Masters of Flux & Anchor

by Jack L. Chalker

  He couldn’t help but wonder what had happened to Jeff and Sondra; whether they were still out there somewhere, or had not survived: if Jeff now wore the lightning and black and Sondra was another dull-eyed beauty in one of these camps. How many of those minds, some of them excellent ones, had already cracked and crumbled inside those beautiful bodies? With a little extra conditioning they all would, in time, just as he would under similar conditions.

  ”It hurts to think. …”

  What a terribly dehumanizing, damning statement that was!

  Spirit, too, was able to figure out basically what was going on and she, too, felt depressed. She had not seen Sondra, but she had not liked leaving Jeff, knowing that it was a spell and not he who had struck her, but she’d seen little she could do for him there and she had decided that if Mervyn felt helpless, she certainly was. The first step in undoing this terrible wrong was to get the wizard back into Flux.

  That proved difficult even when the familiar reddish fog curtain was in front of them, for the area was strung with barbed wire and patrolled on foot and horseback. It was a two days’ walk skulking about in the dark and without food before there was any kind of a gap, and it wasn’t much of one. This was a point, though, where there was only a token fence and for half of the time a lone sentry patrolled. Spirit, too, understood the chance and knew they couldn’t walk much more in this area before either collapsing from hunger or being discovered, and she tried hard to get an idea across to him. It took him a very long time, but he finally got it.

  There were two sentries, but they came from opposite directions. It was supposed that they were to meet each other at this point, then pivot and meet another at the other, but the fact was that those chosen for this dull duty were neither the best nor the brightest of the troops, and first one would make the point, turn, and march back, then the other would come. At a point most of the way to the turn, Mervyn clutched Spirit’s hand, then got up and walked boldly up to the sentry. He was filthy, still stark naked, and smelled. The sentry spotted him. stopped, but so did he. Finally the soldier broke from his line and came over to him.

  “I am commanded to report in, sir.” he croaked, standing as straight as possible.

  “How the hell did you get all this way without … ?” the sentry started, but then he saw movement out of the corner of his eye and turned quickly, rifle coming down. It was not quick enough. Spirit leaped and kicked him as hard as her powerful leg could right in the balls. He went down with a scream of horrible pain, and they wasted no time in running for the void. Spirit actually grabbing his hand and pulling him to run faster than he believed he could. There were shouts and curses behind them, a random couple of shots were fired, but suddenly they were enveloped in the wonderful silence and monotony of the void.

  Instantly, it was like having been struck blind, deaf, and dumb and having your sight, hearing, and speech come back in a rush. He was in his element once more, and he had power again. Behind him, a small company of soldiers on horseback came into Flux, obviously in pursuit. The five men were suddenly struck by a blinding beam and toppled from their horses, but the unconscious forms hitting the ground were all those of naked Fluxgirls.

  Spirit laughed, and hugged and kissed him. She could not be transformed, but he would not be stopped. Instantly he was a centaur with full saddle and even safety rails, and he lowered his hindquarters so she could mount and ride. She didn’t like the idea, but as she had at the start, she forced herself to do it.

  Inside the basket-like saddle appeared a great variety of wonderful and familiar fresh fruit, which she tried simply to settle herself. She was feeling a little dizzy and sick from the ride, though, and would wait before the feast. Mervyn no longer required such things; he drew what he required from Flux, as always, and continued onward with a speed that was even more inhuman than his form. He had a string in moments and from its color and shape and texture read exactly where he was. He was forty kilometers northeast of Anchor Logh, and less than twenty from his temporary hideaway. Spirit’s navigation had been on the mark indeed.

  Still, he scouted and checked when he reached the Fluxland shield to make certain that it was as he’d left it and designed it. Only certain people could make it in. and he knew that he’d have to take two of them off the list as soon as possible.

