Crecheling Read Online Free Page A

hair. “We’re all pleased that Dyan gets to stay with the milkmouths.”
    “But I would have said that until now you have been paying the prices of the System’s decisions,” Zarah added. “Some things simply are the way they must be , with no question of fairness or how it might have been.”
    “Is that the second attribute of choices?” Deek asked. “That doesn’t sound quite right.”
    “People,” Zarah said, “are not as predictable or as regular as machines.”
    “They’re not as dependable, either,” Deek added.
    “I’m glad to see your Lot Letter also reached the right recipient.” Zarah laughed, a rare sound, and it made Dyan smile. “The second attribute of all your choices—beginning tomorrow—is that every choice you make will affect your relationship to Buza System.”
    Dyan felt a shiver down deep inside her, like the string of a musical instrument connecting her neck and her tailbone had just been plucked.
    “For instance,” Cheela yawned, “you could run away. And then the System would send Outriders to hunt you down.” She patted the whip on her belt affectionately.
    “You mean like the criminals this morning,” Dyan said.
    “Yes.”
    They rode in silence for a minute. This was the Magister’s way, Dyan knew, of giving her Crechelings—her Creche-Leavers, now—time to consider and absorb a new point.
    “The Hanging is an extreme case,” the Magister picked up where she had left off, “as are outlaws captured by Outriders.”
    “Killed,” Cheela said.
    “Captured or killed,” Shad added.
    “But every single choice you make strengthens the System or it weakens it,” Zarah continued. “Or it strengthens one part of the System at the expense of another.”
    “So Wayland devotes Healing resources to one Urbane at the expense of another,” Deek said by way of example.
    “You must consider the System and your relationship to it with every action you take,” the Magister said, which sounded like agreement. “And with every action you take, the System will be considering you.”
    “The System’s not a person,” Deek added quickly. “It’s just a collection of interacting things. Institutions, individuals, devices.”
    “Is it so obvious to you,” the Magister asked in return, her voice quiet and subdued, “that there is a difference?”
    “Of course you have to consider the System,” Wayland said. “If you commit crimes against it, you get killed.”
    Magister Zarah was quiet again for a while. “The System,” she said slowly, “kills to protect itself, and all the people who are its charges. Sometimes it has to kill criminals. Sometimes it has to kill the wicked, or the weak.”
    “What do you mean, sometimes ?” Cheela grinned like she was imagining herself as a Hangman, and enjoying it.
    “Sometimes the System has to kill good people,” Dyan said, reaching the logical conclusion of Zarah’s line of thought. “And the strong.”
    They rode in silence for a long time after that. Off to their right, they passed occasional crumbling walls of brick, and long stretches of shattered grayish pavement.
    Buza System lay on the north side of the broad Treasure Valley, along a river and pressed against the lowest hills of the Jawtooth Mountains. To its south the land rose steadily, passing through a broad gate between a westward-jutting ridge of the Jawtooths and the easternmost of the Wahai Mountains. Beyond that gate lay a sea of grass and sage that was bright green for approximately one month of each spring, and otherwise lay yellow and gray under a hot sun, fit only for jackrabbits, coyotes and antelopes.
    Out in this wilderness lay Ratsnay Station, the Creche-Leavers’ destination. Ratsnay Station wasn’t beyond the wilderness—as far as Dyan knew, nothing lay beyond the wilderness, and the entire world lay blighted, burnt and devastated—and there was no way to get through it that didn’t involve a hard ride. Outriders, Cheela repeatedly informed the