Soul Rider #01: Spirits of Flux and Anchor

by Jack L. Chalker

  They thought about it. "There are lots of back roads, so long as you don't mind camping out in fields," Cass told him. "But there's really no place to hide from somebody who knows them as well as you and also knows what you look like."

  He nodded. "I thought as much. I'm going to pull rank with the church, then, and get us a full police guard all the way back. I want no more lopsided ambushes."

  They returned inside the police station and Mervyn composed a long note to the Sister General, sending it back with the admin chief. They waited a good hour or more, until a lower ranking priestess in admin gray returned with instructions for the police, and they had their escort and more.

  There were no further attempts on them, and Mervyn wasn't surprised. "The object of the exercise was to kill Daji first, then me if they could. You two were totally optional."

  "Thanks a lot," Suzl grumped. "But—why Daji? Because we had her number and maybe could have learned a lot from her?"

  "That, of course," the wizard agreed. "I knew we were in trouble when I saw that falcon there. It was meant to confuse, but all it did was signal that they knew something was wrong."

  "It sure confused me," Cass told him— "I thought for a while that the whole thing had been a Haldayne-inspired hallucination."

  "Which was exactly the intent. But when it failed, and we arranged to have Daji come with us, they knew their subtlety had not paid off and took direct action. They could not afford one of their chiefs in my hands. She would know vital things far beyond this immediate crisis."

  "Then the plot is really foiled, huh?" Suzl put in. "I mean, their agent's dead."

  "One agent. Someone saw us taking Daji out, and someone received orders to kill her. Haldayne might have started the killers, but he couldn't possibly have been inside the Temple. I'm afraid that all this shows is that Anchor Logh is already as conquered as Persellus, and woefully ignorant of the fact. We shall not know it all until we have dealt with all our problems, and perhaps not even then." He turned to Cass. "First things first. We must go into Flux and prepare you."

  "Huh? Prepare me for what?"

  "Your ordination and conference, of course. It will be done by the Sister General herself in front of the troops at the west gate just before we march."

  "My what and my what? Hey! Wait a minute!"

  "It is necessary for a priestess to lead the forces of Anchor into Flux. They are terrified enough now, as you would have been not so long ago. They need what is called in scripture an Adjutant to lead and protect them—-a high-ranking priestess who is able to stand and use the Flux and protect herself and them. Don't worry—it's the required part of the Holy Books for all in Anchor Logh to read right now, although it's so obscure and in one of the codices that is rarely paid attention to. In short, we need a wizard-priestess. The Adjutant, when created, is second in rank only to the Sister General herself."

  "But, wait a minute! Don't _I_ have any say in this? I mean, I'm not even sure I believe in that stuff any more, at least not the way it's taught, and I sure don't want to give up sex and the Flux power now that I've found them."

  Suzl gave a raised eyebrow at that but said nothing.

  "Obviously it's too obscure for you, as well," Mervyn responded patiently. "The Adjutant is considered a somewhat supernatural figure. She comes from Flux and returns to it, although she is, of course, able to travel to Anchor. It exists for the very reason that a lot of the rest exists—it is convenient when the rules have to be bent. In this case, men raised to be terrified of the Flux are being asked to go into it and do battle. Think of how you felt when you first went in. It's not so bad. You'll be a High Priestess in Anchor and a wizard from Flux, and you'll need more training as a wizard than this job requires."

  She thought it over. "How long has it been since the last—Adjutant—was appointed?"

  He thought it over. "Three, maybe four hundred years, I think. They all run together after a while. But now there will be two, each accompanied by a Flux warrior."

  "Huh?"

  "A Flux warrior, it is said, is the reincarnation of one of the greatest warrior angels corrupted and exiled to World after the Rebellion. Because they were of the highest rank then, they are cursed to live their lives in Flux, and to be known because they differ from humans only in one specific attribute. That attribute is not defined, but that only makes it convenient for our candidates."

  Suzl grinned. "Like me, you mean?"

  He nodded. "Like you. And like Dar."

  Cass gasped. "So that's why you split them up! You had this in mind all along!"

  He nodded. "But your vanishing act nearly spoiled it. I was determined to take a dugger or whatever, but, fortunately, I didn't have to."

  Suzl giggled. "Just think—only weeks ago we four were stripped of it all and cast out of Anchor.

  Now two of us are gonna be High Priestesses and the other two are angels' This is crazy but I love it!"

  Cass nodded, not sharing the mirth. "Yes, lucky— if we survive all this. Not like the rest of them marched out with us. Not like the ones in Arden's train."

  "Oh, let the dead be cremated and their ashes returned to the life of the soil," Suzl quoted from the holy books. "Now is now and I am me, and I'm having a ball."

  The void, which had been so terrifying before, now seemed like a welcome friend to them, offering peace and quiet and relative security. Mervyn wasted no time becoming his favorite old man's character once again, but after a short session with Suzl to brief her on just what her part in this was, he sent her back to Anchor, to the apron area, with an eye to getting as much information and rumor from the resident duggers as possible. Mervyn wanted to know how the wall leaked so easily, and it was also a way to have Cass alone for a while.

