Masters of Flux & Anchor

by Jack L. Chalker

  She nodded. “I am certain. Suzl said it best, back at the farm. I am what I am, and I’ll never be any different. That’s all right—I like myself more now than I ever have before. But I saw it in Suzl, too. The agony, the memories, the hopeless struggle inside. She coped with an add-on spell, but deep down there’s a sickness in her that’s kept her from happiness. I think she’s craved what I’m asking for years, but she never had a way to do it.”

  He felt her pain and understood her problem. For others it was not so much to bear, but she had shouldered a load far too heavy for anyone to bear and stay completely sane. “If that’s what you truly wish, it can be done. And for Suzl as well.”

  Tears came to her eyes. “You would do this for us?” She knew how he hated magic, and even when he used it it was always through others.

  “I would. Any time you wish. I really do love you, Cassie.” He kissed her gently.

  She thought a moment, deeply touched. “Do it now, Adam. Let it start here.”

  “You’re sure?”

  She nodded. “Now I am.”

  He placed a hand on either side of her head and turned her face to his. “All right, then. Here it is. All you have to do is let it in and take it. If you don’t, that’s all right, too.”

  It was a probability spell, as they were called. The formula basically postulated an existing end product and then created what was necessary to reach it by moving backwards along the probability path the wizard selected. He himself had no idea from where the new past would come or its details although he could establish certain basic elements that had to be present in it— but she would still be as smart and loving and supportive as now. It was, in fact, one of the most common spells on World.

  So depressed was she that she simply let it flow into her and relaxed almost totally, so much so that he had to support her body.

  Her name was Cassie; she had been born sixteen years ago to parents who ran a large farm just outside the capital of New Eden. Her father had later died in battle, her mother a year later in an accident. She had not been attractive as a child, but her father was influential enough to have her made into a Fluxgirl shortly after puberty, guaranteeing a good marriage. They were social equals of the ruling class and had known Judge Tilghman socially, so when her mother died he had shocked and delighted her by making her his wife. She knew it was partly out of pity and partly out of respect for her father, but she had grown to love and respect her husband and believed she had the best life possible to have.

  The details were exacting. Memories of growing up. of playing games, neighborhood girlfriends and secrets—all of it. New Eden was the only culture she had ever known, and she had no concept of any other existence than that in New Eden. She did not know that World was round, or even that it was a world. She knew Adam had taken her with him on this trip because she looked like somebody famous who used to be important and because he wanted to be there when his kids were born. Flux and magic mystified and scared her, but she knew she was safe under Adam’s protection.

  She neither imagined nor desired any other life. Adam gave her love and protection, and provided all a girl could ever want. She’d never want for nothin’, and that was all any girl could really ask for.

  10

  TRANSITIONS AND LEGENDS

  The rider was expected: even so, his arrival was the cause of great excitement and anticipation as he rode up to and through the gates of Mervyn’s Fluxland of Pericles. Sondra, looking as striking as ever, accompanied him; Jeff, with Spirit, had preceded them using wizard’s power.

  Having little such power himself, the tall rider in black disdained using it even though, through Sondra, it was easily at his disposal. He was always a firm believer that use bred dependence upon it, and while most of World lived in respect and fear of Flux power he had only respect for it, as one would respect a potentially threatening fire or a loaded pistol. He was a survivor in a world where only those with the power were survivors.

  In only one respect had he allowed his daughter, who possessed Flux power and was closest to him. to use her power to his advantage. His hair was thick but gray, as was his drooping moustache, and his face was worn and weathered by both age and experience, yet his internal health was as good as that of a man of twenty, and he could still take on youths less than half his age. He didn’t like Flux power, but as a man well over seventy years of age in various lines of work where the life expectancy, even for wizards, was under forty, he was not a fanatic about it. He was, instead, the quintessential survivor.

  Jeff watched him ride in, relaxed and confident, and immediately felt the man’s power. He had heard stories about this man since he’d been a baby, and there were legends galore about him in every corner of World, and Jeff had always wondered if anyone could live up to that sort of reputation. One look at Matson, however, and he knew that there had been little exaggeration. It was a hard thing to put your finger on, but the tall, dark figure drew the attention of all around even without saying or doing a thing, and everyone who looked upon him felt a slight chill and sense of awe. This was the man who’d stalked and killed the most powerful wizard World had ever known and killed him in Flux. To see him was to hope that he was always on your side.

  He pulled up to Jeff and dismounted. “So you’re Spirit’s boy,” he said in a deep, authoritative voice. He put out his hand. “Glad to meet you, son. Go ahead—I don’t bite my grandsons unless they bite me first.”

  Jeff trembled a bit but took the hand. The shake was hard and firm.

  “Sorry we didn’t get to meet before this,” Matson continued. “It wasn’t for lack of wantin’. It’s just that I don’t tend to go around like I used to, and a visit would’ve been kind of awkward.”

  Jeff warmed a little, although there was only so far you could go with this man. “I understood, sir. In fact, until Sondra showed up most folks thought you were dead.”

