03. Masters of Flux and Anchor (29 page)

Sligh was getting even more diabolical in his old age. But there had obviously also been a rider spell for those with a male orientation, as witness his own physical transformation. Clearly that spell provided for those quali¬ties New Eden valued as "male"—largeness, strength, bravery, dominance—things like that. But if the object was to keep women from thinking very much, then men had to have all their knowledge, skills, and experience, and many, if not most, wouldn't think kindly of New Eden's presumptions. Great power, fixed protective spells, and over seven centuries of experience had obviously shielded him from the more subtle mental orientation, but that left him ignorant of what they did.

"Come on," he told her. taking her by the hand. "Let's find the others."

They walked back up the hill and over to the left, where he thought Jeff and Spirit had been, and he called out their names. Spirit might not be able to respond to her name but she'd recognize voices.

A man stepped out in front of him, as naked and as big and well-built as he now was. There had been a little fine tuning, but it was recognizably Jeff. "Who the hell are you?" Jeff asked. It sounded like his voice had dropped an octave.

"It's Mervyn, Jeff."

Jeff frowned. "Mervyn? But he was old."

"He still is, and getting older by the minute. I'm afraid."

"Who's she?"

"It's what they did to Sondra."

He grinned wolfishly. "Well, now, that's a big im¬provement. She'll make the trip a lot easier to take."

It was Mervyn's turn to frown, and he tensed. "Trip? What trip?"

"It's our duty to locate and report to any New Eden authority. You know that. We should leave as soon as we can."

So that was it: a compelling command to check in. Perhaps other minor adjustments as well—a heightened aggressiveness, certainly, and perhaps a suppression of conscience? The way Jeff was looking at Sondra and getting very obviously turned on indicated the latter.

"Jeff—where's your mother? What happened to her'.'"

For a moment that threw him. and he looked suddenly confused. Suddenly he brightened, then replied. "Oh, her. Nothing changed on her. Nothing ever changes with her. She's over there someplace." He gestured in the direction from which he'd just come.

Mervyn left Sondra and walked into the woods, looking around. He spotted her in a few moments, lying there against a tree, and rushed to her. She looked unsteady and confused, and he saw as he knelt down that she had a nasty-looking gash on her forehead. She started, frightened, when she saw him. but the Soul Rider reassured her.

Do not fear. It is Mervyn. The process changed him physically but not mentally. Trust him.

She relaxed, and he sensed it. understanding somehow that she had recognized him in spite of his physical change. Using what sign language he could come up with, he tried to find out what happened, and gradually pieced together the story. She had rushed to Jeff, and he had come to. and he'd been like an animal. He had angrily resisted her attempts at communication and finally had shoved her hard against the tree, which she'd hit, knocking her out for a while.

Mervyn felt sudden rage, not only for New Eden but for Jeff. It took a lot of willpower for him to calm himself down, and it was only then that he realized that his own hormones were heightened as well. Signing for her to wait, he walked back to where he'd left Jeff and Sondra. and came upon the appalling sight of the two of them together in the grass. Jeff was raping Sondra—no, that wasn't the right word, exactly, for she certainly seemed to be enjoying herself. New Eden, in fact, was raping Sondra and all like her.

"Jeff! That's your aunt!" he managed to say. trying to keep himself under control.

"So we'll keep it in the family." Jeff shot back, then continued with what he'd been doing.

Mervyn returned to Spirit, unable to resist the urge to kill her son and his adept if he'd remained one more minute. He had to decide, and quickly, what to do next. Short of killing him, there was no way to control Jeff, who was firmly in the grip of the spell. Because he intellectu¬ally couldn't blame Jeff any more than he could blame Cassie or Suzl he knew that killing was not the tack to take, and he also knew it would be unavoidable if they remained together. Or Jeff, discovering that Mervyn was not in New Eden's grip, would kill him. There was Sondra to think of. of course, but at this point he couldn't see any way of getting her away from Jeff—and if he did, Jeff would simply follow them and kill him and take both women back.