  "I know you're wondering about all this," he began, "and that will never stop, I'm afraid, for none of us knows the answers. We, and our forebears, however, do know much more of the history and geography of World than the church permits to be taught, simply because part of our mission was to save the books and records of the past. Not all survived, alas, particularly from the earliest days, but much did."

  Humanity, he told her, had once been far greater and more numerous than now. There was once, as near as they could understand it, a great empire of humankind, which included but was not restricted to World. "This is only one world of men, perhaps the only one left now. Once, however, there was the concept of empire."

  In this great time in the far past—fully thousands of years before—man had had a great civilization, an ideal community where all were free and had—if not directly then through machines—the powers and wonders of wizards. The forces of Hell; rose up to attempt to destroy this civilization, and there was a great war, such as none today could even imagine. In the end, humans defeated the forces of Hell and pushed them back into a place outside our very universe. But the battle had not been without great cost, and the empire was shattered and destroyed and with it most of the race and most of its worlds.

  "It was here on World that the final battle took; place," he said, "and it was here, at last, that Hell was pushed out of all we know and the gates to Hell were sealed."

  "Then the machines I saw at the gate were those of that lost empire," she responded, understanding it better. "They were the means by which all was sealed."

  He nodded. "However, all did not go well here, either. The church, originally set up to guard against those gates being opened or tampered with, as well as to guard all the old knowledge, became corrupted, as new generations saw it as an avenue of power. Still, the system, even with what we have lost, has held for all this time. There were those who disagreed with the system, however, and sought to preserve what could be preserved. Nine people, all great men and women of their time and all great wizards, copied, begged, borrowed, or stole all that they could and moved into Flux. They did not desert the church, but rather felt the church had deserted them, become too large, political, and bureaucratic. These Nine hand-picked their success
ors, so that when it finally came their time there was always someone ready to step in."

  "And those are the Nine Who Guard?"

  He nodded. "We guard not only against the forces of Hell but against the follies of humanity as well. None of us are saints, but we have somehow managed to do our jobs and keep the faith. Besides, it's not bad being a wizard of such tremendous power here in Flux. We also keep our hands in with the church, as it were. No one can become a Sister General or higher without spending time with us in Flux, if only to totally understand the nature and threat that Flux presents, and, of course, to read and leam the literature forbidden or destroyed in Anchor."

  "So that explains why you knew Sister General Diastephanos!"

  Again he nodded, "Yes, she trained with me long ago. Twenty years or more, I'd say."

  "She sure didn't take all the moral lessons." Mervyn grinned. "Oh, it's not that terrible. The fact is, the holy books are quite a bit less strict than the rules the church now imposes. That particular section, which you'll not read in the Temple libraries, actually specifies that none will engage in sins of the flesh with any man after ordination. In the early days, for example, it was rare but not unheard of for priestesses to be widows with children,, and in the early days many a 'scarlet woman' or one with family problems or pregnant with a child born out of wedlock joined to regain status and respectability. The church had such a potential to be a unifying force for World. Instead, it became the dictator of it."

  This was a far different picture than the one she'd had growing up, and, indeed, the one she'd formed since leaving Anchor. She began to realize both the potential and the loss to World of its corruption, and it made her feel more than slightly angry. In a sense, the church had become to Anchor what each ruling wizard was to a Fluxland. Corrupted by power, each had inevitably exercised that power to the fullest. It was a strong vision it presented, of a church keeping knowledge alive, and providing a moral and cultural unity to World, while government, as a separate entity elected by Anchor, would rule subject to the voters, not'.'the church.

  "And Haldayne, Daji, and the rest? What are they?"

  "Wizards, just tike the Nine and the other powers of Flux. Their organization is, in a sense, a mirror image of the Nine. In their own minds they have a noble purpose in which the ends justify any means. They believe that humanity can never regain its former greatness but will remain in primitive stagnancy until, believe it or not, an accommodation with Hell is reached."

  She was shocked. "An accommodation with Hell?"

  "That's right. You see, even though the gates are sealed and guarded, some slight leakage gets through. It was designed that way. It may seem strange, but our basic power source seems to be those machines in the gates, which generate excess energy from the seal as they maintain it and then transfer this excess to the generators in the Temples. Without them we would have no electricity at all, since we really don't know how to generate it on a massive scale. We keep everything working by removing parts that go bad and giving them to wizards in Flux who are good at making exact copies of things. Since the art of being a good wizard is mathematical, they can look at a part that they have never seen before and have no idea what it is or how it works, and make a copy that does work. They don't know how they do it, but the only explanation is that the math is wrong on the broken one, and they can figure out where it's wrong and make the equation balance."

  "So we depend on these Hellgates for a lot, and Anchors really depend on Flux."

  "Interdependence. Flux is a cruel place, subject to the whims of the powerful and power-mad. It is by its very nature impossible for more than a handful of people to be free or independent in Flux, or even remain human. It is nice if you're a wizard, but no great discoveries arise in Flux. It simply devours a larger number of people than it can possibly replace. Hence, the trade of people for what Anchors need. Ideally, Anchors should be the seats of learning, where great things are produced by a free and unified people, while Flux produces what is needed. Unfortunately, deep down, it is difficult to tell them apart."

