03. Masters of Flux and Anchor (41 page)

"How the hell are you doing all this?" Matson asked her as they walked briskly towards their goal. "I thought your old self was erased!"

"It was. But nothing is permanent if you have Flux power here," she told him. "Nothing but death. First they read my memories back in, so I have the whole record. That also negated Coydt's spell."

"I notice you kept your Fluxgirl body."

"Honey, if you had this body would you go back to being a fat, dumpy broad with stringy hair?"

The twins were recovering from their shock in the excite¬ment of freedom, and joined in. "So you've got Flux power. But, Matson, you said it don't work in this place."

They were going up the vast, high stone steps now. Suzl slowing only to make allowances for the others' vision. Their eyes had somewhat adjusted now, but it was a dark and cloudy night.

"It works when I want it to work," Suzl told them. "Like when this square was turned to Flux once."

She was at the door now, and waited for them to reach the same place. "The Guardian did that," Matson pointed out, feeling a little out of shape. He was breathing hard from just that climb.

"Matson, darling, haven't you figured it out yet? I am the Guardian!"

The technician was a blubbering, quivering mass of terror. Onregon Sligh looked at him in complete disgust.

"Get hold of yourself, man! What the hell is wrong with you?"

Finally, the technician collected himself enough to speak. He was terrified out of his wits, but he was at least as terrified of Onregon Sligh.

"I—I monitored a surge in the line. I went down to check on it, and I s-saw—him."

"Who?"

"G-General Champion! God! It was horrible! He'd been cut completely in two, his guts and blood are all over the place. . . ."

Sligh frowned. He didn't like losing Champion at this stage of things. Still, there were others. "You've seen dead men before."

"Not like that. Burned through, he was! And the look frozen on his face—I'll never be able to get that face out of my mind!"

Sligh turned away and summoned some of Champion's aides. They told him what Champion was doing down there. He took out his big cigar and spat on the ground. "Stupid hung-up psychopathic son of a bitch! He just loved torturing the girls so much that he couldn't resist it even now. Well, it's clear what happened. She was a wizard, and he took her down where there was maximum power. She was stronger than he was, and absolutely terrified, and that terror pulled so much force out of the Gate it killed him. Serves him right, risking his life and command in a crisis." He sighed. "Well, you were his aides. Take some men, get down there, and clean up the mess. I don't want it fouling the cable. When you're done I'll send some of my boys down to check and see if any damage was done."

He walked back over to the communications shack. He'd have to call up von Heilman and Narjawal and tell them that their precious general had cut his throat and that they would be expected to shoulder the load now. He didn't care which one of them took over here. They were good military men, but otherwise both were just as batty as their fallen commander.

General Borodin jumped off the platform to the first car before the train had come to a complete stop and ran over and saluted Adam Tilghman. The Judge returned it, then shook hands warmly. Borodin had been thought by Cham¬pion and Sligh to be on their side, and, in fact, he had been—for a limited coup. He had never felt right about it, though, smelling something odd, and when news came of the Hellgate plot it all fell into place for him. Tilghman knew that Borodin had been ready to stab him in the back before, and Borodin knew he knew it, but neither let it influence their actions now. Any ideological differences could be settled later—if there was a later.

"I had to sacrifice men for ordnance," the general said apologetically. "How many have you got?"

"Almost two thousand," Tilghman replied. "We've picked up a very large number from nervous junior officers and sergeants who have little stomach for revolution if it means civil war. I'm hoping that more of them won't fight when we move."

Borodin nodded. "We'd better. With only two trains on this damned single track I was lucky to pack in another three hundred, and half of those are ordnance experts. Still, we've alerted a lot of commands along the way, and we might get substantial reinforcements overland if we can hold that long. I wouldn't count on them, though. There's one hell of a storm front between there and here. We almost didn't make it through!"