  “Still do. I like it better that way. I’m not immortal, son. There’s a ton of little cowards waiting to backshoot me at the first opportunity just to make themselves a footnote. I hear you got more of me in you than is good for your health. Sondra tells me you’re gunning for both Zelligman Ivan and Adam Tilghman. That’s a tall order, son.”

  “If there’s one thing I’ve learned from you, it’s that nothing’s impossible if you’re smart enough and patient enough to wait for the right time and place. I’ll get them, sooner or later. You understand why.”

  The big man nodded. “Yeah. I do, son. It’s true that if you’re willing to wait for the time and place it’ll come to you, but you better be sure of yourself and sure you can take your mark before you do it. You’re too young to get your fool head blown off.”

  “I almost had Ivan in Anchor up north a couple years back,” Jeff told him. “I was this close, but I finally couldn’t take him out without taking out a bunch of innocent folks, too. I’ll get him, though. Tilghman, now—he only comes out from his Anchor when he’s surrounded by both amplifiers and an army, but he’ll slip, sooner or later.”

  “Maybe. You watch out for Tilghman, boy. He’s smarter than any of them others, even Ivan, and don’t count on him in Flux. He’s a little nuts, but he’s one world-class wizard if he has to be and the kind of man who, if he knows he’s going, will make sure you go with him.”

  Jeff’s eyebrows rose in surprise. “You know him?”

  “Knew him, long time ago. I doubt if he remembers, but we’ll see.” He sighed. “I guess I’d better track down Spirit and say my hellos, then get down to business. Then I got to sit down with the old man for a spell.”

  Jeff told him where Spirit might be found, and Matson went off, leaving Sondra behind with Jeff. She dismounted and let her horse graze for a bit.

  “So.” she said, “what do you think of the great man?”

  “I’m impressed.”

  “You do look a lot like him, or like him when he was younger. I can see it in you, and I think he could, too. He likes you.”

 
“Well, I’m glad to hear that. I wouldn’t have guessed from his manner.”

  “Oh, that’s as nice as he ever gets. You don’t want to see him when he’s in a bad mood. Still, I think he’s having the time of his life getting back out and into action again.”

  “Your mom didn’t object?”

  “Mom and he split years ago. I don’t think they were ever really in love. They just got married when both needed somebody and stayed together just for us until my brother and I were grown.”

  “Sondra—what’s this business about? I mean, it’s been all this time and nothing, and suddenly, now, here he is.”

  “I don’t think I can tell you that right now, Jeff. It’s the Guild that asked him, and he’s operating as their representative. Still, he’s seen Spirit off and on with me the past few years and I think he’s always felt a little guilty about not seeing you. He’s just never been all that good one on one with other people, and unless it’s something like this he’ll never make the first move.”

  “Well, I can understand him staying away from Grandma, but it’s been more than eight years since she got swallowed up in New Eden.”

  “He’s been busy lately with the Guild, training new stringers and holding down some important Guild posts. That’s the way it is in the Guild—anybody who lives through all he has gets the power and the position. He’s the only false wizard to make it this far in anybody’s memory.” There was more than a little pride in her voice.

  They paused for a moment, and then Sondra asked, “What do you think of your mother?”

  “Huh? Oh, yeah, I know what you mean. I’m getting used to it now, but I wish I understood it better.”

  “I wish any of us understood it at all.”

  What they both referred to was the change in Spirit the past few years. She had the most restrictive spells in the history of World upon her, and even Jeff tended to think of her as a wild thing, a child of nature not truly human. No speech, no understanding, no use of clothing, tools, buildings, or other artifacts—just her, wearing her emotions and nothing else and taking a tender if childlike delight in things. She’d been that way for his whole growing up, but eight years ago, during the turbulent time when her world had come apart, she’d changed. It was not that she could do or use anything more, but it was more in the way she moved, the way she looked at things, and the way she reacted to those around her.

  One could almost swear, for example, that Spirit was totally aware of what was going on around her and perfectly understood everything and everyone with whom she came in contact. She examined everything in the most minute detail, including things that the spell prevented her from ever comprehending, and you swore that she could almost peer inside a person’s soul and know its innermost thoughts and feelings. There was something in her eyes and her manner that was at once reassuring and alien, unknown and unknowable.

  The truth was, Jeff had gotten used to that by now, but could never really get used to his mother becoming rather heavily sexually active again. Intellectually he knew that it was perhaps the only pleasure she could really have in common with the rest of the human race, but it’s pretty tough to think of your mother doing that, and with total strangers both male and female. He was too embarrassed to raise the subject, though, particularly when he already knew the response—but she wasn’t anyone else’s mother, after all.

  It had been more than eight years since New Eden had taken Nantzee and failed at Mareh, and many things had changed other than just Spirit.

  Jeff had studied long and hard with Mervyn and with others of great power, and was a formidable wizard. He was the kid just hanging around only when with Sondra or Mervyn; otherwise, he was a strong and powerful figure who was getting a measure of fear and respect in his own right. He traveled widely throughout World, and was as good with a gun as he was with a complex spell. He still tended to be far too emotional in crisis situations for his own good, but he could be cold and deliberate as well. Still, while he was known as an adept of Mervyn’s, he kept his lineage concealed from others and his objectives as well. Ivan, for example, knew of him of course, but thought of him as one of Mervyn’s employees detailed to keep track of the current leader of the Seven. The wizard had no idea that Jeff tracked him for his own purposes, and to a more dangerous end.

