Masters of Flux & Anchor

by Jack L. Chalker

  They took it nice and easy, and it gave Matson a chance to get a feel for this land and its changes with the aid of a native guide. He was pleased to see that there were still trees and broad farms and that this new machine society hadn’t paved it all over like they had the central part of the road, leaving only a dirt strip down each side for the horses. The central road as it was, though, provided a smooth ride for wagons and coaches.

  Along the roadway spaced every forty meters or so were barren tall poles set deep in the ground, with crossbars at the tops carrying wires and containing funny-looking shaped things as well. Taglia explained that this was actual voice communication by wire, as well as steady electrical power gained not just from the old temple he called it the Scientific Center—but from other sources as well, including wind and running water. Every once in a while, high up on a pole, there’d be a lineman checking or repairing the wires, perhaps with a whole support crew.

  The economic pattern of New Eden soon became clear to him. The fact was, no matter what the ideal, women were required to do far more work than just that in the home. Their illiteracy and mathematical limitations limited the types of jobs they could perform, but there were far more women than men and a lot of necessary work had to get done. He saw large numbers of women in the fields planting or picking crops—he couldn’t tell which—and grooming animals. Wherever their physical limitations did not interfere with their capabilities, women were working and working hard.

  After the twentieth time they’d had to identify themselves, Matson had a whole new definition for the term “regimented society.” You couldn’t buy or sell or use anything without identification. Even the public johns had a sign-in sheet. Finally he had to ask Taglia, who took it all for granted, how the powers that be kept from drowning in all the paperwork.

  “Oh, it’s not that bad,” the major replied. “They have recording machines that they just feed the information into on a district by district basis. It all goes over the wires to the bigger machines in the capital, and they spot anything odd and notify the local authorities. Those machines have everybody’s numbers and descriptions on them. New Eden is crime-free and peaceful, thanks to the system. Everyone knows his place and does his duty.” He said that like it was something to be very proud of.

  Machines, Matson thought sourly. That’s what the place was—one big machine. Everybody was cared for, absolutely, cradle to grave, and protected from all harm, so long as they did everything exactly the way it was ordered. Individuality was frowned upon, and creativity might rock the boat, but if you conformed and did your duty you’d have everything you needed. If you didn’t like it, well, the government had ways of making you love it, too. To Matson, it made people of equal importance to the electric poles and other gadgets: all were just cogs and gears in a larger machine.

  They spent the night in a small town that had once been much larger, but wasn’t as necessary now to supply the surrounding farms and provide a rural cultural and service center. Still, in the town he saw his first Fluxgirls at close range, and realized how different they were. Nature could never make such exaggerated beauty and sexuality, yet in their own way they were as dull and docile as the female workers. The only difference was, the Fluxgirls had more fun, and mooney-eyed men made fools of themselves around them. Yet in the dining room he saw men making it with other men while Fluxgirls served them dinner and drinks and always with a smile. Fortunately, Taglia seemed to be the kind that doted on the Fluxgirls—fortunately for Taglia, Matson thought sourly.

  He had expected not to like New Eden, and he hadn’t been disappointed, but he certainly hadn’t expected the men to be as oppressed as the women. The Fluxgirls probably had the best of the bargain, he decided. They didn’t know any better, and he bet they enjoyed what they were designed for more than any man or normal woman.

  He couldn’t help wondering if those fools of the old Anchor Logh would have fought against liberation at the cost of mass death if they could see what their society had turned into. Hell, probably some of them were still around, turned into what he saw. It was one thing to be at the mercy of a wizard in Flux, unable to do or even be anything that wizard didn’t wish, but it was quite another to have a choice, even this or death, and see how somebody could choose this.

