03. Masters of Flux and Anchor (12 page)

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Jeff returned to Pericles from the north feeling less depressed than he thought he would. Although he didn't like the fact that she was exposed to danger, he found his mother more cheerful and alive and full of life than he'd ever seen her before. He was somewhat angry at Sondra— initially for not immediately sending Spirit home when they found each other, then for taking so long to get word back. But the two strange half-sisters seemed to belong together, and there was something in his mother's eyes that he'd never seen before. He couldn't quite put his finger on it, but where there had always been a childlike, innocent quality there now seemed a thoughtfulness and deliberateness that was difficult to understand and a little bit frightening. What could one such as she be plotting and planning?

Mervyn listened with interest to his account. "This is something very new," he told the young man. "Something different is happening once more. I'm very afraid, son, that your family seems destined to fall into things that others do not. Beware your own self. I've seen this sort of phenomenon run in families before, when a Soul Rider was involved, although not nearly as dramatically as your line."

That interested him. "You mean—there are others like us?"

"No, not like you. As I said, your family seems to be unique in the extent of its doings and its tremendous reach, not to mention how complex the spells. But, yes—there are many other families in which a Soul Rider is involved, all of whom have great power. Some don't know it, because they never leave Anchor. Some wind up heads of Fluxlands. But they are all there. Rather dull, though, when compared with our lot."

"Thanks a lot. I think we could all stand a little more dullness."

"But it is not to be. I thought you were going to stay with the train up there for a while and see some of the adventurous north."

"Too chilly. Besides, it was different with just me and Sondra. Now I find out she's my aunt, for heaven's sake, and she's taken my mother in tow; I'd just get in the way."

"Uh huh. Poor boy crushed by romantic fantasy. I thought so. So now what will you do?"

"Oh. I kind of hoped I'd be of some use around here for a while. The way you've been talking, things are going to start popping around here any second."

"And so they will, my boy," Mervyn told him gravely. "So they will. You have the power, and some formal training, but very little self-control, I fear. Still, only your heritage makes me hesitant to accept your services. You folks, as I said, always seem to make your own trouble and inflict it on everybody else."

"Well, if you think it's a curse, it's going to come anyway, so I can't lose any sleep over it. At least that Soul Rider's over a thousand kilometers from here."

"I know, I know. Don't worry so much, son. Have a seat and relax." He paused a moment, trying to find a bit of strength for person-to-person intensity. He never was very good at this sort of thing. "I have news of your grandmother."

"You do!" He frowned suddenly. "Bad news, I take it."

"In a way. I was correct in all things. Zelligman Ivan was clearing away the one distinct threat to him—the woman who routed Haldayne from this cluster and helped destroy his predecessor here—as well as currying favor with New Eden. He delivered her to them. A young Fluxlord named Richards was witness to the result. She allowed herself, in Flux, to be transformed into one of their kind of women and then married Adam Tilghman, the strongest mind and will of New Eden."

"What! I don't believe you! She would never—"

"Yes she would, and did," Mervyn responded calmly. "You know only the loving grandmother and the warrior legends. We forget sometimes that those are human beings under all that guff. You think nothing of stalking a comely young lady and taking her to bed, but none of us can really imagine our parents doing such a thing or acting in such a manner. Family and authority figures are rarely taken as they are—real people with real hurts and wants and needs. Your grandmother considers herself a total failure, a killer of thousands. For over forty years there's been nobody except possibly me whom she could relate to, human-to-human, and not as a legend, an institution, or a parent— and she blames me for part of her problems."

Jeff was absolutely crushed. He simply couldn't believe it. "They brainwashed her, that's all."

"Undoubtedly, but it didn't take. She has more auto¬matic protection than I do, and while I admit my body may be killed I consider my mind invulnerable to external pressure. If she took that binding spell it's because she wanted to."

"But she always hated them and everything they stood for!"

