Masters of Flux & Anchor

by Jack L. Chalker

  Matson didn’t like the sound of that, and he hadn’t expected such a cave-in without a demonstration of power. It was too easy. The man was up to something, that was for sure, but he wasn’t going to say what. “Well, I’m sure it’ll be fine with the Guild. Me, I’m a little tired of being Exhibit A every time I walk down a street, like I got two heads and four arms or something, but I guess I can stand three days of it. I have to admit I’m a little curious as to what you got in mind anyway, and the closer I am to you the less likely it is to hurt me. Still, it bothers me personally. I got two daughters and a grandson out in Flux in this cluster.”

  That was news to him. “Didn’t they get the warnings?”

  “Oh, yeah, they got them. One of ‘em you can’t get much through to, and the other two are determined to ride it out.”

  “Well, if they’re not in a known Fluxland they’ll probably be safe. If they are, well, it’s too late to warn them and talk them out of it anyway now. I’m sorry, but we did all we could to warn people. You yourself have noted just how hard it is to convince a wizard of anything.”

  Matson sighed. “Well, you’re right, there. I can’t say I’m gonna feel good until I know they’re safe, though.”

  “Understandable. As for remaining here. I can’t do much about people’s stares but I can order that you be unmolested by the authorities. I can assign an officer or even a Fluxgirl to you, if you like.”

  “I’m not too keen about any more junior or middle officers, and I might have some reservations about a girl.”

  “Oh, don’t worry about that. There are several unattached ones around who know the city as well as anyone and will cook, clean, or do anything else you want or not, if you don’t want it.”

  He protested, mostly because he didn’t want somebody going through his things, and he thought he’d settled it when he’d left for the evening, but when he returned to his apartment he’d barely begun washing up when there was a knock on the door. He opened it, and found a Fluxgirl there. She was perhaps a hundred and fifty centimeters tall in high heels, with curly, sandy-colored hair tumbling over her shoulders, and deep, huge green eyes, and was at least 115-50-95, which seemed even when looking at it to be anatomically impossible. She wore a backless, shiny satin slit dress of a green that matched her eyes and clung like a second skin, leaving nothing to the imagination.

  “Hi, I’m Sindi,” she said in a soft, sexy voice. “I’m to be your companion.”

  He was, in fact, more human than they thought. “Come on in,” he managed.

  12

  ON LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE

  Matson found himself fascinated by Sindi, the spelling of which he only found out by reading it off her, in spite of himself. He suspected full well that she would be required at some point to search just about everything he had, and to report on his conversation and activities, but he also knew that this was why he now had a certain measure of freedom in the city. Sindi was not a gift—she was the requirement.

  Her life story was interesting, although possibly as authentic as the life stories Cassie or Suzl would now tell with full conviction. She had been born and raised in the city, and really hadn’t been more than a few kilometers outside it. She had an immediate, but no long-term, time sense. She could tell if it was late, or early, and roughly what time of day it was, but she had no idea how old she was or how long ago some past events were—and, more important, she didn’t care. She was a Fluxgirl but not a Fluxwife, an important distinction that had up to this point eluded him. She could not have children, about the only thing that bothered her even a little but something she accepted as part of life, and she was more or less married to a place, not a person.

  She was, she said, “a part of the bachelor officer’s quarters in which he now resided. She was basically a porter and maid for the place, although she also, in the evenings, provided company and whatever for visiting young officers from elsewhere in Anchor or from other parts of Tilghman’s empire. She was actually quite happy about being able to provide for such a variety of nice young men, and the variety couldn’t be beat. She lived out of a service closet on the second floor; she always spent the night with someone there, or in rare cases in an empty room. She thought that was kind of neat, too, and in a way she considered herself freer than any of the Fluxwives, who were limited to one man and didn’t have the fun on the town she had. When asked where she got the clothing and jewelry, she responded quite matter-of-factly, that “the men like to buy me things.”

