Masters of Flux & Anchor

by Jack L. Chalker

  They were suddenly bathed in an eerie glow and for a moment their physical forms seemed to fade into a great single burning mass. Then it died out, and they were solid once more. She got off him, bounded to her feet, and looked down at him, then smiled and offered him her hand.

  “My God, Mom! What have I done?” He took her hand, and got shakily to his feet. “If only I could talk to you,” he said sorrowfully. “If only I could tell you… .”

  “Cut the bullshit and pity, Jeff,” said Spirit, in perfectly clear speech. “We haven’t time. You and I have work to do. First I’m going to conjure up some clothes. After all these years I hate the idea, but I’ll be damned if I’ll give New Eden the satisfaction!”

  Matson had crossed from Flux back into Anchor just west of Anchor Logh, with the intent of reversing his route on the train and getting back to New Caanan. The army had pretty well guessed his probable route, and had been waiting for him.

  They were very polite, even apologetic. They didn’t really know what was going on, but they had received clear and confirmed orders to intersect and detain him and his wives.

  They were taken into Anchor Logh by the familiar old west Gate, but they were not to take the usual time riding to the old capital. Sligh had taken advantage of the ability to experiment, and had constructed a scale model of the steam line down the main road all the way in to the capitol itself. Flanked by a stern-looking and uncommunicative security patrol who refused to take his word as an officer that he would give them no trouble, all three of them were stripped to nothing. Conditioning collars were snapped around their necks, and were demonstrated. Now they were unceremoniously shoved into the tiny car behind the engine and, with security men sitting all around, any one of whom could trigger the collars, they were off.

  Matson understood the futility of resistance at this point. His only hope was that he would eventually be taken before some higher ranking officer or authority whom he might have a slim chance of convincing that the thing was not a coup but the first step to opening the Hellgates.

  The twins had never felt so helpless in their lives, and they were clearly frightened to death. The implications of all this also started to sink in, and they wondered if their parents were dead or alive. No communication of any sort was tolerated, although Matson was permitted at the start of the trip to tell them to relax and take it easy and not do anything foolish. His one plea, for his cigars, was answered with stony silence.

  The train stopped for nothing but water, and used some sort of floodlight with a wick and mirror system mounted forward of the boiler to keep on through the night. They were fed basic soldier’s field rations, which tasted like centuries-old library paste, given one cup of water to wash it down with, and were allowed bathroom privileges only at water stops and only one at a time.

  Matson knew he should have expected it, but he’d hoped they wouldn’t have moved quite so fast. He wasn’t really worried for himself or even the girls, since when that Hellgate opened he knew his status would change fast. What frustrated him was to be kept nearly a thousand kilometers from where the action was until it was too late for him to participate.

  With a change of security and train crews, they reached the old capital in ten and a half hours and chugged right down to Temple Square. He didn’t approve of what they’d done to the nice old park—it was now all dug up and changed into a turntable and service center for the train. They were met by an officious security lieutenant who had his orders and was all arrogance.

  “To restore stability and reason to New Eden and foil a plot to kill several senior officers and seize complete control of the nation, it was necessary for the army to take charge,” he told them, offering no introductions. “Our orders were that if any of you crossed our boundaries again you were to be held and interned. When the crisis has been resolved and order has been restored, you will be brought before a military commission at which time you may make any pleas or statements you wish and at which your ultimate disposition will be determined. Until that time you are to be interned here. Follow me.”

  Matson shrugged, giving up any hope of an early chance to plead his case, and they followed the lieutenant and his squad. To their very great surprise, he led them to the old Tilghman house and up the steps. Armed guards were stationed front and rear, and there was a heavy lock on the door and all the windows, first and second floor, had been barred.

  The place still looked nice from the outside, but inside it was completed barren of furniture, the paint and wallpaper were peeling, and the now-exposed wooden floor had splinters. The lieutenant’s voice echoed ghost-like through the place.

  “All electricity to the house has been cut. Sufficient food for cold meals has been provided, and will be restocked as necessary. The plumbing still works, but all doors have been removed throughout the interior. The upper floor is off limits, and a small transmitter is positioned there which will activate your collars if you get halfway up. You have the run of the first floor during the day, but after nightfall you will be confined to the front room. A number of army mattresses have been placed there so arranged that they cover the floor. You will sleep there. No conversation with the guards is permitted, and you must obey any order they give without question. Any infraction by anyone in the house will result in all of you getting a jolt. If you cause trouble, the guards will condition you out of it. That is all.” And, with that, the security men turned and left, and slammed the door behind them. They heard the lock turn.

  Matson sighed. “Well, it’s not much, but I guess it’s home.”

  “Uh—do you think they … killed… .”

  He put on a false smile and kissed them. “I wouldn’t count your old man out yet. He’s pretty—listen! Did you hear something?”

  They went down the hall and peered into the old library, then went through the former dining room to the living room and stopped.

  “Candy? Crystal? Matson? So they got you. too… . ” said Suzl sadly.

