04. Birth of Flux and Anchor (52 page)

He looked tired, but otherwise much the same. "Brenda, what in hell are you doing here?" he asked her.

"I'm the only remaining member of the general staff other than yourself, but I don't seem to have a command anymore."

"I've got my own security force, Branda. You're out of your element here."

"I've got considerable sensitivity power. I can be a big help, Mike."

He sighed. "I don't have time to be polite or go over old times. There's just too damned much I have to do to save lives here. Brenda, you don't fit in here for several reasons, and I'm going to be blunt. First, as I said, your skills were killed with the old order. Second, you blew it.
You
let Ngomo's plot go on.
You
saved Watanabe and used her and came up with some of this scheme and now that it's backfired on you you figure, O.K., so I killed a lot of people for nothing and sent maybe eight million people back to the Stone Age worshipping planets and destroyed the lives and cultures of even more. So I let a fellow officer murder my commander. So what? Now it's time for another job. Well,
bullshit,
Brenda. It's not what you could do for me, Brenda, it's what you'd almost certainly wind up doing
to
me, and you couldn't handle this bunch. I never asked for this, but I got it and I sure as hell ain't gonna give it to you."

She was genuinely stung and surprised by this attitude. "Mike, I—"

"Can the crap and the excuses; I don't have the time," he snapped, cutting her off. "You know what you are, Brenda? I don't think you do, and I'm not sure you ever will, but I'll tell you anyway. You're a professional psychopath. Oh, your kind's been around since somebody formed tribes, and every time we don't deal with your type because you're useful. You sleep sound at night with a clear conscience no matter what. You can order the execution of five hundred innocent people and witness the event if you can see a military objective to doing it, but it doesn't bother you as long as that objective's there. Nobody's a real person but you. Everybody's just some kind of playing piece on a huge chessboard filled with little miniature soldiers and civilians, and you're the kid playing with the toys."

"You didn't think of me that way when I was useful to you."

"Sure I did. Everybody did. Everybody always has. But you
were
useful. You enjoyed wallowing in the slime and muck of other people's lives and secrets, and you would do or order all those distasteful and evil things we wanted to do but couldn't ourselves. Better for your sort to serve those with some conscience than those with none, but it's only as long as you serve. When you start knocking off the boss and trying to take control, you're nothing but another Watanabe, mad as hell and a danger to everyone."

"If you feel this way, why not have me executed, then?"

"Because you're no worse than many around here, for one thing. Because you screwed up so badly that you no longer have a power base. You want an assignment? Use that power of yours. Go out and carve a big pocket and tailor it to your own likes, then try to see if you can talk anybody into moving in there. Only watch your back."

She was feeling angry now. "I'm no common girl you can just push around and cast off! I still have influence and followers around. You may regret this."

"Love, you got nobody. Let me tell you this before I order you out of here for good—and don't try to get back in. Folks here have power, too, and they'll cut you into little pieces. You better get a head start, woman. Your old exec, Singh, turned down a job in my command. He's got a band of men and women who all want to find you. They don't have much in common except varying degrees of sensitivity—Moslems, Hindus, Catholics, Baptists, maybe a few Buddhists and Jews and God knows what else—but they all hate your living guts. All of 'em lost something when your little scheme got played out. Some lost family, some lost friends, they all lost their religious base and their cultural heritages, but Singh's the worst. You stole his ideals and his dreams. They're all good people, but they won't be good for nothing until they find you."

That hit home. Enemies out for revenge she understood completely, although Singh's participation particularly hurt her. She had always felt that they were two of a kind.

"Mike—if that's true, you
can't
send me out there and I
can't
build a pocket! You know that! You at least owe me
some
protection."

