03. Masters of Flux and Anchor (26 page)

The population, all of it, he realized, would be terrified if they one day awoke free to do whatever they wanted— and free to do or get nothing as well. Theirs was a society in which you did what you were told and in exchange were provided with everything society could give you, including cradle-to-grave security and the basics of life.

After three days he'd decided that Tilghman was right in one thing at least, that if the Judges and the Central Committee suddenly all died, but the system and bureau¬cracy remained untouched, this society could and would by this point go on indefinitely. Still, that was where Tilghman the idealist and dreamer and Matson the sour pragmatist and cynic parted company, for the Judge really believed that such a state would come to pass, where Matson knew with conviction that any gaps in the top leadership would be instantly filled from just below. The state would never fade away or retire because human nature loved power most of all, and there would never be a group tough enough and ruthless enough to get to the top who wouldn't hold on to that power and use it themselves. The Fluxlord never surrendered; he or she clung to power until deposed by an even stronger and more powerful Fluxlord.

The only free people he knew or knew of were those so powerful they could not be challenged, yet also smart enough to be bored playing tinpot dictator or god. Even he was not really free, or he wouldn't be in New Eden now or anywhere near the place. He'd retired and gone to work for a powerful Fluxlord who'd also been a pretty nice guy—but he was still the Fluxlord's man, dependent on him for everything. Then he'd gone back to the Guild, and there he was a colonel, which always seemed to him when he was young a high and mighty rank and position. But the first thing a colonel learns is that there are five ranks above him, all able to give colonels orders, and there were an awful lot of colonels.

He spent one last night with Sindi, then rose early in the morning on the fourth day and started packing up. She seemed genuinely sorry to see him go and her affection seemed quite genuine and touching, but the cynic in him wondered how many times a year she played out the same scene with equal sincerity.

His clothes had all been neatly cleaned and pressed, and when he walked over to Temple Square in the predawn chill he found they'd taken very good care of his horse and apparently had cleaned and waxed his saddle. Even the old shotgun looked brand new. He hoped it still shot.

Tilghman was there in full uniform, as was a whole troop of spit-and-polish cavalrymen. It was really impres¬sive when you stopped to look at it. He was escorted over to the high-ranking group and Tilghman spotted him and greeted him warmly. The old guy seemed in exceptionally high spirits, and was quick to introduce him around. He met too many men to keep track of them, but he knew that there were three other Judges here, just slightly less power¬ful than Tilghman, and Gunderson Champion was impossi¬ble to miss. Only the general seemed less than overjoyed to be there on what Tilghman kept referring to as a "historic occasion," but he was a good soldier. Champion knew of Matson but did not remember him, but the old stringer remembered the general well. He'd been Coydt's chief henchman, lieutenant, and troubleshooter. the only man as psychotic as Coydt himself and. therefore, the only one Coydt trusted to run his operations and affairs while the chief was away. Elsewhere around had to be the man who was Coydt's "left hand" as much as Champion had been his right, but there was no trace of Onregon Sligh this morning.

The main road led to the east and west Gates, always the only real entrances and exits from Anchor Logh, but the great banded multicolored orb that the Church called the Holy Mother was barely a third of the way to mid-Heaven before they turned and took a side road through the rolling farms almost due south. Even at the slow pace such a huge group had to take on these roads and under these conditions, they would arrive at the wall fully a day ahead of deadline if they continued in this direction.

Matson tended to be quiet and rarely initiated a conver¬sation. He was a guest of the big shots, but he wasn't privy to their councils or secrets and he really didn't like Gunderson Champion in the least, so he stayed with the men of the headquarters company on the frequent breaks. He learned very little, except the fact that not one of them, including their top sergeant and their commander, knew what the hell all this was about, either.

