Empires of Flux & Anchor

12 FEASIBILITY STUDY

There had been no warning. The entire thing had been carefully planned out to the last detail, with Coydt directly in charge. It was, he told his followers, a scientific exercise, a “feasibility study” of several new theories and techniques in war and political control, as well as social theories he wished to test out and demonstrate. Most of the men who joined with him didn’t really understand or care about all that, and he knew it. He promised them their own private Fluxland, all to themselves, and a safe haven for as long as they wanted it.

Whether he was mad or whether there was true method to it, he told each group he needed what they wanted to hear. He promised the Fluxlords that he would break the back of the Church, pull it back not only from expansion but even from their own domains, and show it demoralized and impotent. Their fears of the Reformation were far greater than their lifelong emnity towards one another. If Coydt could deliver, they did not want to be left out.

There were a bit more than a million people in Anchor Logh, divided into fifty-seven political subdivisions called “ridings,” each with a population of about eighteen thousand. This included the concentration around the capital, which was a riding all its own. Firearms, and even bows and arrows, were strictly illegal in Anchor Logh. Almost no one, except perhaps a few stringers and others trapped with the general population, would be armed or have access to arms beyond the rather weak border patrol.

The number of his forces had been underestimated by Mervyn and the rest; they failed to take into account the contributions of population from the participating Fluxlords, which swelled his ranks to perhaps ten thousand. All were extremely well trained and well drilled in secret camps in Flux, and the attack was perfectly planned and timed. At the same moment that soldiers were being introduced into the temple basement in the same manner as Matson and Kasdi had reclaimed it, both gates were hit and specific points in the old wall were blown completely out. Within the first hour, all of the arsenals were taken, and there was only scattered border guard resistance. The shields went up at that point, coordinated by the Fluxlords. The mass of them maintained the shields only for the first few days, though; they were replaced later by something new. They weren’t sure exactly what, but they had the idea that the shield was now being maintained by only a token force of powerful wizards and a lot of very strange machines.

The temple was taken in less than two hours, most of that time consumed in getting enough men into it to handle it all without the general population becoming alarmed. Small teams then went after the police, all of whom were unarmed except for “billy clubs” in the Anchor tradition. The small arsenal and almost all the police arms were taken with few shots being fired. All electrical power was cut off.

The forces divided along well thought-out lines, occupying riding centers, while a strong force rode in on the capital from both directions. They quickly took control of the waterworks and major buildings.

There was resistance. A number of invaders were literally beaten to death by an enraged mob that surprised and jumped them, but quick examples had been made, along with assurances. Those who showed any opposition were summarily shot. For every invader killed, ten people were picked at random and mowed down in the temple square. The rest were warned that the next time it would be a hundred for a life. However, everyone was also assured that cooperation and obedience to what were called “martial law liberation forces” would result in the people’s homes and families being safeguarded. There were even apologies made for the brutality, and excuses that it was necessary to avoid greater bloodshed.

Huge numbers of people tried to bolt out of Anchor Logh, but were stopped at the wall or at the shield itself. Again, examples were made.

It took Coydt and his ten thousand less than two days to secure full control over Anchor Logh. Local civil servants cooperated with them, knowing the alternative. All public roads were declared military, and anyone on them without a letter of permission from the local commandant would be tortured and then shot or hung. A dusk-to-dawn curfew was established, not just in the cities and towns but everywhere, and ruthlessly enforced. Within five days, all people of Anchor Logh were required to report to their local churches. There they were matched with records from the temple, churches, and government, were photographed and fingerprinted and given identity cards. They were also, to their indignation, tattooed, with machines not seen since the days of the Paring Rite. Women were tattooed on their left thigh or rump, men on their left arms. Resisters were simply forced to do it. Objectors were taken away and not seen again.

Local watch groups were established throughout the whole of Anchor Logh as a part of the processing. People in positions in every commune, town, and apartment were told that they would be held directly responsible for anything traced to their local area, and all of them were married and most had small children. By the tenth day, enough examples had been made that everyone was afraid to speak of anything but work or the weather.

By the end of the second week, hope for a quick rescue had faded, in some cases into bitterness. An astonishing number of officials and merchants began to cooperate openly, even enthusiastically with the invaders. Also, the new rules were being enforced.

