"Well, I ain't gonna be exactly welcomed with open arms," she responded, being careful, "but I'm in a little different way than you. Train I was travelling with, comin' back from visitin' relatives in the city, got hit by bandits. I got raped."
"Wow! And I thought I was through something! Now Putie, you'll meet her, she's a nice kid, she got raped, too, but it was by the Company Supervisor's brother. He claimed she seduced him and was only claimin' rape 'cause she got knocked up and, well, you know which one they believed. She's from Gashom. She says they shave your head there, then rub some gunk on it so it never grows out, stick a brand on your forehead, and then you become the property of the Company, which in this case includes the guy who raped her. Ain't much, but the guy gets the kid, and in her case that means the kid's raised with the upper class, so it's something. Her friend Meda's also from Gashom, but she's from a town and got knocked up same as me. She'll get the same shave and brand, but her kid'll go to some orphanage someplace and she'll wind up property of the town, kind'a like what they say you get in the city, only without me forgettin' juice."
"I guess you're all sort'a thinkin' 'bout goin' back or not," Sam responded, "and maybe comparin' notes."
"You try not to think about it," Quisu said softly, then patted her bulge. "But sometimes you just can't get away from it. Meantime, we're kind'a the bad examples here. Not that you're treated bad. There's some that're holier than the gods or real smug and superior, but most of 'em'll talk to you, sometimes ask you what it's like. that kind of thing, even be real sympathetic or extra kind. We don't do no work here 'less we want to, and those of us this far along don't want to much. It's kind'a borin'. but it's the way things are. Sometimes you get to hatin' the kid, sometimes you get to hatin' yourself, sometimes you just lie there and cry a lot, but mostly you Just relax and try not to think much. There's always some girls assigned to watch us, like them over there tryin' to pretend they ain't, just to make sure we don't try'n kill ourselves or somethin', but nobody stops you if you just slip away and off the grounds."
"Are there many girls who try and kill themselves?" Sam asked, wishing she could do something, anything, for these girls.
"Sometimes. One tried it while I was here. Real sloppy Job, though. Many got a lot worse to go back to than me or me others I told you about. I mean, what's a little balding or scarring compared to havin' your tongue cut out, your eyes put out, and your eardrums shattered, like they do in Fowkwin?"
There wasn't much to say in answer to that. And this festival would be winding down in a few weeks; they'd all be forced to choose at that point.
Damn it! Boday used to take kids like these and make them into mindless sex bombs, while others on the street sold the less desirable ones into slavery or worse. The lucky ones would wind up permanent, free, peasant labor at a Pasedo-type place. And she'd sat there and accepted it!
The fact was, she'd just ignored all the bad parts and hadn't looked very hard or thought about it at all. It didn't make her feel very good right now.
If she had her way, and the power, she'd create some land somewhere on one of these colonial worlds as a refuge where all these kind of girls could go and have their kids and have a kind of life without being slaves or property or worse! A Pasedo kind of place without a Duke or hierarchy at all. But she didn't have that power, and so long as the Akhbreed maintained their rigid cultural attitudes and tight colonial grip there never would be such a place, not really. And she was supposed to save these damned Akhbreed from such destruction! Hell, this was just one small part of one branch of one clan! How many girls like this were there? Maybe, just maybe, she was coming around to the real Storm Princess's point of view. She'd been around Klittichom a long time she couldn't be that dumb.
Could it be that the Storm Princess knew just what she was doing, but could not imagine even dominance by a godlike Klittichom any worse than what was now here?
Her old problem was coming back now, in spades. The problem that had overshadowed all her other problems, all her personal problems, and the one no magic mirrors could resolve for her. It was the one she'd been running from, consciously or not, since it had been first put to her, and she was no happier with it now than before. Sure, Klittichom was a damned murderer and something of a power-mad maniac, but what in hell was Boolean? Etanalon had said that Boolean disliked the Akhbreed way and was outspoken in that dislike, and that was, more than anything else, why nobody else liked him or would help him or even believe him. But he'd done nothing to change the system and was still working against the odds to preserve it. Nor was Etanalon a really good source on this; she, with her power, could never comprehend the horrible choices these girls faced, and the most she might do with the system was fine-tune it, remove some of its more gross features, but leaving everything else in tact. Etanalon, at heart, was a believer. Why else was she still on the fence?
