Spirits of Flux and Anchor

by Jack L. Chalker

  “Wake up, Cassie! It’s your mom and dad here!” the man’s voice called to her, and it did sound just like her father. She opened her eyes and saw, with some surprise, that she was under a tree in the pasture just outside her old farm, and her Mom and Dad were there, looking down at her.

  “I know you’re only seven years old, but you must have had a big, bad dream,” her mother told her.

  “Oh, yes, Mommy! It was real scary, too.”

  “Did you dream about the old man with the cane that shot sparks again?” her father wanted to know.

  “Uh huh.”

  “What happened this time after he shot sparks all over that room? You have to tell us your dream to make it go away.”

  And, so, she told them, repeating the entire account verbatim, just as it happened. All about the terrible looking people and the talk of war and strategy, all the way to when she walked back to her room with her imaginary playmate and they woke her up. It was all there, better than she could have remembered it any other way.

  “This is bad,” her Mommy said. “You’ve been too clever for your own good, Giff. The old boy’s already on to you.”

  “And what’ll he have?” her Daddy responded. “Persellus and a vague suspicion and nothing else. Eventually they’ll scratch their heads, maybe put extra guards around the Gate, and that will be that, for all the good it’ll do them.”

  Cass frowned. Her Mommy and Daddy were talking such funny stuff, the kind of stuff in her dreams, but to each other, not to her.

  “What about her?” Mommy asked, pointing to Cassie. “So long as she has a Soul Rider she’s a mortal danger to us all.”

  “But we can’t destroy Soul Riders, whatever they are. Kill her and it just takes over somebody else whose identity we don’t know. No, I prefer my enemy in plain sight.”

  “You just can’t leave her here, though. That thing could come out and attack at any time.”

  He chuckled. “Not yet. If it acts too soon it might get one of us but it’ll be useless later on and it won’t know the facts. No, I have a better, more effective idea. An original one.” He turned to her. “Cass, you cannot move, but see me now as I am.” Her father dissolved into another figure, a man she also knew. Haldayne. And, beside him, the woman, too, was visible, and she knew her as well. She knew, but she couldn’t believe. Sister Daji! The sexy but dumb consort to the Sister General!

  Still gorgeous, still sexy, but hardly dumb. Not this one. Even the odd, ignorant tone in her voice had vanished, although she still had that very odd accent.

  Haldayne grinned, and it was obvious that he liked to have his victim know who was doing it before he did whatever it was. He put out a hand on her forehead, and it was warm and wet. “All memory flies,” he intoned, “all that is there is null.”

  Her mind literally became a complete blank. Cass no longer thought at all.

  “So, genius?” Daji taunted. “That isn’t going to stop a Soul Rider when it wants to take charge.”

  He grinned, and made a pass with his hands. Cass seemed to shrink down until she was very small, standing and looking up at giants.

  Daji looked down, and saw a magnificent looking falcon. She nodded approvingly.

  “What will you call her?” Haldayne asked.

  Daji thought a moment. “How about Demon? It seems appropriate. But what good does this do?”

  “My dear, I said I was a genius. There is your passport back through the Guardians. They will not harm a Soul Rider and its companion. I know— I’ve done it once before. She is a falcon. She thinks she’s a falcon, too, and will respond only to you and only to the name Demon. She is devoted to you, will obey your simple commands, and that is all. Now you just take her back to Anchor Logh, then keep her on a leg chain as a pet. Feed her mice and insects and she’ll adore you forever. And, most importantly, there is no power in Anchor.”

  Daji brightened. “Oho! I see! But what if it breaks away, or betrays me at the Gate?”

  “It won’t. I have presented our powerful but predictable Soul Rider with a series of moral dilemmas. If it wants to learn the truth, as it must, it must accompany you all the way to Anchor. Otherwise it will never learn it, and it knows it. On the other hand, if it goes to Anchor, it is trapped, at least for the life of the bird. That should be more than enough time, I would think. Do not, however, let her off her chain. It can and might fly long distances, over walls and into Flux. That’s what it plans on doing, you see, which is why it will cooperate with us. And, so long as you continue to perform that little chore, we are safe.”

  She kissed him. “Giff, you really are a genius!”

  15

  HELLGATE

  They flew from Persellus as great winged creatures of their own imaginations, out from the Fluxland now remade in his image and into the void, following first the stringer trail marks, small bands of energy seen as a criss-crossing network of lines below them, then special marks on a frequency intended for their eyes alone. Held by a small chain to the foot of one of the creatures, the falcon called Demon flew with them, having no trouble keeping up.

  Finally the small lines below split and then joined again a ways off, outlining a circular pattern between them. They descended carefully, landing at the point of the first split, and their forms shimmered as they landed and became once more human figures. Now both walked forward, leaving the trail lines, to a bright point ahead that only those trained and gifted as they were could see and understand. They were almost upon it before it took true form.

  The Hellgate was actually a saucer-shaped depression in the void, very regular, solid, and smooth, and immune to the void’s energies and powers. A long ladder seemingly made out of the same stuff led down from the edge to the floor below, where, in the center, there was a dark circular area that was the true entrance.

