05. Children of Flux and Anchor (32 page)

Worse, if they started getting wise over there that somebody was shadowing them, there was no effective camp that wouldn't be well in range of even a sweep. Matson knew it was time to make a move or move out, and soon.

Spirit's messages contained less than she would have hoped, due to her relatively confined position. They had been trying to train the Eves to at least perceive and recognize Flux power, but so far they had totally failed. Lately there had been talk of impregnating all of them by major wizards so they could determine whether any Flux power they might have had once would be passed on to children. Suzl had been around once to look at them, and had some means of talking and seemed clearly in charge. That was about it, though.

Morgaine returned with Dell, but her mood was mixed. They had gone into Logh itself while he'd hit on his contacts, and she had certainly more than relieved her tensions with variety, but she wasn't sure she liked the results. "I didn't like those people," she told them, "but I found it harder and harder to keep any sort of control there. Something about being around all those men. ... It was like a drug. I hated them and myself for it, but much more and I would have done
anything
in exchange for being laid. Now I think I really understand what they did to those poor women at the start of it; the original Fluxgirl formula."

"You have a taste," Sondra responded understandingly. "Only a taste. You see, you still had enough self-control to break away and come back and talk about it. We didn't. We
literally
couldn't resist. That's what's at work down there, in the Fluxland. All that experience, that
helplessness,
and fear of it coming back. Ayesha certainly, and Suzl as well, if not by spell then because of decades of being like that. No love, just sex as a drug you have to have regularly. Suzl was turning back that way again, and she hated it. Now, over there, surrounded by a whole land of females only, she's going after the lowest common denominator of that fear. If she can produce a world without men, she thinks, she can beat that beast inside of her. Suzl's war now isn't really with New Eden, although they caused it, or against men. It's against herself."

Dell had some mixed news from very high sources. "The projectors can't be really mass-produced," he told them. "Each one has to be built by hand as an individual piece, then tested and checked and fine-tuned. They feel they're going to need a dozen just to take on what they still insist on thinking of as Borg Habib's band."

"Seems excessive from their own viewpoint," Matson noted.

"Maybe, but they figure that once they really show what these things can do and that they're not as helpless in Flux as they appear to be, some of the Fluxlords will gang up on them to stop them. They think a dozen is the minimum necessary to deal not only with the raiders but with the reaction to their use."

Matson nodded. "All right, I'll grant 'em that much. When will they have a dozen?"

"They figure about four months from now. After that, things will be going along smoothly enough so they can produce and test one every two weeks. They also have a squad of between thirty and forty strong wizard officers. They're not sophisticated and they can't string spells together with the same ease as a world-class trained professional, but what they lack in polish and speed they make up in intensity. These guys are true believers."

"Four months. . . ." Matson mused. "Morgaine? You decided what you want to do from here on out?"

"I don't mind telling you that New Eden scared me," she responded honestly.  "Whoever created that binding spell was diabolically clever. If I go into Anchor it won't take long to have me trapped. If I stay in Flux, I may be even worse, 'cause this just kicked whatever is in my new makeup into high gear. Something in my brain keeps trying to draw from Flux, and so far I'm keeping it in check, but I'll lose. So I can't stay in Flux or I don't know what I'll turn into, but I can't go to Anchor 'cause I
know
what I'll turn into. They win either way. Either I go down and join them or I'm out of everybody's hair forever."

He nodded. "O.K., then. I'd say go on down and hope you keep your sanity up. If we're lucky, you might be able to influence them, particularly Suzl, to get more of a grip on reality. If not, you'll be stable until this thing's through and we can work out some other way around the problem."

"I'm willing," she told him. "After all, Mom's down there, anyway."

"That's one of the things we'll have to take care of first. We're going to need your permission and cooperation to selectively remove a few facts from your mind. Otherwise they'll find out and hunt us down and your mom, too."

"I think I can manage that much," she assured him.

He turned to other matters. "Dell, you get those coded dispatches from the stringer office for me?"

In the end, they managed only to alter her so that she was absolutely convinced that her mother was at Guildhall, with her grandmother. Matson decided to live with that. "It's about time we came out of the bushes anyway," he told them.

Dell took Morgaine down on horseback, bid her goodbye, and sent her into the Fluxland. He then proceeded to the point where Spirit had been sending messages, far to the northwest, to see if there was anything new.

There was, but their names were Gabaye and Tokiabi and they were far too much for him to handle.

They brought Morgaine in through abundant fields of food worked by hordes of identical, naked blond women singing happily as they toiled. She asked for Suzl, but they worked  her through  the chain of command,  starting with a wizard who said her name was Cissy and who was a smaller version of Morgaine herself. Explaining her position now, thanks to the spell, and also her indirect relationship with Suzl, she was passed to a strong wizard named Jodi, who listened critically. Finally, though, they brought her to Suzl in a large and lavishly furnished tent near the center of the Fluxland.

She was somewhat taken aback by Suzl's method of speech, but her heart also went out to the blind half-woman, half-man who had begun as a victim and was now the leader, and Suzl certainly sympathized with Morgaine's predicament.

"I'm sorry they had to do that, but you understand why," the blind leader said in that odd electronic voice.

"Yes, I understand. It was my own fault. The thing is, what can I do about it?"

"Being blind has an odd advantage," Suzl told her. "I'm not sure if your other senses get better or if you're just more aware of them, but it is so. In addition to better hearing, for example, I also find I can see Flux and spells and their interrelationships a hundred times more clearly than before. I can see, for example, that they handed you a few variants, but mostly gave you my old Ayesha spell. I think—I know—that I am the only one alive who understands that spell. The difference is that you have wizard power. Your body and your mind are at war, as mine was before coming here, although mine was more self-inflicted, while yours was imposed. Like my old one, your body is winning, but because it is the Ayesha spell it is accelerated by a high factor. Had you remained in New Eden, you would have become a Fluxgirl whore. Because your mind is so advanced, so intelligent, you could not have stood it. It would have broken. You would have become as witless as one of those Eves out there."

