Empires of Flux & Anchor sr-2

by Jack L. Chalker

  “Which do you choose? A happy life—or this? I have little patience left. Here is the binding spell I spoke of. Take it, embrace it, and join your husband. Or refuse it, and stay that way until hunger forces you in.”

  She saw the binding spell clearly in her mind, in Spirit language, but it was far too mathematically compex for her to follow. Why not take it? she asked herself. What choice do I have?

  Matson and Kasdi jumped off the horses not too far from where they had gotten them and, slapping them on the rump, rolled into the brush. The pursuers, following the hoofbeats, rode right on by as fast as they could.

  Matson had been forced to discard his pack, but Kasdi still had her rifle and gun belts, and Matson still had shotgun, whip, and knife. Water would be no problem, but food would.

  They made their way cautiously overland to the southwest, on the lookout for more searchers. But the searchers, it seemed, had lost the trail.

  “What now?” she asked him.

  For a while he didn’t answer, because he didn’t know, but soon they reached a respectable stream flowing in the direction of their travel. He stopped and thought a minute. “If this thing goes all the way to the wall, it’ll either have to empty into Flux or flood. Any big lakes in Anchor Logh?”

  She thought a moment. “Not that I know of.”

  “Then we’ll follow along here as best we can, all the way to the wall. If it can get through, then we might be able to. There must be hundreds of drain outlets. It’s how many people sneaked in and out of Anchor in the old days.”

  “Well, say we can get out. What then? We can’t escape.”

  “We can get into Flux, no matter how little. And in Flux you can conjure up what we need to survive. You can change into a bird—a little one, this time, like Haldayne does—and scout our positions. Even a few square meters of Flux will give us some kind of breather and help.”

  More than ever, she realized how a man with almost no Flux power had survived and prospered in a world of mad wizards for so long.

  There were occasional patrols, but because the search was now over a far wider and less well-defined area, it was easy to avoid them and keep to the river. They reached the wall before daylight and saw that the water flowed through a series of huge drain pipes. There seemed to be no obstacle to passage, but they knew that could be deceptive. The great concrete pipes were all filled with a constant flow of water to almost eighty percent of their area. They studied the problem, noting the lack of guards on the wall at this point, and worried.

  “I’m willing to chance it,” Kasdi told him. “I can’t see how they could have screens or mesh down there without all three pipes clogging up with silt and debris. But that water is fast and deep and that’s a long tunnel. Can you swim?”

  “I can, as a matter of fact. You?”

  She shook her head slowly from side to side. “There was never any place or reason to learn.”

  “It won’t matter,” he assured her. “That current’s so fast that it’ll have you through before you can drown. Most of the drains I’ve seen from the other side are pretty level, often at ground level and rarely more than a meter’s drop. The trouble is, the water will spread on the apron, so it might be shallow and tricky, and there might just be a canyon worn into it with a river this fast. That could make the drop really nasty.”

  “What choice have we got?” she asked him. “I mean, do we climb the wall? Surely that’ll bring people running. We aren’t all that far from one of the strong points of the shield.”

  “I’d say we jump in, take our chances, and let you dry us and our powder out in Flux, not to mention fixing us up.”

  She swallowed hard. “If I’m in any condition to do it. O.K. What do I do?”

  “Take a breath, hold it, and jump in as close to the pipes as you can. Then hang on for dear life, and if you hit the sides, kick away.” With that he looked for signs of life, found none, and ran into the open towards the drain and jumped in. Kasdi waited a moment, summoned up her courage, and followed.

  It was a nightmare that lasted only twenty seconds or so, but it seemed an eternity. Carried along, she was surrounded by endless water and total darkness and flung at high speed against a wall of the drain. She was totally at the mercy of the flow, but, suddenly, she was plunged back into outside air and then fell into a roaring pool. She panicked, but then felt strong arms around her and let herself be pulled by them. She assumed it was Matson, but right then she didn’t care who it might be.

  And then, quite suddenly, the roar and the wetness stopped and they were flung and dropped onto a spongy surface. The water itself struck the Flux barrier and crackled, and was converted into energy itself and added to the void. Wracked with pain, she passed out.

  When she awoke to the same formless void, it seemed almost a familiar friend. She tried to move, and found every single part of her body felt broken. She must have called out, because Matson heard and came over to her. The sight of him was almost unbearable, as he’d removed all his clothes and laid them out on the ground to dry.

  “You all right?” he asked, concerned. “You had a pretty bad time in there. I got sort of banged-up myself, but not like that.”

  She saw that there were huge bruises on his arms and on the right side of his chest. He also had a nasty swollen place over his right eye.

  “I think you got several broken bones,” he told her. “You’ve been out a while. We’re in Flux, though, so you’ve got your power back.”

  “Yeah, Flux,” she responded weakly. “But the pain’s tremendous! I need to do a thorough self-examination and construct—agh!—the proper… formulae and con… centrate. The pain… makes it… hard to… concentrate.”

  He nodded. “Take it slow and easy and one step at a time. Those forces out there got no place else to go, and I don’t think anybody knows we’re here.” He paused a moment. “Just don’t die on me, Cass.”