When they arrived at the wall he found that it had actually been breached in this location, and professionally, too. A new, if primitive, gate had been cut in it with a steel mesh bridge carrying patrols over the rectangular opening. Sturdy temporary wooden stairs had been built on both sides of the opening, and up top he saw where a section of wall had been widened into a platform a good thirty meters long by twenty wide. The timber was fresh and untreated, but the thing was sturdy as a rock. He saw grooves and holes in and around it, indicating that some¬thing was to be put on it, but what that something was turned out to be platform walls, or shields, perhaps three meters high, also of wood but with metal sheets nailed firmly to their outsides. There appeared to be only three walls. There was a fourth stacked up against the wall below, but it seemed the wrong size and shape to fit anyplace up top.

Below, a tent city had already been established, and now the various parts of the VIP detail found their tempo¬rary homes and stables and proceeded to move in. There was no specific place for him, and he was told pretty much to pick his own spot and just stay out of the way. He found an empty spot in the tent with the detail who'd been here setting all this up for weeks, apparently. They knew who he was, and seemed amiable enough to talk about their work. After several hours he had a very good idea of their orders and the layout of the place, and found out that none of them really knew what was going on, either.

He had to admit, though, that he was increasingly worried, not for himself but for Sondra, Jeff, and Spirit. In Flux they felt that they were in their element and that nothing except an attack by a stronger wizard was to be feared. Of course, he knew that you could blow a wizard's head off with a shotgun just as easily in Flux as in Anchor, but he also hoped that Sondra remembered her own experience in the attack on Spirit's refuge. One strong wizard—Zelligman Ivan—and one New Eden amplifier had collapsed a Fluxlahd maintained by both Cass and Mervyn—two of the strong¬est—sent Sondra in flight and knocked Cass cold for maybe days. Mervyn was hooked to the old, pre-amplifier days and the pre-amplifier reflexes. Could he and the other two wizards withstand a power that might be three, or even thirty, or perhaps even three hundred times the power of one amplifier? New Eden had warned the entire cluster. Clusters were 3017.5 kilometers across, no matter which way you sliced them. Let's see, that would be that number times itself—nine million square kilometers! Could that be right? Or was he rusty on his math somewhere? At any rate, it was one hell of an area. What could they possibly do to it to affect it all?

It was to be another day and a half of waiting and worrying before he found out.

The platform atop the wall resembled a cross between a war bunker, a command post, and a parade reviewing stand. It was all decked out with chairs, table, lectern, and some sort of powered sound system. In the center, however, was a motorized winch to which were attached a series of cables along carefully delineated aisles. The three metal-covered walls were attached to the main platform on great hinges, and by cable to the master winch—or winches, really, although one motor served them all. He had watched them test it out several times in the past day.

Apparently they had been told no rear wall, facing Anchor, was needed. The fourth section was to block the passage blasted or dug out of the old wall itself. Matson, smelling something lethal for those still in the void, mounted the wall nervously and took a seat well away from those cables, which he didn't trust, and about halfway back in the grouping of chairs. He began to wish that he'd relented and allowed Sondra and Jeff to accompany him here. They would have presented a sticky situation and a potential danger to him and to themselves, but now it seemed they would have been safer in the hands of the enemy.

Just inside the void he could barely make out the hulk¬ing shape of one of the amplification machines, with a lot of wires leading back to a small temporary building on the Anchor apron. Some wires then ran from the building to the wall and entered the platform through the floor where it jutted out from the wall and over the apron, and where the hinged section would not interfere with them.

There had been some delay, and it was well past the appointed time; the assembled big shots of New Eden and their one lone visitor began to get the fidgets. Matson regretted his seating choice now that it was too late. He had to go to the bathroom and was afraid he'd never get out, get down to the outdoor privy, and back up in time. The old law applied—if he didn't go, they'd sit for hours; if he did, it would start when he started his business down there. He decided he would hold it until he blew up or until they were told to take a break.

Finally, though, Adam Tilghman emerged from the old stone guard house near the platform flanked by two white-uniformed men. He looked annoyed and kept saying things no one could catch and nodding occasionally to the two in white, but he continued on to the platform and up to the podium.

