03. Masters of Flux and Anchor (52 page)

"No, Dad. Just the opposite. I was alone for a very, very long time, and I've never felt more alone than now. I never want to be alone again. I'll come—for a visit, anyway. As you said, I've got to be somewhere, and I have to live a very long time in this new world. If I can't start with my own family, I don't know how I can cope with the outside."

"You know your big trouble? You really got it in the head with your parents. The more I listen to you the more I hear myself, only contaminated a little with your mother's idealistic streak."

They rode along, getting to know each other better as they did so. She liked him a lot, and felt a growing pride and inner glow at being his daughter. If she had only a fraction of his magnetism, his wise pragmatism, and his incredible inner strength, she felt lucky indeed. Yet he wasn't perfect. He was an ornery, stubborn man who could be warm to her yet cold and callous to injustice— and to many people. As he said, he wasn't a saint or a monument, he was a human being—and that was what made him great.

The sidebar string to Jeff and Sondra's new land was well concealed even for an expert, but Matson had no trouble in finding and following it. He had a lifetime of experience doing just that.

Like most Fluxlands, this one had no permanent shield to drain the reigning wizard's power, but the moment the void began to clear and form itself into vague shapes, then turn into clear landscape, both Jeff and Sondra would know who had arrived and where. Any enemy or stranger crossing that boundary would meet a firm shield soon enough.

"It's big," Spirit remarked, both amazed and impressed. "You know, in a way, that deep blue sky and the forests and glades and streams remind me of . . ."

"Pericles," Matson completed. "Yeah, it's a new New Pericles in a way. It figures. He worshipped the old man, and I arranged to have Mervyn's people and records moved over here since their temporary got shaky. Some nice touches, though. Lots of flowers, and the hills over there; I think I see a lake off to the left."

"I see it! It's beautiful! Looks even better without all the marble buildings."

"Well. I'll kind of miss the naked statues, but that's not much of a price to pay. I wonder how far we got to ride into this place before we find a human being?"

It was, in fact, almost four hours before the solitary dirt path led them to the settlement. The great lodge, made apparently of hardwood, was set on wooden stilts up high against a hill and partially in it. The place was multistoried and enormous, yet it retained a genuine rustic air, and it was framed by two waterfalls cascading down into a pool below and then running off as a river. The noise of the falls was obtrusive at first, but you quickly got used to it.

Below, on either side of the river, they could see smaller buildings—cabins, mostly, although some seemed rather large—going off into the woods. There Mervyn's surviv¬ing staff of probably no more than thirty or thirty-five lived and worked.

There were stables below, and several horses were in them, but they were able to see to their own mounts and then head for the redwood stairs under the house that led up to it. Matson stuck a cigar in his mouth and went up with Spirit—there was room for more than two on the stairway.

When they reached the top they found themselves on a broad deck, or porch, leading to the first floor. There were mats and recliners around, allowing anyone to relax in the warmth of the outdoors without going far, or just to enjoy the magnificent view.

Sondra came out and greeted them warmly with hugs and kisses. "We were wondering how long it would take you to get here," she told them.

"How're you doing?" he asked her seriously.

"Wonderful! How do you like the place? Jeff and I designed it together." She meant the Fluxland, not merely the house.

"It's beautiful." Spirit put in. "You may have two free¬loaders here for quite a while."

"Everyone's welcome," Sondra responded, obviously delighted that Spirit had come. "I have to go back in and check on things. That noise you hear that sounds like the second invasion of the Samish is the kids. Come on with me. Dad. I've got a lot to say to you."

Together they entered the house. Spirit started to follow, then heard all the commotion and decided she'd stay out¬side a bit and just relax and admire the view. The sound of the waterfall might be intrusive to some, but she found it soothing, almost carrying her back to a different existence.

