22
VISIONS AND SPIRITS
A lone rider sat atop a black horse on the apron outside the ancient gate of Anchor Logh and looked momentarily back, deep in reflection. The old gate had plenty of holes in it now; it never had been much good to those who’d built it to keep out the horrors of Flux, but it had made the inhabitants feel safe and secure. He felt a great deal of kinship with that old gate and its old attitudes. Both of them had shared a lot of experiences and both were rather old-fashioned and out of date in the world today.
Another rider, coming hard, emerged from the gate and rode up to him, halting expertly. “I hoped I’d catch up with you,” Spirit said to him. “It would be hell finding you in the void.”
“Well, you made it.” Matson responded dryly. “I can’t say I’m really surprised to see you, daughter.”
“What were you doing that slowed you down here, if I might ask?”
“Just—remembering. Wondering if an old fossil like me is going to be able to survive in this new world of ours.”
“You’ll always survive,” she assured him confidently. “Besides, you’re a hero to World. Even Fluxlords who hate everybody and everything, even themselves, and Anchors suspicious of their own, call you a hero—the man who saved World. Even New Eden will build statues to you, maybe as big as the ones they’re building of Adam Tilghman.”
He laughed dryly. “Well, that’s what the old boy wanted. And, sure, I’m safe enough now—anybody who’d draw down on me would be killed by his best friends. The thing is, I’m not any hero. I’m the same crusty old hellhound son of a bitch I always have been, no different. There were hundreds of people on World who came up with the same ideas I did. The fact is, I stole all those ideas and all those plans from other folks. Mostly women, too. Didn’t figure out a one. Only I mouthed them off around a Soul Rider, a Guardian, and big-shot wizard so the computers knew my name and let me in where I could talk ‘em up.”
“It doesn’t make any of it any less true. Shall we go into Flux a ways? I want to be well away from here when disengagement comes.”
He nodded, and both figures eased their horses through the reddish-gray curtain of the void. They were in no hurry, and he, at least, hadn’t decided just what to do next. He wondered about her, and asked her about her plans.
“None, really,” she told him. “I have a lot of hard decisions to make myself. I figured a little time out here would help me make them.”
“I gather that one of them wasn’t to stay in New Eden and see now it all comes out.”
“Hardly. Dad. I may be old in years, but the fact is that I’m really just going on eighteen, so to speak. I’ve never really been out here in full possession of my wits, as a real human being. My entire adult life, except for the brief period in the takeover days of Anchor Logh, is a total blur. I could relate to some people and some specific incidents, but it seemed entirely like a dream. Now, suddenly, I wake up, and I have to take up a real life again. I like it, but I’m as jittery as any schoolgirl.”
“You ought to travel around a bit, see the place,” he told her. “It’s interesting, if a little depressing. Even when you lose your friend you’ll still have enormous power and that beautiful fine-tuned machine of a body.”
“I’d like to, but that’s one of the hard choices to make. Dad, I’m pregnant.”
He and the horse stopped dead in their tracks. “What!”
She nodded. “When that terrible change came over Pericles and Jeff, and I was forced to run, I grew terribly depressed. I didn’t have much of anything, but I did have a son I loved, and I felt I’d lost him. Oh, I know it was a silly, emotional action, but it’s done.”
“How far along? And who’s the father?”
“Barely three months, if I guess the timing right. And the father’s Mervyn. Oh, don’t look so shocked. He was very kind to me and pretty good looking near the end.”
“It don’t look like Mervyn’s coming back. You’ve got a fatherless kid holding you down. You’ve got the power. It doesn’t have to be that way.”
“I know—for some. But this is the last of the Hallers in direct lineage, and that’s a responsibility, I think. And to use the power to transfer it and walk away—not even my mother did that with me, under her circumstances. And if I have it, I’ll bring the child up. It’ll be the great-greatgrandchild of a founder, the child of a great wizard, and the grandchild of Matson and Cass. That’s quite a proud line.”
“Sounds like you’ve already decided.”
“On that, anyway. Where and with whom I’m not so sure of. You said it yourself, though—we’re practically immortals. I have time. I can’t just have it and abandon it, like I was abandoned. Oh, don’t look so guilty! I know you didn’t know about me, and I know the reasons for it all, but this is different. It’s a matter of choice.”
They rode a while more in silence, each deep in their own personal worlds. Suddenly Matson said, “The Samish could have been us, you know. I think about that a lot.”
She nodded. “Yes, I know. No matter how horrible they looked, or what hellish world spawned them, they were in many ways only one step further on than us. That, the time lag they never did seem to know about, and our sheer numbers were all that saved us, even with what we had to fight.”
“It could still be us, if everybody hadn’t agreed to disengage.”
She shook her head. “Not now. We’ll be free to laugh and cry and love and hate and be our own petty selves. Still, it wasn’t unanimous.”
“So I heard. I wonder if we’re not seeing it start all over again. The overwhelming majority for disengagement and blocking the Gates, a small but passionate minority saying, ‘No, stop—the price is too high. We can handle what they couldn’t.’ The Nine versus the Seven. The army versus the Company. It’s all there, just as they must have faced it long ago.”
