05. Children of Flux and Anchor (13 page)

"Now that we all know each other, I think we deserve to know just what it is we're looking for here," Matson told Verdugo. "Just what is it? What's it look like? What's its power and range? What's it supposed to
do,
anyway?" He saw that the major was still hesitant. "Come on, Major. It seems like all the bad guys already know. It's kind of crazy to keep us in the dark after all that."

Verdugo thought for a moment, then decided to talk. Matson was, after all, a field marshal, a rank never more than technically retired.

"It's pretty bulky," he told them at last. "Looks like a chair but a chair built into a heavy machine. It weighs close to a ton, and so it's not easy to move. There's also four antennas attached to the top, but they can be removed when shipped. They only got it on the lorry because it was on a platform and electric winch."

"They knocked out all the power," Suzl noted. "How'd they get it up?"

Verdugo was not used to having women in these conversations, but he answered the question. Things were changed now, at least for the present.

"You always have a backup system. They turned it with teams of horses. Their own and some of the judge's, too. It wasn't hard to do."

Matson nodded. "What about the scientists who built it? None of them were there at the time, surely."

"No, none were. Only a couple of soldiers as guards, both of whom were killed. They just blew in the door, bypassing the security, with some very heavy explosives. We didn't hear it because we had enough noise and mayhem going on with the fires and their own explosions.

Everyone working on the project is now in the custody of the district military commander, to see how the raiders could have known so much. Even allowing all the rest, they knew there was a winch in there and how to operate it, for example, without power. They also blew in the weakest point in the building. Somebody who'd been inside had to tip them."

"Good thinking," Matson approved. "I wonder what they could have offered somebody to sell out? Or what kind of hold they had, anyway. Probably duped somebody into thinking they were working for somebody else. It's easy to fool people when those people think they're too smart to be fooled." He sighed. "O.K., so they have it. Now—can they make it work?"

"It connects directly to the power grid, so it has to be used in Flux or at the Anchor Gate to be worth anything. That's why it was being built and tested out here, close to the Flux border. It's a prototype, so there's not as many safeguards on it as a production model would have, but there are some."

Suzl was thinking. "It weighs a ton, you say? Then, if they can get it to Flux, any competent wizard sitting in it would be able to move it. Not very fast, but they could draw up enough energy to lift it off the ground, and move it forward in fits and starts. If it was up at all, then it could be pulled by horses with no big problem. There wouldn't be any drag like a wagon would cause, and the only friction would be atmosphere."

Both men looked at her with some surprise. This was insecure little Suzl talking about drag and friction?

"All right, they can move it, at least as fast as a stringer train would move wagons," Matson said. "Now—can they work it? Honestly?"

Verdugo thought about it. "If they knew enough to steal it, they probably won't have much trouble figuring out how to work it. It draws tremendous Flux from the grid and then can send it to anyplace else. You program in a grid ID system that's consistent. Any assignments will do, so long as there's no overlap of locations. Simple map work. Block A-25, Block K-144, and so on. That's the only real security item on this one. You have to know what is Block 0-0, or the locations make no sense."

Matson nodded. "Uh huh. So the operator sends a program along the grid to any specific block and it works there just like a wizard was standing there. You said there were four antennae. Does that mean you can send to four blocks at once?"

Verdugo shook his head negatively. "Uh uh. If you have all your locations correct, it forms a circular pattern around the projector. When the
Samish
took off, they drew a shield that extended for a distance of about a kilometer around their flying ship. They, however, were a remote unit of the mother ship, tapped into the Flux at the Gate itself, which was then broadcast to the ship. The more power it got, the more it could expand its shield and link it back to the mother ship's."

"But that was in
Anchor
!"
Suzl protested. "You can't tap the grid in Anchor. That's why magic doesn't work there!"

