03. Masters of Flux and Anchor (25 page)

"What a fascinating concept. Matson, I wouldn't have believed that you of all people would be such an optimist."

"I'm no optimist. I may be way off the mark in my ignorance of the enemy and the Gates. All I can do is look at what we do know and what I can see and create the best possible military scenario. If you want the truth, what I just said might work, but it won't. All seven tunnels aren't packed with high explosive ready to go off. None of them are, or are likely to be. If you don't get their bases or whatever they are and knock 'em out early, they'll have defenses set up and be well deployed before anything can be brought to bear against them. If they control intact Gates, they can be reinforced. Or they just set up there with all the Flux power in the world at their disposal and a base that's the biggest amplifier we can ever imagine and ignore our attacks, then just increase their perimeter as they can while feeding in reinforcements and material until they all meet up. That's what's going to happen someday, because everybody's so bent on keeping the Gates closed they're not willing to accept the idea that we can still win even with them open. You let an enemy confuse ignorance with stupidity and you just have another fat, powerful wizard begging for a shotgun blast in the back. You be stupid and ignorant, and they got you where they want you."

Tilghman nodded, taking it all in. Finally he said. "I'm ready to discuss our problem with the Guild now. If anything, you make things easier, not harder, for me."

"Yes?"

"I hope you can remain here another six days. In fact, I would advise it anyway. Flux in this cluster could become very dangerous at that time. It'd be two days, maybe three to the wall anyway. Stay around three days and we'll go down to the wall together. I promise you that what we're going to do will end the Guild's primary objections. Seven days from now the network will be dismantled, and you can be on hand to assure yourself of that. We will also cease at that time making the full-scale amplifiers for outside markets, and repairing or renewing the ones now in the field. We have no more interest in opening those Gates than you, and every stake in keeping them closed and secure. All research and attempts at Flux communica¬tion will cease as of now. Will that satisfy you?"

Matson didn't like the sound of that, and he hadn't expected such a cave-in without a demonstration of power. It was too easy. The man was up to something, that was for sure, but he wasn't going to say what. "Well, I'm sure it'll be fine with the Guild. Me, I'm a little tired of being Exhibit A every time I walk down a street, like I got two heads and four arms or something, but I guess I can stand three days of it. I have to admit I'm a little curious as to what you got in mind anyway, and the closer I am to you the less likely it is to hurt me. Still, it bothers me personally. I got two daughters and a grandson out in Flux in this cluster."

That was news to him. "Didn't they get the warnings?"

"Oh, yeah, they got them. One of 'em you can't get much through to, and the other two are determined to ride it out."

"Well, if they're not in a known Fluxland they'll proba¬bly be safe. If they are, well, it's too late to warn them and talk them out of it anyway now. I'm sorry, but we did all we could to warn people. You yourself have noted just how hard it is to convince a wizard of anything."

Matson sighed. "Well, you're right, there. I can't say I'm gonna feel good until I know they're safe, though."

"Understandable. As for remaining here. I can't do much about people's stares but I can order that you be unmolested by the authorities. I can assign an officer or even a Fluxgirl to you, if you like."

"I'm not too keen about any more junior or middle officers, and I might have some reservations about a girl."

"Oh, don't worry about that. There are several unat¬tached ones around who know the city as well as anyone and will cook, clean, or do anything else you want—or not, if you don't want it."

He protested, mostly because he didn't want somebody going through his things, and he thought he'd settled it when he'd left for the evening, but when he returned to his apartment he'd barely begun washing up when there was a knock on the door. He opened it, and found a Fluxgirl there. She was perhaps a hundred and fifty centimeters tall in high heels, with curly, sandy-colored hair tumbling over her shoulders, and deep, huge green eyes, and was at least 115-50-95, which seemed even when looking at it to be anatomically impossible. She wore a backless, shiny satin slit dress of a green that matched her eyes and clung like a second skin, leaving nothing to the imagination.

"Hi, I'm Sindi," she said in a soft, sexy voice. "I'm to be your companion."

He was, in fact, more human than they thought. "Come on in," he managed.

12

ON LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE

Matson found himself fascinated by Sindi, the spelling of which he only found out by reading it off her, in spite of himself. He suspected full well that she would be required at some point to search just about everything he had, and to report on his conversation and activities, but he also knew that this was why he now had a certain measure of freedom in the city. Sindi was not a gift—she was the requirement.

Her life story was interesting, although possibly as au¬thentic as the life stories Cassie or Suzl would now tell with full conviction. She had been born and raised in the city, and really hadn't been more than a few kilometers outside it. She had an immediate, but no long-term, time sense. She could tell if it was late, or early, and roughly what time of day it was, but she had no idea how old she was or how long ago some past events were—and, more important, she didn't care. She was a Fluxgirl but not a Fluxwife, an important distinction that had up to this point eluded him. She could not have children, about the only thing that bothered her even a little but something she accepted as part of life, and she was more or less married to a place, not a person.

She was, she said, "a part of the bachelor officer's quarters in which he now resided. She was basically a porter and maid for the place, although she also, in the evenings, provided company and whatever for visiting young officers from elsewhere in Anchor or from other parts of Tilghman's empire. She was actually quite happy about being able to provide for such a variety of nice young men, and the variety couldn't be beat. She lived out of a service closet on the second floor; she always spent the night with someone there, or in rare cases in an empty room. She thought that was kind of neat, too, and in a way she considered herself freer than any of the Fluxwives, who were limited to one man and didn't have the fun on the town she had. When asked where she got the clothing and jewelry, she responded quite matter-of-factly, that "the men like to buy me things."

