhat fundamentalist place with covered women and lots of hang-ups, and even though she'd lived all her time there in the inevitable capital city entertainment district, she had a strong idea of just what the typical Akhbreed were like and she'd been none too thrilled by them. They had their lapses, usually for their own convenience, but they were basically straight, uptight, and kind of like those pictures you saw of the most backward parts of the Middle East back home. Since then she'd come more or less through the back door from place to place, mostly hiding out, or sneaking through.

  Covanti, however, was a much looser place. It was almost too bad that it was ruled by such dumb guys at the top, since otherwise it was almost the opposite of what she thought of as proper Akhbreed society. It was more class-bound, sure, but she had never identified with anybody other than the lower classes here anyway and so that didn't really bother her. The big city folk dressed more comfortably and with a lot more variety than the suits and baggy dresses of Tubikosa, and, while nominally all Akhbreed followed the same general religion, there was nary a veil in sight and a lot of skin. Upper-class women were still somewhat cloistered and withdrawn, but middle-class women were at ease in colorful saris and light sleeveless tops and short skirts, and even me men wore loose-fitting colorful shirts and slacks most places.

  The peasants were even looser, more so than even some of the colonials she'd seen. The climate was warm and wet, at least in the hub, except in the few high mountains areas to the north and west, and it was kind of startling to see peasant women, often with huge jars or boxes on their heads, walking topless down the road wearing only a colorful, light-colored sarong or short skirt, apparently all of cotton. The peasant males weren't above being bare-chested. either, although their normal dress was a kind of white or tan baggy shirt and matching pants, usually with sandals, and wide-brimmed white or tan leather hats.

  "In many places it's hard to tell the classes apart," Crim commented, noting her surprise. "In the subtropical and tropical regions things are clearer. Somebody with royal blood wouldn't be caught dead even in this heat and humidity without being fully and formally overdressed to the point of heat stroke, which is why you never see them much in the day. The middle classes show off their relative wealth (or hide their lack of it) with fashion. The peasants; well, you see how they dress. It's not only tradition, it's the law, really. The gradations of class are actually a lot more complicated than that, but you can actually get thrown in jail for dressing inappropriately to your class."

  "I'll stick with the peasants," she told him. "No complications or hang-ups and they just let it all hang out and to hell with it."

  He nodded. "Now, the vineyards of the Abrasis clan are loose, and the women brought in from the colonies to handle it are all officially peasants here no matter what position they might occupy back home. It's not quite as loose as it looks, either. There's an effective if unobtrusive security guard for them and the women don't go anyplace alone, only in small or large groups. The women don't have much more in the way of political or civil rights here than anywhere else in Akhbreed society, either, outside the family. The only real exceptions are those with magical powers and those with political connections, who have a kind of de facto position and respect. Needless to say, the plantation owners and colonial managers don't send their own wives and sisters and daughters to these obligatory things, they send the peasant-class women in, usually the daughters and such of the Held supervisors, overseers, and the like. Lots of peasants hire on cheap to the colonial corporations because, while they're the lowest here in the hub, and the lowest Akhbreed in the colony, they always have a whole native race to feel and be superior to out there. It's an ego thing. You'll find most of these women ignorant, totally unschooled, lacking much imagination, and about the most bigoted group you ever met. Take it easy in there. The object is to blend in, not draw attention."

  She nodded. "I'll try. How long do I have to stick it out in there, anyway? I know as much about wine— other than it comes from grapes and if
you drink enough you can get tipsy, as I know about, well… babies."

  Crim grinned. "You won't have to know much. You're starting to show and that means they'll make you a cook or something like that. Women are coming and going all the time there during this period so it's unlikely anybody will think your showing up is anything unusual. For most of them it's an excuse to get out and away and many of them spend more time in the villages, maybe buying stuff or just seeing the sights, than actually working. You just walk in, keep your story and your accent straight, and do a little acting so you won't pick fights and draw attention to yourself. I'm going check the lay of the land and security on the eastern borders. I'll stick myself in as a Navigator going into the colonies as a dead head interested in escorting any who want to go home and thereby picking up some spare change. I've got about fourteen different Guild cards, so don't panic if I come in with a different name and a slightly different look."

