Empires of Flux & Anchor

17 HARD CHOICES

Cass made her way over to Suzl, who hadn’t moved much in the whole affair. The gross malformation was the worst Suzl had ever been and among the worst that Cass had ever seen. The woman was unnaturally balanced and grossly obscene.

“Let’s see what we can do for you, Suzl,” Cass said, and started examining the spell. She frowned. This was no spur-of-the-moment spell; it had been prepared in advance and custom-tailored to Suzl. It was in Spirit language and monstrously complicated.

“Don’t fool with it, Cass,” Suzl warned. “I may not understand a spell from a bill of lading, but I know curses when I see them. This thing has a million traps in it for anyone trying to take it out, and you don’t know this language. I do. I’ve been looking at it this way and that for a little while.”

Cass sighed. “Well, Mervyn and the others should be here soon. They might have better luck.”

Suzl chuckled mirthlessly. “Yeah, he’ll have a lot of nice psychology spells that will make me think this is just wonderful to be this way. He couldn’t even lick the old curse, and that was child’s play compared to this one. Coydt had everything planned out from the start. Everything but Mat-son’s shotgun. At least I owed him that. He never knew Matson was here, and that was his only mistake.”

“Perhaps if you can link with the Soul Rider—”

“Fat chance. Even if I could, it would revert Spirit. And Coydt knew the Soul Rider’s langauge, too. I’ll bet that somewhere in this spell there’s a nasty little thing that would add on to Spirit’s curse. She has enough trouble in Flux without turning into a thing like I am.”

Cass sighed. “But what’s the alternative?”

“Cass, Coydt had a very evil mind. I doubt if I have ever known anybody more totally evil and yet so damned smart. Whatever he touched he corrupted, and that’s still true. I have a way out that he gave to me. I think it’s the only way out for many, many years.”

Cass was shocked. “Not that binding spell! Suzl! It would turn you into a different kind of thing, one just as unpleasant.”

Suzl sighed. “I’m tired, Cass. Real tired. All my life I’ve been owned by somebody and took orders. Every time Flux touched me, it was to turn me into something more strange, more grotesque. I was owned by the Church, then owned by stringers, then owned by the Soul Rider. None of ’em ever gave a damn about me. Even Spirit was a lie, just the Soul Rider hyping both of us up because it needed somebody to do its dirty work for it.”

“I’m tired, too, Suzl. I’ve been as much a victim and a pawn as you have, but I didn’t really realize it until just a little while ago. Now I’m free, for the first time. I don’t know why he did it, but he freed me.”

“You really think so, Cass? I think I know why he did it, and I think Matson does, too. Tell me, Cass—could you take back on yourself all those binding spells and restrictions right now?”

“No. Never again. Even if there was a real need. Even if life depended on it. I could never bring myself to do it.”

“Then he’s got you, too, just like me. He’s undermined the whole Church with what he did to Anchor Logh so quickly and easily. But the Church, and the empire, could stand that. You see, he’s also taken away its foundation, the rock on which your Church and revolution sit. They won’t march off to fight any more if their own homes are in such mortal danger, and they don’t have the symbol, the example, to lean against and be inspired by. They don’t have you anymore.”

“I made my sacrifices! I deserve some reward!”

“Yeah, you have and you do. But that’s not the way it’ll be seen by others. They’ll march for a saint, Cass, but not for a Fluxlord. And with nothing to keep your power, your temper, your wants and your needs down, that power will corrupt you just like it did all of them, Coydt included. He trapped you just as sure as he trapped me.”

“Suzl—promise me you won’t do anything rash until the wizards get here and I can sort this out. Will you at least do that?”

She nodded. “For a little while.”

Relieved, Cass looked around. “Where’s Matson?”

A fairly strong force had been waiting on standby north of Lamoine, but Coydt had ordered them well back and it had taken some time for Weiz to make it back to the town and then send a runner with the news. Now they rode forward to the wall. The fires were out, but it was still a smoking ruin up there.

General Shabir, chief administrator of the riding, looked disgusted. “I told him that it was a pushover. You know what he said? ‘I want a pushover, but a convincing one.’ ”

Weiz nodded. The steps were in ruins, but were still serviceable for about three quarters of the distance. It wasn’t easy, but a crew managed to get up with hooks and ropes and lower down netting for the troopers to climb up. One of the first to survey the apron from the top turned and shouted back, “Sir! There’s a lone civilian standing there just below us! Looks like a stringer! He says he wants to talk to you!”

