Masters of Flux & Anchor

by Jack L. Chalker

  Cassie was near the center of power and decision, but such things simply didn’t interest her anymore. She had returned with Tilghman to the capital, a very different place than it had been in her youth, with only the ancient temple, with its shiny no-maintenance facade and seven towering spires, really recognizable. Much of the old city had been demolished, and in its stead had risen large buildings for research and administration, others for the central market and general services. Most of the workers lived in large, spacious apartment buildings where quarters were as limited or grand as the man’s job and social rank, which also determined which building you lived in. For the top, though, there were now a series of grand structures around Temple Square, luxurious homes which had previously been seen only as dwellings for Fluxlords. The largest and grandest of these, facing the temple entrance itself across the park, was Tilghman’s.

  She was awed by it even before stepping inside, and once inside she saw that the ornate carpeting, the huge rooms all tastefully furnished, the art and statuary—female nudes, mostly, she noted with some amusement—were all of a kind only a Fluxlord could have. “You are mistress of this place,” he told her proudly. “The serving girls are all unmarried daughters of prominent men, and they will address you as ‘Mistress’ or ‘Madame.’ Other wives must do their turn in the public buildings, but this is your sole responsibility. It will not be easy. There are a lot of official parties and receptions that must be held here.” But she was so in awe of the place that she hardly heard him.

  The staff included a huge number of young girls, mostly between the ages of ten and fifteen. They would be married off, of course, but others would take their places. These girls were, in fact, the new generation that had been born into the system and knew no other. They were ignorant that any other way existed; their education had been entirely tailored to the roles they were expected to fill. They knew the skills Cassie had to learn, and she threw herself into the job enthusiastically.

  The work was exhausting and time-consuming, and for a place that size it never ended, but Cassie earned the respect of the staff by being willing to try herself any and all tasks she asked of them, and to keep at it no matter how hot or dirty it was until she could do it with the best of them. She found none of it drudgery, and took great pride in the results.

  Adam had proven very well endowed, and very, very good, although she was, in fact, virtually a virgin. She quickly learned what he wanted most, and learned new tricks from the other girls. She felt insatiable, as if making up for all those years of deprivation, which, of course, she was.

  In a few weeks, Tilghman had held what he called a “diplomatic reception,” actually a party for both rewarded party functionaries and for representatives from places, both Flux and Anchor, with which they did business. In truth, it was to show her off.

  It was a gala affair, with music and dancing, but later on that evening, while she was over checking on the small pastries and drinks, a young woman approached her. She was a knockout by any standards, short, pert, incredibly cute and very, very sexy, with breasts that had to measure over a hundred and five centimeters. Cassie had always wondered how such women bore the weight, and how they kept from chafing in this braless society. Still, there was something oddly familiar about the girl… .

  “Cassie?” the stranger asked, in a soft and sexy soprano.

  “Yes?” She was somewhat startled to be approached so familiarly by a stranger.

  “Don’tcha rec’nize me? Even after all this time I kinda hoped y’might. ‘Course, you never seen me lookin’ like this,” she continued, displaying a pronounced and sexy lisp. “I’m Suzl. Suzl Weiz.”

  Cassie’s mouth opened, and then they were embracing and crying and hugging again. Finally they broke, and Cassie looked at her old friend. “Look at you!”

  “Look at you,” Suzl retorted. “Oh, Cassie, you are gorgeous!”

  She felt warm at the compliment. “You only say that because you know how impossibly beautiful you are! All that was fat is now in your breasts and it looks wonderful there!” They laughed at that.

  “Cassie, when I came I didn’t know what to ‘spect, but it’s really not a bad life here. It ain’t perfect but it’s the best I ever had. I hope it’s the same for you, too. You glow with beauty.”

  “I truly am happy, Suzl,” she responded, and realized that it was somewhat true. “The old days, the old times—they happened to someone else. I can hardly even remember them now, except that they were mostly sad, miserable times.”