"Ah. yes, but we're not dealing with a machine here. This is a person. She is paying off her guilt in a way that is physically painless. She's had a life like no other, one of greatness, but it is for others to see and understand that. For every great thing she accomplished, she died inside, and benefited not a whit. No, if suicide runs in families, then you're immune. What your grandmother and mother endured would have destroyed lesser people quickly. It just finally caught up to Cass."

Jeff sat there quietly for a moment, trying to understand what Mervyn was saying. On an intellectual level he fol¬lowed it, but on a personal one he would never understand it. "So what you're saying is that the pressures of her life finally caught up to her, and she had a breakdown, and now she's found a way out without shooting herself in the head."

"That's about it. It does, however, cause a severe headache for me. Don't underestimate Tilghman. He'll use her as a symbol. Her conversion has already spread terror among the local Fluxlords, who can't jump fast enough to get on the New Eden bandwagon. Just tonight your grand¬mother is hostess to a dinner gathering of the uppermost echelons of New Eden. I don't need to be there to know what they're talking about. New Eden, with the interven¬ing Fluxlords in line, is about to move on Anchor Nantzee, the most highly industrialized Anchor in the cluster and one of the top four on World. Bakha gives him the raw materials, and Logh is the breadbasket. Mareh, with its hordes of sheep and textile mills, is least important to him, but if Nantzee goes it'll fall into his hands almost for the asking. His cult will control an entire cluster, and the vast bulk of Flux in between. It's the start of a new Empire, and this time a very ugly one that might engulf us all."

"Then this is where I guess I'd better be. Uh—sir?"

"Yes?"

"How do you know there's this dinner party going on tonight? I thought you said New Eden was air-tight."

"No, it's not air-tight. What I told you was that what you were proposing was impossible. It is far easier to get information than to act on it. I, my boy, am off to Anchor Nantzee in a matter of hours, with a few stops at some nervous Fluxlands."

"Surely the Nine could take them out!"

"Possibly. Certainly, so long as they have to move forces through Flux. But the Nine will not take them out. The Nine does not interfere as a group unless it is to directly thwart a dangerous act by the Seven. Had Coydt lived and been in control, we would have stopped it, but he's long dead. New Eden hates the Seven as much or more than we do. I tried to get that distinction across to Sondra, but failed. If they take the cluster they will do as good or better a job of defending our Gate as we would. Old Zelligman is running around trying to break in, but he's frustrated. On a personal level, I spent a good deal of time trying to talk them into some action, and failed miserably. I'm on my own in this, for humanitarian rea¬sons and because I don't like messes like this in my neighborhood. And to quiet you once and for all I should tell you that a majority of the Nine, like a majority of the Seven, are female."

Jeff shook his head in wonder. "Then how could they . . . ?"

"Because they are committed to a higher duty. And, in a pinch, so am I. But I'm not pinched. Unless I've missed something very, very important, the Gates are not at risk here. The terrible thing about New Eden is that it is the legacy we have reaped from the past two thousand years. The men who built it and formed it are our children. They are the children of an overbearing, dictatorial matriarchy in Anchor and the abuse of power by wizards in Flux. Coydt, and your mother and grandmother, are all victims in differ¬ent ways. We let the matriarchal church go on and on in our complacency and did not stop it, and now the hate has combined with power, and is striking out. You see, we didn't tell them or teach them that enslavement or dictator¬ship by a privileged class based on a random inheritance of power or a restrictive religion was wrong. We condoned it, as maintaining the status quo. We weren't affected—oh, no! We were the powerful wizards. All of the leaders of New Eden grew up as slaves of the system, but we didn't teach them an alternative system. So now the slaves are masters of Flux and Anchor—and they are retaining the system, merely turning the ruling class on its head. We taught them to hate, to oppress, to be ruthless. And we were very, very good teachers. . . ."

Onregon Sligh entered and sat down in a chair, nodding to the Chief Judge. "Adam?"

"Doctor. I want to know ahead of time if we're ready. I've read your reports, but I want it directly from you."

"I don't feel there's going to be any great difficulty with the takeover. It's quite risky, but I think you'll make it on sheer gall."