He thought a moment. "There's only one place you'd ever be safe, Brenda, and that's in Anchor. I'll guarantee secure and safe escort to the Anchor of your choice. Best I'll offer. Get there, get rid of that uniform, maybe change your looks a little first, and go. A bunch of Ngomo's officers blew Watanabe away over at Headquarters Anchor and your old pal Suzuki's taken over the church. She
might
have a job for you. Either that or use that power to totally change yourself. You can't change the way you are, but you can sure as hell change everything else. Make yourself look so different, nobody will ever be sure it's you."

She sighed. "Well. I guess that's it, then."

He shrugged. "Yeah, that's it. Get lost. Brenda. You're scaring the troops." And, with that, he stalked off.

She left an hour later on horseback, thinking about what he'd said and about the future. She accepted his moralizing as a cleansing of his own conscience rather than any reflection on her, but he had made one strong point. She had failed and so caused a disaster of unprecedented proportions and consequences. A good military officer knew what happened when you did that, even if it wasn't your fault. It was your command, so you take the fall. She was most certainly retired.

She still had trouble believing that Singh was hunting for her to do her harm, but she knew that word of her role and the resultant blame had gone all over the void by this time, and she was never in the world's most popular job. Worse, she'd been in the same general area for quite some time amid a communications command post staffed by many who probably felt like Ryan, and this group could not be far away if Mike had offered them jobs.

Suzuki she rejected out of hand. She knew how much power the head of that church had; she'd helped with that Holy Book thing herself. If a Mike Ryan, on top, could turn on her, then Suzuki was a sure bet to do the same. What could she be anyway? A temple Warden? A glorified security guard? The Anchor Guard was all male; that had been part of the division of power.

Her inbred paranoia began playing tricks on her mind. Was that a shape over there? Were those muffled hoofbeats coming from somewhere close? Had Ryan really given her a head start, or arranged her execution?

She halted, dismounted, and felt the power of the grid. She was
sure
she was being followed. If not by them, then by some of Ryan's people, spying on her and reporting her position to her would-be assassins. It's what she would do in reversed circumstances. There was no time to really prepare for this now. She had to become invisible to them—fast.

She felt sudden twinges of panic. The void seemed to be closing in on her, filled with menacing shapes. What to do? What to do? Change of size and perhaps race was mandatory. It barely mattered to her so long as she was healthy and in a permanently youthful state. Still, she hesitated. Something was wrong. While she thought about it she enacted a small program changing her horse from a black to a roan, and the saddle to a basic model. No sense in being betrayed by that. But what was wrong with a complete body change? Something Mike Ryan had said.

"You can't change the way you are. . . "
..

She would still act the same, like the same things, do things in much the same way, see the world the same and react to it that way.
What was that over there?
They would know that, too, and if Singh were their leader, he'd spot her if she were in the body of a ten-year-old boy and so would some others close to her for decades. Ryan, too, for that matter.

"You can't change the way you are. . . "
...

Well, why couldn't you? Suzuki and she had done it a thousand times to other people. She couldn't, of course, because Ryan assumed that she would never wish to change anything basic and really couldn't order it subconsciously when push came to shove. It was because she liked herself pretty much the way she was. She didn't have any fantasies to draw on.

She knew now that they were out there, closing in. She knew she had very little time, and she tried hard to suppress her nerves and think clearly. If you didn't think clearly, you made mistakes, and this shit was like dealing with the devil. You had to be dead certain of the wording of the contract to get what you thought you were getting.

Loopholes . . . Maybe that was it. Could you pose a specific problem clearly to the computer and command it to solve it with a program? Was that possible? Maybe, if a program already existed that would fill the requirement. Wording, though, had to be careful, considering how much discretion the computer would have. She didn't want to be turned into one of those wimps she'd sent back to the Bedouins.

She felt a disturbance along the grid power line and she knew then for certain that someone was coming. She had no doubt of their intent. It was now or never. Survival or a fight right here, her one gun and powers against how many of them? She drew the Flux to her. So long as she retained her power, she could correct or fine-tune anything later. Security had to be willing to endure the unthinkable. She would order a complete change even though she didn't want to. She had the will to do so. It was necessary. Carefully, she framed the command string. It was somewhat mathematical and in a precise command structure, but basically this is what it was:

Command: I wish to be altered so completely that no one will ever even suspect now or in the future my past or identity, yet I wish to retain my freedom of action, memories and self-identity, and my sensitivity powers. Run!

