She thought about it. “No. I’ve been this way and I think I’ll stay this way, at least for a while.”
He stared into her eyes. “You ever had sex? With anybody, I mean, of either sex?”
She was startled by the directness of the question, but felt comfortable enough with him to answer it. In fact, around Matson her feelings were oddly different, although she couldn’t really put her finger on it. “No,” she said softly. “Never.”
“Never wanted to?”
“Oh, sure. I had the urges, yes. But I’m just not the sort that boys want, that’s all.”
“Maybe. Maybe for some boys, or men, that’d be true. Most of ‘em only look at the outsides in Anchor, which is why I call ‘em all dumb and ignorant. If I only looked at outsides in the Flux, I’d never have the best dugger team on World and I couldn’t stand ninety percent of the Fluxlands. Arden, now, wasn’t pretty by some standards, although she sure knew how to make herself so when it counted. She was as bald as you, you know.
Kept it that way because she said she didn’t have time in the void to mess with her hair.”
The only view Cass had had of Arden was pretty ugly and not conducive to knowing anything about what she had looked like in life. “I didn’t know that,” she told him.
“You sure you’re not running from sex? I’ve seen it before. Women who get to where they try and make themselves as unattractive as possible. Confess, now. You got rid of those shots back in Persellus.”
“Maybe you’re right,” she responded, her mind a little mixed up at what he was saying, wondering if in fact it was true. “But maybe it’s just that I don’t want somebody attracted to me just because I faked it all with fashions or even magic spells. This is crazy, but I really do like being me, and, right now, I’ve never been happier in my whole life. Does that sound like I’ve gone mad with the void or what?”
“No,” he said gently. “No, it sounds like you did something most folks never really do, in Anchor or Flux. You grew up. Most folks never do. Most of them never will, never would in any case. That’s the bottom line in why I took you on. Now you have to grow up one little bit more or else you’re going to lose something. Either you can hide behind that boy’s face and voice and keep forcing those feelings down or you can say the hell with it and let it out. If you hold it in and hide, then you’ll still make a hell of a good dugger but you’ll never be a complete “human being.” He pointed to the regular duggers, all misshapen, most deformed inside and out. “The Flux will just reinforce it, like it reinforces their own problems. Ever think that any of them has enough on account to get themselves done back to any human form they want?”
No, she hadn’t thought of it. “You mean they’re that way because they want to be like that?”
He nodded. “They’re all hiding, just like you. Oh, they’re not all hiding from the same things, but they’re hiding all the same. We’ll never know what turned them into those forms, so we’ll never know what keeps them that way. But that’s you over there, Cass. Now.”
She didn’t like that idea, but she was in a minor state of shock from his talk, and she didn’t want to admit that he might be right. “So what would you suggest? I shoot the profit making myself into a glamorous sexpot? Who wouldn’t last long in Flux or Anchor?”
He shook his head negatively. “No. If you like it that way, be that way. But be that way because it’s practical, or comfortable, or it’s just you, not because you’re hiding behind it.”
She thought back to that time in Anchor, about all the rejection and her own attitudes and feelings. Was Matson right? Could it be true? “So what do I do if it is true, which I don’t think it is.”
“If it isn’t, prove it. Take the plunge.”
She smiled grimly. “Yeah, that’s an easy dare. Take the plunge with who? Jomo? Nagada? One of the fake Lanis? Seems like everybody around here is either female or not exactly human.”
“There’s one,” he said casually, blowing a smoke ring. “Me.”
She stared at him as if he were suddenly some strange and terrible creature, the man she’d imagined when she first was scared stiff of the sight of him that day back in Anchor Logh. Her emotions were so jumbled up inside her she could neither understand nor sort them out. “You?” She paused a moment. “It’s just Haldayne’s influence. You got a jolt along with them, and coming on top of Arden’s death. …”
“Could be,” he agreed. “Probably at least a little. But that doesn’t mean that anything I said was wrong. Look, I’m not asking you to marry me, just take a tumble up in the hay wagon. The only chance you’ll have to screw your boss and get away with it. Yes, or no? It may be your only chance—I’m going to work the tail off the four of you from now on, and you’ve got to learn how to fight and how to shoot to be any good to me in the long run.”
“You aren’t just teasing me? I mean, this is for real?” She felt oddly distant, her mind and body a confused mess and somehow out of control.
“Nope. Serious. I’ll even pour us each a shot of good brandy so you won’t have the cigar smoke.”
“Yes, all right,” she heard herself saying, as if in a trance.
He got up, and she followed him. They walked forward after he took a small bottle out of his own pack, and he cleared away a couple of dugger guards, repositioning them well away from the wagon. He jumped up, turned, then helped her up, and then put the tarps down front and rear, lighting a small lantern inside with a match so that there was a small amount of light.
They were in there the better part of two hours, and there was little doubt to anyone who noticed what was going on in there, but the only conversation heard was his sudden exclamation, “I’ll be damned! You really are a virgin!” and her soft, nearly unintelligible reply in a tone of voice she had frankly never used before and never knew was there.
