Masters of Flux & Anchor

by Jack L. Chalker

  December 25. First Christmas. With the Operations Building newly poured and settled, it’s the dominant thing in the Anchor. Somebody said the seven broadcast antennas looked like steeples, so Engineering managed somehow to come up with some brightly colored lights and festoon them top to bottom. I wonder what the preachers in Dickens’ time would think of their descendants squirting through space and creating worlds out of nothing? Blasphemy, I suspect. As for me, if God hadn’t wanted us to fashion pretty-worlds out of rockpiles He would have made only Einstein and struck the relativists and high energy-particle physicists to dust with lightning bolts. Or at least made only one universe. I always wonder if we were the main one or were we just practice?

  I take it back, all my comments about the polyglot here. The sight of those sari-clad Hindu women and turbaned Moslem holy men sitting there listening to a bunch of nuns in workboots and jeans singing O Little Town of Bethlehem is worth all the rest of this nonsense!

  There was much more of it, including a detailed account of how Toby met and let himself get trapped and tied down by a “tiny, beautiful-looking mathematician named Mioki Kubioshi—Mickey for short.” and tales of wedded bliss.

  What he’d said, even up to that point, would, if known, shake World to its very foundations. Mervyn tried to imagine a civilization that could punch holes in space-time and ride great strings through to another universe and other worlds, yet still produce so ordinary and likable a fellow as Toby Haller. The names and faiths of that ancient civilization meant nothing now—how was a Japanese, for example, different from a Nigerian? It was impossible to say. But for all his cynical good humor, Toby Haller had hit the nail on the head when he wondered whether people praying to an indistinct Heaven might wind up praying to the most dominant and spectacular object in their skies.

  Mervyn understood enough of gravity to at least get a general concept of the process. Haller seemed to say that in the universe of men nothing could go faster than light, which seemed logical, or you’d get someplace before you started. The same was true of this other universe, but light traveled so much faster there that distances that would take perhaps centuries to cross. This was evident from just looking at the astronomical distances Haller casually noted for the distance to the big planet, and to the solar system’s sun—so dim it seemed just another star from here yet dense enough to hold a world as big as the Holy Mother in tight orbit. Somehow they had managed to punch a hole between the universes and control the very different energy that was there as wizards on World controlled the Flux.

  He tried to imagine it—an entire universe filled only with the densest Flux energy. They took some sort of machine, threw it into that universe, and it just kept going, but deviated due to pulls of some sort between our universe and that one, telling scientists where things were.

  How would they start it? Punch back out with their machines, probably, and record what they saw. Follow it up with more specific machines that could see and measure and find worlds, worlds that had the elements, even if in the wrong order or mix, to be turned into places for human beings to live using the same energy flowing from that other universe, but harnessed and under control. All of World, all of the Flux, was that energy, coming out in a regulated stream from the Hellgate.

  So they punched seven tiny holes to get at this limitless source of power and energy, and then they used it to transform a world. But not all worlds would work. There were more failures, it seemed, than successes, for technical reasons Mervyn, and perhaps no one, would ever understand. To find out if it would work, you had to experiment.

  To this end, engineers and masters of the machines and of the greater Flux came in and built a variety of little worldlets out of Flux, and stabilized them and introduced a variety of plants, animals, whatever, from their home world. And people, too, who would make it all work and build the place into something livable, then try to survive there.

  Clearly, in Toby Haller’s time, it was still very new and they were still learning. There seemed no indication in the early years of the journal that he knew what power some humans could command over Flux without his machines, and he never seemed to make the jump from creating trees and flowers from Flux to creating Fluxlands and remaking people. To him, Flux was merely a tool to do a job.

  His employer was a private company of some sort, that was clear, yet the army—the army from his old world—was there, had been there, apparently, first, Mervyn thought of the Signal Corpsmen creating the network to travel between Anchors and all he could see was the Stringer Guild. It was a total vision both grand and glorious—and something of a comedown. The fact was, these people really had the technology to do miracles on a scale that would put the most powerful wizard to shame, yet they were oblivious to their greatness, took it for granted, and were, in the end, pretty much the same as people today. How many worlds had they tried this on? How many had succeeded? One could infer four or five from the journal, but it could just as likely be fifty, or five hundred, or fifty thousand.

  Toby Haller chronicled the development of World, which he generally called the project. When the first children were born, he rejoiced that they were “completely normal—crying, helpless brats that made life miserable.” Yet when his own first born came along, the child was “absolutely beautiful, perfect in every way. She has her father’s brains and big mouth and her mother’s beauty. What a terror she’s going to be!”

  But the project was never completed. Man, it seemed, wasn’t the only one riding the strings of that other universe, and it had the tremendous bad luck to run into another quite quickly. Nobody knew their name, and they were just called “the Enemy” most of the time, although quite often terms like “demons” and “devils” came into it. It was only certain that if they somehow found your string, and rode it to you, you were never heard from again.