"Well, ma'am, that's the only thing that saved us down there. They had to draw everything from the mother ship. When the mother ship's connection to the Flux from the Gate was severed, they had no power and it all came tumbling down. Up north they weren't so lucky. That's why so many millions died up there. The ship could draw direct from the grid. Still, when they blew the two other mother ships, they blew whatever brain was controlling the creatures who ran the things and they crashed in confusion. If it'd been
us
in those ships, nothing could have stopped us."

Both Matson and Suzl could visualize it: New Eden operators, flying above Flux and tapping the grid, overwhelming any forces on the ground behind an absolute shield, robbing even the other wizards and amps against them of the power to attack. Armed with their conversion programs, used so devastatingly in conquering the southern cluster, converting those of Flux into perfect New Edenites, Fluxlords and stringers, masters and slaves alike.

"But you never figured how to make it fly," Matson noted. "So what's the range of this thing?"

Verdugo shrugged. "It's never been fully tested. That was for the big full-field tests that were to start next week. Allowing for it being earthbound, at least line of sight or so, they figure. Maybe a circle thirty kilometers out. Maybe a lot more, but at least that. Now you're getting too technical for me, and I don't know the answers, and I don't think those who might would be allowed to give it out anyway, considering how easy it was for these bastards to learn what they did."

"I think we got to figure a lot bigger than that." Suzl told them. "I mean, if a single Fluxlord can make a consistent world a quarter to a third the size of an Anchor, and three or four can make 'em
bigger
than Anchors, like they have been doing, you got to figure this is at least that strong."

"I agree," Matson responded. "I rather suspect, though, that it depends on who's in the operator's chair. Just like some wizards can make a small Anchor, while others can only make big pockets, I think this would be the same. A wizard strong enough to make a Fluxland the size, say, of Freehold, would be able to do a lot more than that because they wouldn't have to worry about stability. The projector would provide that. And, right now, we have no evidence that they have anything like a world-class wizard. The ones we interrogated suggested that most of the band had some wizard power but were only world class when working together. That's not enough. I assume that only one person sits on that chair as operator."

"That's the way I understand it, sir," Verdugo replied.

"Then they need a wizard. If our guesses are correct, Ayesha draws from Flux but it's a fixed program. She has no power to cast spells, nor the ability physically even if she had that power. What about Habib?"

"A false wizard, like you," the major told him. A false wizard could cast spells and create anything quite convincingly—but it wasn't real. It was all illusion and would fail if tested. The best a false wizard could do was scare you to death, since it was impossible to tell if the monster coming for you was false or true until it caught you—but false wizards could see and read strings and make some use of them.

"Then if it takes a hundred of 'em combined to make one good wizard, they aren't much of a threat, even with the chair," Matson noted. "That means they'll take their strongest and use her strictly as a mobile shield. Oh, they'll play with it. Test it out on little things, maybe each other, but they won't be able to do much damage. They're gonna need a world-class wizard to do real mischief."

"More than one, sooner or later," Suzl said. "After they learn about it, and if they have enough horses to transport more, won't they just create more of the projectors out there? One wizard, one chair. Ten chairs need ten wizards."

"No, ma'am, that won't happen," the major explained. "You see, it's not something our ancestors thought of. It's not something they knew how to do. They depended on fixed programs and big amps using the grid directly. They couldn't project it, except the way we know—one wizard calls up one spell. This thing uses a whole different principle. It was designed by the
Samish,
and our version was built in Anchor. There's just no spell for it. Some genius could probably
write
one, if he knew all the details, and had a lot of testing on it, but it's not likely these folk will. If there's no way to interpolate a complex duplication command, and the thing isn't in the big computer's memory, it fills in the gaps for you. It's like nobody can ever think of all the details that would make a Fluxland really work. They just command the basics, and the computers fill in the rest. If you tried it with this one, it would make the power plant a big amp, and if we were told right, you made it so big amps don't work."

She nodded, a little relieved. "That's right. They don't. Oh,
I
see now!"