“Don’t shoot!” Shabir ordered. “Tell him I’m coming up. Keep him covered, but that’s all!” He turned to Weiz. “Want to come with me?”

The captain nodded.

The stairs on the side leading to the apron had been blown out about a meter, but they had somehow escaped catching fire. They were singed, but serviceable, and were easily drawn back and secured with hooks. With a hundred guns trained on him, Matson stood calmly and waited for the brass to show up.

The military men approached him cautiously but correctly. He had dropped his weapons belt and was clearly unarmed. “My name is Matson,” he told them, not offering his hand. “Coydt van Haas is dead. Your wizard is dead over there, and I’ve blown up your pretty machine. If we can’t come to some agreement fast, in an hour or so an awful lot of power is going to burst right through that area right there.”

The military men swallowed hard at the news. Dimly, in the void, they could see where the machine should have been, and there was nothing.

“One of you wouldn’t happen to have a cigar on you, would you?” the stringer asked. “I’m dying for a smoke.”

One of the infantrymen looked to the officers, who nodded, then handed Matson a cigar and a safety match. He lit it and seemed much more content.

“If what you say is true,” the general said slowly, “then it is the end of Anchor Logh. Many of my men are scum, I freely admit, but they’ve been made that way. They’ve marched and died on command in other people’s armies for nothing. The Fluxlord I once served, and deserted for this, is a particularly nasty sort. The military leadership here is experienced and superior. They were given a chance to take their own land, and they did it. They will not return to the way they were, and they will leave this place a costly hell.”

The stringer nodded. “I figured as much. That’s why we have to take this time to make a deal. We have to keep all this quiet from the rest of Anchor Logh, or the other wizards will panic and let the shields drop as they run, and everybody will be primed for the last stand. Then it might be too late.”

The general frowned. “Too late for what?”

“A deal. Suppose there was no invasion outside of this small area? Suppose we let you keep Anchor Logh and run it without any interference? What would you say then?”

Both officer’s mouths fell open in surprise. Finally, the general recovered. “At what price?”

“The empire controls the machines, and the temple becomes a sort of embassy. We need to insure that it’s not a free and easy passage to the Hellgate. Beyond the temple, no one leaves or enters without the permission of your government and the empire’s. The stringer guild will deal with you at east and west gate. I’ve seen a thousand Fluxlands, General, and so have most of the others. We’ll keep your trade open, and we’ll be the intermediaries between the empire and your people. It makes no sense to cost a million lives and make this a wasteland. No sense at all, for either side. They want to keep this contained. If you’re here, running the place, they can do so. They do it by co-opting you into the empire. Making it legitimate. Anchor Logh is restored, but has total internal self-government. Everybody benefits and nobody else dies.”

“If we could only trust the empire on that,” Weiz put in. “But it’s a theocracy. How can we trust it?”

“Guarantees can be worked out. You and the Church have both been working with an illusion. The empire isn’t the Church; the Church serves the empire. Nine wizards set policy and control everything that it does, and none of them are in the least bit committed to the Church. The war has bled off the surplus population so far, but that won’t last forever. Flux will absorb the surplus, though, as it always has in one way or another. The ones with the power, the Nine Who Guard, are really mostly concerned with securing those Hellgates. Secondarily, they went as far as they could in learning. They needed a mechanism to break the control of the wizards, each of whom had some piece of old knowledge that usually meant nothing to them until fitted into the whole. They needed a way to pry the ancient stuff out, and they needed Anchors, with fixed laws, to experiment with what they learned. I think they can spare Anchor Logh.”

“It seems reasonable to me,” Weiz noted. “But it’ll have to be sold to higher-ups, in secret, while everything is contained here.”

“Just keep your men on the wall. I’ll stop them and explain the conditions there, too. I think the head of the Nine will be among the first through. You sell it to your side; I’ll sell it to mine.”

“It’s a tough job,” the general noted. “Still, I agree, for what that’s worth, and I’ll cooperate so long as there are no tricks. But no empire forces are to cross the wall or extend more than a kilometer in either direction. If they do, it’s all off.”

“These are hard choices you’re handing both sides, Matson,” Weiz noted. “You’re the only one free and clear in all this. You don’t give a damn.”