“Oh, I hope not! God! I hope not! I hope we’ve learned this time, and that the technology and knowledge we do have will keep us in perspective, at least. There’s nobody lurking at the Gates any more that we can’t prepare for.” She sighed. “It’d be different if we knew how to build and use ships of our own and go out there ourselves, but for security reasons that wasn’t in the computer files, and the three ships of the enemy are too melted down and burned out to figure out. Even if they were perfect, it still wouldn’t help. We don’t have the programs, the cosmic stringers, to keep us riding out there to a destination or get in anywhere else with the proper entry codes. So all we can do is close the Gates, shove the garbage in there, wipe clean the memory records of the Guardians and Soul Riders so they’re back to their command shell states, and disengage. Unless human beings show up and give us the stars, our future has to be made right here.”
“Unless some new wave of religion and knowledge suppression knocks us back again. New Eden still has that potential. Changes in that system will come slowly, and with much suffering. The system that ultimately emerges may be something entirely new, but maybe not anything we’d like. Whether it’s just another Fluxland variation or something really radical and new remains to be seen.” He paused a moment. “You’ve talked with your mother?”
She nodded. “She’s changed. She’s really changed from the person I knew.”
Matson gave a sardonic smile. “No she hasn’t.” he said. “With the possible exception of me, she’s the most consistent person I’ve ever known. You know she expects me to come back and marry her, and Suzl.” He sighed. “I’m surprised and my ego’s a bit bruised that she let me get away so easy this time.”
“I don’t know. I don’t think I’ll ever understand either one of you. You, for example, have been so busy practically running New Eden the past few weeks I’m surprised you didn’t stay. Maybe she expects you to come back and protect New Eden from the re-emergence of the worst elements of the old leadership.”
“Most of Coydt’s bad boys were at the Gate when the ship blew, which was mighty convenient. They didn’t trust anybody, n
ot even themselves, to be anywhere else. The junior officers, most of which grew up in this sort of system or spent most of their lives in it, are shocked by the evil of their leaders. They really believed in the dream and feel betrayed. Using Tilghman as a model and a martyr was simple because of that, and the officers proceeded to do their own purging. They’ll be the power brokers now, the men who make the decisions, and they’ll do it from the framework of this master program. None of them considered leaving for a moment.”
“That’s another depressing thing, I think. Even on the borders with Flux, most of the women chose to remain there even knowing what they do now.”
“Yeah. In fact, more men left than women. Remember, almost all of the women are Anchorfolk with a longstanding and deep-seated fear of Flux. It’s the old Anchor Logh proposition all over again. Better the devil you know than the hell you don’t. Most of ‘em certainly don’t understand the full ramifications of what they’re choosing, but that’s par for the course. Many had young kids and no alternatives for them or themselves. Most of the ones who did understand knew they’d probably just wind up slaves of some Fluxlord. and there were quite a bunch that really bought the new faith’s line. You know, as bad as the new system sounds, when you consider the alternatives for most folks it’s really not that awful, and now that the women have their pasts, their skills, their self-control back they’ll gamble on changing the system from within. It may be a bad gamble, but who knows for sure?”
“I gather you don’t put much stock in their new faith.”
“I put great stock in it as a driving force for a new culture, but if you mean believe in it, no. I believe in machines and people. I believe that machines will keep on doing any dumb thing they’re told even if it doesn’t work, and I believe that people, when faced with critical choices in their lives, will always do the safest and easiest thing—and it’s the wrong thing ninety percent of the time.” He took out a cigar and lit it. “I gather Suzl never told Cassie that Tilghman could be ressurrected if you went along.”
“No. Suzl is a competent and sometimes smart person, no matter what she seems to be. She knows I’ll never do it, and she knows she can’t talk any of the others into it, and she sees no reason to drive a permanent wedge between Mom and me. And—she understands. She admired Tilghman, that’s clear, but she loves only her own children, Mom, and me.” She sighed. “You know, if Suzl had ever had any goals, any ambition in her, she could have done or been anything she wanted to be. She doesn’t, though. She just always makes the best of what she’s stuck with. She didn’t even care what happened to New Eden—she let Mom decide that.”
“Well, most folks are that way,” he said philosophically. “I never had any real goals, except personal and temporary ones. I doubt if you do, either. I don’t judge and condemn, like Mervyn did, and I don’t want to change the world like your Mom. I’m too old and cynical to believe people can be fixed up to the good. I’m satisfied if it leaves me alone.”
“Even if it’s New Eden and its computer-derived religion?”
He chuckled. “I don’t know where religions get their pedigrees. Certainly I kind of believe in some God someplace, if only because I just can’t believe all this is an accident it’s irrational. I kind of suspect that the reason women are more religious than men is that they get to see it start with a good screw, then develop as a lump, come out a baby, and see that baby turn into a complicated human being. I just can’t take the idea seriously that it’s the way the science fellows say, that it was all chance and good luck, and neither have a lot of other smart folks. But going from that to any one true religion is just as bad to me. In those records old Tilghman studied there were dozens of religions back on old Earth, and a good many here. All disagreed and all were sure they were right. He tried to reconcile them and give the result direct application to World. It’s not as crazy as it seems.”