There were rumblings in the west, and the occasional glow of far-off lightning flashes to emphasize his point. Tilghman was delighted with the ordnance, particularly the heavy ray projection equipment and the rocket launchers, but he was under no illusions as to their chances. Even though the enemy force was currently spread out in all directions, once either their scouts located him or he struck they would all move to close in. If they couldn't punch through quickly and in total secrecy until the actual point of engagement, there was no chance at all of reaching the transmitter. It sounded simple, but even with an all-night trek it would be midmorning before they could be in any kind of position for a solid attack.

Tilghman walked back to the small, fast carriage he was using. Cassie had used a small portable stove and offered him hot coffee and a two-day-old sandwich. "Them san'wiches don't look like much, but they're better'n nothin'," she told him, forcing him to eat and drink something.

Not for the first time did he wish for the "old" Cassie back, the veteran warrior queen who'd conquered half of World. Still, he understood that that woman had hated war, and had hated being forced to wage it. Even this one had guts, though. She could have been safe but chose to be here, knowing she might die or watch him die—or both. She'd kept him going out here, forcing him to rest, to eat, to catch a little sleep. "I ain't much good for fightin' an' wars," she'd told him, "but you take care of the war and I'll take care of you."

Soon they were breaking camp. The trains had been unloaded, everything was hitched up, and he and Borodin and the brigade commanders had agreed on routes, strategy, and tactics. There was nothing left to do but to fight.

He had driven himself like a wild man, without rest or comfort, for many days, and he'd driven all those on his side the same way. The word was spread through Flux and Anchor, by wizard, by messenger, by stringer, that it could not be stopped. The Gates of Hell were opening, and the final battle and final test for humanity was at hand. They would be a massive force in each cluster, but a disorganized one. The stringers tried to help with that as much as possible, as each assumed an area command and switched roles. For more than twenty-six centuries the men and women of the Guild had studied and trained for just this sort of conflict, but this was the first time they, as a group, were called upon to put theory into practice. Still, they formed a ready-made senior officer corps as trained as any could be for an unprecendented situation. For the first time, Mervyn began to believe that, while World might well lose, it was not as unprepared as it seemed.

He had stuck to Flux, not wanting to be caught in Anchor as had Krupe and the others, and now he circled in the form of a great bird around the Northeast Gate. It was the least defended, since Fluxlands tended by chance to be closer to the cluster rims there, and entry from the temples had been somehow jammed. He circled, saw nothing out of the ordinary, and then landed and changed back into his human form almost at the lip of the dish-like depression.

All seemed deathly still, and he climbed down the an¬cient ladder to the dish floor and walked over to the tunnel entrance. Suddenly a head poked out, so abruptly that it startled him. The man in the tunnel grinned, then quickly hauled himself up to the surface of the dish.

"Hello, Mervyn," said Zelligman Ivan. "Well, it's just as I planned it. I waited until I heard you were in the region, then made more of a ruckus here than I had to in hopes it would bring you to me."

"Zelligman—there's still time to stop this."

"Had a last-minute glitch in the remote receiver," the Chairman of the Seven continued, ignoring the old wizard's plea. "It wouldn't do to have a mechanical failure undo all these carefully laid plans."

"Zelligman—how are you going to do it? You have no receiving antenna."

"Very astute. It's because you can't really ever be sure about broadcasting through Flux, old boy. So the signal will be beamed down, full strength, and concentrated on the tunnel in the south. There's a carrier signal of some sort connecting all the Gates, you know. Our signal will piggyback onto that carrier, and they'll all open—not within a minute, but within a second or less."

"So the tower is only so that the real transmitter is high enough to beam directly down into the tunnel."

Ivan nodded. "I know what you're thinking, and, yes. Knock off a bit of the top and it's no go. But they'll never get that close, you know. And even if they did, and stopped it, they couldn't disconnect what we've put in. It's inevitable, Mervyn. If not now, then next week, next month, or next year. It might as well be tomorrow."

"There might still be ways."

"And if there are, I'm sure you can think of them, but it's rather obvious that you and I are going to sit up there and be the welcoming committee. It should be instructive to one of us."

Mervyn looked at him. "You mean to take me on, then?"

"You're done, old man. Your cause is lost, your power is half what it was. Why fight me at all?"