These struck at the very social balance of Anchor Logh and most Anchors. The Church was dissolved as an institution. Priestesses, those who survived, had vanished early in the invasion, but were now back and being paraded out as “ministering angels.” Women in supervisory positions were removed, and it became illegal for a man to work for a woman. Women were restricted to their homes and work places only, unless escorted by a man at all times. Worse, women were forbidden to wear anything above the waist, something which caused much embarrassment and much protesting—which was dealt with in the usual manner. Reminders were made that a sufficient amount of Flux remained to remake anybody into anything the new rulers wished, and again examples were made.

Men were only marginally better off. They bore direct responsibility for everything, and they were accountable for it, including a woman in their company mouthing off or protesting. One of the invaders remarked that a man was probably asked for his I.D. four times just going to a public bathroom.

More, and nastier, changes were coming, that was for sure. There were already reports of a riding commandant freeing political prisoners, who were naked and dyed red, into a forest, then hunting them like animals. The killings had slowed to a trickle, as resistance had, but there were tales of torture, Fluxchanging, and other horrors all over. Tales of mass orgies by the occupying troops were rampant, and the ridings nearest the border were reported to be model and faithful citizens of the “New Empire” to a frightening degree. There were rumors that soon an emperor and lesser royalty would be established.

Coydt’s hang-ups over women were obvious in the plan and also his methods. He was showing how an Anchor could be taken and totally transformed into something else. He was proving that the kind of control exercised by Fluxlords could be done in Anchor and that the same kind of mad empires could be established there, based on fear and physical power rather than magical abilities. True, he was using Flux, but sparingly and as a weapon. The odds were that the “social” part of his experiment would result in greater absurdities on both men and women, of which the nothing-above-the-waist rule was just a taste. He would, in fact, see just how insane the rules could be that a population not bound by Flux magic would swallow. He was going to push them to the breaking point, and find out if there was one.

The rest of his “feasibility study” was more mechanical. He had machines that could draw upon and use Flux power. Where had he learned how to build them, and how had he done so? These machines were a threat to Flux as well, for they could create an impenetrable shield anywhere, as much bottling up perpetrators as keeping enemies away.

Finally, there was the temple takeover itself. Somehow, Coydt had managed to do the impossible —to walk into a Hellgate and come out unscathed, without aid of a Soul Rider. How? And if he could, then why couldn’t the others of the Seven? Was communications strictly the problem? Or, in fact, did Coydt feel so secure with his new discoveries that he really didn’t want to open those gates after all—and hadn’t told the others how he did it?

Coydt was emerging as more and more of an enigma, although a very dangerous one—on the surface, a brutal psychopath who viewed people as things to be used and objects of his curiosity as well as his odd social and sexual hangups; yet below, a coldly brilliant, analytical mind capable of finding out what others could not and understanding and applying principles others hadn’t even dreamed of. The two were not necessarily incompatible, and there was the tragedy for World and its people.

The temple was supposed to have been consistently well guarded, but Coydt had been away for more than five days—where, nobody knew—and in that time things had gone lax, as the best officers were concerned with putting all Anchor Logh under their control and the top brains were concerned with Flux and the shield. A good officer had been in command at the temple, but the quality of his troops was low. He had tried to keep them in shape and in line, and had become the early victim of an “accident.” Things had been much more fun after that, and that explained the ease of entry. Unfortunately, the military commander of the capital was neither lax nor incompetent. The empire had the temple, but they were totally sealed off.

Matson, Kasdi, and the generals fumed at the standoff, but whatever they tried seemed to fail. The old stringer’s glib assurance that they could blow an opening through the temple proved wishful thinking; while there was a thick inner layer of wood and then masonry, the outer walls, of that strange substance, would yield to no power. That left only the three exits, and those were death traps, as attempt after attempt failed. The only thing the empire had accomplished by all this was the denial of electricity to the city. Another maddening week passed, with no way to even get news.