  Sondra had retired from riding the string, and hadn’t been seen much in the past couple of years. There was word that she’d had a child of her own and was working in the mysterious place where stringers trained and raised their children and coordinated the commerce of World, but she was closed-mouthed about it and Jeff knew better than to ask. And now, suddenly, both she and Matson had come out of hiding on some mysterious business. Jeff didn’t know what it was, although he was dying of curiosity, but he knew that this wasn’t just a family gathering and social call. Certainly it had something to do with the fall of Mareh just two months before, not by outside attack but by a clever and nasty New Eden-inspired revolution from within backed by black-clad troops. With total surprise and treason from within on very high levels, the Anchor that had fought New Eden to a draw eight years ago was now in its enemy’s hands, and even now the population was being systematically rounded up and “processed” in Flux as Nantzee’s had been. New Eden now held an entire cluster of four Anchors around a Hellgate and essentially controlled the Flux in between as well.

  Although now surrounded by his enemy, Mervyn had been preoccupied for years with the location of Toby Haller’s journal, convinced somehow that it existed. With New Eden’s threat waning after the initial defeat at Mareh, and with the Seven going their separate ways and involving themselves in individual mischief rather than collective action towards their ultimate goal, the threat that had seemed so imminent eight years earlier now was long forgotten. Mareh’s fall now might awaken it. but it would take more than that action to create a feeling of crisis on the rest of the planet.

  Jeff hadn’t seen Mervyn much since Mareh’s fall, and hadn’t wanted to. That development had totally depressed the old wizard, and he was something of a holy horror. He hoped that Matson would at least cheer him up.

  Matson had been warned of Mervyn’s mental state, but found the old wizard as cordial and active as always, which was something of a relief. He took the offered plush padded chair and took a swig of excellent beer. Knowing that the old man didn’t mind, he took out a cigar and lit it and looked very much the Matson of old.

  “I’ll come directly to the point,” the legendary stringer began after the niceties were done with. “The Guild has recently uncovered something that is of equal concern to it and to the Nine. They’ve asked me to go and investigate it, and I’ve already done so, and there’s real reason for concern.”

  “I knew it would take something disastrous to bring you out in the open again. Go ahead. When the sky has fallen on your head and you’ve been knocked helpless and senseless by it there’s no room for anything but more bad news.”

  “New Eden has a way of communicating through Flux.”

  Mervyn’s heart seemed to stop for a moment, and he knew instantly that he’d been wrong. The moment you truly believe things can’t get any worse there is a fickle law of chance that says it must. “Communicating? Through Flux?”

  Matson nodded. “I know they can do it. I’ve spent the last two weeks monitoring their calls. It’s a fairly crude system using an on-off binary code, and they can only send one message at a time through a given string, but it’s real enough. The theory’s always been known to the Guild, and we’ve kept it a tight secret. We never were able to use it ourselves, first because we didn’t have the amplifiers needed to make it practical and second because even a limited use would show to everybody that it was possible.”

  “You have crystallized all of my nightmares in one comment. You say you knew this was possible all along?”

  He nodded again. “You must know that the Guild grew out of an ancient military order. We have most of the ancient manuals and the like from those day
s, and we’ve always kept ourselves as a military group. Right now I’m a full colonel, for example, although we never use those ranks outside our own.”

  Mervyn knew the military organization and structure well, but he had no idea that so much of the ancient writings had also survived.

  “This knowledge is only known to field grade officers and above,” the stringer told him. “I didn’t know it until just a few years ago myself, although I always wondered why it wasn’t possible. After all, a string’s only energy in a fixed form. If you can send signals over wires in Anchor like they discovered during the Empire’s time, there’s no real reason you can’t use the strings for that as well. The only reason I figure it took ‘em so long to figure this out for themselves was that we had all the books on the subject and they had more immediate things to think about. They got it now, though. They’re using a relay network of their own strings off the beaten paths, but they’re in constant two-way communication with Bakha and Nantzee and probably Mareh too by now. They had to rig their own to keep it secret from the stringers on the main routes, but one of our people got off the beaten track on a tip from a Fluxlord and found it anyway.”

  Mervyn was silent for a moment, although his mind seemed totally incapacitated for a brief period. Finally he said, “You realize what this means’? If the Seven can learn how to do it, and they will, it’s touch-and-go if we could stop them from opening the Hellgates.”

  “Yeah. Well, don’t think we haven’t thought of that. Luckily it’s not that simple. You need a lot of amplifiers to link up the whole of World in even the most basic communications net. They need twenty just to establish and maintain the network they currently have for this cluster, so you can see what it would take to connect all seven Gates.”

  “The operative thing is that it can be done,” the wizard noted. “What can be done eventually will be. What is primitive now will become sophisticated fast. It’s been that way since we opened the magic box of ancient writings and began to compile and study them.”