“Was,” she responded dreamily.
13
GLOBBUS
The next two days were extremely busy ones, offering little time for the newcomers to have their minds on anything other than business, but it was obvious to those who knew her that Cass had changed. She seemed more relaxed, more at peace with herself, and, if anything even more determined to learn what could be learned and make the most of every opportunity.
As for Cass, while she felt different she couldn’t quite explain what that difference was. It was less in the experience itself than in the sense that some enormous load had been lifted from her mind. It was an odd sensation, but out here, in the void, she felt completely and totally free for the first time in her memory.
Matson had been marvelous that night, even cautioning her that the blood and mess would not happen again, but she hadn’t cared about that. After, though, he hadn’t really referred to it nor treated her any differently than before. He was the boss, and a pretty fair but tough one, and that was all right with her, too.
Equally gratifying to them all was the way the duggers had accepted them, although there was still some strong, underlying suspicion of Dar for his actions in the fight and they bore down on him far harder than on the others. It was clear that he would win their confidence and respect only by superior conduct in the next fight and not before.
It was also clear that the additions, two of them, anyway, made the train dugger-heavy in the sense that there really wasn’t enough extra work for four of them. To everyone’s surprise it was Nadya who proved the most worth, after Cass of course, helping equally with the animals, supplies and repacking, and even cooking. Although Matson had agreed that they would not have to have anything to do with their former fellow captives on this trip, since they knew them, Nadya also proved adept at the literal stringing technique and didn’t mind the nasty comments and envy from the others. Suzl, on the other hand, did the minimum necessary and seemed to spend most of her time with Dar.
Still, they got some arms training, and some other fighting techniques as well, but clearly it would take far longer than the two nights and few breaks they had f
or the starter lessons. Although Dar proved to be the best natural shooter, it was Cass and Nadya who were presented, their last night out, with their own guns by Matson on recommendation of their dugger trainers.
The final day in would be a short one, and Cass rode up to Matson as they approached the Fluxland. “Just wanted to know something about the place before we got there,” she told him.
“Well, it’s like its name. Exactly,” the stringer replied casually.
“It’s like a globbus? What’s a globbus?”
“It isn’t anything. It’s a nonsense word. And that pretty well describes the place. It was set up by the guild the wizards have as one of three places where young wizards could study and practice and perfect what powers they have.”
“You mean it’s like a school?”
He nodded. “In a way. But no school you’ve ever seen before. Think of the mess a hundred or so practicing—and mostly not very good—young wizards might make, then multiply that by the number of students who Went through it, and you have an idea of what real insanity is.”
“It’s dangerous, then?”
He shrugged. “If you mean in the sense of kidnap and kill, no, it’s not at all dangerous. But if you think of it as a playground for a bunch of children of gods, then you get an idea of what it really is. Just remember to stay on the road, trust nobody and believe even less of it, and stick to the central district which is fairly safe and sane by comparison. Don’t let one of the locals sucker or seduce you into something, no matter how innocent. They have what is known as an implied consent rule.”
“What’s that mean?”
“It means that nothing you see can hurt or affect you no matter how it seems otherwise unless you give your implied consent to it. It’s a game with them to get that implied consent, and you don’t have to say ‘yes’ to something to give it, which is why it’s implied. Just think everything through and use all your common sense and you’ll find it is something of an experience.”
She went back and briefed the others on what he’d said, but she couldn’t answer their questions because Matson either couldn’t or wouldn’t. The only way she got the implied consent idea across to herself, as well as the other three, was to remind Dar of his experience in trust in the bar at Anchor Logh that had cost so much.
Globbus began in the manner of all Fluxlands, with things becoming a bit more solid, normal senses returning, and, finally, it opened up into a real place in every sense of the word. Or was it? It was very easy from the start to see why Globbus was nonsense.
Grass grew in multicolored striped and checked patterns. Cows and horses in the fields had any number of legs and even heads, and looked like creatures put together by a bunch of drunks and then painted in outlandish patterns. Trees in places looked like nothing they’d ever seen, and some grew upside down, roots high in the air, while others had weird looking fruit. Dogwood would occasionally bark at them, and pussywillow purred or hissed, and at one part tiny crabapples scuttled back to their branches, pincers closing. Hills and bushes were sculpted into fantastic shapes, and even the sky often changed colors and at one point was half a dull pink and half dark as night, with stars shining, some of which had the disconcerting habit of occasionally racing to new positions and patterns as you watched.
Water flowed in no particular direction, and some waterfalls flowed up. Large clouds floated by overhead and suddenly decided to make obscene gestures at the travelers below. Few people were seen, and none close up, until they approached the center of the Fluxland and its university proper.
There were buildings now, large and small, no two even remotely alike. One very normal-looking stone house was atop a high and very fragile-looking tree with no sign of a way up or down; another was a traditional cottage with peaked red slate roof, sitting upside down on its roof point. As they watched, two rather ordinary looking young men approached the house, stood there, flipped upside down in the air, then walked in the upside down door, their heads about three meters off the ground.
