Masters of Flux & Anchor

by Jack L. Chalker

  Mervyn and many others argued with equal force that, while New Eden was in fact opposed to the opening of the Gates, its research into communications and alternate power sources would bring the means of such an opening within reach of the Seven within a few years. Flux was inadequate as a power source or transfer medium, but the New Eden scientists were learning—or re-learning—fast, and while refusing to go into details the stringers affirmed that such a communications system was not only possible but probable.

  This was countered by the bulk of leaders who, it was found, didn’t really believe in the existence of the Seven, considering it an old tale designed to reinforce control by the Church in its areas. When named as one of the Seven, Zelligman Ivan himself appeared and did a virtuoso performance mocking the very concept.

  All of this was most disturbing to the Nine, who saw and felt the hidden strings of the Seven in much of the attitudes and fears reflected in the group. Clearly the Seven and the Nine agreed on New Eden’s potential, but the Seven wished that potential fully realized.

  In the end. what they decided upon was not war but a policy of containment and watchfulness. New Eden could survive and prosper, but it must not expand its borders. An attack on any remaining Anchor was to be considered an attack on all remaining Flux and Anchor and would automatically trigger war. Otherwise New Eden could continue, and even export its technology. While uniformly deploring the theology and morality of the place, a pragmatic approach was prudent to keep it from spreading.

  Mervyn gave a stirring speech before the final adoption of the agreements, reminding them of his prior warnings and stating flatly that if New Eden were given the time it would become invulnerable. He pointed to the large Church leadership and the female wizards and warned them that it was their future they were seeing in New Eden. He made them uncomfortable, but the issue had already been decided.

  About the only accomplishment he made was in getting copies of the Haller journal to Ivan and to Gabaye and Stomsk as well, both of whom were also present and active behind the scenes. As Haller’s great-great grandson, he thought he had the right and the duty to show them what had happened. They were fascinated, but undeterred. They were completely amoral and egocentric. To them, only what they did or what happened to them was important or even relevant. They were willing to open the Gates no matter what the consequences because they were bored or wanted something different. Absolute power had so jaded them that they were willing to risk their own lives and the possible annihilation of humanity just to see what happened.

  The Nine could do nothing now on their own against New Eden, although they now granted Mervyn’s point, previously rejected, that it was the real threat. Their power was in Flux, not Anchor, and New Eden had effectively placed itself outside their control. They would guard the Gates they could. As for Mervyn. he was beginning to come around to Matson’s point of view. As hopeless as it sounded, they had better prepare to defend World from invasion from an enemy they didn’t know, couldn’t understand, and which was as technologically far ahead of them as man was from the horse.

  16

  MAJOR STORM WARNINGS

  New Eden had changed a lot in the six and a half years since Matson had moved there. Anchor Logh, called simply North Borough, was still agricultural, but it was now a backwater save the science and technical research complex in the old temple, and even that was mostly a library and university-style facility, as were the other three. The population had shrunk from more than a million to now just under a hundred and eighty thousand, and that counted the soldiers on permanent duty there. It was amazing now quickly the old capital had become a provincial backwater, and how quickly it had gone to seed.

  As he’d predicted, it had taken Sligh’s group almost three years to perfect the steam boiler and generators, but once that had been done production proved easy, particularly when the shortcut of Flux was used for mass production. Determining a proper weight-size ratio for the steam vehicles before producing one had permitted the production of and laying of track almost from the time of the decision, and in fact a rail line was already in full operation using horse-drawn cars and spring-assisted handcars long before the first steam engine was placed on line. The new capital city of New Canaan rose from the plains between the Hellgate and the Great Sea in record time, using timber from the virgin forests and rock quarried from the canyons and fissures to the northeast. By the end of five years there was a single-track rail line from New Canaan to West Borough, the former Anchor Nantzee, and they were hard at work on the northern line, first to North Borough and then to the former Anchor Bakha. The Great Sea blocked direct access to Nantzee, but eventually a rail line down the shoreline was in the plans, and a study group was looking at the feasibility of large ships, possibly wind-powered, that would be even cheaper and more efficient in that direction.

  The bulk of the men with nonessential skills were put into mining and construction; the women’s role was broadened again so that they did almost all of the agricultural work, and a clear division of labor was developing.

  New Canaan still wasn’t luxurious, but it was serviceable. Long lines of poles connected it through telegraphy with many of the centers of civilization, and while the streets were still mostly dirt and the buildings more utilitarian than homey, it was taking on the look of a growing and bustling boom town.

  During this period Matson had arranged for stringer aid in the telegraphy system and had established a network of trails and regular trade and supply routes which were handled by New Eden locals but under stringer supervision. Matson had to admit to himself that as much as he had doubts about the people and the system, he found this new land an invigorating challenge and was somewhat caught up in the excitement of the pioneer experiment. The fact that they had cut the stringers in, in exchange for exclusivity on some technology, seemed to satisfy all and was a very smart move on New Eden’s part.