“Life is all hard choices, Captain,” the stringer replied. “I’ve had more than my share. But most folks never get any choices at all, and hard as they are, I’d rather be the one making the decisions.”

Weiz stirred. “Did you see a woman in Flux? Short, chubby, kind of cute?”

“Yeah, Suzl’s alive. Why? What’s she to you?”

“I… sort of married her.”

Matson chuckled. “On orders, of course.”

“Well, yes, on orders. But I find her a little special.”

“You can hardly even know her!”

Weiz shrugged. “I’m a gambler.”

“Well, we’ll see if she is. Do your job first, Captain. The rest is academic if we fail.”

It had been kind of imposing, even threatening, to stand in front of a point in Flux and try to talk an invading force into not going into Anchor. Fortunately, the initial shield opening was quite small, and there were few soldiers to work with—and a wizard. The wizard had contained the assault and sent for Mervyn.

Weiz was a glib talker, and it had been a surprisingly easy sell on the Anchor side, although, of course, it would be years before the military government felt safe enough to relax and remove its martial law organization designed mostly to fight a tough war. On the empire’s side, there was almost a feeling of relief at Matson’s offer. Many of them were appalled at legitimizing such a terrible and repressive sexist regime, but when you had the Fluxlands for an example, the bizarre could be made palatable and the unthinkable allowed. The people of Anchor Logh knew the hard choice. All-out war to the death or the system they had now. Most hardly liked the system, but they were terrified of the alternative. They consoled themselves that such a rigid system would have to bend someday, and slowly reforms would return. They would wait, making a characteristically human decision that none not in their place could comprehend.

They had seen the burned-out and desolate future, and they had decided no more, no more. They would accept the system, with faith that it would eventually change from within, if not in their lifetimes, then in their descendants’. Slavery and repression, in the end, only ever existed with the consent of the slaves and the repressed, who preferred their condition to death. On a mass basis, there was no other way for such systems to survive.

Mervyn had called in a whole crew of top wizards to examine the spell on Suzl and found it fully lived up to her expectations. Its traps were based on her own Flux power; automatic spells that would trigger when the one before was touched. Such was the way of curses. They could see the traps, but there were so many of them, and all of them so subtle, that there was no way to disarm them without exploding them, to the detriment of any wizard—and innocent bystander—who tried. Coydt had made good use, too, of the linking spell between Suzl and Spirit, now inoperative. Through that, Coydt had engineered a system which would backfire on Suzl when she disabled the spell, sending it along via the linking spell to Spirit and attaching it to the binding spell. To free Suzl would send the curse intact to Spirit, making her curse even more grotesque.

There was always a chance, of course, that the Soul Rider could work it out, but they wouldn’t know until it was tried. As far as the Soul Rider was concerned, Suzl was convinced that her part in all this was done. The Soul Rider had stuck with Spirit. It would not risk her, particularly when Suzl could still use the power through the Soul Rider’s spells. From the Soul Rider’s point of view, Suzl, as translator and spell receptor, was still just fine the way she now was.

“And the binding spell Coydt handed me?” she asked the spell doctors. “What would it do?”

“He was as good as his word,” they replied. “You would remember, but your perspective will have changed. You would see your previous life as a waste, a miserable emptiness. You would see this system of theirs as perhaps not right for others, but just what you’ve always wanted and needed. Once in place, you would consider it natural and normal. You would know all the rules, and you would embrace them. It would dampen your aggressive streak, and pump up your hormones, and freeze your sexual orientation, and focus your interests on what your new life demanded. There would be no regrets.”

“And the body?”

“Physically and emotionally, you would be seventeen or eighteen again and would be somewhat frozen there.”

“So it’s this forever or that forever.”

“Perhaps not. When we get to really understand the power amplifiers, we can perhaps reform and refocus them. Technology and our knowledge will advance. What one person created, another can surely uncreate one day.”

“One day.”

Cass was appalled that she was even considering the binding spell. “For whom? A guy who was ordered to marry you and parade you around to draw me in? A man you’ve known for maybe a day?”

“Or somebody else. What does it matter, Cass? I told you a while back that you just can’t relate to what kind of life I’ve had.”

“But you’ve always been the clever one, the big mouth who’d always point out the truth. You figured out how to reach the Guardian and made it all possible! You’ve always been the independent free spirit!”