The former priestesses had been passed back to Flux and examined by top wizards. The spells were consistent and insidious, clearly bearing Coydt’s personal handiwork. Stripping those spells off, layer by layer, brought them back, but at a great price. The memories, the horrors, of the first day of the invasion and the rape and perversion worked on them would drive most people mad; in addition, all of it had been done against their vows and binding spells—a mental conflict they simply could not resolve. No one had ever discovered a magical way to selectively erase memories. They could be suppressed, of course, but then they still were there and caused problems; or there could be wholesale erasure and replacement, but to bring them back to the point just before the invasion was beyond anyone’s power.

The generals began to worry about their backs. There were fifteen other Anchors to guard against a similar invasion, and nobody knew the whereabouts of Coydt or any of the other of the Seven. With at least one Guardian neutralized somehow, the other three Hellgates also had to be defended, and that took powerful wizardry as well as troops. They had a quarter of a million troops and reserves they could count on and about a thousand wizards powerful enough to matter. Concentrated around Anchor Logh and its Hellgate, they were the greatest power on World. Divided up into twenty divisions, each guarding an Anchor or Hellgate in the empire, they amounted to fifty wizards and twelve thousand five hundred soldiers per location. The enemy alone could easily put a hundred thousand soldiers and three hundred top wizards against any one of those locations, and the math, when put in those terms, was pretty grim.

Kasdi, in particular, was amazed at the situation. “How can we have so much power, so much population, so much of World and still be scared of the dark?”

Suzl couldn’t follow all the fine points, but all she needed were her eyes to see that things had gone nowhere. She itched to see what the situation in the temple was like, but Spirit was not anxious to enter a building she couldn’t get out of. She was aware of Suzl’s itch, though, and finally indicated to her that she could stand Suzl’s absence if she were careful and not away too long.

Nobody could stop Suzl, of course. She had the combinations and the codes. She traced the pattern as Spirit nervously watched, then stepped through. She had done it before with Spirit to Anchor Nanzee via this same Hellgate, and she knew that transmission was instantaneous, probably at the speed of light. She found the entryway lit and an actual stairway built up to the reinforced floor. There were military emplacements and lots of equipment, and quite a number of uniformed men and women who were less than thrilled to see the nude mute around poking into things.

Suzl had no intention of getting in the way; she’d seen the grim bodies pulled from here back to Flux through the gate, and she had recognized Nadya, who had become Sister Tamara. She had no idea why she thought she could do anything, but just sitting around that big hole was driving her nuts.

She spent the better part of an hour just exploring the place and saw nothing she didn’t expect. They did not let her near the doors, of course, but she was pretty sure that anybody who peeked out of those would peek no more. Finally, she walked back down, thinking about it all and trying to find a way around the problem. She knew she was kidding herself that she could come up with something the pros could not, and even if she did, she might never be able to get the plan across, but she had to try.

She walked back down the steps to the place now sketched in chalk and stepped on it, but she didn’t trace the pattern right away. Instead, she drew in the weaker Flux power emanating from it and tried to find out where it went. She had no idea why she thought of this, but it seemed an interesting line of thought. Let’s see, she thought. From the vortex to the entry gate, and from the entry gate to here. No, that wasn’t quite right. There was a tremendous amount of energy going in from the vortex and an incredibly weak amount coming out at this end. One of the immutable laws everybody knew in both Anchor and Flux was that there was just so much of everything, and that energy and matter might be transformed, even into each other, but not created where there wasn’t any—or destroyed. Where was the extra power going?

Well, she didn’t know much about electricity, but she knew that such power needed a transformer to make it weak enough to use in the capital by the electrical generators. She looked down, found signs of the flow going past the entry port and coming up just over from it. The stone and cement filler had buried both the point at which that energy came out and the transformer or other device used to capture it, but the thick cables emerged and then were routed through the floor to the power plant that took up most of the rest of the basement. The power flow going through that cable was very different from the pure Flux power, but she could still follow it and sense its amount. It was more than that which existed at the transfer gate, but the total was still only a small fraction of what was going in.

She cast mentally down to the original flooring and below it, trying to find the actual entry point for the pure power of the vortex. It wasn’t difficult to sense, nor the point at which it divided—perhaps through some sort of transformer built into the temple structure itself? There was the gate, and there was the electrical power line—no, it couldn’t be. The line did not come from the junction point as the gate’s did; it came from someplace else, someplace even further down. Down! That’s where most of the power was going! That’s why it hadn’t really been noticed before. She tried to follow it with her mind, seeing as a wizard saw, and suddenly found herself suspended in darkness.