  Satisfied that at least he could fight any potential enemy within, he entered. It was small and crude by Pericles’ standards, but it was all he had right now a few small stone buildings, some grass and fruit trees and a little water. It was enough—for the present—although most of his records and artwork would have to be unpacked and probably recataloged.

  He let Spirit down, then changed back, not to his old man form but to the form of the younger, virile man he’d become, now neat, clean, well-groomed, and wearing the purple and gold of a master sorcerer. Spirit smiled and nodded approvingly, then looked past him, gasped, and ran behind him. Mervyn turned and saw a familiar figure now being smothered with kisses and hugs. Finally the man was able to free himself and look over at Mervyn.

  “You look pretty good for an old man.” said Matson. “What took you so long?”

  “And so,” Matson concluded. “I suddenly figured I’d be a fool to go in there looking for what used to be Pericles, without maps, landmarks, or anything except a gate compass, particularly when I couldn’t be sure what anybody even looked or thought like anymore. There I was in Anchor Logh. and to the north was still Flux, so I figured I’d just find a stringer lineman, send off my report as best I could, then come and wait for you here.”

  “I’m very sorry about Jeff and Sondra. but, damn it, I wouldn’t have made it without Spirit, and there was simply nothing else I could do at the time.”

  “Not your fault. I can’t do much about Jeff. I’m afraid, but I think I can pull Sondra out of there given enough time. The old man likes me a lot, I think, and from now on he’ll need every outsider he knows to stay friendly, if you know what I mean.”

  Mervyn nodded. “I’ve already sent out messengers. I expect we’re going to have the first true summit meeting of Flux and Anchor since the Concordat was signed years ago, and with nothing predetermined. Those fools! I warned them about New Eden, but they wouldn’t listen. Now our worst fears are realized.”

  “Worse than you thought, I bet and worse than you think.”

  “How’s that’.’”

  “I think Dr. Sligh’s discovered wireless transmission. He’s got enough potential power there just from water to give a broadcast station the capacity to blanket the whole damned planet, and enough Anchor area now to get a real firm signal that’ll punch through Flux like a knife through butter. I don’t know if the Seven know it yet, but there’s no way of keeping it from ‘em and Sligh’ll build that thing simply to give instant transmission throughout his whole cluster. I’ll try to talk Tilghman out of it. but the fact is he’s so blinded by his visions he can’t see the enemy at his throat. I think we better load up and get set, Mervyn. I think there’s no way now to prevent those Gates from being triggered—by wireless remote control. Maybe not this year, or next, but you and me and a lot of other folks are gonna find out who’s right about what’s on the other side.”

  “Then it is even more imperative that New Eden, all of it, must fall.”

  “If it’s possible. This isn’t any big Fluxlord, remember—it’s all Anchor now, and these boys are the world’s greatest experts at Anchor fighting and they have the weapons that took three other Anchors and secured a cluster. If you don’t think Tilghman and Champion aren’t ready for it, you’re still underestimating them.”

  “And you’re still going back?”

  Matson sighed. “I have to. if only to try to save Sondra’s neck. Also, this place has possibilities. I think it’s gonna be the easiest area to defend when the Gates come open, and I think Tilghman’s ready to listen on that score. Also, bet on them pretty well evacuating the Anchors as much as possible and moving their main centers inland fast
. It’s their best defense. With their limited manpower, the Guild’s in the best position to contract to service the new areas they’re gonna build.” He shrugged. “Don’t look so shocked. We do business with just as bad, always have. And maybe we can dampen down that broadcast scheme a little. Gates open, Gates not open—somebody from the Guild’s got to be there to represent our point of view and our interests.”

  He got up to leave, then stopped, turned, and reached into his pocket, removing a small cube which he bounced like a the on the table. Mervyn just stared at it.

  “I hope you can duplicate that exactly,” Matson said. “That there’s your precious Toby Haller journal, and I think I can sneak it back into the old boy’s library if you can.”

  Mervyn stood up and stared at the cube in wonder. “Toby Haller’s journal … . You’re sure?”