A screened door opened behind her, and she turned and saw a small, slight, yet very familiar figure there. She was taller than any Fluxgirl although still far shorter than Spirit, of very slight build, thin and somewhat plain-looking, but still a little cute. It was, in fact, a familiar boyish figure from the past, still looking nineteen or twenty, with only a few subtle changes. She had sandy-colored hair now, fluffed up and curled and reaching to her shoulders, highlighting her face. Her skin was a coppery bronze, her eyes brown. She wore small, dangling earrings and had a touch of makeup on. which seemed just right to highlight her features. She wore a tight-fitting dark brown body stocking and a pair of dark brown leather boots with thick high heels. The outfit showed such small breasts that they would be totally concealed with anything looser fitting, but her figure was firmly curved and athletic.

Spirit gaped. "Mother? Is that you?"

Cassie smiled. "Who else?"

"But you're back to normal—sort of."

That brought a laugh. "Sort of. Actually, except for the hair and skin color this is just the body I had before being tossed into Flux that first time so long ago."

"But—I've seen pictures! You looked like a boy! That figure isn't the original, is it?"

"Yeah, it's hard to believe, but it is. The truth is, the way you see yourself sometimes—most times—is reflected by your appearance. I was never very conscious of my figure because I didn't think I had much of one; I always dressed like a boy. kept my hair real short, never wore makeup or jewelry, always loose-fitting clothes to conceal what I thought of as my lack of a body. It's sure as hell not the body I did have for a while there, but I finally had a chance to see myself from one of those glamour girl perspectives and I found that it's more a matter of how you present what you have than of trying to crawl in a hole. That goes for men, too, if they want to take the trouble. I had my fling as a sex object; now I thought it was time to stop the fantasy stuff. I don't need it any more. I just decided I was going to be what I really am, and not run and hide anymore. I finally decided it was time for me to grow up."

"But—what are you doing here? I thought you and Suzl would be back in Anchor Logh for disengagement!" Spirit persisted.

She shrugged. "Why? We sure as hell didn't need to be there, and there was nobody we had to come home to. I talked it over with Sondra and Jeff, and some of the staff here moved me and the kids in three days ago. Suzl will be along when it's all over, which I guess should be any time now. She kept her Fluxgirl body, but she's got all her wizard's power again. For me to come back to myself I had to pay a price."

"What?"

Cassie nodded. "We had to leave those millions of women in New Eden looking like they had since they became Fluxgirls, and there was a general feeling among the Guardians that it should be a hard and fast rule, just to be fair about it. Particularly for me. But if I stayed that way I'd stay in New Eden forever, and I'd be expected to remarry and to serve as some kind of example or living monument. I couldn't take that. So to appease both the Guardians and the government that would want to use me, I had to pay a big price. I agreed to it. I'm totally disengaged, totally cut off from Flux power. I can't even see strings. I'm not a wizard any more, not even a false one. That way, I'm not threat now or in the future to New Eden or to anyone else."

"That's terrible! It's unfair!"

"No, it's perfectly fair. Any other way I'm a threat to them. If I can no longer live under their system and endorse and be a shining example of it, I become a threat. I have a hell of a track record, remember, for upsetting the established order. Without Flux power of any kind. I'm safe. They can all rest and so can I. With that power they would always be nervous, like New Eden was at the start, and they'd be out hunting me down. They locked me into the master program—the absolute master. I won't age, they agreed to that much when I agreed to surrender all power, and I'm not only totally without Flux power but totally immune to it as well. No wizard can alter my body or my mind, because to do that they would have to go through the computers, and the computers are instructed to keep me just this way. It was a nice gesture."

"Nice! I think it's awful what they put you through!" Cassie sighed and took her oldest daughter aside for a moment, never more conscious than now of the gap sepa¬rating them. "I've lived a very long time," she said seriously. "I've been three or more different women in that space. Now this is the fourth and last incarnation. I'm going to look like this and feel like this and be like this until somebody kills me or I fall off a cliff or something. Sure, they took the power, and I have to admit that it's a lonely and frightening thing to be in Flux dependent on someone else, but it's no different than I started, and certainly Suzl coped with that condition for years until you linked her up. No, after you've been a genuine Fluxgirl for fifteen years or more this is a pure delight, and, in a way, I'm happier without the power."

