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laughed. "So much for their security. Checked you two over with a microscope,
and you both phony as can be, while they just kept shoving papers at me and
never even looked me in the eye."
SOUL RIDER: SPIRITS OF FLUX AND ANCHOR 259
"I counted on that," Mervyn told her. "Remember, a bureaucrat does not believe
in Heaven or Hell, Church or Government. A bureaucrat only believes in paper."
They rode on, stopping overnight in Lawder, a small town about halfway to the
capital. Cass found her disguise both annoying and fun at one and the same
time. Annoying, because as a priestess she had no money and had to more or
less beg for food, drink, and lodging from the locals and was really prevented
from going to the bar and other public rooms. It was FUJI, though, in that she
was treated deferentially by almost everyone, and it was funny to watch them
try and control their language and behavior around her. She found some
diversion, though, in the fact that, as an outside priestess, everybody wanted
to confess to her and this became the main agent of barter. It was obvi-
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ous that many sought absolution from sin but did not relish confessing to
their local priestess, who would be living in the same town with them.
Since she had been through the ritual on the supplicant end most of her life,
she knew all the proper things to do and say, and it occurred to her more than
once that this, more than anything else, was the most effective way in which
the church had the pulse of, and control of, the entire community.
They barely needed the spies and agents she had imagined when she'd seen the
dossiers on that screen. All they needed was weekly updated re-
ports from each and every parish priestess on the
confessions of the faithful-
She soon had quite an earful from the locals, too. Clearly Anchor Logh was not
the calm, straight-
laced community she had always imagined it being.
It was one thing in Flux, but here, in a place she thought she new, she began
to feel a stranger.
Jack L. Chalker
260
They set out again the next morning, Suzl feel-
ing a little grumpy because Mervyn had stopped her fun in the bar short of the
payoff. She knew, of course, that this was not the time, and that there was
much danger in exposure, but it still irritated her.
By early afternoon they were approaching the capital, and as they passed a
large farm Suzl and
Cass halted and looked suddenly serious.
"What's the problem?" the wizard asked them.
"Over there is where both of us were bom and raised," Cass told him. "Our
families are still there.
I'd hoped to be able to see them, tell them I was all right." She sighed. "I
guess I can't, looking and sounding like this."
He thought a moment. "If you can pull it off, not blow your cover or break
down, it might be all right if you just, say, carried the news as a third
party," Mervyn said. "Do you think you can act the part in front of people you
know? They won'f know you, remember, for you are someone else."
"I'd like to try for their sakes," she responded honestly. "I think, after
all, this is something I
have to do."
"All right then," he agreed. "Go and do it. We will go ahead and register at
the hotel. Don't take more than one hour, then follow us in. That will give us
a chance to settle and get the lay of the land, as it were. Meet us there, and
we'll discuss what to do next. And if anything goes wrong here, anything,
break off and come to us immediately. I
want no surprises here that we don't generate."
She nodded. "I will. The Holy Reverend Sister
Kasdi will behave." She turned to Suzl. "Want me to pass on any word about
you?"
She thought a moment. "Just tell 'em I'm free and I'm happy." She had a sudden
thought. "I
hope nobody who knows me is in town now." She
alone appeared, at least, the way she had^een.
SOUL RIDER: SPIRITS OF FLUX AND ANCHOR 261
"There is very little chance of that," Mervyn told her. "It is midweek, after
all. Let's cross that bridge when we come to it."
They left Cass there, and for a while she hesitated.
Here it was the large box she- had come to check that day that now seemed so
long ago, the day she had seen Matson riding in. The difference between that
child and her now, although separated not really all that long in time, was an
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unbridgeable chasm.
Sh& decided, though, to walk down the road, and tied up the mule at the post
box. How many times had she walked down this same road to those buildings? She
looked over at the pastures and could still identify and name just about every
horse and cow she could see.
Finally she reached the familiar complex, and made the almost automatic turn
that took her to the blacksmith's shop. The old sounds of iron being pounded
and reshaped caused her heart to skip a beat, and she began perspiring despite
the slight chill. Could she do it or not? She sighed, and took several deep
breaths to get hold of herself.
As she had told Mervyn, she had to.
She walked in the barn-like open doors of the smithy and saw her father there,
dunking a horse-
shoe in water, as two other smiths and three ap-
prentices worked elsewhere. She approached her father, the tension rising
within her. He looked up, frowned, stared a moment, then put down his work and
came to her. "Yes, Sister? What can I do for you?"
She repressed the urge to fling her arms around him and hug and kiss him as
she so desperately wanted to do. Instead she said, "You are the father of the
girl called Cass who was taken in the Paring
Rite?"
He suddenly went a bit tense and white. "Yes.
What's this all about?"
262 Jack L. Chalker
"I have news of her."
He looked suddenly very concerned and she could see the emotions within him
rising, despite his efforts to contain them. "Speak," he said hoarsely.
"I have just come through the Flux from Anchor
Bakha- During that journey I met many from this
Anchor. Most are suffering as expected, but your
Cass is doing well."
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