  "I still ain't too sure about this," she said worriedly. "We're gonna hav'ta pick up a small bunch of girls to make it a group, and unless we ditch'em fast Kira's gonna be kind'a obvious, but if we do they'll be after our heads."

  "Don't worry about Kira," he soothed her. "For one thing, these are colonials, not hidebound hub-huggers. I've had a little experience here. Just make friends, not waves understand?"

  She nodded. "I'll do what I can."

  Infiltrating the harvest gathering proved to be very little of a problem. Sam looked right, talked more or less right, and the security men weren't about to even ask whether or not every woman in the group she joined had been there from the start. The idea of a woman actually sneaking into one of these peasant camps just would never enter their head.

  Sam had always thought of wine as something that came from more or less cold regions, and, back home, she would at least have not found lush wine grapes in a tropical setting. This was not home, though; this was Akahlar, and the rules were quite different here, as were the animals and vegetation, even if much of it looked the same.

  The festival looked less like hard work and more like the Campfire girls, although the Campfires never dressed like this. The ancestral castle was off on its own grounds so far away from them it was simply a distant and tree-shrouded speck; the women were put up in open-sided buildings with thatched roofs, about twenty women to a unit, or block, sleeping on straw mats. There were communal cooking areas between each unit; generally fire pits and crude stone ovens that looked like giant backyard barbecue pits. The makings came out in wagons daily from the estates, were prepared, men distributed on a regular basis to the women unit by unit. To eat, you lined up, grabbed a hubcap-sized wooden plate, got what you wanted, then went over on the grass and had a picnic. The food was of surprisingly good quality—these were of the clan, after all, peasant branch or not—and drink was, naturally, local wine.

  It seemed to Sam almost like an all-girl's picnic and camp out. Nobody seemed to be working very hard, most seemed to be enjoying it, and almost all of them were young, the majority in their mid or upper teens and the oldest perhaps in their mid to upper twenties. They came from every kind of colonial world Covanti controlled; Sam counted maybe sixty variations of telltale earrings before she stopped counting.

  And. although married women were rarely sent to these things and she met none in her first day there or, after, there were a fair number of pregnant girls around, many looking no more than fourteen or fifteen. Kids having kids. Peasants couldn't afford the magic charms and alchemical potions that were the only forms of birth control in Akahlar, and abortion was quite literally a mortal sin to the religion; you did it and got caught, you died by public dismemberment. That was what drove many young colonial peasant girls to run away to the hub cities, where, of course, they wound up feeding the appetites of the patrons of the entertainment districts.

  Of course, it depended on the locals and the clan, and the local priests as well, how such a bald indiscretion was taken. The pregnant girls here were sent here mostly to get them out of sight for a while, or until the family back home could figure out what to do next. Legally, none were allowed to have their kids in the hub, though; that would make them hub citizens, not colonials, and the government would then have some responsibility for their support and upbringing. Some would think just that way, sneak off to the city, have the kid and have it taken away and given to the church, then delivered to the pimps and lords of the entertainment district if they refused to be neutered and made wards of the church usually janitors, housemaids, and the like, de-sexed and then cloistered for life; although few if any of the colonial girls who ran off to the city either knew or believed this. The rest would go home, but Sam wasn't sure what kind of reception they'd get at that point. She decided she'd try to find out, although she was pretty sure it wouldn't be a great life or a happy one.

  This system not only oppressed and controlled the nonhuman and not-quite-human colonial populations, it was also quite effective in making even a large number of its own miserable for life.

  Few of the pregnant girls with whom Sam was naturally quartered and placed seemed to mink about that, though, or the alternatives awaiting them. Some of it was just the usual teenage "It'll work out" or "It won't happen to me," and some was just trying not to think about the future so long as they could be here.