"I don't think I'm ever going to understand that one."

"Well, they're right, Spirit. I would always be a threat to them. When I think of what I did do with the power— well, it wasn't much that was positive. I fought a lot of wars, defeated a lot of Fluxlords, transformed a lot of bright-eyed girls into slavish devotees of a religion that was totally false, and built an empire. When Coydt took that away from me, I discovered something terrible about myself, something I really couldn't deal with. I didn't know how to be anything else. I was a professional warrior-priestess at a time when warrior-priestesses were out of date. Thinking about it now I realize that that was the real reason I accepted Adam's spell and married him. I'd been a failure at everything except the warrior-priestess role—a failure as a lover, mother, even, in the end with Coydt, as a wizard. My self-confidence was shot to pieces. I needed some role, any role, that would let me just run away. You see. Spirit, in all that time I never really grew up. I never had the chance."

Spirit shook her head in confusion. "I don't think I'm going to be able to follow this."

"Well, now I'm through. I'm trapped as you see me, and I don't mind a bit. I'm no less a mother to the kids, who seem to approve of this new look—after a lifetime around nothing but Fluxgirls I am the one that looks exotic!—and I'm no less a human being for it, either. I really don't want anything more from this life than the teenage Cassie long ago did. I think I finally earned the right to be a person, not a symbol or somebody's tool. I might still get the urge now and then to save the world or mount a revolution, but I can't—and no wizard or Soul Rider would want to have anything to do with me. For the first time in my life, I'm really free, and I understand myself better than most folks ever will."

The daughter looked at her mother, and for the first time there seemed to be a glimmer of, if not understanding, at least respect passed between them.

"So what will you do now?" Spirit asked her.

"That depends on how things work out. I've still got the kids, and I'm not necessarily out of that business if I don't want to be. Who knows? Maybe I can't really grow up. Maybe I'll always think on the grand scale no matter what. I mean, there's a possibility in this new land here to start one hell of a dynasty. Just think of the pedigrees alone."

"Mother!"

The door opened again with a crash and Matson came tearing out, saw her, stopped, and stood there for a moment.

Then  suddenly,  he  felt  an  urge  rising  in  him,  and  he simply couldn't repress it.

"Matson!" Cassie yelled sharply. "Stop laughing your¬self sick and kiss me!"

AUTHOR'S AFTERWORD

The Soul Rider saga was conceived as a single novel and then broken into three parts because of its length. At the end, I had intended to include appendices with much of the technical data and background on the physics involved, but in going over it and in particular the "history" lead¬ing up to World's founding. I found that there was enough material to do a novel on it alone, a prequel of sorts which will involve the discoveries and construction of World and will. I hope, be a pretty good independent novel in its own right. Thus, in a year or so, expect to see Birth of Flux and Anchor from Tor Books, who also thought it was a pretty good idea.

Also, in concluding this novel. I discovered that we've raised a lot more questions about the dynamics of revolu¬tion than we've solved, and that there is a lot of World we haven't reallv seen, trapped as we've been in Anchor Logh and New Eden. New Eden is obviously a bankrupt system and a failure, but it has certainly taught all of the power-mongers of World just how empires and revolutions are built. We have left World in ferment: as New Eden dies, and so too the fear of the Gates, we have a political system as much in Flux as Flux itself. I find I have more to say here, and I hope you would like a return trip as well. Tor has also agreed to a (hopefully single volume) sequel for the future, to come after our prequel.

My thanks to Tom Doherty for allowing this book to he the length it needed to be, and whether you liked or loathed the ideas we played with here, if it made you think then I'm happy. For those of you absolutely ill at New Eden's methods and philosophy who don't already know what we were doing here. I should warn you not to be complacent. New Eden was firmly based on a real theocratic government and its own writings, one alive and well in our own world as the book was written, needing neither Flux nor new technology to exist and even gain adherents elsewhere. Sleep well.

Jack L. Chalker