  Like all the Fluxgirls, she was totally sexually uninhibited. She seemed to need and crave sex for her own sake, and not just because it was part of her function in life. She appeared an avid listener, but it was soon clear that anything she didn’t understand or didn’t need to understand went in one ear and out the other with no stops in between. Part of her function was to listen if somebody wanted to talk; comprehension wasn’t required. She had no concept of, nor interest in, anything beyond her narrow life and what she had to know. She took her society totally for granted and had no real interest in it. Her concept of government was that it was “something that ran things, I guess” and an army was “a bunch of guys who go off someplace and beat up on a bunch of other guys ‘cause that’s one of the things you men do.” No, she didn’t ever want to be a man because she couldn’t think of a single thing men did that girls didn’t that she wanted to do.

  Girls were the opposites of men. They did the things men couldn’t do either physically or by their natures, or that men didn’t have the time to do. No, she didn’t want to be a man—she’d seen ‘em come in here all banged up and depressed and nervous wrecks, and she’d never been any of those things. He found, somewhat to his amusement, that she actually felt sorry for men, who paid a big price for all that responsibility and for all that power and playing those silly power games. They kept everything bottled up inside them, while girls let it all out. In that one area, he wasn’t really sure that she wasn’t right, and he had both the scars and the latent ulcers to prove it.

  He liked her, partly because he thought he understood her, but he still took the opportunity later on to remove the small cube from its hiding place in his pants and push it down into the bottom of the small jar of skin cream in his travel kit that he carried for use against burns and minor wounds and bites. He hoped that would be sufficient to avoid any nastiness during the next couple of days. He wouldn’t like to harm her, and he preferred to worry only about whether Adam Tilghman might get the urge to look at Toby Haller’s journal while he was still here.

  Sure enough, late into the night, after they had both supposedly fallen asleep, she slid professionally out of the bed and began a very silent but very methodical search of every inch of his possessions. As an old stringer and true survivor, he’d awakened the moment she’d moved, but pretended to sleep on. Confronting her was meaningless she’d only say she was going to the bathroom or something like that—and it would be far better to get a clean bill of health than to thwart a search and imply there was something to hide.

  She did check the travel kit, and even took the lid off the cream jar, but the odor was unpleasant and the stuff had the consistency of axle grease, and she didn’t even think of swirling her finger around in it. He had carried that cream, or one just like it, for all these years, and never once used it. He had no idea if it really worked or not, but it definitely had always done the job in concealing small objects.

  Matson idly wondered just what criteria she’d been given concerning what to look for, and how she could possibly recognize anything suspicious for what it was with her world view. She could come across a detailed written plan on how to assassinate New Eden’s leaders and the mathematical combination to open the Hellgate and wouldn’t have any way to tell them from a book of the latest dirty jokes and a record of his gin rummy scores, and since half his possessions would be unfamiliar to her simply because they were from another culture she might well have dismissed the cube in any event as a good luck charm or
something while reporting on the sinister substances like the cream and the jar of wax for the bullwhip.

  It was, of course, simply a case of the root nature of this society—and that made it easier than usual to beat if you really wanted to. He relaxed and went back to sleep.

  Sindi took him on a tour of the city over the next three days, and he had to admit some interest in it purely on comparative grounds. It certainly was true that the thing worked economically—there was food in abundance in almost infinite varieties, including fine cuts of meat both fresh and preserved by a process known as “freezing,” rather than by magic. The pedaled vehicle was everywhere and in constant use, sometimes hauling surprising tonnage, and there were not only regular garbage collections but a block-by-clock campaign in which the women living or working on a particular street got together at the end of each day and almost scrubbed the exteriors clean right down to the streets themselves. Littering was a social crime that provoked instant stern lectures, and there were plenty of public waste baskets about covered with slogans about pride and cleanliness.

