Read The Line of Polity for Free Online Page A

is a shame that it has even been necessary for you to labour like this." He came to stand before Dent, and gestured Ulat to come and stand beside him.
    Ulat pulled his mask down. "Yes, Proctor?"
    "What do you think is a sufficient punishment for his infringement?" Volus asked.
    Ulat took another deep breath from his mask before replying. "I think a few days in a cage should do the trick. We don't want to ruin him completely."
    Eldene glanced aside nervously. It was coming now. Volus was bound to suggest a more vicious punishment. Quite likely Dent would soon be dead, and Eldene could see the man knew that: he looked terrified.
    Volus nodded slowly. "I see ... So, that being his punishment, what do you think yours should be, Ulat? Your own crime has been theft from the Church... hasn't it?"
    Eldene could not help but feel a species of joy at the sudden panic in Ulat's expression.
    "I have done nothing, Proctor, I assure you!"
    "No, of course not," said Volus, but now his hand snapped out, and he struck Ulat across his legs with the stinger. Ulat shrieked and went down, and Volus immediately stooped over him. Eldene watched in amazement as the Proctor tore away the foreman's breather gear and stepped back.
    "Now, brothers," continued Volus. "A new work party will be taking over here from tomorrow. So tomorrow morning you four must report to the ponds on South-side, to join the sprawn harvest. Return to your barracks when you have finished here."
    As the Proctor returned to his aerofan, Ulat crawled after him, his breathing heavy at first, then gasping and choking as he tried to summon the breath to beg for the return of his mask. It was a horrible and rare justice, Eldene felt, watching Ulat die, while the Proctor took his aerofan into the air. They loaded Ulat into a basket along with the other deaders — asphyxiated blue under the lurid sky.
----
    2
----
    With the boy on her lap, leaning back against her breast, the woman continued, "And then there was the brother who built his house from grape sticks, and who sat safe while the heroyne ate his friend and clacked its beak in satisfaction. So proud he was of what he had built... and don't we know all about pride?"
    In all seriousness the little boy said, "Big trouble."
    The woman bit her lip trying to keep a straight face, then sat upright. "Yes, 'big trouble'," she concurred.
    In the picture book propped on the console before her, the long-legged bird creature was frozen at the point where it pinched the previous brother's head in the end of its beak. As she clouted the book, the picture continued running through its animation. The creature tilted its head back and swallowed the man whole... then the picture clicked back to where it was gripping his head again, and had clearly gone into a loop.
    "Bugger," the woman muttered, clouting the book a second time. Now the animation resumed as it should, and proceeded to the house of sticks.
    The woman went on, "That very night the heroyne came to stand over his house of sticks. And what did it do?"
    Together, woman and child said, "It huffed and it puffed, and it puffed and it huffed, and it blew his house down."
    "And what did the brother say when his house was gone?" the woman asked, checking her watch.
    "Don't eat me!" was the boy's immediate reply.
    "And I'm sure you're eager to tell me what happened."
    "It gobbled him all up!"
----
    "You can't run, girl. None of us can run." Those had been Fethan's early words to her, shortly after she had crossed the short space from the hover bus that had transported her and five others from the city orphanage to this farming co-operative. Fethan had gone on to explain that euphemism to her: "You co-operate on the farm or they kill you."
    It seemed Fethan was an old hand. Some time in his youth he had got on the wrong side of some member of the Theocracy, but not far enough on the wrong side to end up dead — only as a virtual slave.
    "Why?" she had asked him. "Why all this?"
    "Just the way