Masters of Flux & Anchor

by Jack L. Chalker

  It was to be another day and a half of waiting and worrying before he found out.

  The platform atop the wall resembled a cross between a war bunker, a command post, and a parade reviewing stand. It was all decked out with chairs, table, lectern, and some sort of powered sound system. In the center, however, was a motorized winch to which were attached a series of cables along carefully delineated aisles. The three metal-covered walls were attached to the main platform on great hinges, and by cable to the master winch—or winches, really, although one motor served them all. He had watched them test it out several times in the past day.

  Apparently they had been told no rear wall, facing Anchor, was needed. The fourth section was to block the passage blasted or dug out of the old wall itself. Matson, smelling something lethal for those still in the void, mounted the wall nervously and took a seat well away from those cables, which he didn’t trust, and about halfway back in the grouping of chairs. He began to wish that he’d relented and allowed Sondra and Jeff to accompany him here. They would have presented a sticky situation and a potential danger to him and to themselves, but now it seemed they would have been safer in the hands of the enemy.

  Just inside the void he could barely make out the hulking shape of one of the amplification machines, with a lot of wires leading back to a small temporary building on the Anchor apron. Some wires then ran from the building to the wall and entered the platform through the floor where it jutted out from the wall and over the apron, and where the hinged section would not interfere with them.

  There had been some delay, and it was well past the appointed time; the assembled big shots of New Eden and their one lone visitor began to get the fidgets. Matson regretted his seating choice now that it was too late. He had to go to the bathroom and was afraid he’d never get out, get down to the outdoor privy, and back up in time. The old law applied—if he didn’t go, they’d sit for hours; if he did, it would start when he started his business down there. He decided he would hold it until he blew up or until they were told to take a break.

  Finally, though, Adam Tilghman emerged from the old stone guard house near the platform flanked by two white-uniformed men. He looked annoyed and kept saying things no one could catch and nodding occasionally to the two in white, but he continued on to the platform and up to the podium.

  I bet he went to the john just before coming here, Matson thought grumpily. There was no greater personal demonstration of power to him than this. Tilghman’s Utopian dream would never come about because no man in his position would pass up being the lone individual able to hold up the proceedings while he took a piss. Sit here with a full bladder, Judge, and see what equality really means.

  The sound system came alive with a screech, and a couple of technicians leaped to adjust it. The screech stopped, and there was only a buzzing noise and the vague sound of some nasty-toned conversation in the air. Tilghman turned to the crowd and began, his voice surprisingly easy to hear.

  “Gentlemen, we are here, finally, to witness a true revolution, an act that is irrevocable and which will change our world forever. Some of you know what we are about to do. but most of you do not, for security was essential to this entire operation.

  “I have now been informed that, after some technical problems, all is now in readiness for the act. We are doing nothing here, today, that our ancestors did not plan and design. For various reasons they were unable to carry out the full operation, but we will do our part today.”

  He paused a moment, mostly for dramatic effect, and then continued. His audience was all ears.

  “We have used the amplifiers whose plans and designs we discovered in the ancient papers mostly as weapons to this point, but they were not designed as weapons. It was never the intent of our ancestors to promote the conditions under which we’ve lived for twenty-six hundred years. Flux is a tool, not an end; a tool to be used by these machines to accomplish a specific task. For various reasons, some of which we do not fully understand, that task was not carried out—until now.

  “Nine years ago. a research project of ours discovered, quite accidently. a series of modules designed to instruct and operate the amplifiers. We’d not known what they were for, as they were classified under the general term ‘Landscape Architecture,” with their use guide making reference to various machines we didn’t until now understand. For unknown reasons, we found that these and many other modules were called ‘programs’ by the ancients, which means that they are incredibly complex sets of instructions intended to be fed automatically to the amplifiers and which the amplifiers will then carry out.”

  Again he paused, and except for the buzzing in the public address system there didn’t even seem to be the sound of breathing.

  “Now, then,” he went on, “these modules, or programs, were originally given to the botanical group because of the name, and it was a young, bright botanist named Kerr Endina who finally put it all together, mostly in his spare time and at the cost of some ridicule from his colleagues.”

  Matson wondered what remote outpost those colleagues were now staffing, and what Endina would be doing if this, whatever it was, didn’t work or didn’t work like he said it should.

  “We have deployed one hundred and twelve amplifiers in the cluster,” Tilghman told them. There was a collective gasp at this. “This number, or so the scientists tell me, is the largest number that can be used within a cluster, since all of them use and modify Flux and there is only so much Flux. We actually don’t need but a fraction of these for what we will do, but the rest are deployed with a different purpose. Once the signal is given, every Fluxlord and every Fluxland population that remains in the cluster despite our warnings, and this is a very large number, would be against us. General Champion was brilliant enough to come up with what we think will be a solution which involves the other amplifiers.”

