03. Masters of Flux and Anchor (8 page)

Sondra had sent word to him, summoning him quickly from Globhus to Pericles.

"What do you think we ought to do, sonny boy?" the stringer snapped back. "Mobilize half of World? They'd laugh at you. Go back and forth through every inch of the void? You could fly within fifty meters of her a hundred times and never see her."

Jeff was a large, muscular young man with wild hair and a thick, if unkempt, full black beard. "It's easy for you! It's not your mother and grandmother who might be dying out there someplace!"

That hurt, and required an answer. "Jeff—I was saving this for a better time, but I'm your aunt. Spirit's my sister."

He stared at her. "Don't feed me that shit. Cass only had one kid."

"That's true, but Spirit and I have the same father."

He was suddenly fascinated. "You mean—you're one of Matson's kids?"

She nodded. "So, you see, I've got a stake in this, too. A personal stake as well as a professional obligation. The only thing I can figure out is that they always shadowed Mervyn, and when they saw I was going off in the right direction they took a chance on me."

"Yeah, well, it seems to me—"

"Look, Jeff," she interrupted, "let's get a few things straight. First of all, I could have handled the duggers and that whatever-it-was machine, but so could your grand¬mother. Those duggers couldn't have stalked Mervyn and me, made the right choices, and organized to do what they did. Somebody else put them up to it, and that somebody did their thinking for them. And that someone was power¬ful enough to literally collapse and undo the whole Fluxland, while keeping me at bay almost as an afterthought. And I'm a pretty strong wizard."

He calmed down a little. "Yeah—but who? Where do we start?"

"With Zelligman Ivan," Mervyn's voice told them, and they turned to see the old wizard enter.

"Mervyn!" Sondra exclaimed. "Thank Heaven they found you!"

" 'Bout time you got here," Jeff grumped.

"I was up north trying to get some coordinated action against New Eden," the old man said. "A messenger came a few hours ago and I rushed down here as quickly as I could. I'm not cut out for turning into birds anymore. I'm bushed."

"You said something about Ivan?" Sondra reminded him.

He nodded and sank into a chair. "Yes. He's been working this cluster and has been up to all sorts of mis¬chief for a year or more."

"Then that's who I was thinking of facing down back there?"

"Most likely. And a good thing you didn't, my dear. You're no match for him, nor are most people. He's not like the Haldaynes or Coydt van Haas; he generally likes to be in the background and get others to do his dirty work. But when he's cornered, he's among the best there is. Lots of folks might lie in wait for Cass, if they could find her, but only Ivan would try for a clean sweep."

Jeff felt distinctly unhappy about all this. "Where do you think he's taken them?"

"I doubt if he has your mother. If he does, he won't keep her. Soul Riders bother them, and they've never really beaten one. As for Cass, she's strong—very strong— and the threat to Spirit will feed her emotions and therefore her power and will. He won't want to chance tangling with that sort of power. I'd say he's taken her to Anchor."

"Then you think she's alive? We'll go after her—"

Mervyn held up his hand and Jeff sat back down in his chair. "No, it's not that simple. I think she's alive, yes, because he had no need to go to all this time and trouble just to kill her. Now, Sondra, before we proceed, I want all the details of the visit and the attack. All of them. Leave nothing out, no matter how trivial or inconsequen¬tial it might be."

As Jeff fidgeted and fumed, she did as instructed. When she finished, Mervyn just sat there a moment, deep in thought. Finally he said, "Well, if it is any consolation at all, the projector you describe is not intended as a lethal weapon. Its builders intended it essentially to negate power¬ful wizards. It seems to both knock you cold and cut you off from any Flux power or feeling. The effects last from a few minutes to a few hours, but that's neither here nor there. It's long enough for a powerful wizard to spirit someone from the middle of the void to an Anchor, certainly."

"Who would build such a thing?" Jeff asked.

"New Eden, of course. They hate wizards, but they need them for some of the things they do. This sounds like a payoff of some sort, I fear. Or, perhaps, a wizard's attempt to curry New Eden's favor."

"Huh?" Jeff was startled. "What would those guys want with Grandma?"