  Daji calmed the nervous falcon and looked down, wishing she could calm her own nerves so easily. “You’re sure this will work?”

  “You got here that way, didn’t you?” he soothed. “Nothing bothered you emerging from it.”

  “Yeah, but I had sent a couple of those silly novices through first to make sure. What’s to prevent the Guardians from letting her through and killing me?”

  “The Soul Rider won’t allow it, because then it would never know. I do admit this is a one-time thing, my dear, but I feel much better with you not gone so long from Anchor but merely a few hours.”

  Never before, since she and Haldayne had intercepted the real Daji in Persellus and substituted her as an indistinguishable carbon copy, had she met with him in the Flux. Always it was Haldayne, flying over the walls in the form of a common raven, who had sought her out. He, of course, could not change back from raven shape once in Anchor, but he could talk and discuss things with her virtually within the Temple. Now he had summoned her, through the gate, for this very purpose—to trap the Soul Rider in Anchor as he would be trapped.

  “You must do it,” he told her, “or the entire plan is lost. No one recruited you as one of the Seven—you volunteered, and you accepted my leadership freely and of your own will, without reservations. Either go back on that now, and lose it all, or trust me and go.”

  She knew that what he said was true, and that if she refused it would not be merely the plan that died. Still, it was a terrifying thing to be asked to do, to enter a Hellgate from the Flux and survive. She took a deep breath. At this point she was dead either way, and only if Haldayne was correct did she have a chance. He did not risk leaving Persellus at this delicate time, even for a short while, merely to see her off. Without being able to neutralize the Soul Rider, inevitably drawn to such a scheme as this, the plan was nothing but bloody madness. She took a deep breath, let it out, then began climbing down the ladder.

  The powers of Flux still operated here in this fixed bowl, but she dared not use them, for they would inevitably attract the unknown Guardians of the Gate—unknown because none had ever seen them and survived. She reached the bottom, her bare feet pr
oviding decent traction, and walked slowly and apprehensively towards that dark center spot. The falcon made a sudden fluttering motion With its wings, as if trying to fly away, startling her and almost making her fall, but her nerve held steady and she again pulled the bird back on its chain to her and then held it against her breasts, petting it and somewhat calming both of them.

  Up close the dark hole showed a web-like grid of strong cables going completely around it and down into the darkness. She knew what to expect, and gingerly turned and started climbing down, the bird placed down on her shoulder and seeming a very heavy and unbalancing weight. It was not, however, far to the floor, where the webbing stopped and a tubular structure replaced it, going off horizontally in front of her. No horrible Guardians had yet appeared, and she began to relax a bit. She did not doubt, though, that those Guardians existed. Once, at another Hellgate, she watched while sacrificial slaves had been ordered in, saw the flashes of multicolored energies fly out of the dark central hole, and had heard the horrible screams of agony from the slaves as they had been destroyed.

  The tunnel was long and sloped slightly downwards, but again was no problem. Although made of apparently seamless material the yellow-orange color of the void itself, it was actually sectioned, and as she reached the first section it glowed for a distance of ten meters in front of her. She walked forward, and near the end of the light, at the gaping darkness, the next section came on. When she entered it, the first section winked out. There were seven such sections, and in this direction it was a long, long walk indeed. Now, though, she reached the end, and before her was illuminated the gate itself, a great swirl that might be solid, might be energy, or might be itself alive. To her right was a large, blocky machine that did not seem to belong to this eerie place, with its hundreds of small squares and its read-out screens. This was the locking mechanism, and the ultimate trap for anyone attempting to open the gate, clearly placed here not by the builders of the gate but by someone, or something, else. To walk into that swirl, without all seven machines being fed their unique combinations within sixty seconds, would trigger instant vaporization.

  But she turned away from swirl and machine, to the wall opposite the locking device. There was nothing whatsoever to mark or otherwise distinguish the wall from any other part of it, unless you knew the proper pattern. She pressed it in several spots with the flat of her hand, eventually tracing a pattern that had no meaning to her. A section of the wall glowed bright red, but she did not pay any attention to it, turning around instead to see an intricate pattern now traced on the floor of the tube, almost in front of the machine. It was a duplicate of the pattern she had just traced with her palm on the wall, enclosed in a circle of red. She walked to it, then into the center of it. There was a slight moment of dizziness, and the Hellgate vanished, replaced with the view of a dark and damp sub-basement piled high with the signs of work.

  She stepped off the cleared and swept spot and into dust and debris, and as she did she felt all sense of the Flux leave her. It made her feel empty, as it always did when she entered Anchor, as if something wonderful and important had been taken away.

  She had left her regular robe here when she’d left, and had reentered naked so that she would be as unencumbered as possible. She groped in the dark and found a small light switch, then pushed on it. A small, naked light bulb hanging from a wire came to life. She saw her robe on the nail, then managed to put it on, although she found she had to remove the bracelet binding the falcon’s chain to her to do it properly. She had a few seconds of nervousness at that, but the falcon made no move to escape. Now she reattached it, and slid back the bar that sealed the door to outside entry. She opened it carefully, stepped out into the corridor, then reached back, shut off the light, and closed it again. She fumbled in her robe, found the key, and then locked the door again from the outside. She had spent a lot of time making the door look like nothing more than a bunch of nailed-on boards covering a crack in the foundation, and it was very convincing.