  Matson glanced over at Champion and saw the general smile and nod. No matter what you could say against Tilghman, he was one Hell of a politician.

  “The great work that we do today,” Tilghman told them, “is nothing less than the conversion of an entire cluster from four Anchors and Flux to solid Anchor!”

  Suddenly everyone was talking at once, and it took a while for Tilghman to calm them down. When he did, he continued.

  “Think of it! An Anchor the size of a cluster, stretching from where we stand to the southern tip of Mareh and to the westernmost point in Nantzee and all the way to the easternmost point in the former Anchor Bakha. Those names in a moment will have no meaning. There will be only one—New Eden, largest and dominant Anchor on this planet!”

  That set them off again. Matson, like many, was stunned. No wonder the wily old bastard was so agreeable to dismantling the communications network! If this crazy, impossible scheme actually worked, the Guild was out of business in the south.

  “We have among our ranks many with substantial Flux power, and we have used them in our secondary move which actually comes first, by a few precious minutes, thanks to General Champion’s foresight. Every known substantive Fluxland is now covered by mass amplifers. When the signal is given, they will begin to direct on those Fluxlands the massed power of the amplifiers and our own adaptation spells that worked so well at Nantzee and Mareh.

  Those spells will roll like a great wind into all the lands, immediately followed by the activation of the ancient program. As Flux is transformed to Anchor, the wizards so attacked will find themselves powerless to react or to undo what we have done. Those who survive the onslaught will become as ordinary as you or I, and as mortal. All of this is coordinated by our own Dr. Sligh, whose own communications breakthroughs make it possible for us to time this down to the last tenth of a second throughout the entire cluster. Just one signal will trigger the adaptation and a few seconds later the ancient programs. Our troops have withdrawn into Anchor or outside the cluster. The individual volunteers on the amplifiers are there merely as safety checks and observers. Everything is being handled by what Dr.
Sligh calls “preprogrammed remote control.’

  Preprogrammed remote control, Matson thought, his heart sinking. Could the Hellgates, too, be opened this way? Now, at least, he understood why Tilghman had insisted on this specific timing for his visit and had been anxious to keep him here. The Judge wasn’t as naive about the Guild as he’d let on. He wasn’t about to let Matson go when an order from the stringer might disrupt the vital communications needed to pull this off. After it was over, the mere elimination of this much Flux would be New Eden’s answer to the Guild. He wondered if they really knew all the consequences of what they were doing, and doubted it.

  “I will now give the order to commence the operation.” Tilghman told them. “As soon as it is completed, our troops are ready to spread out and assess the total effect and, hopefully, contact and establish control over the populations affected. Detailed mapping and exploration will come later. I must tell you, though, that we have to trust our ancestors on these programs. Except for the fact that they will not alter existing Anchor, we have no idea what sort of world we now will create, and I find that more exciting than frightening. The protective walls will go up for a brief period here only because there is some indication of a backlash in the air from the change in power. Records state that a very thin lead sheeting will be more than sufficient protection for the less than three minutes required, so have no fear. This is it, gentlemen the dawn of the new age that will permanently revolutionize World and create a single New Eden so large and so secure that it shall never fall!” He reached down and threw a switch in front of him.

  Bells and sirens went off all around them, up and down the wall and behind, as well as on the apron. The winch motor came to life, coughing and chugging and giving off a somewhat foul smoke, but the walls came up dramatically and were soon locked in place. Although the back and top were open, they all felt cut off from reality. Now a second section of the front wall was pulled up creating a roof about two-thirds complete, cloaking them in semi-darkness. Matson felt simultaneous urges to make a run for it or to somehow attack and kill this assembly and break that communications link. He did neither, both because there was really no place to run and because the signal had already been given and there was no chance of stopping it now.

  There was a sudden series of loud, terrible explosions that shook them almost off their chairs and rattled the temporary walls. Then there was a great rush of air, a terrible windstorm that swept into Anchor. Below, men and animals shouted and screamed and panicked and the wind picked up every loose particle and whipped it around. Trees and tents toppled, and it grew suddenly very dark, and the temperature- seemed to drop several degrees in a minute. The sound of fierce thunder and the echoes of lightning continued.

  Below the wall, those with a view of Flux who were not propelled into emergency action by the terrible windstorm could look out and see startling changes take place. The fixed, familiar curtain of reddish-gold with its sparkles stretching up to the heavens as far as the eye could see was no more; there was now a reddish-brown swirling fog. Observers in the blockhouse on the apron watched as much as they dared in awe as the mass reached the ground, and there was a sudden line of electrical fire moving from the very lip of the apron inward into Flux. As it did so, with increasing speed, the far observers could see the mass of swirling clouds withdraw with the line of energy, as if the whole were some living, alien force.