"My cause is lost when it is lost, Zelligman, not before. My power may have diminished, but I need no machine to amplify it, so great is my hate and disgust of you and your works, when pitted against your cold and soulless rationality. You are dead inside, Zelligman. And if your cause is inevitable I can still hurt you, for I can cheat you out of ever knowing for certain."

Zelligman Ivan smiled. "This was ordained from our births, Mervyn. This is the moment for which we were born." He rose into the air and there was a sudden, blinding sheet of fire. The match was on.

They went down stairways and walked dark halls, the only sound in the the temple complex the noise of their bare feet on the cold floor. Finally, they reached their destination, and the emergency lighting came on to aid them. About twenty meters from the small area which was the switching center from temple to Gate had been sheathed in bright metal; floors, ceiling, and walls were all covered.

"They rigged it as an electrocution zone," Suzl told them. "Anything coming out or going in without some¬body on a remote switch upstairs holding down a button was zapped. In a way, it was their version of the tunnel defense system, and it's been pretty effective. Don't worry about it now, though. There's no power to the mains." She stepped onto the metal, and, after a nervous moment, Matson and the twins followed. It was always chilly in the basement area, but the metal made it more so. Still, they made it to the spot, now clearly marked on the floor, where the transfer could take place. "Huddle in close together," Suzl told them. "We all want to go at the same time."

"Go where?" the twins asked nervously.

"Down. Down to where the others are, in the master control room."

"What others?" Matson asked. "Who else is involved in this?"

"I haven't the faintest idea right now, but we'll find out in a second. Ready? Here goes!"

Suddenly all reality seemed to wink out, and they felt as if each of them were floating in a black void, without bodies or any sensations. Then, just as abruptly, they were themselves again and it was light.

They were in a circular room perhaps twenty meters across. There were banks of alien-looking equipment lin¬ing the walls, and above them screens on which, at the moment, nothing showed. The entire ceiling was a source of soft but adequate light, and somewhere there was a soft rumbling of air being recirculated. Spaced evenly around the room, facing the equipment, were large padded chairs, at least two dozen of them.

"Daddy!" a woman screamed joyously, and before he knew it Matson was being hugged by a familiar figure. Sondra still looked like a Fluxgirl. and had a singular lack of self-control. The twins just gaped in amazement at the place, while Suzl walked forward and across the room to where a tall figure turned in one of the chairs and got up.

"Spirit!" she breathed, awed and suddenly hesitant.

Spirit looked at the other woman and shook her head in wonder. "You've sure changed a lot, Suzl." Then they hugged and kissed and cried a little. Suzl's small form was almost smothered by Spirit, yet she was the first to recover. "Damn!" she said, voice cracking. "You made me break my two remaining cigars."

Spirit sighed and smiled and looked down at her, wiping away the tears. "Well, finally it all makes sense, doesn't it?"

Suzl nodded. "Yeah. Personally, I think our ever-loving ancestors were a bunch of paranoids." She stopped, spot¬ting another figure behind them. "Who's he?"

"That's Jeffron."

Suzl almost choked. "That is little Jeff? Holy shit!" Jeff looked somewhat bewildered, and Suzl immediately realized that he had no idea who she was. How do you explain to a big, strapping guy like that that the voluptuous little Fluxgirl with the foul mouth and cocky expression is his father? She decided that Spirit was right to leave it for another time, if there was another time.

Matson, who understood the situation, stepped in. "Well, I'm glad it all makes sense to somebody," he growled. "Now will you make sense of it all to me?"

And as they all began to check out their systems, they told him.

The sealing of the Gates had been an army decision, as he knew, supported by the non-Company authorities and the fearful general population. Once sealed, this had given the military authorities time to set up defensive actions.

Each Anchor was established and held firm by a master computer so huge and complex it was larger than the temple above it and went down several hundred meters below the foundation. These computers were the products of two hundred years of development since the first crude computers had been developed; they were self-repairing and self-aware, and each in its memory sections could contain much of the sum total of humanity's knowledge.