Matson looked disturbed. "I still don't like it. Out there, what if one of these Soul Rider things got hold of one inside a wizard? First thing it would do is analyze it, send all the data back to the big computers. That's partly what they're for—to keep learning and feeding information to the big machines. They might well decide to give the key to whatever group was in charge at the time just because it might be convenient to have a single, unified culture again. Convenient for them. And they wouldn't care which one, either. Those creatures got a habit of deliberately falling into these things, too."

"When we get this one, we should blow it up, and all the records, too," Suzl told them. "And make spells on all the scientists so they forget how to do it, too."

"Won't work," Matson responded. "Damn near impossible to uninvent something once everybody knows it exists, it's possible, and it works. No, this is a pretty nasty present those creatures left us. In a way, it's more dangerous than they were. And sooner or later somebody's gonna figure out how to make 'em fly and mass-produce them in spades."

Verdugo gave a self-satisfied smile, and Suzl, for one, understood it. Under these circumstances, New Eden would, even now, be rushing into production of these things, this time behind all the military protection known. On the whole planet, only New Eden had the vast industrial base to produce these things in huge quantities and it had a system that could demand and get any sacrifices to make them. Production-line plans were probably even now being drawn up.

While before New Eden was secure and lazy behind a certainty of exclusivity, now it maintained only a technical advantage that would someday run out. If it did not attack and conquer first, it would eventually
be
attacked and conquered by these machines, perfected by other smart minds out there in Flux and Anchor. Although generals down in the capital were probably even now mapping out their plans and scientists were adapting their programs to the new system, the threat was not immediate. These would have to be built, tested, then deployed with trained personnel. Still, New Eden had the population and industry to do it. The chairs might not even need to be deployed. Right now, they just looked like variations of the big amps. They had to be more than that.

A grid,
Suzl thought.
You just tell it the numbers on the grid. . . . Sure! That was it! That was what Verdugo wasn't telling!
Any
grid number! Any one! The grid linked all of Flux, all the Gates, all the big computers.
That's
why it was called a projector. No limits. You could be sitting a few kilometers out in Flux from New Eden and command an area as big as a Fluxland maybe halfway around World!
She wanted to say something, to tell Matson of this, but there was no way now, not with Verdugo present.

They would be slow to build and train, but it would be a quick war. They wouldn't have to go very far—perhaps a hundred meters into Flux from the vast New Eden border, all under impenetrable shields. Then you tap into the grid, all at once, and send not to Gate Four but to Gate One, and divert all of its excess power, and send it outward by feeding in the grid numbers: The Fluxlands crumble, the wizards lose their power, and all of Cluster One becomes one big Fluxland, all in the image of New Eden. All the men become like Major Verdugo, and all the women become like—well, Suzl Weiz had been. But the land would still be Flux, and the male wizards would retain their power, but would have a will to defend and preserve New Eden's system and its philosophy. You could give it back to them; they would sustain it themselves. Then the same projectors tie into Cluster Two and repeat the process. With all the Gates secured, you'd move projectors to each and then fill in the gaps between the clusters. With all World of one New Eden mind save the twenty-four Anchors, most weak, divided, and cut off from one another, you'd have a dedicated army large enough to conquer them one by one.

New Eden would be the soul of World. No longer fearful of Flux, they would control it utterly, and all human beings within it, even in the void, would be New Edenites by fixed program.

Suzl thought of what she had been like as a Fluxgirl, what she was fearing being like one again, and she knew one thing: She preferred
any
vision, no matter how grotesque, to condemning every single woman on World now, and those yet unborn, to permanent status as ignorant, childlike servants and sex objects. It was all well and good for Matson to take the long view and hope for a way out, but he was a man. He would never understand, not on the gut level, as she could. She understood his vague plan, to get rid of Ayesha and Borg Habib and capture the projector for the stringers, no mean scientists themselves. But they had no vision of controlling the world. They would learn how to defend against it and to protect their own. That would probably include Freehold, but how much else? They had been more than willing to accept and deal with New Eden before; they would compromise again, and let the rest of World go hang.