His first duty was to regain his power. Without that, no operation against New Eden, which was now a point of honor and necessity, was possible. To do that, he had to make it to Flux, praying that Flux was still where he'd left it when he'd moved the staff and contents of Pericles.

He helped Spirit to her feet and they made their way cautiously down and around, the sounds from nearby clearly indicating what was happening between the two others. The two horses were still there, although there was no sign of the two spares who might be around and might have panicked and be kilometers away by now. He thought he could still tell direction from this point, although it would get difficult later, and he'd never had to ride a horse bareback, let alone bare and with this amount of genital equipment. Spirit tended to be afraid of animals, but the urgency of the situation overcame the fear for at least the moment. The Soul Rider could not affect her spell-created aversion, but could dampen the fear areas and heighten confidence. With Mervyn's help she actually was per¬suaded to mount one of the horses, and with considerable difficulty he mounted the other. He started off slowly, then checked and saw that she was holding onto the mane for dear life but maintaining her balance, and her horse was following the leader. Due to the forest and the terrain he couldn't go fast, anyway, but he prayed he could go faster than a man on foot if need be.

Several minutes later it started to rain; a cold, uncomfort¬able rain that beat among the treetops and then filtered down onto them, thoroughly soaking them both. At least twice, partly due to the rain, both he and Spirit slipped off the horses, but managed to break their falls and recover. It did, however, become increasingly difficult to remount, and he was just about to give it up and wait for a clearing when they came out of the forest and onto the shore of a large freshwater lake. The trees thinned noticeably along the shoreline to the right, and became tall grass and bushes. He headed for it, and they stopped and dismounted just barely concealed by the trees. They would have to rest here, and while it was as wet and chilly as everyplace else it offered concealment and a wide view of the opposing shoreline, which might give him some edge should Jeff be following.

He knew, though, that their main problem wouldn't be exposure or capture but hunger. Even if they surmounted all the other obstacles that seemed impossible, there was no getting around the fact that only the horses were pro¬vided for in this new land. There was nothing to do now. though, but pick out a spot of wet grass and try and get a little rest.

Mervyn hadn't believed it possible to sleep under those conditions, but he did. When he awoke, he saw with a start that Spirit was nowhere to be seen. He jumped up and checked the shoreline, but saw nothing threatening, and the two horses were grazing nearby. The rain had stopped, and a slight wind had come up which dried him off a bit but did nothing to help the chill. They needed food and warmth, in that order, and there was no way to find either.

He was afraid that Spirit had returned for Jeff, but shortly he saw her return, with a small armload of berries and some greenish-looking fruit. He couldn't ask her where it had come from, but seeing that she'd obviously already eaten he wasted no time. The fruit was bitter and the berries not quite ripe, but the idea that they were poison¬ous he simply dismissed from his mind. If they were, then that was that. He had little choice.

They were filling, and the only result seemed to be a case of acid indigestion that passed after a while. For the first time he felt some confidence, even optimism, in the affair. There was food in this place for people, even if not just right. He prayed that there was sufficient food near the major population centers. Otherwise, cannibalism would quickly rear its ugly and repulsive head, and he knew who the victims would be. He only hoped that New Eden realized it, too, and was rushing first to those areas.

Still, he now realized that Spirit's spell included one for survival under almost any conditions. It there was food, she would find it along the trail.

She did not wish to ride again, but at the speed he could go on horseback in this condition it was just as well. The other horse, although not tied to them, seemed anxious not to be lost and followed calmly along, which was a relief.

There were many breaks in the clouds now, and the sky was filled with the wonder of what the old Church called the Holy Mother in all Her glory. Except for the wilder¬ness aspect and the extra chill in the air it might have been any Anchor. Spirit, on foot, took the lead and often ranged far ahead of him. Although he had a general sense of direction from the way the Holy Mother came in on the east and went out in the west, she seemed to know where she was going and what she was doing and he decided to let her take the lead. At this speed, he knew, it would take a month to get out.