  All transactions were now through credit accounts at the central bank. To buy something, you handed in your identification card and the vendor punched in your number and that was it. His “visitor’s” card seemed to have ample credit; nobody ever called him on it, but he resisted the temptation to abuse it. Not one single cop or authority figure challenged him, though—quite a change from when he’d arrived. When the Judge gave an order it was instantly received and obeyed to the letter. The stares he could put up with; stringers were used to being stared at out of fear or suspicion by Anchorfolk.

  The old temple looked pretty much the same, and pretty much as all the temples looked, although, of course, it wasn’t a temple any more. Sindi called it the “Bigbrain place” although she had no idea what went on in there and no interest in it, either. In any case, it was off limits, not only to him but to anybody without specific business there. Matson suspected that he could get in if he really wanted to, although he wasn’t so sure about getting out again. He’d once held that temple against the entire New Eden army and he knew how tough it would be to move around in there undetected.

  There was nightlife in the city as well, something that surprised him. There were limited gambling parlors and private clubs, some bars but for men only and some entertainment establishments, including a couple of places with small bands and dancing. He wasn’t much of a dancer, but he liked to sit and watch the others, particularly the nude and nearly nude Fluxgirls, gyrate all their ample body parts into erotic frenzies. Even there, though, it was the cleanest, most antiseptic public area he’d ever seen, with the girls who worked there practically catching spills and scooping up trash and even buffing scuff marks off the polished floors by hand before you could even blink.

  He could see the Judge’s vision, but he wasn’t sure about it. Certainly this was a society that worked; there was no crime, no poverty, no apparent disease, no dirt or filth, plenty of all the necessities and more of the luxuries than had been available to the general population in the Church-run Anchor Logh days, full employment, and apparently ample leisure time. The price, of course, was a different matter, but there was always a price. For the men it was regimentation, which also meant that you did what your superiors wanted the way they wanted it done no matter what you might want; for the women it was a dual reduction to menial laborer and/or sex object. The society was directed from the cradle so tightly and efficiently that each sex believed it had the better part of the deal; that was the trick and quite an accomplishment.

  The population, all of it, he realized, would be terrified if they one day awoke free to do whatever they wanted—and free to do or get nothing as well. Theirs was a society in which you did what you were told and in exchange were provided with everything society could give you, including cradle-to-grave security and the basics of life.

  After three days he’d decided that Tilghman was right in one thing at least, that if the Judges and the Central Committee suddenly all died, but the system and bureaucracy remained untouched, this society could and would by this point go on indefinitely. Still, that was where Tilghman the idealist and dreamer and Matson the sour pragmatist and cynic parted company, for the Judge really believed that such a state would come to pass, where Matson knew with conviction that any gaps in the top leadership would be instantly filled from just below. The state would never fade away or retire because human nature loved power most of all, and there would never be a group tough enough and ruthless enough to get to the top who wouldn’t hold on to that power and use it themselves. The Fluxlord never surrendered; he or she clung to power until deposed by an even stronger and more powerful Fluxlord.

  The only free people he knew or knew of were those so powerful they could not be challenged, yet also smart enough to be bored playing tinpot dictator or god. Even he was not really free, or he wouldn’t be in New Eden now or anywhere near the place. He’d retired and gone to work for a powerful Fluxlord who’d also been a pretty nice guy—but he was still the Fluxlord’s man, dependent on him for everything. Then he’d gone back to the Guild, and there he was a colonel, which always seemed to him when he was young a high and mighty rank and position. But the first thing a colonel learns is that there are five ranks above him, all able to give colonels orders, and there were an awful lot of colonels.

  He spent one last night with Sindi, then rose early in the morning on the fourth day and started packing up. She seemed genuinely sorry to see him go and her affection seemed quite genuine and touching, but the cynic in him wondered how many times a year she played out the same scene with equal sincerity.

  His clothes had all been neatly cleaned and pressed, and when he walked over to Temple Square in the predawn chill he found they’d taken very good care of his horse and apparently had cleaned and waxed his saddle. Even the old shotgun looked brand new. He hoped it still shot.