  "And the Seven believe that Hell is the only way out?"

  "That's about it," he agreed. "You see, in some of the gates, because of that leakage I mentioned, it is possible for Hell to communicate with one in the tunnel. The demons of Hell are cut off from our world, but are immortal, and know how the machines work and the nature of Flux and Anchor. To early wizards frustrated by having godlike powers that were very limited over a finite piece of ground, the lure of ruling all World, as one great Fluxland under their total domination, is irresistible. And if it means selling one's soul to Hell, it seems to them a small price to pay. They are the ultimate corruption power brings, and they delude themselves that they will be partners with Hell and not make us all its last victims so that Hell will finally attain its goal to rule the universe— alone."

  They went on like this for more than two days, and in that time Cass believed she gained a true picture of what was going on. Much, as Mervyn had warned, was unknown—the nature of the Soul Riders, for example. To her, there did seem to be a divine plan for the rescue of humanity and its restoration to greatness, a plan subverted by the weaknesses humans had. Those who now ruled the church had all been shown this path, but all, in the end, had been corrupted by their own power or deluded themselves that they were making small changes or reforms and that any major changes would take generations. The forces of Hell were real, and on the march, but it only reinforced the church's resolve to keep things the way they were, thereby substituting the total evil of Hell with a more banal evil done by humans-

  Finally, Cass was briefed and prompted on the ceremony to come, and felt she was finally ready, although it still seemed like a'lot of foolishness to her. She felt a little guilty, being used as a lucky icon for a lot of scared and possibly doomed troopers.

  The ceremony itself was quite impressive and flashy. A platform had been set up just inside, the gate, and Cass, her horse changed to snow white for the occasion, was led in by Suzl on her black mount, Cass had made several decisions herself on this, one of which was to use her own normal form and make no more pretenses about her identity. She felt any threat to her individually was over as much as it ever would be. The reasons were no longer there.

  She entered dressed only in a plain robe of white, as a novice. It was important that she be ordained in front of them, even though the Sister General already assumed it. And the troops were all lined up, as well as a great mass of common people, to see the show.

  Diastephanos, who had understood Cass's role in this from the start, made it a long service, with lots of ceremony, all of the sacraments, and lots of scripture reading. It was all necessary not for its own sake, but to show the people of Anchor Logh, long taught to fear the Flux and have no truck with it, that in this case only it was the right thing to do.

  Cass participated fully, finding the whole thing oddly moving to her. And. once all vows were exchanged and she was fully ordained, it was then time to accept the job, exchanging her whites for robes of lavender satin trimmed with ancient designs in gold thread, and to accept a scepter only slightly smaller and less ornate than the Sister General's own. It was then concluded, and she turned and looked out at the crowd for the first time. All eyes were on her, and, for the first time, she realized that they had accepted all of it. In every sense of the word, even legally, she was to them and in fact a high priestess of the church.

  She stepped down from the platform and went to the troops who would go with them, standing at attention next to their horses. As she passed each, she could see in their eyes the absolute confidence they placed in her. It shook her a bit, to realize the full responsibility she had been forced to take on. And when she stood before them, they all knelt and bowed their heads, and she gave them the blessing they expected, meaning it more than she intended-

  "Soldiers of Anchor Logh," she said at last, hoping her voice would carry and not tremble. "We set out now on the most important mi
ssion in our long history. Hell is out there, almost at our gates, invading our land at will, killing our citizens and threatening us all— Do not fear the wizardry of the Flux, only respect it, for we have the strongest wizardry, the righteousness of our cause, and the support of the Nine Who Guard. The divine will is not known, except that victory is assured if we prove worthy of it. The creatures you will fight will be of flesh and blood. Some of you may die, but you will do so in a cause so noble that you will be reborn with greatness— Others will live, to enjoy the great honor that awaits. We cannot know our fate, for only Heaven knows that, but we can know and fulfill our destiny. Will you ride with us now?"

  "We will!" came a chorus of responses that moved her even more.

  She walked to her horse and mounted it, then held the sceptre high. "Then mount and follow me!"

  In groups, they passed through the west gate and out onto the apron. A way had been cleared from the dugger shantytown to the Flux, and they again formed up. Suzl and Mervyn, still in his old man's role, rode out of Flux to meet her, then turned to form a threesome leading the way. Suzl leaned over and whispered, "Wow! You really look great!" Cass smiled and winked, although she was aware of the enormous weight she was now carrying, and held the sceptre up, then angled it forward. The troopers, she'd been assured, had been briefed by Suzl and Mervyn as to how to ride the void. She hoped so, for they were off.

  Mervyn dropped back to the rear as the entire column entered the Flux, just to make sure there were no stragglers or unexpected surprises. Cass did not need him to lead. She felt the power of the Flux instantly, and the glowing strings of energy came crystal clear. She decided to ride as far non-stop as prudence said the horses could take, so that there could be no last-minute defections. Suzl, still dressed in stringer fashion, checked out the formation and felt every bit a stringer with a very strange train. She wished, however, she had a dozen or so duggers to help out.