"That isn't what I mean and you know it. Do you know how to do what we have talked about for so long?"

"I believe I do. We have enough amplifiers now to do it with half the cluster, but I do wish you'd wait until we have Mareh. Not only is that amplifier shield around the Gate an unknown quantity—we don't know if the signals will pass through or around it and our field tests have given contradictory results—but the process requires eight wizards, and they will be smart enough to realize what we're up to in time to stop it. That'll put eight wizards with amplifiers right at our throat."

"Would you need less if we had Mareh?"

"No, the same. But we'd eliminate the potential prob¬lem with the shield at the Gate. It would be irrelevant. And doing it now, to half a cluster, would tip off the whole of World. The Fluxlords would be up in arms over their very survival."

"Could they undo it?"

"I don't believe so. I believe that the ancients who designed the machines did so for just this purpose and no other. Once it's complete, it's done. But, remember, we don't know what sort of file they designed for so vast an area. They were not a secretive lot. The filing system is rather straightforward. If we had thought of the full impli¬cations of the category 'Landscape Architecture' rather than dismissing it as a euphemism for gardening, we'd have seen it long before. No guarantees, though. But the filing system is not the language of those programs. An inconceivable number of atoms goes into making up just you, yourself. Not even a wizard can duplicate a human being; he can only modify it. Now consider the number of atoms that goes into making up the whole of an Anchor— New Eden, for example—and all that it contains. All arranged just so in exactly the right order to make what you see. Now consider that a program, a small metallic cube that would fit in my hand, contains that information for a much greater mass. Far greater. I can read the label, and I can read the instructions—but no mind alive today or in the foreseeable future could grasp the mathematics in that cube. It had to be manufactured by another machine, and that by another machine, and so forth down the line until you get to where a man designed one. Men tell it what to do, what to make, but I doubt if the men who built it knew how it stored that information."

Adam Tilghman nodded thoughtfully. "So we'll never know what we're getting, and we just have to trust that the ancients numbered things in order. All right, I'll accept that. But we must have a test, and soon. I don't fear the Flux armies. By the time the alarm is raised we'll be at Mareh's gates, and they'll have to come through the clus¬ter to get at us and fight on our terms. I am, however, fascinated by the idea of it. What do you think will happen to the Fluxlands in the way?"

"The forms of those lands will be overtaken and over¬run by the program. The people and other living creatures who live there will, however, most likely freeze as they are."

"Hmmm . . . Yet there will be no wizard's powers binding them. They will rebel, and be violent opponents of any Fluxlords entering. I think we can use that to good advantage, until we're ready to directly incorporate them under our system." He reached back and pulled a long, tasseled rope in back of him.

"Yes, but you don't address the major problem. Where will we get eight wizards strong enough who are also willing to operate the machines?"

"Doctor, you are the most brilliant mind of our age in science, possibly of many ages, but you'll never think like a commander or a politician. Has it not occurred to you that we have in our midst a number of sufficiently power¬ful wizards who will obediently climb up into those things and do exactly what we tell them?"

At that moment the doors to the study opened; Cassie entered and scampered over to Tilghman, kneeling before him. "Yes, my husband?"

Adam Tilghman grinned at Sligh, who sat there, mouth open. "You can tell the other gentlemen to come in now, Cassie. And—Cassie?"

"Yes, my lord?"

"Think about packing. We're going on a little trip soon."

8

PLAYING HARDBALL DIPLOMACY

Cassie had felt only excitement at the prospect of a trip. The doctors were not at all concerned about it, since Fluxwives were absolutely perfect baby machines. Short of injury or death, she would deliver normally and with no complications exactly on schedule, trip or not. This, in fact, had been the convincing factor for Tilghman, for he wanted her along both for political reasons and because he considered it intolerable that a child of his might be born while he was away.

It was a large wagon train, heavily defended with over four hundred soldiers, many armed with strange-looking weapons, as well as several wizards in New Eden's em¬ploy and, to ease commercial problems, a tough-looking stringer in charge of leading them.