The command passed to the nearest computer, which passed it on to the next, which just happened to be Seventeen, which passed back a program that met the requirements.

Brenda Coydt felt every cell of her being tingle, and there was a momentary disruption of her corporal self, then she was back once more. Back, but she still felt very strange. Her body
tingled.
She felt turned on, and every movement only added to it.

She looked down at herself and saw that she'd changed physically a great deal. Huge breasts, tiny waist, nice hips, gorgeous legs. Her hair was very long, almost ass-long and thick. She had a vaguely dark Oriental complexion with no mars or marks. She was stark naked.

She walked over to the horse and saw by comparison that she was much shorter than she had been. She began to fumble on tiptoes for the maps in the saddlebag, finally getting them out. She looked through them and discovered that she couldn't make any sense of them at all, not even the little words. She'd been rendered illiterate and something had been done to her spatial perceptions. She tried to figure out where she was and where she wanted to go to from the grid map and got hopelessly frustrated and confused and abandoned it in less than two minutes. She sat down on the Flux floor and for the first time since she was a little child she felt tears in her eyes.

Finally, she got hold of herself and tried to think it out. She knew who she was and what she'd done. Well, she had the power. She tested it out, bringing it up and thinking, hard,
I want a red apple.

The Flux swirled, and an apple appeared before her on the Flux floor. She picked it up and started to munch on it, then stopped and frowned. What else had she wanted to do?
Mirror!
she commanded, and a thin sheet with high reflectivity appeared before her, showing her for the first time her full form. It was one that was familiar.

Kitten!
she thought.
It made me Kitten!
As a transitory program, of course, unlike the original, and also one with Flux power. Seventeen
had
been the one with an apparent sense of humor. But this wouldn't do. Wouldn't do at all.
I want to read and write!
she commanded, but nothing happened. The maps remained as enigmatic as ever. Why would it give her an apple and a mirror but not those things back?

And suddenly she knew why. The things she'd asked for were stock programs keyed to individual words or needs. God-gun stuff. She was asking for a change in a very complex program, and that required orders and statements to be made in a precise mathematical way.

She shook her head. What was she thinking about anyway? Something was there, something important. Something about reading. Why would she want to read? She again stared at herself in the mirror and began to masturbate. It felt so good, she didn't want to stop for a long time.

A corner of her resisted. This was
too
good a disguise. She had fantasies like she never believed possible, and she'd experienced an intensity just with herself that was beyond any normal human to know. She knew that if she didn't soon find somebody powerful enough to bring her out of it she wouldn't want to. She was everything she always detested in women and her body made her love it.

A Signals patrol found her soon, and was amazed. "What's
your
name, and how'd you get out here like
that,
honey?" the corporal, a big, good-looking fellow asked her.

Can't tell
them
the story.
"My name's—Candy," she said sweetly in a high, sexy voice. "I don't remember how I come to be here. I really don't remember nothin' much at all."

They'd seen cases of powerful enforced transformations and assumed that she'd encountered an independent Sensitive with a real hot lust and no room for excess baggage. "Well, get up on your horse and we'll take you in to civilization," he told her. "It'll be a-ways though."

For ten days in the void she had to suppress everything about herself, her knowledge of Flux and Anchor, and, of course, Coydt, and let the body take command, and she willingly gave it a workout with all who were interested. By the time they reached one of the new big pockets, she had forgotten what it was like to be anyone else. Still, way back in her mind, she felt ashamed to be this way and knew she'd get it changed sometime. Still, whom could she trust? The place was crowded with Moslems and Hindus and even some Sikhs, and some of them, including the man who had created the place, were former Security personnel from Anchor Luck.