  18

  THE WORMS TURN

  It was well past daylight when Sondra, Champion, and the security party reached the Hellgate. Although she’d seen the pictures, she still gasped at its sheer height and the massive size of its base and foundation. Above, far into the sky, she saw two huge balloons tethered with what seemed to be a kilometer or more of strong cable. They didn’t seem to be of the hot air type, but she now at least understood where the photos had come from. What was far more sobering was that the tower had been topped off, guy ropes were in place and a horde of tiny figures far up were working and welding.

  “Not a word about the Gate opening to anyone,” Champion warned her. “You may not care about your own life, but you hold the life of your children in your hands.”

  The general kept her waiting while he went inside a small administration building and checked with his communications people. The news was not good. Communication lines to the west had been cut, a vital bridge had been blown on the rail line, making it useless. Several messengers sent through the Hellgate passage to West Borough had not returned, indicating either that General Borodin, the west’s military commander, had been taken out, or that he had lost his nerve and double-crossed the plotters. That meant that Tilghman’s loyal forces could be reinforced by train from the west, stopping just short of the blown bridge. They, however, controlled the capital and all sectors to the north and east. Champion knew that Tilghman would regroup his forces and with whatever reinforcements he got would move on their position as soon as he felt able.

  He had established defensive perimeters in concentric rings around the position and the Hellgate, with his major force concentrated just out of heat ray and rocket range of the tower. He had almost twenty thousand men in the field, but it was a large area to cover, and Tilghman could pick the direction of attack. He had concentrated his main strength where it was the most mobile. More, he didn’t really need to win; all he needed was to buy enough time. He called Sligh on the local wire system. The science chief was at t
he base of the tower, personally supervising the work.

  “How long until the big broadcast?” the general asked.

  “We can’t work up high at night, but we’ll finish by midday tomorrow for certain. After that I have to run some checks in the tunnel to make sure we don’t just fry ourselves, and then it’s any time we want.”

  “Call it thirty hours, then. I can hold anything for thirty hours with this force. Are you sure, though, that that thing will withstand suicide attacks by gliders?”

  “Who can be certain? I know that our ray defense can blow them up before they reach the tower, at least. About the only other holdup could be the weather. A major line of thunderstorms is moving in ahead of a cold wave. I wouldn’t want to work around this kind of juice, let alone broadcast, in that. But I wouldn’t want to have to attack this place in it, either.”

  “Very well. Get back to work. I have to attend to a little personal business here, then I’ll be in the situation shack.”

  They broke communications, and he went back outside to Sondra. “Get down!” he ordered, and she obeyed. “What do you think of our little project?”

  “I think you’re all insane,” she told him.

  He laughed. “Insane is the label they pin on great men with big ambitions who gamble big and lose. The winners are called great and genius and they build monuments to them. Follow me.”

  She had no choice but to obey him, already having decided that her life was forfeit. She had no doubt that with his peculiar sense of soldier’s honor he would spare the children if she caused no trouble, and kill them without losing a wink of sleep if she did not.

  He led her to the edge of the Hellgate. She’d seen it, or ones just like it, many times before. She stood there on the apron while he undressed her. Now naked, she was led to the ladder and told to go down into the depression, which was shaped like a deep saucer. He followed, and they walked to the small central hole, the “tunnel” back to the true Gate itself. There was another ladder, and then a smooth floor that gently sloped down. She had never been this far before; it was well known that automatic defenses disintegrated anyone trying it, but Champion seemed unconcerned. The long, extremely thick power cable had traced their route, and continued on down.

  They reached the Gate itself, and she saw the large machine with its dials and gauges to one side. Only now an access panel had been opened on its side, and the fat cable went right into it.

  Beyond was a short space and then the Hellgate itself, a swirling mass of multicolored Flux denser than she had ever imagined. She could feel its massive, pent-up power. She felt too, that she could draw upon it, and reached out to take it.

  Champion grabbed her, turned her around, and squeezed her bare shoulders hard, nails biting into her flesh. It hurt, and for a moment she let go of the Flux. He took the opening and drew upon it himself. As Mervyn had said, the general had very limited power, but when that power was amplified by the Gate itself and directed with emotional fury at a single individual, it was powerful indeed. The shock of his turning her and digging into her flesh had distracted her, as he’d intended, and he used it to draw full on his own hatred and fury and drive it all right at her mind.

  Her mind burned, and she was powerless to do anything. The commands and the spell could not be resisted.

  You are a girl, it said, and girls are animals, like horses and chickens and pigs. You do not speak, but you hear and obey. Your sole purpose in life is to make men happy. There is nothing else. You are …

  The power was suddenly broken, and she fought for what she could retain. Champion suddenly straightened up and looked very confused. “What the hell …’?” he muttered, and his hand went to his holster as he turned.

  Facing him were two figures, a large, muscular, bearded man in a New Eden soldier’s uniform and a strikingly beautiful but extremely tall woman in the black uniform and boots of a stringer. The pistol came out and pointed itself at the strange pair. “Who the hell are you and what do you mean by this?”

  The bearded man looked at the woman, who with her boots was almost the same height as he was. “He wants to know who we are.”