It was a bit much for any of them, but it was particularly stunning to the captives, for this was the first Fluxland they had ever seen. Most just gawked in disbelief or tried not to look, particularly at some of the people, who were only theoretically people. It was easy to see, looking at them, why this Fluxland was no inhibitor to duggers. The entire train moved into the center of what could be loosely called “town”.
The street was not crowded, but was nonetheless a mob scene. In front of them, a small horse was riding a man, while on a porch two ugly-looking old dogs were arguing in perfect human speech about the proper solution to an abstract mathematical problem. People with two heads argued with each other, while others looked lizardlike or were part animal, part human, part something else. It was, nevertheless, less a chamber of horrors than a lunatic’s view of World—no, every lunatic’s view of World, all at once.
There was, however, an area in the center that looked normal. It was really four huge two story square buildings around a central open plaza, but that plaza had a large circular stage in the center and cordoned off areas of turf all around it. It was empty now, but it was clear that it was used often.
“That’s the Market Block,” Matson told them. “That’s where we’re going to unload most of our surplus merchandise in three days.”
“Three days! You mean we have to spend three days in this place?” Dar exclaimed nervously. “I mean, two blocks over there is a square rainstorm— and it’s raining up into the clouds!”
The stringer grinned. “Yep. I hadn’t expected to be here so early, but it’s not bad so long as you can get used to the people and animals and whatever wandering about. So long as you all stay in this area, within the Market Block and the four big buildings facing it and on the streets between them, you’re safe. There’s shops and services available in these places that you can’t get anywhere else, particularly at decent prices, because they’re all practice shops for the best students with specific talents rather than the general type like the goddess or Haldayne.”
“You mean the Rory Montagne type,” Cass noted sourly.
“Yeah, like that, but service oriented rather than criminal types. It’s all magic, of course, but it’s all the permanent type. Just about none of this is illusion, remember. There’s hotels in that building over there, as well as holding areas for the Market Block. That one next to it has a huge number of eateries of every size and type. The building across from the hotel is the services building. That’s where you go if you want numbers removed or hair or a whole new you. The one across from the food pavilion is the merchandise mart. Got it?”
They nodded. “Now, how do we draw on our accounts?” Cass wanted to know.
“First you say you’re with the Matson train, then sign for it when they give you the bill. I’ll let you know any time you want what your balance is, since they’re all posted to the train bill at the hotel center. Most Fluxlands have their own money of some kind, just like the Anchors, but the universal unit, used here as well, is the kil. It’s short for kilogram, but nobody knows now what it’s a kilogram of. That’s long lost in history. It’s broken down into a hundred grams, of course, but don’t look for it. It’s all on paper, and settled on common bills paid out of established accounts.”
“Well, that’s fine,” Nadya put in, “but how do we know how much we have to spend of this money?”
He thought a moment. “You don’t, since I haven’t sold your stakes yet. Cass, you and Dar should figure on no more than two hundred kils each, while Suzl and Nadya might have a little more— but, remember, you two girls, you have to stake yourselves out of that when we pull out, so keep it in the fifty to seventy kil range. That’s for everything here except hotel, which the train picks up.”
It was clear from the central lobby of the hotel building that they were far from the only train in Globbus. In fact, there were at least four, and Matson was greeted with shouts and waves from a host of duggers, most of whom looked even
worse than his, and at least one tall, dark, exotic-looking female stringer who ran up and gave him a big hug. Cass had to suppress more than a little tinge of jealousy, but she kept control of herself. It was just a reminder of the new enigma, that the unattainable, now attained, was still unattainable.
The rooms were large and comfortable; in fact, more comfortable than those Cass had stayed in in Persellus, with the floors fully carpeted and a small parlor area with two chairs and a sofa. The room had a bathroom, and Cass, who elected to stay with Nadya, had the joy of being the old sophisticate showing the rube the joys of running water and flush toilets.
They weren’t needed to check in the team and cargo, so they were free as soon as they were settled in, and the foursome met again in the lobby and went first to the food pavilion to eat. The amount of choices was overwhelming, although some of the prices gave good indication of just how far a kil did, or didn’t go. Although they had all dreamed of a real restaurant meal, they decided to settle, for now, on sandwiches and beer from a walk-up. They noticed, though, that the first floor only was devoted to countless eateries— upstairs were all sorts of bars, entertainment joints, and other signs of a wide-open place the likes of which even Main Street had never seen.
After eating, they decided to tend to first things first, going to the “services” building and trying to ignore the six men and women going by who had wheels instead of legs and feet and seemed to just roll along effortlessly, as well as the woman with the body of many men’s dreams and the head of some sort of short-beaked bird and other oddities.
Dar did remark, though, that in this company he was absolutely ordinary, and there was no denying that.
The building directory listed what seemed to be hundreds of service experts, most of whom were specialists in things they couldn’t make head nor tail of. What, for example, was a master of sustentation? Or a storax modifier, for that matter? And did they really want to know?
Spirits of Flux and Anchor Page 18