There was no up, no down, no forward or back. No light at all showed anywhere, nor in fact were there any of the sensations—no sound, touch, smell, taste—nothing.

But she was not alone.

Something touched her mind, something at once very frightening and very powerful; yet it seemed more curious than threatening. For a moment she feared that she’d gone the wrong way and touched those in Hell itself, but she was powerless to do anything about it. Little probes seemed to tingle all over her mind, unlocking memories and sensations long dormant or unused, and she knew that whatever it was, it was finding all it needed to know, but she had no way to talk to it or to even ask any questions. She had the distinct impression that it could not have answered her if she’d had that ability. This was something new, something totally alien.

Suddenly there was a blaze of light, and she knew she was back in the temple once again, yet not quite a part of it. She seemed to float above the floor and was not conscious of having any physical form at all, but that seemed irrelevant as she had no control over her movements anyway. She entered the generating system and flowed with it forward, until she was the electrical system of the entire temple. Power had been restored inside when experts had figured out a way to decouple the temple’s power from the city’s, and everywhere that energy flowed Suzl was, sensing all of the great building and its contents at one time. Despite being very frightened by it all, she still thought the whole thing was neat.

In one room, Cass was sound asleep over a bunch of papers. There was one of the temple intercoms nearby, and suddenly it began to buzz irritatingly, awakening the sleeper. She reached up groggily and flipped the switch. “Yes?”

“Exactly this time tomorrow night I will turn off the sector known as Temple Square,” said an eerie, electronic voice that was somehow still familiar. “This condition can be tolerated for only one minute exactly or the structure of Anchor itself will be endangered.”

“Who are you?” Kasdi shouted back, flipping the switch. “Who is this?”

“This sector condition will resemble what you call the void, but it will not be. It will be raw energy. All in the square will have to be suspended, and I will retain control. Because of the intricacy of the action, I can sustain no more than four of you. Move from this center straight forward until you reach Anchor as quickly as possible, for when sector stability is restored, all will be as it was, but none in the square will be aware that any time at all has passed. This is the best I can do without endangering the lives of everyone in my district.”

The voice was strange, oddly distorted, but she suddenly realized why it was familiar. “Suzl?” she asked wonderingly.

“The remote operative, which you call the Soul Rider, will be needed to fully act against the shield. It must be along. Destroy any one of the devices or its operator to create a necessary thinness. The translator will give you the necessary formulae. Remember, exactly this time tomorrow on my mark.”

She frantically flipped the switch over to “talk.”

“Wait! Tell me who or what you are!”

“My mark is—now. Farewell.” And the intercom went dead.

Suzl found herself withdrawing from the omniscience of the temple as if she were water flowing down a drain. She had understood every word said in both directions, but she hadn’t uttered any of them.

The creature, or whatever it was, withdrew, and suddenly she found herself standing back on the chalked-in gate once again. She looked down at herself and saw that she glowed with a faint energy. She frowned and went back over to the stairs. Her body crackled when it walked, but it was undeniably hers again and it tingled, or itched, like crazy. She touched the metal handrail and got a real shock that stunned her and flung her back. “Yow! Damn it!” she screamed in pain, bringing several of the soldiers running.

“It’s the mute,” one of them called. “Something happened. I thought she was long gone.”

“Mute, my ass!” Suzl screamed back, then sat up, feeling numb. Suddenly she looked up at them and frowned. “Hey! I can talk again! How about that! Hot damn!” She paused a moment. “I need a drink and a good cigar.”

The message had been heard through all the intercoms in the temple, although only Kasdi’s could talk back, and it wasn’t until she had answered that it had spoken. A fair number of higher-ups, including Matson, had already gathered in the refurbished gym to discuss it when Suzl was brought in.

She told them her story, sparing nothing. “I don’t know what it was,” she concluded, “but, damn it, Cass, it lives in here. I think it always has. It lives down deep, under the temple. Hmmm… Do you think I just had a religious experience?”

“Not you,” Kasdi assured her. “We’ve already sent for Mervyn and some of the other experts. Let’s try and sort it out.”