  There was no way to guard against them, for to do so you’d have to shut off the flow of energy from the Gates, and that would kill World. The military assumed general control of the planet and redirected much of its efforts for defense. There was some talk of pulling out, abandoning the project, evacuating for home, but not a lot. It had been thirty years now since Haller had come to World, and he was a man who helped create and shape it. His children had been born here. More, most of the population had nothing to return to. This was the new frontier, the outlet for the dispossessed who were perfectly willing to be guinea pigs in an experiment for a chance to be the first families of their own world. What exactly made it profitable for a company wasn’t clear, for it certainly was long-term in the extreme and had to cost a fortune, but profit there was. It just wasn’t in any of the surviving records.

  And then Earth, as they called their home, had sent a delegation with an ultimatum. Losses were running high. They could not protect the colonists until they knew much more, and could take the battle to the Enemy. In the interest of Earth’s own security, the master terminal—the Borelli Point as Haller had called it—would be sealed. The project families had just one month to evacuate or they were on their own.

  They didn’t have a month, even though many, if not most, would have stayed anyway. There was nothing to return to. Military monitors on the Gates revealed a sudden, massive surge along the string, which when converted to matter using their formula would be a very large mass, and headed for them with only a few days remaining. The nature and size of the energy indicated it was nothing Earth had generated.

  The army moved quickly. Its engineers worked feverishly to seal all seven of the Gates, and, effectively, to seal off the humans of World from the rest of their kind. By this time there were over fifty thousand people on World, and all of them were stuck.

  Because leakage had to be allowed to maintain World, the mysterious Enemy knew that they were here and now had it on their maps. But because most of the energy was blocked, they could not flow from the Gate into the large dish-like area where buried machines would reconvert them into matter once more. There were fears that the Enemy,
knowing the location, would punch through elsewhere and invade, but something made that impossible. Scientists ran it through their machines and decided that the most likely explanation was that the Enemy invasion force itself was present to arrive on World and was now in Flux form against the Gate but unable to crash through. Powerful automated amplifiers held them back.

  The Enemy was trapped in energy form in the other universe, unable to even know it had been stopped, let alone back up and return. And because it was there, nothing else could punch through without punching through that invasion force first. By attacking at all Gates simultaneously, the Enemy had trapped itself and blockaded the string for the defenders.

  With time to breathe, the defenders of World worked long and hard to create better, more powerful self-repairing mechanisms. Nothing would come through those Gates except the specific amount of Flux necessary to maintain World. But that limited the available power, and made it very unlikely that the “terraforming,” as Haller called it, could be extended much beyond the Anchors, “or at least not much more than the clusters around the old Gates.” And because they hadn’t received the “shiploads of semen and eggs and all that”, they considered population expansion too long-term a project to really consider. With their relatively small population in Anchor, any population problem seemed centuries down the road anyway. None of them. Haller included, seemed to think that this would last forever, or, in their situation, none could think much beyond the immediate moment and crisis.

  There was always the fear, though, that some madman might loose a seal, and there was a reluctance to make it forever impossible to gain access. What if Earth sent a force to them, and it was behind the Enemy? What if the Enemy dissipated over time? Might they not be able to reopen contact with their universe, then? So the Gates could be opened, but only by a complex mechanism. The seven cluster commanders each had a combination, one they alone knew. Using the psycho-conditioners, the combination would be impossible to pry out of them. Their juniors were each given a small part of the combination and also conditioned.

  The center tower of each Anchor headquarters linked with and coordinated with the other Anchors of the cluster. A combined signal, an automatic check, could be bounced off the upper atmosphere to the other clusters. Those thinking machines, which Haller called “computers” but were apparently much, much more than mere adding machines, would require the seven locks to be keyed to open within one minute or they would run a charge through all seven tunnels electrocuting everything inside. To insure extra security, just in case one day one of the invaders would punch through anyway, the tunnels would fry anyone entering from the dish side. The headquarters side remained relatively unguarded, since it would be necessary sometimes to check them and perhaps check the Flux transformers, but this was considered relatively safe. Any enemy that got through would now have to attack overland, over hundreds of kilometers of void, opening them up to attack without cover. They would have to take the headquarters to gain control, and the computers were reprogrammed as tremendous defensive weapons of death, which could be activated only when the Gates were opened.

  Mervyn sighed and rubbed his eyes. So much. Too much. Yet, these people had a world, and a strong measure of security, and all that knowledge and power. How had they fallen to their present state? The seeds of World’s culture were certainly there, and told much. An intermarriage of cultures would eventually produce one. Religions might get all mixed up, and new ones grow out of the old in subsequent generations. They had agreed on a common language, implying that there were several, but that language would change over the years. But how had we lost, or forgotten, so much? And why did Seven otherwise sane individuals work like mad to let the Enemy in?

  There weren’t many more pages in Toby Mailer’s journal, but, as tired as he was, he knew he had to find out. The script was changed quite a bit from the last entries, indicating that Haller had changed a great deal, and there was no pretense at a diary any more, just a narrative even harder to read as it got squeezed down to fit into the remains of the book.

