Flight of the Outcast Read Free Page A

to the planetary governor, whose offices were a thousand miles to the south, in the large settlement of Central. That took a day. And then Baron Kamedes, the ultimate authority on Theron, sent back word that the death of the Lockes was a local issue. The Bourse should handle everything.
        All that debate for nothing, Asteria thought bitterly as she sat in the solitary cell they had prepared for her in their holding center for orphans and strays.
       And so the Bourse did handle everything. Slowly. The day following the governor's decision was the Holy Day of Repentance, when Bourse settlers remained shut in rooms thinking of their sins. Nothing could be done. Then came the Day of Appeal, on which Bourse men and women flocked to the various temples of the gods and prayed for whatever they needed. Old men went to the Temple of Prosperity. Young men went to the Temple of Love. Women went to the Temple of Patience or the Temple of Endurance. Asteria sat alone in the little room they had provided and grew more and more frustrated.
       At last, long after the raid, the local council sat in conference to decide Asteria's fate. She was not allowed to speak, though the Bourse granted her an advocate—a lean, grim-faced man of thirty named Nels. Six elders, clad in black and looking as solemn as attendees at a funeral, sat on a high platform behind an imposing wooden table carved in figures of dour saints, and listened as the case director, a grizzled old man named Marren, laid out the facts.
       The head of the panel of elders summed up: "So this infidel girl is left without a family? And she is heir to the estate?"
       "That is the case, my masters," said old Marren.
       Asteria could see greed flickering in the elderly eyes. Sanctal was a place where people who believed in simplicity and devotion could live and pursue their vision of the holy life. But forty thousand hectares of land, with seven intact and functioning biodomes producing a rich crop of coffera…well, that was a solemn thought indeed. If the farm could continue, even with only seven domes working, it could produce enough income to appeal to a family.
       "She must be given to a husband," the elder at the far end of the table said, looking down at Asteria. "She looks to be sturdy enough. She must learn our ways and our beliefs and become one of us. She must learn to serve the Six Great Gods of the Bourse."
       "All glory to the gods," the others murmured ritualistically.
       "I don't want—" began Asteria hotly, but Nels shushed her.
       "My masters," he said, rising, "the girl is not yet sixteen Standard. In three years' time, she may be of age to be married, but now our laws forbid that."
       Marren shrugged. "Then she must be fostered into a family of believers," he said simply. "There she may be disciplined and schooled and brought to a knowledge of her place in serving the gods."
       Asteria again saw those flickers of interest. A foster family might have the inside track. And the income from the farm would be put in trust for the lucky husband, but some of it would go to the foster family. It would be profitable to be the guardian of a girl who would inherit a freehold of land.
       "That is a good point," the chairman of the council said. "It would be well for her to learn proper manners and behavior. She must learn that she cannot speak out of turn, for one thing. She seems a headstrong, willful girl, and we could not accept her into our fold unless she learned to curb that haughty spirit."
       "My master," said the elder to the chairman's left, a thin-faced old man with a fringe of white beard. "If you will permit, I think my eldest son, Kern, might take her in. He farms too, but not in the Uplands. He has a boy about her age—"
       A man on the other side of the chairman cut in, "With submission, my master, I believe that our family could provide the girl with a better grounding in our beliefs. We live in the