  She smiled, and drifted back into sleep. It was a turbulent, nightmarish sleep in which she was back in that roaring tunnel once again, only this time not alone. Suzl and Spirit were there, and they were drowning and she couldn’t save them; the whole of Hope opened before her, but all the priestesses turned away from her and began worshipping statues, laughing statues, of Mervyn, and Krupe, and the rest of the Nine, and of Coydt and Haldayne as well. Matson was there, too; she kept trying to reach him for help, but the closer she got to him, the more out of reach he became.

  She awoke again, and the pain was worse, but her mind was clearer. She looked around and didn’t see Matson, but that was all right. She remembered the horror of the dream and feared she might have been calling out things best left unspoken. She tried doing a diagnostic on herself and found that she was in fact in pretty bad shape. Some of her internal injuries were serious enough that she might well have died from them, and would, if they were not corrected.

  She took self-repair in slow stages, shutting off all pain from any but the area she was working on. After a few tries, she realized she just wasn’t going to be able to do a piecemeal approach. She brought up and constructed a spell for a whole new body based on the old, a spell that was tremendously intricate and difficult. She almost passed out several times in doing it, but finally managed and put the spell into effect. She felt relief flow through her and lay there for a while luxuriating in that feeling.

  Matson returned. He’d put on his pants, but little else, and they were still slightly wet. “I assume that’s still you in there,” he said after a while.

  She sat up and smiled. “Yes, it’s me. It’s a body I designed for visiting Spirit in secret. The only one I could manage on short notice. It’ll give me time to concentrate on reforming me as myself.”

  He nodded. “Well, it’s not all that flattering, but if it lets you conjure up something to eat and a way to dry everything out, that’s fine with me.”

  With no references, time had little meaning in the void, but they got their food and drink and dried not only the clothes but t
he weapons and ammunition as well, and she managed to get back somewhat to a normal appearance. Well, not quite normal. She had felt herself eighteen again, out here in the void with just Matson, and somehow she had come out looking eighteen in spite of her vows or herself. She could not have him the way she wanted him, but they were together now, alone, in Flux, and for the moment that was enough.

  In a while, they decided to risk forays into Anchor to see what was going on. Borrowing a trick from Haldayne, one of the Seven she’d bested before, she turned herself into a normal-looking bird and flew out and over the wall. Matson, too, could and did become transformed by her power, and together they scouted the area.

  It would have been easy if she had been able to change back in Anchor, but she could not, nor could she be some human-sized flying beast, for that would require either too much wing to remain inconspicuous or too much weight to stay aloft and remain in touch with the required physics. Still, they were able to map out the terrain and get a look at the guard post and the Flux machine itself. That had been the one risky point, since the wizard operating it might well have sensed her power, and any observer who saw two birds fly into the void would be instantly suspicious of them.

  Both became intimately familiar with the town of Lamoine and the military post on the wall. The town disgusted her. The natives there had discarded ways and attitudes of generations very easily, and both men and women seemed to be acting under the new rules automatically and without threat or supervision. She had expected some laxity, particularly among women off by themselves, but she’d seen none. Of course, their proximity to Flux and a wizard would tend to make them model citizens, she reasoned. Otherwise, model citizens could be made. Her opinion of the human race in general took something of a beating.

  There were some large, predatory species of birds in the area that had been imported from some far-off Anchor generations ago to control a rodent infestation. These had strength and speed, and she used their form to perch right on the wall near the emplacements. They used this not only to steal some more palatable food by snatching it with strong claws, but to snatch items occasionally from the emplacement as well. They didn’t need much; once in Flux with one of them, she didn’t have to know what it was to duplicate it.

  Still, they kept planning and putting off any real attack. For one thing, they hoped for some time that Suzl and Spirit would eventually show up, and they undertook long searches for them to no avail. When they didn’t appear, and had to be assumed captive, another problem arose.

  “The Guardian said we needed the Soul Rider to knock out the machine,” she reminded him. “It obviously amplifies Flux power. How can we do anything without Spirit?”

  “I’ve been thinking about that,” he replied, “and I feel we have to try. I keep going over that Guardian’s message again and again.”

  “It said we needed the Soul Rider to knock out the machine and its operator,” she recalled.

  “Uh-huh. I know we’ve been over this a hundred times, but I knew there was something not right about that, and when you said it, it just hit me. It didn’t say the machine and its operator. It said the machine or its operator.”

  “So?”

  “If we knock out that guard post, the guy in Flux won’t know it right off. The sound’s dampened, as you know. I looked over that machine again and again, and that open operator’s cab is only a little over one meter into Flux.”

  “So?”

  “If I can get my back cleared, I can take him. He’s like most all the wizards; he doesn’t think that anything can hurt him in Flux without being in Flux, and maybe he’s right. But I got a trick I pulled over twenty years ago on the border of a Fluxland called Rakarah that might just work here.”