  “Suzl unnerstands. If I bring back the bad times, I’ll go and stay way aways from you.”

  “Oh, no!We just must be friends! You have much to teach me about life here. I need a friend bad.”

  Suzl smiled. “Well, O.K. then. Oh, Cassie. we’ll get t’make friends all over again! It’s gon’ be great! You’n me.”

  “Do you have any children?”

  Suzl smirked. “Ten.”

  “Ten!” She was filled with envy and admiration.

  They were about to continue when one of the young serving girls came up. “Pardon, Mistress, but your husband sends for you.”

  And that was it; all other thoughts and wants simply fled. Suzl understood; she was subject to the same thing. Cassie hurried across the hall to Adam, approached, dropped to one knee and bowed her head, waiting to hear what he would say to her.

  It was a small price to pay for being a wife instead of a drone.

  At the end of the evening, when all had gone and the basic cleanup had finished, Adam, tired by a very long day, had gone quickly to sleep. Cassie, however, lay in bed in the dark and thought for a while.

  All the ghosts of the past were there, but she shut them out. She had no desire to be a man, to take on that responsibility and those worries. She had gone that route, and it had brought her only misery, deprivation, loneliness, and despair. She wanted it no more, did not desire it in the least. There were compromises to be made in this life, but they were, on reflection, no worse than other compromises everyone had to make.

  What had her life been? First an ugly duckling tomboy, then a dugger—property, really—who was used by the major powers of World and saw her lover die in their arguments. One who was then used by those same powers, who convinced her it was her destiny to mount a revolution and become a saint. Years in which she had deprived herself of everything, while killing those who did not bend to her and overlooking the sins of those who went along, even depriving herself of her own daughter’s growing up and exposing the innocent child to evil and a life of savagery. Spirit could have still been here now, normal and married and happy, had she not been corrupted by her own mother’s stubborn defiance and chosen savagery over this. And for what? The Reformed Church that mother had built had been false to the core; the Empire she’d founded had crumbled quickly into disarray, leaving most no better off than before, and at the cost of thousands dead to build it.

  No collar or spells had converted her, in the end. They had only served to show her how ugly and futile it had all been. No more. She liked being a wife, she liked someone else to do the thinking for a change, she liked being sexy and have men’s eyes twinkle as she swayed by, she liked the idea that she might have a second chance to be a mother in every sense of the word. She liked being the center of attention rather than the center of power. To Hell with the past and all its damage! She was going to live in the present now, and that was that.

  It was too late to wonder if she had done right, so she dismissed the question from her mind. A binding spell could never be undone, and could be transferred only by the efforts of a wizard more powerful than the accepter. And Coydt van Haas was dead, thank Heaven!

  5

  SOUL RIDER’S SONG

  “We can’t just sit here and twiddle our thumbs!” Jeff protested. “We have to do something!”

  Sondra had sent word to him, summoning him quickly from Globbus to Pericles.

  “What do you think we ought to do, sonny boy?” the str
inger snapped back. “Mobilize half of World? They’d laugh at you. Go back and forth through every inch of the void? You could fly within fifty meters of her a hundred times and never see her.”

  Jeff was a large, muscular young man with wild hair and a thick, if unkempt, full black beard. “It’s easy for you! It’s not your mother and grandmother who might be dying out there someplace!”

  That hurt, and required an answer. “Jeff—I was saving this for a better time, but I’m your aunt. Spirit’s my sister.”

  He stared at her. “Don’t feed me that shit. Cass only had one kid.”

  “That’s true, but Spirit and I have the same father.”

  He was suddenly fascinated. “You mean—you’re one of Matson’s kids?”

  She nodded. “So, you see, I’ve got a stake in this, too. A personal stake as well as a professional obligation. The only thing I can figure out is that they always shadowed Mervyn, and when they saw I was going off in the right direction they took a chance on me.”