  Matson himself had chosen to live in a log cabin about five kilometers north of the town itself. It was a spacious but single-room affair with fireplace, hand-hewn furniture, and. incongruously, an electric line going in, a telegraph line spliced in. but with no indoor plumbing. He did have a well, with a creaky hand pump in the front yard, and that was all he needed.

  After all his services and all this time, no one in any way questioned him. He was quite well known, and enjoyed official protection. Even Cassie and Suzl had warmed to him to a great degree, which he found gratifying although he couldn’t explain to himself why. Cassie’s twins. Candy and Crystal, were well past puberty now and they were startling in that both differed from each other only in their tattoos and their fingerprints, which were direct opposites. Both also were almost physical carbon copies of their ageless mother except for higher-pitched voices and thicker lips. The pair were very close, often seeming to be thinking the same thoughts, and one often completed the other’s sentences.

  They had been raised as upper class Fluxgirls. so they had no education to speak of and had learned how to behave and how to sew, cook, clean, host functions, and that sort of thing. They were, however, far brighter than Fluxgirls were supposed to be, and experts at concealing it except around the home. They did. however, have the Fluxgirl’s curse, as Matson thought of it, in that no matter how smart they were their bodies increasingly ruled their minds. In the end it was that, and not any fancy conditioning or machines or spells, differentiating the sexes and their roles in the present and developing New Eden.

  Cassie and Tilghman had “loaned” him the twins when they were fourteen to come out, every once in a while and straighten up his place and do housekeeping chores. He liked them a lot, and they began to let down the guard on their intelligence around him and ply him with questions to which there were no answers in New Eden—except from him—and he discovered their innermost fear. So far, they shamelessly admitted, they had been able to satisfy themselves on each other, since each knew exactly what the other liked, but the tension and pressure was still building, and they
knew they would soon have to be married off. They feared being married off to different men and separated.

  Still, he was surprised when he was asked to dinner one evening and found himself the only guest; not even the children were at the table, although both Cassie and Suzl were with Tilghman. After dinner, when everything had been cleared, and the Tilghmans all remained, and Adam startled Matson by saying. “If you’d like to smoke, use the saucer there as an ash tray. You have my permission to do so here.”

  He took advantage of the offer, but wondered what bomb was about to be dropped on him. He looked at the three of them and had to marvel at them all. None had changed one bit since he’d first met them, and he no longer had any real feeling that the two women were in any way the same people he had once known. They were now friends, but they had been strangers.

  “Matson.” Tilghman began, “you’ve pretty well settled down here now. I know you don’t go along with everything we do, but you’re still an accepted part of the community.”

  Yeah, he thought, amused. I’m the one group eccentric.

  “I know that none of us can know the future, but you seem pretty well settled and content.” the Judge continued. “Our daughters think highly of you, you know. In fact. I suspect they have a very strong crush on you.”

  Itmust be in the genes, he thought, but aloud he said. “Yes. I’m very fond of them myself.”

  Tilghman smiled. “As you know, they pose a problem of sorts. They are more like one person in two bodies than two individuals, unusual even for twins. They’re also a bit too bright and curious to fit into the usual social scene around here, and because of who their parents are there is a lot of contention over who will marry them, something that can’t really be avoided. The other kids pose less of a problem, but I’d rather they didn’t become the wives of one of my colleagues on the Central Committee or of one of the top army officers, if you understand what I mean.”

  He did. Once married, they could by their very intelligence be a gun at Tilghman’s head, since their husbands could literally do anything with them, including arrange for mind-dulling injections, and they were clearly his favorites. Rather quickly. Matson guessed where this was leading.

  “Adam. I’m as old or older than you are, and I have kids three times their ages.”

  Tilghman looked at Cassie and Suzl. “It didn’t stop me. and it did me a world of good. You’re the only one I’d trust them with, truthfully. We’ve all three discussed this, and we all agree it’s the best solution.”

  He sighed. “Look, all of you. I’ve never been the family type. The only time I was a husband I was a poor one. I think of them like I think of my own kids, not any other way. I’ve got a one-room shack and I’m on the move a lot.”

  Cassie looked him straight in the eyes. “Please.” she said softly. “For my sake.”

  He cursed her silently, even though she didn’t understand the meaning or the import of what she’d just said. Finally, he sighed. “Let me sleep on it. Let me think about it a bit, will you?” He hesitated. “Uh—have they been told about this?”

  “No.” Cassie replied. “Anyone who tells ‘em will be punished bad. Only if you say yes will they know.”

  He got up from the table. “As I say, let me think on it a little bit. How old are they now?”

  “They’ve just turned fifteen.” Tilghman told him.

  “Let me wrestle with it a bit, and I’ll let you know.”

  He left the house, but he didn’t immediately go home. He had gotten a signal earlier in the day and now rode just a few blocks to another house as spartan as Tilghman’s currently was, and just as drab.