Like all the Fluxgirls, she was totally sexually uninhibited. She seemed to need and crave sex for her own sake, and not just because it was part of her function in life. She appeared an avid listener, but it was soon clear that any¬thing she didn't understand or didn't need to understand went in one ear and out the other with no stops in between. Part of her function was to listen if somebody wanted to talk; comprehension wasn't required. She had no concept of, nor interest in, anything beyond her narrow life and what she had to know. She took her society totally for granted and had no real interest in it. Her concept of government was that it was "something that ran things, I guess" and an army was "a bunch of guys who go off someplace and beat up on a bunch of other guys 'cause that's one of the things you men do." No, she didn't ever want to be a man because she couldn't think of a single thing men did that girls didn't that she wanted to do.

Girls were the opposites of men. They did the things men couldn't do either physically or by their natures, or that men didn't have the time to do. No, she didn't want to be a man—she'd seen 'em come in here all banged up and depressed and nervous wrecks, and she'd never been any of those things. He found, somewhat to his amusement, that she actually felt sorry for men, who paid a big price for all that responsibility and for all that power and playing those silly power games. They kept everything bottled up inside them, while girls let it all out. In that one area, he wasn't really sure that she wasn't right, and he had both the scars and the latent ulcers to prove it.

He liked her, partly because he thought he understood her, but he still took the opportunity later on to remove the small cube from its hiding place in his pants and push it down into the bottom of the small jar of skin cream in his travel kit that he carried for use against burns and minor wounds and bites. He hoped that would be sufficient to avoid any nastiness during the next couple of days. He wouldn't like to harm her, and he preferred to worry only about whether Adam Tilghman might get the urge to look at Toby Haller's journal while he was still here.

Sure enough, late into the night, after they had both supposedly fallen asleep, she slid professionally out of the bed and began a very silent but very methodical search of every inch of his possessions. As an old stringer and true survivor, he'd awakened the moment she'd moved, but pretended to sleep on. Confronting her was meaningless— she'd only say she was going to the bathroom or some¬thing like that—and it would be far better to get a clean bill of health than to thwart a search and imply there was something to hide.

She did check the travel kit, and even took the lid off the cream jar, but the odor was unpleasant and the stuff had the consistency of axle grease, and she didn't even think of swirling her finger around in it. He had carried that cream, or one just like it, for all these years, and never once used it. He had no idea if it really worked or not, but it definitely had always done the job in concealing small objects.

Matson idly wondered just what criteria she'd been given concerning what to look for, and how she could possibly recognize anything suspicious for what it was with her world view. She could come across a detailed written plan on how to assassinate New Eden's leaders and the mathematical combination to open the Hellgate and wouldn't have any way to tell them from a book of the latest dirty jokes and a record of his gin rummy scores, and since half his possessions would be unfamiliar to her simply because they were from another culture she might well have dismissed the cube in any event as a good luck charm or something while reporting on the sinister sub¬stances like the cream and the jar of wax for the bullwhip.

It was, of course, simply a case of the root nature of this society—and that made it easier than usual to beat if you really wanted to. He relaxed and went back to sleep.

Sindi took him on a tour of the city over the next three days, and he had to admit some interest in it purely on comparative grounds. It certainly was true that the thing worked economically—there was food in abundance in almost infinite varieties, including fine cuts of meat both fresh and preserved by a process known as "freezing," rather than by magic. The pedaled vehicle was everywhere and in constant use, sometimes hauling surprising tonnage, and there were not only regular garbage collections but a block-by-clock campaign in which the women living or working on a particular street got together at the end of each day and almost scrubbed the exteriors clean right down to the streets themselves. Littering was a social crime that provoked instant stern lectures, and there were plenty of public waste baskets about covered with slogans about pride and cleanliness.

All transactions were now through credit accounts at the central bank. To buy something, you handed in your identification card and the vendor punched in your number and that was it. His "visitor's" card seemed to have ample credit; nobody ever called him on it, but he resisted the temptation to abuse it. Not one single cop or authority figure challenged him, though—quite a change from when he'd arrived. When the Judge gave an order it was in¬stantly received and obeyed to the letter. The stares he could put up with; stringers were used to being stared at out of fear or suspicion by Anchorfolk.

The old temple looked pretty much the same, and pretty much as all the temples looked, although, of course, it wasn't a temple any more. Sindi called it the "Bigbrain place" although she had no idea what went on in there and no interest in it, either. In any case, it was off limits, not only to him but to anybody without specific business there. Matson suspected that he could get in if he really wanted to, although he wasn't so sure about getting out again. He'd once held that temple against the entire New Eden army and he knew how tough it would be to move around in there undetected.

There was nightlife in the city as well, something that surprised him. There were limited gambling parlors and private clubs, some bars—but for men only—and some entertainment establishments, including a couple of places with small bands and dancing. He wasn't much of a dancer, but he liked to sit and watch the others, particu¬larly the nude and nearly nude Fluxgirls, gyrate all their ample body parts into erotic frenzies. Even there, though, it was the cleanest, most antiseptic public area he'd ever seen, with the girls who worked there practically catching spills and scooping up trash and even buffing scuff marks off the polished floors by hand before you could even blink.

He could see the Judge's vision, but he wasn't sure about it. Certainly this was a society that worked; there was no crime, no poverty, no apparent disease, no dirt or filth, plenty of all the necessities and more of the luxuries than had been available to the general population in the Church-run Anchor Logh days, full employment, and ap¬parently ample leisure time. The price, of course, was a different matter, but there was always a price. For the men it was regimentation, which also meant that you did what your superiors wanted the way they wanted it done no matter what you might want; for the women it was a dual reduction to menial laborer and/or sex object. The society was directed from the cradle so tightly and efficiently that each sex believed it had the better part of the deal; that was the trick and quite an accomplishment.