  It took another day and a half to reach the city, but once there he was quickly quartered and his horse bedded down in government stables. The city was so radically changed he could hardly recognize it, with its tall buildings and stately mansions and mass apartment blocks stretching out in all directions. Still, it was a very big city with all the basics needed to support a large, population, including various shops and markets, and it seemed to have the kind of life of its own cities seemed always to take on. General use of horses was banned in the center city, but the masses of people seemed to get along well on foot and using various kinds of bicycles, tricycles, pedicars, and even pedal-powered wagons.

  Here the Fluxgirls roamed freely, in various states of dress and undress, and it seemed like every other one was pregnant and carrying at least one small infant in a carrier on her back as well. This was the home of the key bureaucracy of an expansionist empire, and it looked and felt it, even if the place and most of the buildings were pretty dull and drab. Still, the people seemed generally happy, not the dull-eyed creatures he’d so often seen populating Fluxlands.

  He had a special visitor’s card and they’d not given him any restrictions on where he could go, but he didn’t feel like walking around much. It seemed like there was a cop on every street corner and while they didn’t spend all their time asking for I.D.s—the paperwork would have killed them young—he was a marked man if only because he stood out.

  From the officer’s quarters where he’d been housed he could look out the window and see Temple Square, about a block away, and he felt a little of the history of the building and the place itself. From there, many long years ago, he’d hauled Cassie and Suzl and a lot of others, most dead now, into Flux for the first time and had somehow started the chain of events which had now come to this. He didn’t feel particularly guilty—he knew that everything he did from then on he’d do the same way over again—but he did feel a sense of the stream of events that had so radically altered World, as a key participant in that history.

  He thought of all those people down there, trapped by this crazy culture, and then wondered if he should be all that smug. He’d taken Cass on the trail because she’d wanted it, and he’d been down about Arden’s death and wanted some, too. He still might have taken up with her, if he hadn’t gotten shot down in the fight over Persellus and if she hadn’t decided to become a saintly priestess before he woke up, but he knew he’d never have married her. He was a stringer, and stringers married stringers. Everybody knew that. He’d been trapped by his own culture just as sure as they’d been trapped down there.

  And he’d married a good stringer woman, finally, and they’d had kids and a new and more settled life up north in the Fluxland hideaway for those who were running from World and those who had done things preventing them from ever going back into it. He and his wife had each needed somebody right then, and that had been the basis of it. They liked and respected each other, but mostly stayed together out of habit and for the sake of the kids. He wondered if he ever really loved anybody, and wondered, too, for the millionth time, whether it was in him to love. Loving was being out of control, and stringers could never be out of control. It was a condition of the job and the life. Stringers had duties and responsibilities, that was all, and it was supposed to be enough.

  He looked down again at the people going back and forth in the street below. Duties and responsibilities. Was it possible to be poles apart from another society and culture and yet pay the same price? Stringers were individualists because the job required a high degree of independence, intelligence, and stubborn, confident egomania. But they were so because as cogs in the Guild’s machine they needed it to work effectively. Kill a stringer, though,
and ten would avenge him while another out of more or less the same mold took his place on the job. And when you got to the top, if you did, you wound up like him, protecting and refining the machine.

  Like those men in those big mansions off Temple Square or whatever they were calling it these days. The top men, they weren’t dull-eyed or ignorant; their minds were creative, individualistic, strong, and ambitious. Yet what were they doing at the top but protecting and refining their own machine and making it grow bigger? Perhaps the basic difference between the Guild and New Eden, in the final analysis, was that the Guild could not grow any bigger, and spent its whole time preserving the status quo. “We are a military organization,” he’d told Mervyn, and that was quite true. Why did he feel uncomfortable in this one?

  Adam Tilghman lived in one of those houses down there, as did Cass and Suzl and probably a mess of their kids by now. Not the Cass and Suzl he’d known, but the products of all this. Looking down at the city with its criss-crossing maze of communication and electrical wires he was struck by just how similar those things looked to the strings he followed and used in Flux. Just blot out the city and color code the wires as to function and it would be very, very familiar… .