“It was an act, Cass. An act to convince everybody, even myself, that I wasn’t a freak, wasn’t owned, wasn’t property. But I was. The only time I felt really genuine, really free—with Spirit—turns out to be phony as well. My absolute master was the Soul Rider. My mind’s been messed with by the wizards of Globbus, by Ravi, by Mervyn, and by the Soul Rider. I’m not even sure what’s really me anymore.”

“But that life back there—treating women as objects! Even you made fun of it! It’s repulsive!”

“Why? Because it’s only women and not both who are objects? Who are you kidding, Cass? You’re arguing ideology. A place where they oppress and degrade women is bad, but a place where they oppress and degrade both men and women, like ninety percent of the Fluxlands, is O.K. or at least acceptable. Sure, I know it’s stupid to oppress and retard half the human race, but it’s just as stupid to oppress and retard all the human race. You know what I’ve got, Cass? The same old thing I’ve had ever since they threw me out of Anchor Logh. Never mind the principles and the masses—all I’ve got is my choice of oppressors.”

“Suzl—live with it a while. There’s a beautiful and private Fluxland waiting for you that you’ve never seen, and there’s a child out there as well, one who now has no parents.”

“I’m going to be just great raising a child like this. Just look at me, Cass!” She paused for a moment. “Are you ready to prove your commitment?”

“Huh? What do you mean?”

“Make love to me, Cass. Right here and now. I’m totally turned on, and I’m having to repress the urge to leap on you.”

Cass was suddenly taken aback. She looked at the gross breasts, the enormous male organ, the whole sexually misshapen body, and she was revolted. As much as she wanted to prove her points, she knew that there was no way she could possibly do what was asked. No way at all. No spell prevented her, nor any moral qualms—it would have been moral, in a sense, to shut her eyes and allow it for Suzl’s sake—but she just couldn’t. She just wasn’t a self-sacrificing saint anymore, and all she could do was turn, run, and cry it out.

She did not, however, cease her assault on the kind of agreement they were sealing. Finally Mervyn lost his temper and angrily snapped, “What’s all right one way is wrong the other, huh?”

She was puzzled. “What do you mean?”

“Coydt recruited his men mostly from Fluxlands ruled by female Fluxlords. Crazy, nasty Fluxlords. Matriarchies, and worse. They were the objects there, fighting when told, prevented from any real authority or position, doing the heavy, dirty work. Coydt freed them and fed their lifelong resentments. His system reversed the roles and fed their egos. Some of those Fluxlands—most, in fact—are within the empire. Lands you allowed to continue.”

“If it was wrong for it to have been done to them, and it was, then it’s just as wrong the other way.”

“Human nature seldom operates like that. Even its loftiest principles tend to become excuses for doing what the powerful want to do. In Anchor, crippled and deformed male babies were put to death by the priestesses. Female counterparts were taken to Flux with the aid of stringers, made whole, and returned. They were good children, model students, and virtually all of them went into the priesthood. The argument went that those girls didn’t increase the population and they filled the need for priestesses painlessly. Most everyone knew about this and accepted it. Since the mothers of killed male children were convinced the births were stillbirths or that the causes were natural, they took it hard but accepted it. World is a rotten place, but it’s what we made it, and we can hardly judge them and not ourselves.”

Slowly, Cass was losing whatever faith she had left in human nature and whatever hope she had for the future. It seemed like blow after blow was coming down on her, and she was powerless to change it.

She went to find Matson and found him preparing to leave.

“Where are you going?”

“Home,” he answered. “It’s all done now, Cass. I beat the odds again, and that’s that.”

She felt sudden emotional turbulence. “What about me?”

He sighed. “Cass, so long as you were a priestess, it wasn’t worth the telling, but I been married more than fifteen years to the same woman, a tough ex-stringer like me. We got three kids of our own, and it looks like my oldest daughter, who’s fourteen, is leaning to both the power and to stringing.”

She felt shocked, hurt, even somehow betrayed by that. She began to tremble with anger and emotion.

He looked at her. “What’d you think? That I was sitting up there pining for you? You made your choice to go one way, and it looked permanent to both of us. You’re a good woman, Cass. You’d have made a hell of a stringer and there’s no bigger compliment I can give. But I love my wife and I love my kids and they’re probably all in a panic that I’m lyin’ dead someplace. I have to go back.”