  “I’m sure.”

  He picked it up and looked as it as if it were some magical jewel. “This is a service I can never repay. Perhaps it will have the answers. Perhaps it will make the difference.”

  “You can make a copy?”

  “Easily, although by more conventional means than magic. You’re leaving right away?”

  “Tomorrow. No sense wasting time with a daughter at stake.”

  “It will be read, printed out, and duplicated tonight, I swear.”

  Matson nodded. “Much obliged. Make two printouts and I can read it before I leave if it’s not too long. I’m kind of curious myself.” He paused a moment. “Uh, Mervyn?”

  “Yes?”

  “Thanks for saving Spirit.”

  The wizard shook his head and sighed. “No, that’s not necessary. In more ways than one, it was Spirit who saved me.”

  14

  TOBY HALLER’S JOURNAL

  The device produced a book of several hundred very large pages. What was surprising about it was that the thing was handwritten, in very small, close script that was not very easy to read. Apparently it had been kept entirely in longhand, and then simply photographed onto the recording slate to preserve it.

  Much of it was illegible, and there were large gaps, and often great events took only a line or so, while he went on and on about mundane matters that were of no consequence to anyone alive these past twenty-five hundred or so years. But when fitted in with what Mervyn already knew, it painted a stunning picture.

  March 28, 2117: Talley ho! We’re finally on our way! Four bloody years shot to hell on Titan, which once bore a strong resemblance to our little project but now is less akin than Spitsbergen is to Nassau, but now it’s going to pay off. At .8 light speed it takes almost no time to get to the Borelli Point, even though it’s halfway to the stars.

  April 2. All sealed up in this damned shell, can’t even see the Borelli Point. They have photos of it. looking something like an eclipsed sun, but I sure wish I could have seen it. (Unintelligible) … Heigh ho! Wonder what it feels like once you’re strapped in that tube and turned into a lot of particles? Find out tomorrow, and so will you, old record book!

  April 3 (I think). Well, they took us down and strapped us in just fine. First of a whole bunch of people, but the forward parry’s been there for four years already. The thing looked like the biggest room you’ve ever seen, going on for kilometers in all directions, all with very narrow aisles. Place looked like a breeding ground for giant test tubes, only we poor humans were the stuff what’s in ‘em. No clothes, no nothing. You get taken there in the buff, and some tech boy barely out of college pushes a button that raises the tube and you get on the little platform. Then down it comes, and you stand there for what seems hours waiting, while a bunch of women techs walk through and make lewd gestures. They pipe in music, but it’s a bore. Finally, they break in, tell you to relax, the lights dim, and you just go off to beddy by standing up. Damn Einstein for being so right! So instead of a nice faster-than-light drive, we get turned into atoms, shot through a well-regulated hole punched into another universe, and squirted along highways of energy there where energy is solid and the lightspeed thousands of times faster than in this universe. I keep telling these young people that it’s nonsense to shoot a whole gaggle of people, cows, chickens, even pigeons, God help us, and a thousand million tonnes of seed to a place they don’t even know where it’s at!

  Gravity pulls between the universes dictates the bends and swirls of the energy strings, but most times we never know where exactly we are. The Old Man agreed it was a hell of a way to run a railroad… .

  April 10. Busy, busy, busy! Don’t know how long I was out or how long it took for them to get to me, but aside from the gravity it all felt the same. I’m just dating this on guesses, but it’ll show how much time passes for me. Exit in the middle through a hole in the floor, and down the egress tube. You can actually see the stuff pouring out of that stupid universe next door and the Borelli Lock that keeps it nice and regulated. Wonder what would have happened if Borelli had lived to see corporations like ours using it to build worlds? Probablv shit ten bricks. He was an Italian who did most of his work in America, but he was a good old commie. Of course the Russkies are doing as well as we, and the Chinese are out populating half the universe, but we’re good old Westrex Ltd., a nice, cozy, unified culture, all American, Canadian. Australian, British, Nigerian, Indian. Japanese, and a few more. At least with the corporate headquarters currently in Aukland they all have to speak English on this job.