  “Yeah, well, it seems to me—”

  “Look, Jeff,” she interrupted, “let’s get a few things straight. First of all, I could have handled the duggers and that whatever-it-was machine, but so could your grandmother. Those duggers couldn’t have stalked Mervyn and me, made the right choices, and organized to do what they did. Somebody else put them up to it, and that somebody did their thinking for them. And that someone was powerful enough to literally collapse and undo the whole Fluxland, while keeping me at bay almost as an afterthought. And I’m a pretty strong wizard.”

  He calmed down a little. “Yeah—but who? Where do we start?”

  “With Zelligman Ivan,” Mervyn’s voice told them, and they turned to see the old wizard enter.

  “Mervyn!” Sondra exclaimed. “Thank Heaven they found you!”

  “ ‘Bout time you got here,” Jeff grumped.

  “I was up north trying to get some coordinated action against New Eden,” the old man said. “A messenger came a few hours ago and I rushed down here as quickly as I could. I’m not cut out for turning into birds anymore. I’m bushed.”

  “You said something about Ivan?” Sondra reminded him.

  He nodded and sank into a chair. “Yes. He’s been working this cluster and has been up to all sorts of mischief for a year or more.”

  “Then that’s who I was thinking of facing down back there?”

  “Most likely. And a good thing you didn’t, my dear. You’re no match for him, nor are most people. He’s not like the Haldaynes or Coydt van Haas; he generally likes to be in the background and get others to do his dirty work. But when he’s cornered, he’s among the best there is. Lots of folks might lie in wait for Cass, if they could find her, but only Ivan would try for a clean sweep.”

  Jeff felt distinctly unhappy about all this. “Where do you think he’s taken them?”

  “I doubt if he has your mother. If he does, he won’t keep her. Soul Riders bother them, and they’ve never really beaten one. As for Cass, she’s strong—very strong—and the threat to Spirit will feed her emotions and therefore her power and will. He won’t want to chance tangling with that sort of power. I’d say he’s taken her to Anchor.”

  “Then you think she’s alive? We’ll go after her—”

  Mervyn held up his hand and Jeff sat back down in his chair. “No, it’s not that simple. I think she’s alive, yes, because he had no need to go to all this time and trouble just to kill her. Now, Sondra, before we proceed, I want all the details of the visit and the attack. All of them. Leave nothing out, no matter how trivial or inconsequential it might be.”

  As Jeff fidgeted and fumed, she did as instructed. When she finished, Mervyn just sat there a moment, deep in thought. Finally he said, “Well, if it is any consolation at all, the projector you describe is not intended as a lethal weapon. Its builders intended it essentially to negate powerful wizards. It seems to both knock you cold and cut you off from any Flux power or feeling. The effects last from a few minutes to a few hours, but that’s neither here nor there. It’s long enough for a powerful wizard to spirit someone from the middle of the void to an Anchor, certainly.”

  “Who would build such a thing?” Jeff asked.

  “New Eden, of course. They hate wizards, but they need them for some of the things they do. This sounds like a payoff of some sort, I fear. Or, perhaps, a wizard’s attempt to curry New Eden’s favor.”

  “Huh?” Jeff was startled. “What would those guys want with Grandma?”

  “They have always had a paranoia about her. She thumbed her nose at them twenty years ago and many have never forgotten it. She was born and raised there, and they were responsible for killing her father, whom she practically worshipped. She’s a powerful wizard with powerful friends who’s led conventional armies. They think she’s the biggest threat to them going.”

  “Then they want to execute her!” Jeff almost shouted. “We’ve got to go get her!”

  Mervyn frowned. “Must you yell so? No, I sincerely doubt that. It wouldn’t fit their curious mind-set. They will seek to turn her, to change her into one of their own. It would earn them powerful friends, a great deal of fear and respect, and be the ultimate food for their egos.”

  “They—they can’t really do it, can they?” Sondra asked nervously. “I mean, I didn’t speak with her for long, but she didn’t look like somebody they could do that to without Flux power, and she’s strong there.”