  He lay down on the comfortable bed and relaxed for a while, but the depression would not go away.

  Maybe we just ought to let them open those Hellgates. he thought sourly. What the hell are we protecting now. anyway?

  * * *

  When they had returned from the war and Suzl had been informed of Welz’s “heroic” death, she’d taken it so calmly that it was clear that any love that might have been there once was long gone. She’d been mostly concerned about her fate and that of her younger children, and when Adam Tilghman talked to her and made her his offer she jumped at it. Even more, she jumped at the idea of a binding spell such as the one Cassie and had taken, and it was easily done.

  The “new” Suzl, complete with a new tattoo and number, knew that she had been born in pre-New Eden times, but didn’t really remember any of it. She had just remembered being a farm girl, sort of, who’d been claimed and married to Weiz in the early days, and had met and became best friends with Cassie only when both were married and living in the capital. Like Cassie, she neither remembered nor had any concept of another life or culture. The memories had not been merely suppressed, but erased and supplanted by the spell’s details.

  Once the marriage to Tilghman had taken place, things seemed to sort themselves out very well in the household. Suzl had been used to handling a large brood; the kitchen was her domain, and she seemed to remember every recipe she’d ever devised and was a whiz as a cook and kitchen manager, and with the easing of the clothing restrictions she also proved skilled at sewing, clothes design, even the making of drapes and curtains. Cassie made up the beds, did the basic washing, and kept the house clean and spotless. Both virtually worshipped Adam, but they also loved each other, and although Cassie was nominally chief wife it was Suzl who was dominant by sheer personality. Each felt that she was at the top, as far as any girl could hope to be, and they were more than content to stay there. Neither felt any sense of ambition, curiosity, nor saw any sense in competition.

  Suzl’s oldest daughters still at home, ages twelve and fifteen, were heading the household staff; she also had two sons by Tilghman, both now in the hands of the state, and a daughter barely two. Cassie’s twins still had a ways to go to puberty, but had already developed into the absolute image of their mother as she was now. They were absolutely identical and real charmers; only their tattooed names allowed even their mother to tell them apart. She’d also had two other daughters—Cori, six, and Cissy, three—but no sons. A staff of ranking daughters of other officials was still retained which helped to take care of the younger children and helped manage the housework.

  Today was particularly busy, since Adam had told them that there would be a guest for dinner, an outsider from beyond New Eden—a realm they thought of only occasionally and always with a mixture of fear and distaste. But this man, called Matson, was a very important man out there, or so Adam had told them. Their husband had, in fact, seemed somewhat nervous and ill at ease when telling them the man’s name, but it meant nothing to either one of them and he’d relaxed. They had spent the day shopping and then cleaning and preparing for the meal, which was far less of a task than the parties and state dinners they had hosted so many times in the past, and now were fixing each other’s hair and adjusting one another’s makeup and outfits.

  Adam had been clear about what they should look like. Although there was a loosening of all codes and they had formal dresses for many occasions, Adam had specifically asked them to look as they had at their weddings, wearing the coarse netting at the hips which hid nothing at all—silver for Cassie’s bronze complexion, gold for Suzl’s lighter shade—and matching jeweled belt and the highest heeled matching shoes it was possible to wear, with heavy makeup, lashes, and jewelry.

  Adam Tilghman never missed an opportunity to make a point.

  The man who arrived, right on time, was a different sort than either of them had ever seen before, despite his dull black clothing. His broad-brimmed hat, creased in the middle, the left brim fastened to the crown, his shiny, thick belt with the genuine silver trim, and his lack of any insignia, rank, or ribbons, marked him as someone apart. It was his look, though, that indicated something odd and frightening about him. The thick, neatly trimmed gray hair and drooping gray moustache only served to set off his ruddy, worn complexion, and his reddish-brown eyes seemed cold, almost artificial, hiding everything about the man within. He was ruggedly handsome and looked about Adam’s age, although they knew that looks could be and usually were deceiving. He looked in his fifties, but the eyes seemed hundreds of years old.