  But it would take two to work it all, and she was still undecided as to what to do. She simply did not want the specter of her homeland devastated, and she certainly didn’t want it on her head. It was so nice and comfortable being here, just she and Matson, no stress, no responsibility, and nowhere to go. He was getting restless, yes, but he understood her agony and was willing to wait a while.

  And then, flying over Lamoine, they’d spotted a carriage coming into town with some brown-uniformed officer and his lady driving. A close, curious inspection sparked some familiarity in that woman, and when the pair picnicked near the wall, she was able to get a closer and more positive view.

  It was definitely Suzl! Suzl, decked out like all the others, and acting just like they did, and seemingly not minding a bit. She watched as they packed up and walked up to the gate, then to the wall, then down the other side, and then saw, as they approached Flux and the big machine, another figure, casually dressed and in no uniform, come out of the small temporary guard station on the wall and descend to the apron.

  She and Matson returned to their Flux base and became human. “I’ve decided,” she said. “We have to pull her out of there. She’s already half gone, maybe with drugs or something. Now they’re taking her into Flux without Spirit, and she’ll be lost forever.”

  He nodded, but said, “Are you sure about this? It seems kind of funny that they’d bring her here and parade her around and then Coydt shows up. I think they know we’re around. Suzl’s bait to get you out in the open for Coydt, Cass. It’s a trap.”

  “Then it’s a trap we take. You’ve been itching to move. Let’s move now or forget it.”

  Their weapons had been well prepared in advance and needed no more done to them. Practice was impossible; either it worked or it didn’t. Matson set the detonators; then Kasdi changed them into the great birds again and used her power to make the packs fit correctly. They could take off with them in Flux, but whether or not they would be able to handle the weight in Anchor had yet to be proven.

  They flew in formation, one close behind the other, right down the roadway atop the wall. Matson gave a quick glance towards Lamoine and saw no massed troops and made the final decision. They swooped down on the emplacement and let go their loads, then quickly gained altitude and headed for Flux.

  Captain Weiz had waited nervously for a bit at the emplacement, then decided he wanted to smoke. Rather than go further down the wall, he decided to go down into Anchor and see to the horse and carriage. He had barely reached the horse when suddenly the world exploded behind him. He turned and was knocked over by the blast and almost trampled by the panicked animals, but he was the only one able to see what had happened.

  One set of high explosives had struck near the barrels where oil for the night torches and lamps was stored; the other fell on the other side of the small makeshift hut, near the ammunition. When the birds came in, there were only curious stares, but when they dropped loads that clanked metallically on the stone, they leaped into action, some starting to aim at the fast-fleeing birds, others jumping for what was dropped. All too late. Matson had perfect timing.

  Suzl’s initial estimate of their vulnerability had been right. The two containers exploded within a fraction of a second of each other, one blowing the oil barrels and sending flaming liquid everywhere; the other blew up the concentrated boxes of ammunition. The whole post was bathed in a massive fireball; then individual explosives began to go off in all directions. Weiz, on the ground below, could only keep low and try and make himself as small a target as possible. One thing was sure—the wooden stairway was also aflame, and he could not reach the top now even if he wanted to. He looked up when the explosions diminished and made a run for it away from the wall and towards Lamoine. Coydt’s trap had been sprung, but in a way he hadn’t expected.

  Kasdi quickly restored Matson in Flux, then kissed him. “Good luck!”

  “You, too,” he responded softly, giving her a hug.

  Both reentered Anchor east of the machine and saw the remains of their work. Kasdi quickly ran down well past the machine to where they’d seen Suzl and Coydt enter Flux; Matson gave one brief check of the wall to make sure that anybody alive wasn’t going to shoot him, then stood on the apron looking directl
y at the machine, barely visible despite being so close.

  The machine had its own protection against Flux magic, but he had no Flux magic. He had studied this problem over and over again, and he knew he’d better be right.

  Carefully, he uncoiled and tested his four meter bullwhip, then walked right up to the Flux boundary and stuck his head in. He saw the wizard sitting there, relaxed in a comfortable chair, reading something. “Hey!” he shouted. “Trouble on the wall! We’re under attack!”

  The wizard jumped up, revealing the two small probes on his head, and looked puzzled for a moment.

  The whip cracked out, wrapped around the wizard’s neck, and as it did so Matson pulled and was back in Anchor, still pulling. The action was so quick and unexpected that the wizard literally flew off the machine’s cab deck and landed, with a pull, in Anchor.

  Matson cooly walked up to him, leveled his shotgun, and blew the wizard’s head off.

  He unclipped two timed explosive charges, walked into Flux and attached one to the cab area of the machine and another to a random spot on the smooth cube of the basic machine itself. Then he ran back for Anchor, unsure of just what the hell was going to happen when they and that thing blew.

  Kasdi entered Flux and immediately saw Suzl, grotesquely deformed, frozen there about five meters from Coydt. The evil wizard was talking to Suzl.

  “Which do you choose? A happy life—or this? I have little patience left. Here is the binding spell I spoke of. Take it, embrace it, and join your husband. Or refuse it, and stay that way until hunger forces you in.”

  That spell! Suzl was going to accept it! “Suzl! Wait! Don’t do it!” Kasdi screamed.