"They have always had a paranoia about her. She thumbed her nose at them twenty years ago and many have never forgotten it. She was born and raised there, and they were responsible for killing her father, whom she practi¬cally worshipped. She's a powerful wizard with powerful friends who's led conventional armies. They think she's the biggest threat to them going."

"Then they want to execute her!" Jeff almost shouted. "We've got to go get her!"

Mervyn frowned. "Must you yell so? No, I sincerely doubt that. It wouldn't fit their curious mind-set. They will seek to turn her, to change her into one of their own. It would earn them powerful friends, a great deal of fear and respect, and be the ultimate food for their egos."

"They—they can't really do it, can they?" Sondra asked nervously. "I mean, I didn't speak with her for long, but she didn't look like somebody they could do that to with¬out Flux power, and she's strong there."

"You have no idea how devastating modern brainwash¬ing techniques, as they're called, can be on any mind. Every weakness is defined and exploited, and I'm afraid Cass has quite a number. And if they can't wear her down enough to take a binding spell, well, she's powerful, perhaps as strong as Zelligman, but if she had to face not only Zelligman but a half dozen other Fluxlords at the same time. . . . Yes, I'd say that at least they think they can do it, or they would never have tried it."

"Then we have to go in there! Rescue her!"

Mervyn sighed. "Jeff, aside from you, there is no one with more respect and love for Cass than I, mixed in with some not inconsiderable guilt on my part. I have just been in Anchors Abehl and Yonkeh, and I must go yet to Anchor Gorgh and perhaps further. Part of those efforts were to defend the Gates, but I'm also trying to organize support for some move on New Eden before it's too late. And I'm having almost no luck at it, I fear. They're scared, Jeff, and that gives New Eden a free hand. And they have a perfect right to be scared."

It was Sondra's turn to be surprised. "They're that powerful?"

"They are. Where do you think those amplifiers they used twenty years ago to take over Anchor Logh came from? Coydt had them built, in bits and pieces, in various industrial Anchors, then duplicated them in Flux. That ray weapon they used is the least of their arsenal, most of which we can't possibly understand. Coydt somehow discovered, amassed, or perhaps even inherited or stole a wealth of ancient writings describing exactly how to build and use these sorts of things. And he assembled a brilliant technical staff to study and experiment with them. Coydt's forces were dangerous before, but now that they've an Anchor to use for their trials and experiments, a place where everything is always consistent and under natural laws, they've learned so much about these ancient devices that they have a monopoly on terror. New Eden's bosses inherited them all, and have encouraged them in every way, as well as recruiting bright young men from all over World to come and help. When you're offered a job studying and deciphering a scientific revolution, and doing so in a setting where you're surrounded by beautiful, sexy women who only want to serve you—well, they've got the best."

"Somehow I can't imagine Grandma as a sexy plaything."

"Neither could she," Sondra said. "That, I think, is part of her problem of late, although who am I to know for sure?"

"Very astute." Mervyn approved. "Sometimes you can be too close to someone to really know and understand them. But, you see, Jeff, nobody's going to go after New Eden until it scares them directly. The other Anchors and far-off Fluxlands see them as simply another land, a cross of Flux and Anchor perhaps, but that's about it. To take a land defended with weapons so powerful, the cost would be enormous—and they lost enough of their people in the wars for the Empire. I've failed to convince them that they will lose more than their lives if they don't move,"

"And just days ago you were telling me what fine folks they were in New Eden," Sondra noted acidly. Jeff didn't hear.

"O.K., so maybe an army can't get in—but what about a small number? One or two folks, maybe. It's been done before."

"It was done years ago, yes, but that was different. It's extremely well policed now. The populace is conditioned, men as well as women, to be supportive. If their security devices did not match their weaponry, don't you think I would have made a raid by now? Oh, it's been tried by the best, but if anyone has pulled it off we don't know it. You've never been under those kinds of conditions, Jeff. None of us have. I have some indirect channels of intelli¬gence through the Fluxlords who do business with them, but nothing else."

"They still use stringers," Sondra pointed out, thinking of alternatives.