I bet he went to the john just before coming here, Matson thought grumpily. There was no greater personal demonstration of power to him than this. Tilghman's Uto¬pian dream would never come about because no man in his position would pass up being the lone individual able to hold up the proceedings while he took a piss. Sit here with a full bladder, Judge, and see what equality really means.

The sound system came alive with a screech, and a couple of technicians leaped to adjust it. The screech stopped, and there was only a buzzing noise and the vague sound of some nasty-toned conversation in the air. Tilghman turned to the crowd and began, his voice surprisingly easy to hear.

"Gentlemen, we are here, finally, to witness a true revolution, an act that is irrevocable and which will change our world forever. Some of you know what we are about to do. but most of you do not, for security was essential to this entire operation.

"I have now been informed that, after some technical problems, all is now in readiness for the act. We are doing nothing here, today, that our ancestors did not plan and design. For various reasons they were unable to carry out the full operation, but we will do our part today."

He paused a moment, mostly for dramatic effect, and then continued. His audience was all ears.

"We have used the amplifiers whose plans and designs we discovered in the ancient papers mostly as weapons to this point, but they were not designed as weapons. It was never the intent of our ancestors to promote the conditions under which we've lived for twenty-six hundred years. Flux is a tool, not an end; a tool to be used by these machines to accomplish a specific task. For various reasons, some of which we do not fully understand, that task was not carried out—until now.

"Nine years ago. a research project of ours discovered, quite accidently. a series of modules designed to instruct and operate the amplifiers. We'd not known what they were for, as they were classified under the general term 'Landscape Architecture," with their use guide making reference to various machines we didn't until now under¬stand. For unknown reasons, we found that these and many other modules were called 'programs' by the ancients, which means that they are incredibly complex sets of instructions intended to be fed automatically to the amplifi¬ers and which the amplifiers will then carry out."

Again he paused, and except for the buzzing in the public address system there didn't even seem to be the sound of breathing.

"Now, then," he went on, "these modules, or programs, were originally given to the botanical group because of the name, and it was a young, bright botanist named Kerr Endina who finally put it all together, mostly in his spare time and at the cost of some ridicule from his colleagues."

Matson wondered what remote outpost those colleagues were now staffing, and what Endina would be doing if this, whatever it was, didn't work or didn't work like he said it should.

"We have deployed one hundred and twelve amplifiers in the cluster," Tilghman told them. There was a collec¬tive gasp at this. "This number, or so the scientists tell me, is the largest number that can be used within a cluster, since all of them use and modify Flux and there is only so much Flux. We actually don't need but a fraction of these for what we will do, but the rest are deployed with a different purpose. Once the signal is given, every Fluxlord and every Fluxland population that remains in the cluster despite our warnings, and this is a very large number, would be against us. General Champion was brilliant enough to come up with what we think will be a solution which involves the other amplifiers."

Matson glanced over at Champion and saw the general smile and nod. No matter what you could say against Tilghman, he was one Hell of a politician.

"The great work that we do today," Tilghman told them, "is nothing less than the conversion of an entire cluster from four Anchors and Flux to solid Anchor!"

Suddenly everyone was talking at once, and it took a while for Tilghman to calm them down. When he did, he continued.

"Think of it! An Anchor the size of a cluster, stretching from where we stand to the southern tip of Mareh and to the westernmost point in Nantzee and all the way to the easternmost point in the former Anchor Bakha. Those names in a moment will have no meaning. There will be only one—New Eden, largest and dominant Anchor on this planet!"

That set them off again. Matson, like many, was stunned. No wonder the wily old bastard was so agreeable to disman¬tling the communications network! If this crazy, impossi¬ble scheme actually worked, the Guild was out of business in the south.

"We have among our ranks many with substantial Flux power, and we have used them in our secondary move— which actually comes first, by a few precious minutes, thanks to General Champion's foresight. Every known substantive Fluxland is now covered by mass amplifers. When the signal is given, they will begin to direct on those Fluxlands the massed power of the amplifiers and our own adaptation spells that worked so well at Nantzee and Mareh.