"I suspected that."

"Only being out in the world with a limited number of men saved you this far. Once you went back into an environment with hordes of good-looking men, however, you were done. A few more days out here, and you would have been unable to resist drawing from Flux, changing your own mind into one better suited for the body, and your body would have run wild. You would become a mindless, physically grotesque nymphomaniac. Only coming back here has saved you, but the process will continue if left unabated. I have a way out for you, but larger things loom. You are Spirit's child, but you're not mine. I hardly know you, really."

"What do you want?"

"What you know. What you have learned. How many are with Matson and what do they have that could threaten us? What are their plans? What do they know about us, and who have they told it to?"

Morgaine gave a fairly detailed account of everything, including Spirit's own run-in with the gods of the Garden. It was all accurate, as far as she knew, although she assured Suzl that Spirit was safe with Cass. She also told of the news from New Eden—news that was not very welcome.

"Morgaine, we're going to lose to those bastards," Suzl said with complete candor. "Oh, we'll give them a hell of a fight, and maybe take a lot of them with us over a very long time, but we're doomed to lose. Every time we run a duplication command on the projector we get an exact duplicate. It looks right, feels right, and even down to microscopic examination it is identical, except it won't make contact with the grid. There is no reason why it shouldn't work, but it doesn't. Finally, a few days ago, we took a big risk and had the actual projector read into the computer for analysis while we held everything here without it. The computer held it for hours—you know what
hours
are to a computer? Then it gave it back, and it still worked, and they made a duplicate—and it didn't work. You could access the grid from it, but you couldn't project with it. It was just a damned uncomfortable chair for a wizard."

"Matson had hoped that the Guild experts, who are at least as smart with machines as New Eden, could figure out the trick."

"We've had experts. Experts so smart they can actually build ships to go to other worlds. Something's missing. Some basic thing in the enormous library of the master computers just isn't there. The experts think somebody, sometime, maybe long ago, deliberately blocked access to it, or commanded that it never be released to human beings. The computers, God knows, project their power all the time. Something shuts it down, keeps it from communicating—like a binding spell. Then some bright boys, geniuses probably, in New Eden somehow figured out the key. Deduced it, since they weren't even in Flux and couldn't build one. Our geniuses might figure it out, given years, but not in four months. Our spies and allies in New Eden can't get it for us, except that we know they can't duplicate it in Flux, either. If so, they'd be on us. Maybe it has to be built in Anchor, programmed in Anchor. I don't know. But they will have a dozen at the start and one more every two weeks after."

"But their wizards aren't as good, as experienced, as yours."

"So what? They will be, after a while of using them and taking over and turning some of the better wizards out there just like I have. They can afford to go slow, too. Take chunks, consolidate, wait for more defenders to be ready, then take another bite. There's fifty, maybe sixty million people on this world. Thanks to their size and their real high birth rate, they have maybe twenty percent, one in five, of all the people already, and there's a couple of asshole Anchors and one big Fluxland already going their way. A whole world of tough, loveless, super-masculine men and meek, servile, ignorant, adoring Fluxgirls, all of whom will breed true. Sometimes I think we should have let the
Samish
win. We'd all be slaves—sort of remote components of a master computer, I guess—but it would be equal, anyway."

"There must be a way to counter them," Morgaine insisted. "There
must
be. We beat the
Samish,
we beat the Seven, we beat the old Church—there's always a way."

Suzl smiled, but it was a grim smile. "Perhaps. First it's time for you to choose sides. You fought the binding spells before, but if you don't or won't then there's a place for you here. At least it'll be the last place to fall. Otherwise, I might as well send you back to New Eden to get a head start on the rest of us."

"This is a complex binding spell. How could you alter it?"

"Because I have the key. Everybody who goes through the chamber for a binding spell has the entire proceeding recorded. I can read back in those magic numbers—and without even a chamber."

"And what would you make of me?"

"What you are, only uniform in size with the rest of us. No blocks on literacy or math abilities, so you'd have your full powers restored. And, of course, you would be unable to betray us or to act against us in any way."

"That's it? But, tell me—why make all your wizards this way? Why lock them into this form?"

"Commitment. This body, as designed, is good only for unlimited sex. Nothing else. But the conventional spell leaves the mind alone, as yours does not. You see. I can't command my vision of the new world and expect wizards of training to swallow it. Trapped in this body, however, they have no choice. Only in this environment can your mind take charge, do whatever it is capable of doing. In a conventional environment, Flux or Anchor, with men and women, you would find your physical needs and urges compelling. Once you took my spell you'd still be free— you'd have to be to fully and willfully use your powers. I need minds like yours, Morgaine, but if you take my spell you will either be your own mistress or you will be the mistress of strangers. You all have to act in my behalf or you act against yourselves. You see?"

And she
did
see, and also understood exactly how clever Suzl really was. It was less of a decision for her than the others, though, because she already
had
the physical liabilities but without the power and thus true freedom of action.

"All right. I'll change spells."

"No tricks. When it begins, you'll have a rider spell attached. If you don't accept my spell after clearing your own, you'll wind up accelerating every process in body and mind. You'll make Ayesha seem like a plain schoolgirl. And then we'll deliver you to New Eden."

"I won't fight it if you're being honest with me. Then what?"

"You spent your whole life studying Flux and spells. You know more than the lot of us, except those two evil hags I'm forced to play games with right now. I have many wizards with exceptional powers but no really good training, no knowledge of the tricks. You will train them, and any others that come along, as much as you can in four months. They'll be all that will be standing between us and New Eden."