  “You have no idea how devastating modern brainwashing techniques, as they’re called, can be on any mind. Every weakness is defined and exploited, and I’m afraid Cass has quite a number. And if they can’t wear her down enough to take a binding spell, well, she’s powerful, perhaps as strong as Zelligman, but if she had to face not only Zelligman but a half dozen other Fluxlords at the same time… . Yes, I’d say that at least they think they can do it, or they would never have tried it.”

  “Then we have to go in there! Rescue her!”

  Mervyn sighed. “Jeff, aside from you, there is no one with more respect and love for Cass than I, mixed in with some not inconsiderable guilt on my part. I have just been in Anchors Abehl and Yonkeh, and I must go yet to Anchor Gorgh and perhaps further. Part of those efforts were to defend the Gates, but I’m also trying to organize support for some move on New Eden before it’s too late. And I’m having almost no luck at it, I fear. They’re scared, Jeff, and that gives New Eden a free hand. And they have a perfect right to be scared.”

  It was Sondra’s turn to be surprised. “They’re that powerful?”

  “They are. Where do you think those amplifiers they used twenty years ago to take over Anchor Logh came from? Coydt had them built, in bits and pieces, in various industrial Anchors, then duplicated them in Flux. That ray weapon they used is the least of their arsenal, most of which we can’t possibly understand. Coydt somehow discovered, amassed, or perhaps even inherited or stole a wealth of ancient writings describing exactly how to build and use these sorts of things. And he assembled a brilliant technical staff to study and experiment with them. Coydt’s forces were dangerous before, but now that they’ve an Anchor to use for their trials and experiments, a place where everything is always consistent and under natural laws, they’ve learned so much about these ancient devices that they have a monopoly on terror. New Eden’s bosses inherited them all, and have encouraged them in every way, as well as recruiting bright young men from all over World to come and help. When you’re offered a job studying and deciphering a scientific revolution, and doing so in a setting where you’re surrounded by beautiful, sexy women who only want to serve you—well, they’ve got the best.”

  “Somehow I can’t imagine Grandma as a sexy plaything.”

  “Neither could she,” Sondra said. “That, I think, is part of her problem of late, although who am I to know for sure?”

  “Very astute.” Mervyn approved. “Sometimes you can be too close to someone to really know and understand them. But, you see, Jeff, nobody’s going
to go after New Eden until it scares them directly. The other Anchors and far-off Fluxlands see them as simply another land, a cross of Flux and Anchor perhaps, but that’s about it. To take a land defended with weapons so powerful, the cost would be enormous—and they lost enough of their people in the wars for the Empire. I’ve failed to convince them that they will lose more than their lives if they don’t move,”

  “And just days ago you were telling me what fine folks they were in New Eden,” Sondra noted acidly. Jeff didn’t hear.

  “O.K., so maybe an army can’t get in—but what about a small number? One or two folks, maybe. It’s been done before.”

  “It was done years ago, yes, but that was different. It’s extremely well policed now. The populace is conditioned, men as well as women, to be supportive. If their security devices did not match their weaponry, don’t you think I would have made a raid by now? Oh, it’s been tried by the best, but if anyone has pulled it off we don’t know it. You’ve never been under those kinds of conditions, Jeff. None of us have. I have some indirect channels of intelligence through the Fluxlords who do business with them, but nothing else.”

  “They still use stringers,” Sondra pointed out, thinking of alternatives.

  “Yes, but it’s all unloaded right on the apron. Stringers do not go in because their loyalties are suspect. And if they did, it wouldn’t be you, Sondra. They’d love to get a crack at converting you.”

  “Are you telling me we just leave Grandma in the hands of those bastards?”

  “For now, we have no choice. We just pick our opportunities and watch for them, but I can’t see how we can do anything now. No, it’s Spirit we have to be concerned about. I fear that she is out there, confused and all alone in the Flux, with very limited powers. She can follow strings if she’s lucky, but she won’t know where they lead until she gets there, and the closest main string is Logh to Abehl. We’re covering that. I have a huge reward posted and there are hundreds searching now.”