They huddled together at night to share what body heat they could, and he was quite surprised to find her coming on to him rather strongly and suggestively. He fought it for a while, but it was difficult to contain his own urges and impossible to conceal them. He had suppressed such urges with a flick of his mind for centuries, but now he was no longer a wizard, no longer was his humanity protected by the cloak of an ancient body and wizard's powers, and he ultimately gave in to her.

To Spirit, it was a simple act of warmth and com¬panionship. As Mervyn himself had explained, it was the one way she could truly interact with other human beings as an equal, and. because it was the only way, she was better at it than almost anyone else.

It became evident to him after not too many days in the new wilderness that his entire situation had been reversed. Matson was right—a wizard simply forgot how to do the most basic things because he never had to. He could just wish for them. Now he had been shorn of his power, and he was dependent on Spirit for food, for direction, and even, possibly, for protection. The spell and the Soul Rider gave her maximum survival potential—not a guarantee, of course, but as good as one could get—and he was merely hitching a ride. He had never felt dependent before, not even with his shattered leg back in Mantzee. Helpless then, yes, but not dependent on another. Ivan had finally rescued him, but not out of altruism or the good¬ness of his heart.

For decades he'd been trying to understand what went on behind those big, brown eyes and he'd gotten nowhere to speak of. Still, like everyone, he'd tended to think of her as a child, a permanent innocent, not as a human being with a handicap. Now, it seemed, she was truly in her element. Because she could use no artifacts, she neither looked for them or depended upon them. She found food where he saw nothing, or would be afraid to try, and she found shelter where he'd never think to look.

Sign language was only one form of communication. Touching, stroking, and intimacy were also forms of communication, very different and more basic things but still very important. Perhaps, he began to think. I have denied my humanity too long. To have power alone, to deny the basic relationships and feelings of all humans, was not enough, he decided. One could not aspire to a higher state and level of humanity by denying the basics of that humanity.

That was where New Eden was really wrong, too. Like the spell that had consumed Jeff and Sondra. New Eden was a least-common-denominater society. Its values for both sexes were incomplete. Love was equated with sex, intimacy with coupling. Even their predetermined so¬cial roles were biology-linked, as if humanity were merely any other animal, easily quantifiable, with any elements common to both sexes clinically filtered out. Women bore and nurtured children; therefore, they were to stay home and keep house and have a lot of sex when the man wanted it and, because this was rather boring and limiting, they should also be limited in their intelligence. Men were on the whole bigger, stronger, and one man could sexually service quite a large group of women. That made them the workers, the managers, the providers, the warriors— and also, of course, expendable.

But love wasn't sex; sex could, however, be an act of love. It was sharing, trust, friendship, commitment—all those things. He had always downgraded sex because it seemed a simple animalistic urge, available to anyone who really wanted it and wasn't picky about who it was done with. Now he was the weaker and the dependent, and he was learning quite a lot about himself and about the human condition generally. He was very much falling in love with Spirit, almost to the point of it coloring everything else.

For Spirit, it was just as personal but not magnanimous. She was well aware of the fact that fate had cast her, after so many years the outsider and alien, in a leading position, and she was particularly grateful that Mervyn not only understood this but accepted it. She reciprocated in the only two ways she could—by doing the job and by giving of herself to him, although she had no idea the pro¬found effect that was having on the old wizard. She could lead because the Soul Rider was always in at least passive communication with its unknown master which it knew or took to be in Anchor. The Anchors were con¬nected overland and through the Hellgate, which always gave the Soul Rider specific position within a cluster. The overland link weakened the further it was from Anchor, although it was a very slight difference, and from the strength of the broadcast signal it could compute how far away that signal's source was. That more than anything was how it knew that its unknown master was in the center of Anchor Logh.

As for the food supply, the master program had been instructed to construct a mature and balanced ecosystem, not a virgin land ready for planting. The higher animals were not included, nor were they intended to be, but wild fruits, vegetables, nuts, berries, and more were there it you knew where to look, and it knew where to look simply because it had read the program as it was enacted and had a perfect map of the new land in its memory.