  Tilghman was there in full uniform, as was a whole troop of spit-and-polish cavalrymen. It was really impressive when you stopped to look at it. He was escorted over to the high-ranking group and Tilghman spotted him and greeted him warmly. The old guy seemed in exceptionally high spirits, and was quick to introduce him around. He met too many men to keep track of them, but he knew that there were three other Judges here, just slightly less powerful than Tilghman, and Gunderson Champion was impossible to miss. Only the general seemed less than overjoyed to be there on what Tilghman kept referring to as a “historic occasion,” but he was a good soldier. Champion knew of Matson but did not remember him, but the old stringer remembered the general well. He’d been Coydt’s chief henchman, lieutenant, and troubleshooter. the only man as psychotic as Coydt himself and. therefore, the only one Coydt trusted to run his operations and affairs while the chief was away. Elsewhere around had to be the man who was Coydt’s “left hand” as much as Champion had been his right, but there was no trace of Onregon Sligh this morning.

  The main road led to the east and west Gates, always the only real entrances and exits from Anchor Logh, but the great banded multicolored orb that the Church called the Holy Mother was barely a third of the way to mid-Heaven before they turned and took a side road through the rolling farms almost due south. Even at the slow pace such a huge group had to take on these roads and under these conditions, they would arrive at the wall fully a day ahead of deadline if they continued in this direction.

  Matson tended to be quiet and rarely initiated a conversation. He was a guest of the big shots, but he wasn’t privy to their councils or secrets and he really didn’t like Gunderson Champion in the least, so he stayed with the men of the headquarters company on the frequent breaks. He learned very little, except the fact that not one of them, including their top sergeant and their commander, knew what the hell all this was about, either.

  When they arrived at the wall he found that it had actually been breached in this location, and professionally, too. A new, if primitive, gate had been cut in it with a st
eel mesh bridge carrying patrols over the rectangular opening. Sturdy temporary wooden stairs had been built on both sides of the opening, and up top he saw where a section of wall had been widened into a platform a good thirty meters long by twenty wide. The timber was fresh and untreated, but the thing was sturdy as a rock. He saw grooves and holes in and around it, indicating that something was to be put on it, but what that something was turned out to be platform walls, or shields, perhaps three meters high, also of wood but with metal sheets nailed firmly to their outsides. There appeared to be only three walls. There was a fourth stacked up against the wall below, but it seemed the wrong size and shape to fit anyplace up top.

  Below, a tent city had already been established, and now the various parts of the VIP detail found their temporary homes and stables and proceeded to move in. There was no specific place for him, and he was told pretty much to pick his own spot and just stay out of the way. He found an empty spot in the tent with the detail who’d been here setting all this up for weeks, apparently. They knew who he was, and seemed amiable enough to talk about their work. After several hours he had a very good idea of their orders and the layout of the place, and found out that none of them really knew what was going on, either.

  He had to admit, though, that he was increasingly worried, not for himself but for Sondra, Jeff, and Spirit. In Flux they felt that they were in their element and that nothing except an attack by a stronger wizard was to be feared. Of course, he knew that you could blow a wizard’s head off with a shotgun just as easily in Flux as in Anchor, but he also hoped that Sondra remembered her own experience in the attack on Spirit’s refuge. One strong wizard—Zelligman Ivan—and one New Eden amplifier had collapsed a Fluxlahd maintained by both Cass and Mervyn—two of the strongest—sent Sondra in flight and knocked Cass cold for maybe days. Mervyn was hooked to the old, pre-amplifier days and the pre-amplifier reflexes. Could he and the other two wizards withstand a power that might be three, or even thirty, or perhaps even three hundred times the power of one amplifier? New Eden had warned the entire cluster. Clusters were 3017.5 kilometers across, no matter which way you sliced them. Let’s see, that would be that number times itself—nine million square kilometers! Could that be right? Or was he rusty on his math somewhere? At any rate, it was one hell of an area. What could they possibly do to it to affect it all?