  By the end of three minutes, the entire mass had receded from view of anyone in Anchor, and beyond the apron and above them was no longer void but open sky, mostly gray in color and obscuring the great orb the old Church worshipped as the source of World’s light. It was a turbulent, storm-tossed sky, but it was not such a sky as had never been seen in Anchor.

  They all waited anxiously as the shielding walls were carefully lowered, revealing what now lay beyond. All on the platform had been pretty badly shaken up. but aside from a few minor cuts and bruises there was no other damage apparent.

  Everyone stood and then rushed forward to get a view. and even Tilghman was forgotten in the crush of the excitement.

  There was no more Flux, but there was a true landscape now. The apron, for all intents and purposes, no longer existed, but merely extended into the new land. To the right stretched a vast, unbroken plain covered with tall yellowish grass whipping about in the still strong wind and looking like great waves upon an alien sea. To the left was a far more breathtaking sight: a vast expanse of deep blue water whose great waves washed up on a large but gentle black sand beach. It seemed to stretch out to the southeast as far as the eye could see, and there was a strong and alien salty smell to the air and the roar of crashing waves hitting upon the beach. It was more water than any of them had ever seen in their entire lives, and it frightened and disoriented them.

  Huge thunderstorms seemed to be all around, both out over the water and over the great grassy plains, with dramatic lightning that shot from dark clouds and grounded itself on whatever surface was beneath.

  Tilghman had been almost bowled over by the rush to the front, but now pushed his way before the awe-stricken crowd. He saw the scene in front of him and froze, jaw dropping, all the color seeming to drain from his face. The plains were familiar enough, and the only surprise was that the program came complete with its vegetation. He had expected to have to plant it or to wait perhaps years for it to grow out. But it was the huge expanse of blue water with its waves foaming and crashing into the shore that truly shocked him. He had never imagined that such an expanse of water could exist. Broad rivers and great lakes, yes, but nothing like this. They should have known, he realized. They should have guessed, at least, that all that water, deprived of conversion back into Flux at the boundaries, would have to collect somewhere but this much water was beyond comprehension.

  Sitting incongruously a few hundred meters beyond the edge of the sea was the master control amplifier that had created this, now clearly visible, its rectangular form having sunk a bit in the soft, moist earth, now a useless relic, the agent of its own obsolescence. The door to the lead-lined operator’s cage opened, and a shaken figure eased himself out and dropped down to the ground, then stopped, struck as senseless as the rest of them by the sight he’d helped create.

  The temperature of the air at this time of year was generally twenty-one or twenty-two degrees centigrade; now they began to shiver a bit, for the temperature had dropped fully five or six degrees in the operation and continued to do so. By early the next morning it had dropped all the way down to seven, but it would take weeks before it was determined that the temperature range had altered to a spread of about sixteen for a high to five for a low. They were heading into the warmest season under the old conditions, and hoped that it would hold true now, but no one wanted to think right away about what the cold season’s temperatures might be.

  Communications had been severed the moment that the program had been activated, but troops from all four Anchors and from positions outside the cluster now proceeded in to check out the new land and pick up the pieces. Without strings or familiar landmarks, however, it would be slow going, and many would be dispersed or lost. The only thing that allowed them to negotiate the new land was the instant discovery that magnetic compasses, used for generations by stringers as a supplementary aid and known to all, were still apparently drawn tp the Hellgate; but with only that one reference point and the known point of departure, it was going to be tough going.

  More difficult was the discovery of just how much of the new area was water and not fresh water, but contaminated with salt to such a degree that it could not be used for agriculture. Estimates ranged between a third to more than half of the former void now being covered by water, which greatly raised the humidity of the entire region. Clearly the new climate was not only going to be far chillier, but also much wetter.

  No one would ever be able to know how many thousands, or perhaps tens of thousands, of innocent people and their arrogant Fluxlords, not to mention stringers, duggers, and t
ravelers of all sorts, were drowned in the massive transformation of Flux energy to water, but bodies washed up on shorelines after every storm for months.

  After the terrible shock of the sight had lessened and the men on the platform had regained enough composure to leave, either to investigate this new place or to organize their commands for the aftermath, Adam Tilghman and four bodyguards remained, gazing out on the strange and terrifying landscape.

  Matson. too. remained. He would have to travel that landscape soon enough, if he could. He took out a cigar and lit it, then approached Tilghman. The Judge didn’t turn his gaze from the new scene to see who it was, although from the whiffs of cigar smoke he certainly could surmise it.

  “Well, Judge, that’s a right pretty trick,” the old stringer said. “Looks like everybody in New Eden’s gonna have to learn how to swim, and it’s gonna be another neat trick to string wires across that.”