Damn it, she didn't have enough information! Never had. She needed to meet Boolean, talk to him, take his measure, not as some distant and mysterious ghostlike figure but man to woman. How the hell could she muster the confidence and will to beat back the Storm Princess unless she was sure she was doing the right thing?
She felt a sudden, sharp, uncomfortable twinge in her belly, and must have registered surprise or discomfort on her face.
Quisu chuckled. "I think you just got kicked."
But the kick had made Sam abruptly aware that the hot sun was no longer beating down and she looked up and saw swiftly moving clouds gathering, and she forced herself to relax. That was the way to draw a lot of attention fast, and that was in nobody's interest right now.
"Wanna meet some of the others?" Quisu asked her,
"Yeah, sure. Why not?" Sam responded, needing to move or do something right now.
"That line of trees over there is the river," the girl told her, pointing. "That's the bath tub around here. It's shady and a little cooler there, so it's kind of a hangout for those of us with nothin' much else to do. I used to be there a lot this time of day, but you get to feelin' so awkward and dumb-looking and so damned tired quick."
Sam got up slowly, then helped Quisu to her feet. It wasn't all that far, but it really was hard on Quisu, and Sam let her take it slow and easy and knew that, fat or not, this was her in not too much longer a time. If, of course, she lived that long.
There were a dozen or so visibly pregnant girls there under the trees, and it was a sort of instant comraderie that made things a lot easier for Sam. Quisu's friend Putie was something of a shock; she was so tiny she looked maybe twelve or thirteen, no more than four-foot-ten and if she weighed eighty pounds, even with her extra baggage, she'd be at fighting weight. Putie was, in fact, simply very small and slight, but she was among the older girls in the Disease Pit at seventeen. Quisu was sixteen, and Putie's fellow Gashomian Meda, a chubby girt with very large tits, was fifteen. All were well along, although in Putie's case it was hard to tell since she was so very tiny and the child was certainly at least normal size and the distention was gross. Sam couldn't help but wonder if Putie was too small and weak to survive the birth.
Sam let them do most of the talking, if only to avoid having to come up with details of a world she'd never actually been to, or making references to people and places she shouldn't know about. They talked freely, and, as Crim had warned, it was kind of tough not to object to some of it, as when Meda referred to the native population of Gashom as Slimeys, but Sam restrained herself, realizing that, no matter how wrong it was, these girls right now desperately needed somebody, some category, lower than they were, and they took the first and only cultural target of opportunity available. Okay, terrible things portended for them; they were headed for the very bottom of the Akhbreed ladder, but they would still be higher than the natives. It wasn't much, but if it's all you got, you go for it.
Sam had always kind of wondered how, back home, in Civil War times, all those thousands of church-going southern people, most of whom had never and would never own plantations or any slaves, would
be willing to march out and fight and die for slavery. Maybe this was the answer. If you were some dirt-poor Appalachia farmer plowing rocks and in hock up to your ears and had kids you couldn't feed and very little else except what you might get share, cropping for the rich, you were pretty damned low. But so long as there were slaves, there was somebody lower. Like these girls, lowest of the low, who would still be so appalled at a colonial native uprising that they'd fight and die rather than let the natives take over.
Well, she was learning a lot about people and about herself, Sam thought. The trouble was, the lessons didn't seem to lead to any clear conclusion.
The ignorance of the girls was appalling, too. As much as they were being screwed by the system, they still believed in it and could conceive of no other. They thought the sun moved around the Earth and that the stars were holes through which a little of the Kingdom of the Gods shone through. They had seen so little electrical that they considered it in the same realm as magic, and the concept of flush toilets or cities larger than small towns was just not in them. None could conceive of snow or really being cold.