  Hunting through some very old stuff when I found this book. Actually, Christine, my oldest, found it while rummaging around. No sense in rummaging around for the dates; the old ones were probably off anyway. Well, no matter. There are official histories and such in the Anchor libraries that will be of import; this was mostly a lark although, looking back through it, I recaptured, at least for a little, the joys of my youth.

  There are only a few pages left in the old thing to tell a lot, if it’s worth anything at all. Perhaps, at least, my children will read this one day and know from whence they came and maybe hoist a beer to the old man. I could start another, of course, but after all this time it hardly seems worth the effort.

  Well, where to begin? The Anchors were never intended as fully self-supporting enterprises, just as test zones and bases for experimenting with Flux transmutation. The latter, I fear, works all too well.

  We needed the transmutation, of course, for that which we had to have but couldn’t possibly make for ourselves. The population is booming and we had to provide for the future. For all we know, we’re the last humans left. Probably not, but we have to act as if we are at all times.

  A small percentage of the children born here seem to have an inordinate sensitivity to the Flux. We’re studying this, but don’t quite understand it. From the start some folks were able to see the strings which is why they were in the Signal Corps to begin with and see, or sense, energy flow and changes. We engineers could do it through the amplifiers, of course, but we found that the more we used the machines by direct input brain to computer to Flux the more we managed to see it without needing the machines. It’s a fascinating and somewhat terrifying sensation which I, of course, also have, since I’ve spent half my life on those damned machines.

  The military has developed into a supra-government of its own, using its exclusive knowledge of string maps to regulate commerce and travel between the Anchors. There’s a District Commander for each cluster, plus General Yoshida’s Headquarters command and General Coydt’s Engineering command, and they’re a closely knit group. By controlling and regulating commerce in Flux they have us by the short hairs, but since they also are responsible for guarding the Gate locks they get away with it.

  But all this leaves our destinies in others’ hands. There was a message received by the military just before the big energy power surge, one that was suppressed for some time but which was recently revealed and admitted to. I’d hate to be the soldier chap who shot his mouth off, but the thing apparently said, “Do not worry, we are friends, and together our two races will become gods. We are coming, wait for us,” or words to that effect.

  This caused quite a split in the civil ranks. The Anchors have developed steadily enough, but our standard of living has become quite basic due to the limitations on the amount of power required. The company field directors, which constitute the Anchor’s civil authority, are being pressed by many of the scientists and engineers to, would you believe, open the Gates. They argue that the best we can hope for is a stabilization of clusters which might unfavorably alter the ecological balance of existing Anchors, but that Anchors can’t support their populations at their rate of growth. Better to gamble on the message’s validity than to starve and sink into savagery. I personally see it as just another engineering problem, but the pressure on the directors is enormous. The military, of course, opposes taking any chances on the Enemy, and is fighting like hell to sway people to their side.

  I, for one, have been experimenting with this odd Flux power. A number of us have achieved amazing results on a small scale, although stability is poor. Basically, you just stand there in the nothingness and concentrate on something real hard, and you watch and there it is. Somehow our minds have gotten boosted, or linked, by those amplifiers after years of use so that the amplifiers, on a small scale, aren’t really necessary. Too bad we can’t get the amps to work much away from Anchors or Gates they requir
e a very hard and direct access to Flux before it’s been dissipated or it would make life easy. All of my children seem to have the power to some degree, leading either to the conclusion that use of Flux has changed us, somehow, or that they have the power simply because I want them to have it. That last, I fear, may be closer to the truth.

  Apparently it works like the amplifiers, to a degree. One thinks of what one wishes, this is somehow transmitted along lines of force to the terraforming sectors of the nearest Anchor computer, and almost instantly back come the mathematical strings needed to do the job. This is an almost godlike power we don’t quite understand, and since it’s mainly limited to those with massive overexposure to the amplifiers and their offspring, it’s created a sticky situation. The civil groups are scared to death of men and women with such powers, and I’ve actually heard the terms “witches” and “warlocks” and even “wizards” used, all with more fear than awe. The military also seems to fear it for more pragmatic reasons, since it threatens their power and control. Thev would prefer the civil population to remain in Anchor, fearful of Flux, where it can be ignorant and controlled. Most religious groups denounce us, and there have been some incidents of violence, and there’s a new and bizarre religious movement growing up that seems to advocate the military’s ideal. I saw the same movement, which seems all-women, when up in Engineering, and I’m suspicious. Coydt, after all, is a tough old woman, very creative but with a ruthless military mind.

  There was then a break, since the final entry was in a different pen and was obviously written rather hurriedly, spilling over into the margin of the last page.

  What we’ve feared has come! With the failure of the Company to oust the military and open the Gates, the army’s taken over with a vengeance. Coydt’s made that idiot cult the only permitted religion and is ruthlessly stamping out opposition. Power was cut beyond the capitals in a well-coordinated move. There are executions galore, and (unintelligible) must flee into Flux and depend on our powers there to provide. They might as well open the Gates, for Hell is already here. Remember, my children! Remember… .