"Yes, but it's all unloaded right on the apron. Stringers do not go in because their loyalties are suspect. And if they did, it wouldn't be you, Sondra. They'd love to get a crack at converting you."

"Are you telling me we just leave Grandma in the hands of those bastards?"

"For now, we have no choice. We just pick our opportu¬nities and watch for them, but I can't see how we can do anything now. No, it's Spirit we have to be concerned about. I fear that she is out there, confused and all alone in the Flux, with very limited powers. She can follow strings if she's lucky, but she won't know where they lead until she gets there, and the closest main string is Logh to Abehl. We're covering that. I have a huge reward posted and there are hundreds searching now."

"And I put out the call to the stringers on the routes," Sondra added. "If she's following a commercial string like the one you say, they'll find her."

Jeff stared at Sondra. "You knew that all the time? Why didn't you tell me?"

"You never let me get a sentence in edgewise. I admit I'm concerned about Cass, and there's nothing I'd like better than shattering New Eden, but Mervyn is right. First things first. Spirit needs us."

Jeff looked at them. "I—I'd like to go out and join in the search. I know what the odds are of me finding anything, but I'd feel better about it, and at least I'd be close by if somebody did happen on her."

Mervyn nodded. "Sure. I'll give you directions to a search camp."

"One thing puzzles me, though, in all this," Sondra put in. "Why totally destroy that Fluxland? There was no threat left."

"Two reasons that I can think of," Mervyn replied. "In a sense, it's a message to me, a direct challenge of sorts. Zelligman wants me to know that he's ready for me. He must have used one of the amplifiers to break it down so quickly and completely. He's basically warning me to stay away or be crushed. The other reason, of course, is that it puts the Soul Rider on the run and probably away from him. Zelligman thinks he is using New Eden, but it's actually New Eden that's using him. I wish he'd realize that they are as much his enemy as ours, but he's a devious bastard, like all the rest of them, and very patient. Whatever he and his associates are up to, it's something very, very unpleasant, you can bet on that."

The world ended for Spirit with shocking suddenness. She had just come from seeing that beautiful woman visitor, who seemed very kind, and she was walking down the small hill to the stream bank for a drink when it hit.

She felt a wave of dizziness and nausea, and then the whole land seemed to begin to melt. Somewhere in the distance she could hear screams of agony, and her first thought was to find her mother, not only because she was suddenly confused, disoriented, and frightened, but also because her mother maintained this land, and she feared whose screams they might be.

It had been twenty years since she'd felt and seen evil, but she had no sense of time and it made no difference. She knew that, at last, their enemies had come for them, and that they were attacking with tremendous force and power, a power she no longer had and could not match, but one which she could at least keep from herself. She had given her own powers away years ago, but the same spell that limited her existence protected her from others.

The place was too much of a mess now to even find her mother, and the feelings of nausea and dizziness continued unabated. She realized it was hopeless, and decided that her only defense was to escape and wait it out. She was very strong and very athletic, but she could be overpow¬ered by sheer brute strength.

There was no wall, she saw, just the void beyond. She made for it, picking a spot at random and jumping through, then running as fast as she could for several minutes. The odds were with her; only an army totally surrounding the land or a massive new Flux barrier could stop her. The attackers here were few, and, although she didn't know it, were in their own brand of trouble from Sondra.

After a while she slowed down, then stopped and simply sat on the soft, spongy, featureless ground of the void. It had been a long time since she'd been out in it, and she sat there, suddenly entranced by the beautiful display of elec¬trical discharges that made the place shimmer. She could always see wonders others could not, that she knew, and this might well be one of them.

Still, she would have to consider her next move. She was fine now, and had few requirements, but she would need a source of food and water. In the old days, she could just wish them into being when needed, but while she had the wizard's sight she knew she had no control. She could receive, but not send.

She was worried about her mother and the pretty lady, but there was nothing she could do about it. Whoever had done this was strong and mean, and could have her for breakfast. There was a linking spell connecting her mother to her, but although it had always been there and she'd taken it for granted all this time, it wasn't there now. That scared her, for she feared her mother might well be dead.