The old wizard was totally fascinated by the account. “The best I can guess, and it’s only a guess, is that you are the first person to meet the Guardian face to face, as it were, and survive.”

“I almost didn’t. That was a hell of a shock,” Suzl grumped.

Using a lot of witnesses, they put the message back together and were reasonably satisfied that they had it right. Fortunately, the military mind being what it was, quite a number of people had checked the exact time on their chronometers at the “mark” statement. All but three of them said 2209. That was sufficient to order those three to check their chronographs.

“This fits with what I saw in the tunnel,” Suzl told them. “This and the other three Anchors are nothing more than Fluxlands stabilized by that gadget down there instead of by a wizard’s mind. You figure this Guardian is the mind behind it?”

Mervyn shook his head negatively. “I seriously doubt if a being like you describe would build a machine. Use one, perhaps, but not build one. You know, this brings back memories of Kasdi years ago. She was turned into a bird and imprisoned in this very temple, and she somehow got out and was transformed into a Flux creature with Flux powers. Remember?”

Kasdi nodded. “I remember nothing from being turned into that bird until I emerged as that flyer.”

“I suspect our Guardian was responsible there as well. It fits. We will have a lot of work ahead to consider all the implications of this.”

“But now is not the time for that,” Matson put in. “At 2209 tomorrow, this thing claims it’ll sort of turn off the whole square and all that firepower. Four of us will have exactly one minute to dash across to the other side and then be on our own. If we can believe it, the forces out there won’t know anything happened. Do you think we can trust that?”

Mervyn nodded. “We have no reason not to. And, of course, if it doesn’t happen, nobody has to make the dash. The real problem is who must make it. The Soul Rider would be necessary to neutralize Coydt’s machines, the thing said. Suzl, you know what that means.”

“Hey! Spirit would be screwed in this kind of set-up! And we got a month-old baby!”

“Nevertheless, she must come. And so must you. You are obviously the translator it spoke about. Can you still remember the language Spirit and the Soul Rider use?”

She thought a moment, then mentally shifted gears, using the linking spell as a guide—and found she couldn’t speak or understand the rest of them again. She thought consciously and hard and willed herself “back”—and suddenly she could understand the comments once again. “Yeah. But it’s total. One or the other, not both at once.”

“It is sufficient. The Soul Rider knows the complex spells needed to punch the hole, but obviously must first see what it’s up against to devise them. It will then feed them to you and any other wizards along, and you will use them.”

She shrugged. “I’m game, but, damn it, Spirit will never go for it. And what’s gonna happen the first time she stands up in plain view to follow a butterfly, even if she did?”

“You must convince her—and keep her under control. Otherwise, we must give this place, and eventually this world, over to Coydt and the others.”

“She-it,” Suzl grumbled.

Suzl had no choice in convincing Spirit but to trust to the Soul Rider. She took Spirit off where they could be alone, leaving little Jeffron with a nurse, and after the predictable failure to really explain the situation to her, she sat back and decided that what worked accidentally for the Guardian might work for the Soul Rider as well. Both were certainly kin, and both were apparently living, thinking creatures of pure energy, as hard as that was to grasp. They were not the same, certainly, but both could communicate with humans and understand them far better than humans could communicate with them.

She tried sending the story, the impressions, of her experience using what she called “Spirit language” to the Soul Rider through the linking spell, but didn’t seem to get anywhere. Finally she decided on a last measure, and together they walked into the Hellgate, which Suzl had requested be cleared temporarily of any traffic.

Bathed in the flow of massive energy emerging from the vortex, Suzl took hold of Spirit and fed that energy into the both of them. No one else could do this, she’d found, but the Spirit language was the key to it all. Suzl executed the spell that the Soul Rider had sent her that first day, the one she knew would have the desired result. She metamorphosized, changed back into what she had been, a creature of gross deformity, but a creature with what was necessary.

Emotion was the key, and intense emotion was the medium. Strong, overriding emotions blocked rational thought, concentrated all on one specific to the exclusion of all others, and, if strong enough, they blocked thought altogether while maintaining a direction—like love, or passion, or whatever focused the participants excusively on each other. Hate was also an equally strong focus, as were the other emotions taken to extreme. This, however, was the easiest and the most pleasurable route.