  She smiled. “We are the spirits of Flux and Anchor,” she told him.

  “You have five seconds to turn around and march back out!” the general barked, forgetting all about Sondra who slumped unconscious to the floor of the tunnel. “I mean it! I’ll shoot!”

  “I’m sure you will, General,” the woman responded. “But this is my domain.”

  “I warned you, bitch!” Champion snarled, and fired three shots point blank into her. She smiled back at him and put out her hand in front of her. The boiling Flux suddenly reached out a finger of living fire and wrapped itself around his mid-section. Champion screamed and struggled, and the more he struggled the deeper it burned into him.

  “Why not just change him into one of the Fluxgirls? Poetic justice,” Jeff suggested.

  Spirit shook her head. “No, there’s been too much of that. Besides, he’s already had it the other way.” She looked down at Champion, who had dropped to his knees, face contorted in pain. “No one can free you from that, General,” she told him. “It’ll bite into you, burning away bit by bit, until finally it meets in your mid-section somewhere. You won’t be alive by then, General, but it works very slowly if you don’t struggle.”

  They stepped by him and Jeff gave him a kick away from the machine. He screamed. Spirit examined the machine and the cable connection in detail while Jeff looked over the still form of the woman just beyond. “Hey! Damned if it isn’t Sondra!” he cried.

  Spirit continued her examination of the removed panel and its connections. “Is she still alive?”

  “Yeah, but I don’t know if there’s anything left inside her head but mush.”

  “That’s all right. We’ll take her with us. If she’s still alive we can tap into records and get her back. Ugh!” She pulled at something.

  “Can you disable it?”

  “Oh, sure, but all he has to do is slap on a new connector. It’s no good, anyway. He’s damned clever. They know a lot more than anybody was ever supposed to. But it was real confused at the time they did this, and I guess they had enough warning to smuggle out copies of all the corporate files and as much engineering as they could manage. He’s got a constant current running through directly to the Gate lock, removing and replacing one of the boards. Interrupt that current and the whole cluster goes up in a rush. They want to make very sure that anybody who got this far couldn’t afford to meddle, or even switch the defensive screen back on.” She got back up and joined him. “I’ve done a few little dirty tricks in there that’ll give them fits and maybe fry one of the Seven if we’re lucky, but it won’t stop them. You pick her up and step back beyond the machine for a few moments. Right now this timing is all second-hand, and the clock is running.”

  She walked almost up to the swirling Flux itself, taking it in, becoming almost one with it. Jeff, a little worried, could only hold Sondra’s limp form and watch.

  “Farewell, Soul Rider.”

  Oh, no, Spirit. Not ever. You and I are one.

  She took a deep breath. Activate. Merge shell with station commander “L” for Luck. Operational request.

  There was nothing visible but the dark form of his mother against the hypnotic swirl of the pure Flux, but he sensed an immediate and incredibly powerful burst of Flux energy reaching to the point just before the great machine. So powerful was it that it felt burning hot, like pure fire.

  Small jets of a different, more familiar form of Flux came from both walls, the floor, and the ceiling of the tunnel and seemed to intersect her body. Jeff could only stare and frown as he thought he heard strange voices stating things in eerie, machine-like tones.

  “ANCHOR LUCK VERIFIED. COMMANDER ON STATION.”

  And then it was gone. No, not quite, for although she turned and faced him he saw that all of that concentrated power seemed concentrated within her. He stood there, frozen
in mixed awe and fear, wondering what strange creature his mother had now become.

  And then she winked at him.

  He blinked, and she laughed. “Come on!” she called. “Let’s go on through to good old Anchor Logh—Anchor Luck, ironically enough and get to work!”

  He started breathing again. “There’s going to be a nasty welcoming committee at the other end, you know.”

  “Not where we’re going,” she responded, and stepped through. In another moment, he mentally traced the same pattern she’d just shown him and stepped through himself. All that he’d been taught told him that he’d come out in the basement of the temple at Anchor Logh.

  But he didn’t. There were other patterns, and other destinations, that only Soul Riders knew.

  It was dark before Suzl could fully tell them her story, and they were confined now to the living room.

  Adam Tilghman had come home early a few days before and talked to them in a more somber mood than he’d ever taken on in the house before. He’d told Cassie and Suzl that very bad men were about to take control, and if he didn’t stop them, both he and they would be killed. Suzl told Matson and the twins how they had discussed what to do, and he had insisted that the two women take the younger children and go north. He had good excuses all worked out. and a few men loyal to him would accompany them and see that they were safe.

  They’d argued against it. since they didn’t want to leave him, but they had finally realized that the children were in danger. Cassie was adamant about not leaving herself; she insisted that her place was with Adam no matter what. Suzl, with the help of the loyalists, would be able to handle the children. She had gone along with it that way only because she realized that she, Suzl, had the difficult job, and the most important one.

  They had boarded the train, with a special escort and special crew, and gone north. Shortly after, the telegraph wires were to be cut in two places to prevent any fast inquiries, and they were to be met by other loyalists at the end of the line and taken to a place of safety.