  Sondra was glad to see him. They had married her off to General Levett, now Chief of Security forces for New Caanan, which had pleased Matson from an information point of view and apparently had pleased Sondra as well. The general was hardly known as a wonderful fellow—he was, perhaps, the most feared of all men in New Eden because of his job—but he was ruggedly handsome, very much a lover of beautiful women, and he’d wanted children. He must have—he was away quite a lot, yet Sondra already had two sons and a daughter by him and was noticeably pregnant now. The number of youngsters afoot kept her constantly very busy and she assured him she was never bored for lack of work.

  When he’d first met her after her reconditioning he feared that all of the old Sondra had been vanquished forever, but much of it was still there, under the surface. She had thrown herself into her new role of mother and housewife as intensively as she had ridden strings in Flux. To her surprise and satisfaction she found that the iron man of security wanted a wife who really ran the home, and, in fact, was bright and somewhat forward with him. She found it easy: she said she just let the conditioning take automatic control and stopped fighting the body and let it run. In six years the feared and efficient security chief, secure in the knowledge that his wife was permanently deep-programmed and could not read or write, never dreamed that she was still interested in far more than her family and concerned with issues far beyond his own welfare and hers. When she cleaned in his study, she observed. While it was frustrating not to be able to read the documents, it was less so to look at drawings and photographs, and with her father supplying an incredibly small and simple camera, even the documents could be passed along. And nobody was going to be mean, nasty, or in any way question the Chief of Security’s wife, particularly when that Chief was almost always the guard’s boss. And could anyone question the occasional visits of a father to see his daughter and grandchildren?

  “What’s new with you?” she asked him, while rocking the youngest in a rocking chair. The boy was nodding off, more interested in his thumb than her breast at this point.

  “Would you believe the old man wants me to marry both his twins?”

  Sondra giggled. “Now that’s something! You’ve needed a woman’s touch for some time. Are you gonna do it?”

  He sighed. “I’m being engineered into it. Damn it. when Cassie looks into my eyes and says. ‘Do it for my sake.’ I feel a cannon at my head. If I just didn’t feel my age … .”

  “The spell’s not holding?”

  “Oh, it’s not the body, it’s up here.” he told her. tapping his head.

  “If you act old, youfeel old.” she chided him. “Maybe this is what you need to get young again. Me, I feel like I been reborn. Oh, I still wouldn’t like to be out there pickin’ tomatoes or whatever it is, and I feel sorry for most of the girls, but for me it’s O.K. I don’t have the dreams so much any more, and I keep thinking of all the Fluxlands I knew. Maybe one in ten was better than this, and things keep getting better around here.”

  He nodded. “It’s too big for them. They can’t keep tight control and they don’t have enough of a labor pool to manage it the old way. They made you girls so you can’t handle a pick or a sledgehammer or do that kind of heavy work, so the men are doing their share and marrying the farm girls. This place has long-term possibilities, I’ll now admit, if we live long enough to see them.”

  Her expression darkened. “That’s what I wanted to see you about. There’s some very secret project going on just east of the Hellgate. Lev had to send about a third of his force up there to seal it off from the public. I don’t know exactly what it is—I’m not sure he does—but it has something to do with welding a lot of steel girders, and using a lot of very heavy cable. They’ve had to secure shipments of those from the west.”

  He sighed. “The broadcast tower. They’ve gotten to it at last.” He got up, then bent down and kissed her on the forehead. “Good work, honey. You keep your eyes and ears open for anything else on that, but don’t take any chances. Now that I know it’s on, and where. I have other means of following up. You take care—you hear?”

  She nodded. “You, too. Daddy. And you might as well marry them. If all hell’s gonna break loose they deserve at least a little fun.”

  Spirit had remained in New Pericles with Mervyn. It seemed to make him happy, and he was otherwise in
a state seesawing between depression and despair. She herself was quite depressed at times, thinking of all the people close to her who were now changed and gone. Although Matson visited her when he could, the move to the center of New Eden had made it a major expedition and thus cut down the frequency. He had, through signing, managed to convey to her that Sondra was doing as well as could be expected under the circumstances, and that her mother was well and seemed happy, but there had been, according to him, no real sign of Jeff.

  And that was almost literally true. Sondra had, of course, accompanied him until they met up with a larger band of men and women, but by that point she’d no longer been able to distinguish individuals, particularly men. A records check had indicated that he had indeed checked in, and had been assigned to duty somewhere in the west, but records now went with the individual—they could no longer be centralized—and Matson had not pursued him after hearing Sondra’s story. He was afraid he’d kill him, and he didn’t want that on his conscience.

  When the Soul Rider had wanted to get a sense of the country, she’d ridden with Sondra and the train. Now it seemed only to want to be as close as possible to New Eden, although it wasn’t sure why. Orders. It did, however, in due course, admit to a few things that shocked Spirit, and showed why Soul Riders had never before been allowed to communicate with people directly.