  Matson hadn’t looked forward to this, and he’d wondered much of the day how he’d feel, how he’d react, when he first saw the two women. The one reaction he didn’t expect was to feel cynical, but that was exactly how he felt when he saw them, Flux-modified, made up like bar girls and mostly naked to boot. He would not have recognized Suzl at all under any circumstances; Cassie bore a resemblance to her former self, but had he not known the truth he would have dismissed it as merely that—a resemblance. He knew it wasn’t going to be very hard for him, anyway. The two people he’d known may once have been this pair, but they were dead as far as he was concerned.

  “Our husband’ll be down in a li’l while,” Cassie told him. “Meantimes, you kin sit’n ‘lax in the li-bry. There’s brandy’n good cigars in there always. Adam don’t ‘low no smokin’ in the house ‘cept in there.” Her voice, he noted, was still unnaturally deep for a woman’s, but the spell had given it a sexy, throaty quality while taking away her pronunciation and grammar. As a “girl” who’d grown up uneducated and ignorant as the law demanded, this was to be expected, but it was the final break with the past for him. She had lost far more than her memories.

  He nodded. “Thank you, ladies.” he responded, in a voice that was melodious but one of the deepest they’d ever heard. “Show me the way, and tell him not to hurry.”

  Once the awkwardness was over, Matson’s mind went right to work. He went into the library, which was a large room with several comfortable chairs, a single oversized ash tray, two walls lined with printed books and a third with modules—small square objects that would fit in one’s palm easily and weighed only a few grams, but which, he knew, contained more information each than a hundred walls of printed books. He helped himself to a cigar but not the brandy, a drink he’d never much cared for, lit the cigar and studied the printed titles on the spines of the bound books. He was relieved to see that neither of the wives nor any of the staff had stayed around, particularly after he’d lit the cigar, and he idly looked at the titles. Most, he saw, were of relatively recent origin—books on New Eden’s laws, religion, and the like, some histories both of New Eden and of other areas including a standard huge book on the old Church and its doctrines, some
on math and wizardry, some on geography, but nothing odd. The old stuff, and the interesting stuff, was on the modules.

  Each little cube was in its own short binding, attached to a page in a pocket, with a typed index that often ran a hundred pages of single-spaced type included. The spines were number-coded and gave little indication of what the contents were, although he noticed that a dozen or so were in older, worn bindings of a distinctive purple shade. He took one out and saw embossed on the front in gold the initials “CvH”—just like that. Idly he wondered how much time he had, but he picked one at random and thumbed through its yellowed index, mostly in longhand. The first had nothing unusual from a quick scan, nor did the second or third, but the fourth had, in the middle of the index, an entry circled in red with a red exclamation point attached. The entry merely said, “Misc. longhand ramblings.” but he took a guess that was it. Glancing out the doors to see if anyone was coming, he removed a small cube that looked identical to the one in the front from a small concealed pocket in his pants, slipped the cube in the binder out and slipped his own in. He reshelved the binder, but still had his finger on the pocket when Adam Tilghman suddenly entered.

  Slickly, Matson turned, prayed that the cube was secure, smiled, stubbed out his cigar, and extended his hand. “Matson, Stringer’s Guild,” he said pleasantly. He hoped he hadn’t been observed for some time before the old man revealed himself. It would be very much in character with the man and the place.

  “Adam Tilghman,” the other responded, taking the stringer’s hand and shaking with a strong, firm grip. “I see you’ve been looking at my private collection.”

  “Just browsing out of curiosity. The old ones with the purple bindings—they were Coydt’s?”

  Tilghman nodded. “Indeed, they were the ones he kept to himself pretty much. There’s a lot of crap in them, mostly stuff we’ll never understand, but some very interesting things that it would be best not to reveal at large are in there as well.”