None of them had ever seen any real magic, yet they believed that the spirits were everywhere, in the trees and wind and water and even the rocks, and they prayed to them or asked them for favors.
Most amazing was their total acceptance of their class. They could no more conceive of being anything but peasant class or lower, than they could conceive of suddenly turning into a dog or a lion. The very idea of aspiring to move up in class or position or that it was possible or done in other places was so totally alien to them that there was no use in trying to explain it. This was why even the stories of what happened to girls like them in the towns and cities held little terror, but it was also why only a small percentage of these young unwed mothers really did run away. They had a near total fatalistic outlook that sustained them and kept them from madness, but which would lead most of them to mutilation and dishonor back home simply because that was the way things were.
That was frustrating. They couldn't help their ignorance, but the idea of accepting even this was really too much for Sam, yet she didn't try and argue them into any kind of alternative action.
The fact was, they had no alternatives she could recommend. Oh, they had choices, all right; mutilation and permanent dishonor back home, becoming a whore or a slave or a eunuch in the city, or maybe death. And no matter what they were feeling inside, they accepted that. The completeness of Akhbreed political, religious, and cultural control was amazing and something she had never really fully faced before. And by so tightly controlling themselves they were able to control so many other worlds and people and cultures. And the future was always on their minds.
"Men," Meda said in the same tone you'd use for vermin. "They always got to be the bosses, push everybody around. We bear 'em and raise 'em and they grow up to be strutting assholes just tryin' to overpower and outdo each other, and the ones that can't come back and beat up on the women. It ain't fair. There oughta be someplace where the women are the bosses. Yeah, I know, it's sacrilege, but who says it is? Priests, right? Men. I ain't felt too religious lately."
"Well, I dunno," Quisu responded. "I still like men. I guess I'll always like 'em no matter what. There's lots of good ones; my dad, for one, and my brothers ain't all that bad, though I'd never say that to their faces. It'd be nice if we had some equal say in things; I mean, they trust us enough to eat our cookin' but not to do business or sit in on councils. There's good and bad men just like there's good and bad women. It don't make no difference. We just run into the wrong sort once too often, that's all. I ain't even really blamin' the boy that knocked me up. I mean, I was crazy for him and I wouldn't listen to nobody. I never even thought about this." She patted her belly. "Never entered my head, and probably not his, neither. I ain't sure if I could do it over I could stop myself from havin' him inside me again."
"Yeah, but most girls got crushes on somebody, only they don't go all the way," Putie noted. "Most stick it out 'til they get married. I stuck it out, but it didn't do me no good. He was a damned spoiled brat who never thought 'bout nothin' 'cept what he felt like and he was half again as tall as I was and three times my weight, and his girlfriend just broke up with him and got engaged to somebody else. He couldn't take it out on her so he took it out on the first girl he saw, the bastard. And when I went and told about it they all acted like it was my fault or somethin', like I came on to him. That's the way he told it and they all just believed it even though they knew what a louse he was. Uh, I just about made up my mind I ain't goin' back, you know."
The others turned and said, "Huh?" almost in unison.
"I don't care 'bout me," Putie told them, "but he ain't gonna have this baby. No way. I don't care what happens to me or where the baby winds up, but he ain't gettin' it. Shit, what if it's a girl? Imagine him with a girl kid! Uh-uh."
Sam could sympathize. "Where will you go?" she asked me tiny woman. "Into the city?"
"Uh-uh. I ain't never been in no city but what I hear 'bout it I don't like. I'll cross the null and take the first colony that comes up that I can sneak into."
"Putie," Quisu said softly, "if you have that kid without a midwife and maybe a healer around, you'll probably die."
Putie shrugged. "Maybe that's for the best. But it'll drive 'em all nuts in any case 'cause they'll never know. None of 'em'll ever be sure. Maybe I'll luck out and get some colonials that'll help me."