  Another short electric squirt and I’m in Anchor. Doesn’t look like much, yet. We’ve got the masts up but no building yet—took ten full shiploads just to get the bloody computer through and a crew of machines weeks to burn out the basement, pour the foundation, and set the machine in it. Control room and engineering modules came next, and then the towers. Now we’ve got an Anchor—twenty-eight, in fact—and they all look like Hell. Burnt out wasteland, mostly hot. Well, we’ve got a heat source, and that mother of a gas giant just fills the sky all day, making it bright and a rainbow of colors. The brown landscape just ripples all the time. Fantastic effect, good selling point.

  May 11. Getting sick of living in tents, but, oh, my! Is it ever intimate! More all-around nudity here than in Cannes, but without the privacy, damn it. We must get some modular housing up. Not that I really mind, but it’s that damned priest and his corps of nuns tramping about. I still wouldn’t mind, since the Vatican’s paying for this and the Board’s half Catholic anyway, but why should a good Presbyterian boy from jolly old Wellington have to endure it, too?

  June 16. Maybe the Russians have the right idea. Multinational corporations wind up infested with culture shock. I can take the idea that India has Hindus and Nigeria is infested with Moslems and Methodists, and they all have their rights, but when they’re all dumped and squeezed into a little place barely the size of Belgium it’s bedlam. Some fun, though. The Moslems had a big to-do about which direction faced Mecca and decided to pray heavenwards, to the sky. Well, at least it’s finally gotten the Catholics and the Moslems to pray in the same direction, but I wonder in a couple of generations if their kids will think they’re praying to that planet up there?

  June 29. Hurrah! Finally enough energy Flux has bled out from the Anchors and the Gates to create a minimum field. Now maybe we can do something with this cursed place.

  July 19. Bingo! Do I know how to write a program or do I know how to write a program? We’ve got grass now, and even some trees. But today was our first real gully-washing rainstorm, and we celebrated so much we all went out in the mud and acted like kids and got ourselves filthy. Did you know you can’t tell an Ibo from a Yorkshireman or a nun from an Imam when all have been covered in ten centimeters of the best mud you’ve ever seen?

  August 12. What a transformation in so short a time! Our little world is coming into being. I know how it works, and it still looks like a miracle every time we use the energy converters to duplicate trees and shrubs and the like. Landscaping has already started work on drains and laving out stream courses. No oceans yet, but I hope to live to see
the day when this merry little land doesn’t end in a drab void.

  October 9. Army signal corps rode in today, all the way from Engineering on horseback, in their shiny black uniforms and silly cowboy hats. We’re connected now. Sufficient Flux has built up and settled uniformly around our little world that they can now run energy strings between the Anchors. Seems some folks can see ‘em without the glasses and some folks can’t, but for me I’ll stay close to home for now. The thought of getting lost out there in that nothingness scares me to death, and horses scare me worse. Here we are, 22nd Century Homo Saps, riding horses like the wild west! But Flux plays hob with conventional power supplies, and causes all sorts of nasty reverberations to the programs, so back to pioneer days it is. Give me an Anchor and a good Indian racing bike any day!

  December 17. Temperature has been stabilized and smoothed out. We’re too far from the star to get anything but gravity, but our old planetary friend gives us plenty of glorious light. The heat we must supply using Flux, but that’s an advantage. It means no polar caps here. We’ve left the equatorial Anchors permanently warm, but introduced some mild seasonal variations in the two northern and one southern cluster, just for variety. Since Flux within the cluster zone stabilized at 33.333etc. degrees centigrade, just where it should be, we get enough radiated heat to keep our own needs small in any case. Since we’re losing only a half a degree per degree of latitude, the whole place should be quite comfortable.