“What he came up with was.”
“No sillier than praying to a planet that’s nothing but a big ball of gas, I don’t think. He started with the notion that we were part animal and part thinking creature, and he decided we were maybe sixty percent animal and forty percent think, which might be generous. He looked at World from his own background, and decided that all the animal urges could be covered but one—sex. Gender, actually. He decided that this was at the root of our real headaches. Maybe it wasn’t for the ancient folks, but it was for us. He came from a society that had a female empress-goddess who dominated all the males, remember, and he was liberated by Coydt, who sure as hell had sex as his reason for doing everything he did. The Anchors were dominated by a women-only clergy. But the old religions had men running the society. Women could get high up by exceptional ability or accident, but mostly it was a male-oriented society. That got him to thinking. The fact is, the way us humans are made up, women are superior to men and men know it, deep down. The male strut and roar covers a basic inferiority complex.”
She stared at him. “Come again?”
“Yep. Men only exist at all on the biological level to serve one purpose, and one man can serve that purpose to a lot of women. Other than that, men aren’t really necessary. Women think as sharp as men, can do just about anything men can do, and can run a church, a society, a government, an army—you name it. Because of child-bearing, you actually have a better tolerance for pain and better reactions. Left alone in Anchor with no spells, you naturally live longer than men. Not that you’re any better at governing or running a business or a church or even a battle, but you’re no worse, either. And, deep down, most men know this. You see where it leads?”
“I think you’re making too strong a case against your own sex.”
“Nope. It’s clear. Oh, I got more arm muscles and bigger chest muscles, but two or three women can lift what I can or use a rope and pulley just like I would. That’s why human society went the way it did. Men had to be the boss, had to run things, had to have all that responsibility—otherwise, they had no reason for being at all. Just screw a lot until they made a bunch of babies, then curl up and die. In the old days. Anchor men committed suicide ten times more than Anchor women. They were sick and lethargic and only running the play government and playing soldier on the walls gave ‘em any feeling of worth. That’s why most of the male Fluxlords are so devoted to women being sex objects or slaves.”
“Is this you—or Tilghman?”
“Both of us. But old Adam, now, he was an intellectual and it drove him nuts. He finally decided that it was illogical for men to live past procreation at all unless society had to be male dominated. Since this didn’t seem fair, he took from one of the old religions the idea that sexes alternate, that we live as both before going on to the great reward. Believe that, and the rest is logical. It gets rid of the moral problem.”
“So his male ego, his inferiority complex, led to the subjugation of women in New Eden?”
“You might say that. He didn’t see it that way. He started with the woman. She had to have the children, because men couldn’t, and he felt kids needed a full-time parent to turn out right. Now since the man was always number two in that situation, it was his job to earn the living and provide the other basic needs—food, shelter, clothing, whatever—and protect his home and family. He was also expendable—we could lose a lot of men and still have the same number of kids, but we couldn’t lose a lot of women and do that. So he saw them as complements, and opposites, in every way imaginable. To make it even fairer, he wanted every girl to be shapely, sexy, and pretty, and every guy to be tall, muscular, and handsome. He believed that system would produce a balanced world of peace and plenty.”
“You don’t think so, though.”
“Well,” he said, thinking it over, “I don’t know. I kind of doubt it. But for me, the worst part is that it won’t get a fair chance unless all of World is brought under the system, and I don’t like that idea any more than you do. The system they eventually export won’t be the one that’s there now, but it’s still going to be
one I wouldn’t like to live under, and no matter how the male-female relationships wind up it’ll be a technological powerhouse.”
“Do you think they’ll win?”
“No. Tilghman and New Eden unleashed a force that won’t be stopped on World now, but it isn’t their system. Their system’s pretty tame, when you think about it. They broke down the Church, they broke down the unifying culture that kept us pretty much the same for all those centuries, and they introduced science and technology and a lot of the ancient philosophies. Their system has no chance of filling the void, but even now all over World others are thinking of their perfect societies and perfect forms, and learning to use what we’ve rediscovered. These will all study how New Eden did it and they’ll form their own radical systems and try and extend them. There’ll be a lot of conflict and eventually through war and alliance other systems will emerge that make New Eden look like Tilghman’s heaven.”
She shivered a bit. “You sound like we’re going to lose our humanity and turn this place into a Hell.”
“The possibility’s there, along with a thousand Adam Tilghmans, female as well as male.”
Spirit changed the subject because it was getting uncomfortable. “What do you think of Sondra’s choice?”
“Sondra has seen and heard just about everything there is on World. She’s had a hell of a life so far. Now she’s discovered that the Soul Rider fooled around with her Flux power and she’s a much better wizard than she thought and it’s brought back the self-confidence. Her mind and abilities are completely restored. She kept the body because she has young children now and didn’t want to wrench them, but she can look any way she wants in Flux so it makes staying the same easy.”
Masters of Flux & Anchor Page 40