"Yeah, that'll be the day," Meda responded in disgust. "They'll probably eat your baby and then chain you as a pet. 'Com'on! Everybody rape the Akhbreed girl!' Uh-uh. Not for me."
It went on and on like this until Sam could take it no longer. Finally she and the others wandered back to the camp, where hordes of young women were now gathering for the meal or helping prepare and dish it out. Sam ate well, but didn't rejoin in the constant conversation testing out all the alternatives these girls were playing with. She was so damned depressed she wanted to have a good cry, but there wasn't even a good place to do that.
Lying there later on her mat, she tried to sleep, tried to put all thoughts out of her mind, to at least not face the darkness that the thatched roof covered long enough for sleep. Blank your mind, relax….
She was wearing a full-length fine satin dress with gold belt and jewelry, and she was walking down a set of stone stairs to a great chamber. It was a very strange place, sort of like a great hollow dome, only it had concentric stone steps going down in row after row to a round and flat stage at the bottom, kind of like some great ancient theater.
On the floor of the chamber were several designs painted on the floor. The designs were all identical, perfect pentagrams, but were arranged in a kind of mathematical symmetry and each was a different color, the pentagonal centers all pointing inward. And, at the center of the chamber's floor, there stood a strange, violet-colored, pulsating, round globe. transparent enough so that you could see the other side through its outer skin, and the globe was moving, slowly but surely, west to east. On it were evenly spaced dots of bright orange light.
There were others in the chamber as well. She glanced over and saw Klittichorn, in full crimson robes and horns, sitting on one of the stone rows and working with some kind of strange object.
Suddenly Sam recognized that object with a shock. A computer! The son of a bitch had a portable computer! How the heft did he get it or know how to use it?
The others were also in robes, although of dull greens and browns and blues. There were both men and women there. and while none looked like very strange creatures, all seemed to have something odd or amiss about them, something not quite right. One had tremendously pointed ears and a giant cyclops-like eye that seemed segmented into at least three parts; another appeared to have a broad tail sticking out from under her robe, and the last one she could see might well have had bat-like wings. Yet all were dressed as sorcerers, and all seemed busily checking out something or another in various parts of the chamber.
Three of these oddities, plus Klittichorn and her. Five. Five pentagrams on the floor, each color coded to the robes of the others, except for the golden one that was obviously hers.
The Storm Princess turned and approached Klittichorn. "Well, wizard, has your demon box given you what you sought?"
The sorcerer didn't answer right away, but finished up on the keyboard, then watched as the small screen filled with incomprehensible numbers. He nodded to himself, smiled slightly, and looked up at her. "Indeed yes, my Princess. It would be nice to test it out, though, before going straight against Boolean. We know it works, but accuracy and control are crucial."
The Storm Princess nodded. "Very well. Whenever you're ready. This place is unpleasant, almost haunted. I would soon do what it was built to do and do so quickly."
"Patience, patience." Klittichorn responded. "You won't believe what went into its construction, let alone its powering. What brings you here now?"
"I had another brief weakening. I felt it, this afternoon. even though I was doing nothing. It disturbs me."
"Yes. If we only knew where she was…. A good test, I would think. Go, rest. practice your control. We will need it soon enough."
The Storm Princess turned and walked back up the chamber, lifting her dress slightly so as to keep from tripping and falling back into that pit.
Sam had not had one of these cross-over episodes in a very long time, and never one as clear as this. The longer it went on, the more vivid it became, almost as if she and the Storm Princess were truly one, and it was Sam and not her duplicate who was now walking in that chamber. They were so mentally close, so attuned, Sam couldn't help wondering….
"Wait!" Sam called out to the Storm Princess.
The Princess stopped suddenly, then turned and looked around, but saw no one. Clearly, though, she had heard!
The old Sam wouldn't have dared this, and maybe the new one would have been more cautious, but the day spent with the poor girls had disturbed her deeply, causing her to dare the risk.
Changewinds 03 - War of the Maelstrom Page 10