  She picked up her assigned goods, which weren't much, a couple of light brown panties, her personal cup and plate, and her small toiletries kit of comb, brush, and the like that she'd brought with her, and found her assigned sleeping space. Not much, but at least there was a bit of breeze and not many bugs out here.

  "Hi! Welcome to the Disease Pits," she heard a pleasant teenage female voice say in a very provincial but understandable accent- Sam turned and saw a pretty young girl of perhaps sixteen or seventeen, maybe five-five or six, her waist-length hair held in a great ponytail and slung over her left shoulder so it hung down the front. She was very well along in her pregnancy, her natural thinness just making her distended belly all the more prominent, and she was wearing just a yellow panty almost like a bikini bottom. The brief dress was practical; there was no way she was going to get a sarong around her that would stay on. The fact that almost all the women around were wearing the sarongs but Sam had been issued panties indicated that dressing by class was taken here even to the lowest common denominator. "My name's Quisu," she added.

  Sam kind of stared at her distended belly for a moment. It was the first time she'd ever seen a girl this far along not in a maternity dress, this close up, and the sight was unnerving. Unlike Sam, who was fat anyway, this girl really looked like a normal teenager who somehow had swallowed an entire undigested watermelon. Quisu held herself oddly, didn't look either well balanced or comfortable, and waddled when she walked.

  Is that the way I'm gonna get in another month or two? Sam couldn't help thinking. Aloud she said, "I'm Sahma, of Mahtri. Uh, how far along are you?"

  "A few days over eight months. Less than a month to go." She sighed. "They're gonna throw me out'ta here this week, looks like."

  "Oh yeah? Then what?"

  Quisu shrugged. "I ain't decided yet. Guess I got to real soon now, though. I been thinkin' of sneakin' out in the city but I don't know nobody or nothin'. I ain't never been in no city before. Hell, this is the biggest group of Akhbreed I ever been around at one time- I don't even know how far it is or how to get there. You believe that?"

  Sam nodded. "You're better off not knowin'. You get out on the road here, some guy'll come up and promise you all sorts of sniff and take you there. I saw some of the vultures and I know the type. I been in cities. Gid like you, they'd let you have the kid then slip you some stuff so you wouldn't remember nothin' 'bout yourself, your past, even what you looked like, and you'd be just nice and cooperative. You'd just be another street whore on some guy's string."

  "Aw, we all heard all that shit. Maybe it's true for some, maybe not, but it beats goin' home for a lot of girls."

  They walked out to the grass
and sat, Sam curious and wanting to make a few friends right off the bat. "Is it that bad?" she asked Quisu. "Goin' back, I mean?"

  "Ah, I hate this part of it. You can't even get comfortable sittin' or standin' and you got to pee every ten minutes. Uh, dunno what it's like in, where'd you say you was from?"

  "Mahtri."

  "Yeah, Mahtri. But you take like Dolimaku, where I come from. The natives look like big lizards, even hiss when they talk. Ain't that many Akhbreed there, and the ones what are, are real strict, if I go back, they let me have the kid, then I get strung up, get enough lashes on my back to make permanent scars, then they carve my face up so's I won't never tempt no more boys. Like the boys ain't never at fault! Shit, I bet Coban maybe got a lickin' and grounded for a couple weeks or somethin', if that. His dad's the chief overseer. Kind'a big shot. Big deal! But that Coban's so damn cute, with the tightest little ass and the deepest big brown eyes you ever seen, and he was so smooth, I guess I fell for him like everybody did, only I was dumb enough to think he was gonna marry me."

  Sam was appalled at the first part. "You mean they'd actually carve your face up?" No wonder the girls lit out for the cities, dangers and dismal futures and all.

  Quisu nodded. "Yeah. Only thing is, though, the kid would be accepted like a regular member of the family. Have a chance, a future, you know what I mean? And I could see it, hold it, even care for it, watch it grow up, you know? Even if I couldn't never tell it I was its Momma. Things any different where you come from?"

  Sam felt a little sick, but didn't want to press on for now with the subject.