  A dozen novices, working secretly at night for more than six months under her direction, had first discovered the old door, then taken up the old concrete flooring inside the room. The sub-basement was a secure area: the wardens and their monitors did not reach this far down, and, in fact, only the Sister General and the chief warden had keys to the area at all, almost never used except during the annual maintenance checks. It had been easy, though, to get the key from the Sister General’s safe and give it to the raven Haldayne, who, of course, easily returned two so identical they even had the same old markings under a microscope. Things done in Flux held as they were in Anchor, within, of course, the physical laws of Anchor. No huge flying creature such as she had become from Persellus to Hellgate could fly in Anchor—it was a violation of the fixed laws of physics. But a raven was a raven, in Flux and Anchor, and so was a falcon.

  She went swiftly now through back passages and service areas she knew by heart, avoiding the wardens’ mechanical security sensors as only one with an intimate knowledge of the building could, then took the small back hidden stairway to the Sister General’s luxurious apartment, using combinations even the Sister General had probably not bothered to learn. Explaining the falcon would not be a great problem. She had one of the very few VIP necklaces given out by the Sister General that made her immune to most of the security devices in the temple. The wardens would not necessarily see her go in or out at any time, nor would they bother to note or log it if they did.

  After checking and finding, to her relief, that the Temple chief was not home, she checked the time and then the schedule on Diastephanos’ desk. She had selected this time because the Sister General was supposed to be out of town visiting some of the local churches for three days, but there was no way to guarantee that the old bitch wouldn’t louse her up by coming home early. Clock and calendar said that Sister Daji had cut it close, but still had a margin of several hours, perhaps a whole day, before the play began again. That would be very convenient.

  She removed the falcon-restraining bracelet once more and clipped it around the brass air conditioning duct, letting Demon perch on the back of a chair. The bird still seemed very calm and somewhat confused, and that suited her fine.

  She went to the intercom and buzzed the wardens’ office. “This is Daji,” she told them unnecessarily, using the vacant and ignorant intonation she always used. “When is she coming back?” There was no need to say who “she” was.

  “We expect her any time after eight this evening,” a warden told her. Again she glanced at the clock. Barely three. “Thanks,” she said, and switched off. Almost five hours.

  She took a long, comfortable bath, then put on only the loose, open informal robe and called services. A novice was sent up immediately, who took her dirty clothes and also received a written notice signed by the Sister General for the special construction to be sent up. The novice bowed and left. Poor, brainwashed idiots, she couldn’t help thinking. She recalled the ones who’d done all the work for her below. All now were Haldayne’s creatures, having tested the Hellgate passage before she dared go through.

  She got a bite to eat from the small kitchenette while she waited. After twenty minutes or so, the buzzer rang and two novices delivered the solid wood perch she had ordered at Haldayne’s instructions days before. She thanked and dismissed them, then took it over and placed it by the Sister General’s desk, then moved Demon from her odd perch and attached her to the ready-made one. She fed the bird some raw meat from the small refrigerator, then went to work on the sewing machine in her small and normally unused office area. Soon she had a scarlet hood, which fitted over the bird’s head. As she’d hoped, the falcon went to sleep.

  She sighed, finally relaxing, and realized that Haldayne had done his homework well. This time he’d thought of all the angles, of that she was now certain. This time, for the first time, a known and guarded gate would be totally in the hands of the Seven, making only three to go. If it worked here, it would work,
with variations, elsewhere. The long centuries of frustration would be nearing an end.

  Now she redid her hair, applied perfumes and make-up, then went back into her office, lifted the sewing machine off its cabinet, reached in and took out three medium-sized pill bottles. She removed one pill from each, then replaced them in their hiding place and resecured the sewing machine. She went back into the living room area, turned on the small entertainment console and took a tiny clear cube no larger than her thumb nail and put it in the device. Standing there, she dictated a long string of sentences, then programmed the device. It would play until she shut it off, but when she shut it off it would self-erase.

  She poured herself a whiskey and soda, then took the three pills, then went over and turned on the recorder to playback and sat back in a large, comfortable chair, feet up.

  It took several minutes for the pills to take effect, and she just lay there, relaxed, and let them do their job. The recorder kept going, and, finally, it was the only thing in her mind.

  “All memory gone, floating, relaxed, so pleasant, so free of any thought, any worry, anything at all, just feeling so, so good and relaxed…. You are Sister Daji, and she alone is you now. Let her come, let her become you, flow into you, so that she alone is in control….” Then came a series of instructions to Daji, an explanation of the falcon and perch, and an account of what she had been doing these past three days. She drifted into a deep, deep hypnotic trance.

  Haldayne had created Daji by working in Flux with the real one, before he transformed her into another of his creatures. The Daji persona was then transferred, also in Flux, to her, where it resided, complete but separate from her. No chances could or would be taken of any compromise in her identity, which was totally submerged, inactive, until brought forth again by a special trigger command given by Haldayne or one of his agents or another of the Seven.