They joined physically, but also, thanks to the language, amplified by the proximity to the direct full flow of the gate vortex, they joined mentally as well on all the levels it was possible to join. The Soul Rider understood, and used that, as Suzl had hoped it would.

And then another joined them there in the Hellgate itself, a creature that looked as if it were an unbearable ball of light out of which fiery tentacles of pure, crackling energy whirled. The two humans did not see, nor were they now permitted to.

For all its history, which was the history of World, the Soul Rider had seen a Guardian only once before, when, riding the body of Cass, it had been plucked from imprisonment in Anchor by the creature. At the time it had acted but had not communicated. Now it reached out again, hoping against hope not only for communication but also to discover if this creature were the unknown source of its directives and commands.

“You have failed, remote,” the Guardian sent. “The fall of Anchor is the worst of all sins.”

The Soul Rider felt elation at the communication, coupled with disappointment that the creature was certainly not its unseen master, unless in total disguise.

“My mission is to seek out those who would open the Gates and destroy them,” the Rider responded. “I would assume the safety of Anchor was your responsibility.”

“No, only its stability, a condition I am now commanded to jeopardize.”

“You allowed one of the Seven to pass into Anchor. Had you not, this might not be necessary,” the Rider pointed out.

“The one you mention knows the pass codes as you do. I was without power to stop him. Where and from whom he learned this I do not know, but he is one of great power.”

“He is in the employ of Hell. I am charged to stop him.”

“Then you must allow the host to pass to Anchor.”

“Her mind is not like other human minds,” the Rider pointed out. “The same one I now seek has put her somewhat beyond my reach.”

“Then I will render the matrix inoperable. My jurisdiction is entirely within this chamber and Anchor, so it will be inoperable only so long as she is within my sphere of influence. Should she pass out of it, the matrix will be restored as permanently as before.”

“That will help, but it will not undo the damage to her mind.”

“You have been with her since she was made operational. I am willing to aid you in common goals, remote, but I will not do your job for you, nor can I.”

“I will do what I can,” the Soul Rider promised, “but you have given me very little time.”

“If it is not sufficient, you are defective and should be replaced. There. It is undone. I leave you now to your own task.”

“Wait!” the Soul Rider cried out. “Remain a moment! Tell me what you are, and what I am, and who commands the both of us!”

“We are not supposed to know,” the Guardian replied, and faded out.

The Soul Rider, feeling the press of time, went to work. It couldn’t help but note and appreciate the Guardian’s methods. The binding spell was still there, but it was diverted from her by a thin addition that linked it, somehow, to that great machine over to one side. The machine took in the power from the vortex and changed and split it, stabilizing the four Anchors and, in fact, the Hellgate itself. So long as Spirit remained in areas under the control of that machine, the spell would be drawn off, diverted to it and rendered harmless. It was a tenuous thread, however. Once back in Flux, the small link would be broken, and it would take the Guardian again to restore it. Somehow it doubted that the creature who operated the machine would be so inclined.

Because the Soul Rider had lived inside Spirit since birth, it had its own duplicate set of memories and impressions. These could be read back in, but selectively, and subtly altered. It did not wish to withdraw the power from Suzl, as Suzl was clearly better temperamentally suited to it and would continue to have a direct link with the language of the Soul Rider itself. Spirit, then, must remain with Suzl, and Suzl needed to retain her own personal anchor. That meant fabricating a set of false memories and impressions that would take Spirit logically to the emotional, passionate love and commitment to Suzl and away from her heterosexual base. It was rather easy to do to someone you had already made fall in love with the same person anyway and made keep that love when that person had become a grossly distorted creature.

It was also necessary, and only fair, to convey the ground rules as much as possible to both of them. That was far more difficult. It longed for the Guardian’s powers of communication, but had to content itself with what it had. The Guardian, after all, had never experienced the joys and pains of living human lives as had the Soul Rider. On balance, it decided that the Guardian was more deprived.

It was done now, as much as it could be done, and the Soul Rider was content. Minor adjustments could be made, but only slightly out of Flux. It would have to do.

It allowed Suzl to awaken first, but time was running on.