It suddenly all burst out in a fury. “I’ll make you stay!” she screamed at him. “I’m a wizard and I can make you love me and forget all about them!”

He tensed, but kept his self-control. “Yeah, sure. You could make me your pet lover and slave. You been goin’ all over this camp telling people how lousy it is what they’re doin’ to women in Anchor Logh. How immoral it is. But it isn’t immoral if you do it to me, is it? No, because Coydt was right, and those guys in Anchor are right, aren’t they? If you have the power and you want something, you just take it and the hell with the others! I could be the star of a whole Fluxland of men worshipping you, couldn’t I? It’d be O.K. because it’d be you on top and me on the bottom, and the hell with me, right? The hell with my family, right? Go ahead—use your damn Flux spells to make me what you want. Then you’ll be just like all the rest of ’em, and you’ll have no kick coming. Do it now, ’cause if you don’t I’m gettin’ on that horse over there, picking up Jomo, and goin’ home!”

The spells needed came easily to her mind in her hurt and anger. And somewhere, off in a corner of her mind, she heard Coydt’s voice whisper, “Go on! Do it! You got the power and that’s all you need. I’m not dead. I’ll never die. Go on and take him… and I’ll be you next time around.”

Matson checked his packs, got on his horse, and rode slowly away into the void.

And now she had nothing at all. That had been Coydt’s intent and his revenge upon her. He had removed the spells and the way of life that had insulated her from truth and allowed her to use them as a convenient excuse to hold on to her fantasies. He had stripped all that protection away, protection she realized now she’d put on herself to protect those fantasies. Coydt’s final, cynical lesson was that power meant nothing to the wielder unless it was used on other people and at their expense.

Mervyn found her, sulking and alone, the evidence of many angry fits and many tears abounding. “They’re bringing Spirit to the apron,” he told her. “We’re bringing Jeffron.”

She did not look at him or change her facial expression. “She’ll probably stay in Anchor Logh with him,” she sighed. “And I might as well stick on tights and heels and go with them. I don’t want to live in this ugly world any more.”

“She might surprise you. She’s stronger than you think, considering how much she went through with no preparation and how well she came out of it. Her idealistic world has collapsed, too, you know.”

She turned and looked at him. “She’s with her Mom and Dad. She can’t have Suzl, although I suspect the Soul Rider has already begun readjusting her from that. It still has power in her, and it’ll protect its host if it doesn’t conflict with its own objectives.”

Mervyn scratched his beard. “Let’s see. Oh, by the way, that bronze color is a sort of skin tan from the radiation given off when the amplifier exploded. It looks good on you. Perhaps you should make it even and keep it, perhaps lightening vour hair.”

She gave a dry laugh. “For whom?”

“Who knows? You’re alive, you’re powerful, and you’re one of the very few people now who are completely free.” He paused and said, gently. “It wasn’t a waste, Cass. We contained a great evil, and we made a better life possible for those who can do nothing for themselves. It’s not perfect, but it’s better. That’s an accomplishment worth some pride.”

She just stared after him as he walked away.

“I’ve come to say goodbye, Cass,” Suzl told her. “I’m going to do it.”

She nodded. “I can’t ever understand living in that place as it is now, but I think at least I can understand why you have no choice.”

“No, you can’t. I doubt if you ever will. You’re strong by nature. A leader type, Coydt called it.

I’ve been strong by necessity. You retired, and now I’m ready to retire. Good-bye, Cass. I hope you find what you’re looking for.”

“I—I hope you do, too, Suzl.”

The great, misshapen creature that was Suzl was helped by duggers, many as strange and grotesque as herself, into a wagon and she rode off. They rode down to the end of the perimeter and lifted her off, then drove away. She looked around the void, and there were tears in her eyes, not just for herself, but for Cass and Spirit and the others as well. None of them really understood, but, oddly, Coydt would have. She was a terrible freak with the power. If she remained this way, she could survive and even learn to use that power. Eventually she would dominate and make others like herself, and others like she wanted to be would be forced to worship her. She would be yet another child of Coydt’s, and she knew it. World had too many Coydts now. Hard choices. No more hard choices…

She engaged the spell. She felt momentarily dizzy and lost her balance, but her mind cleared quickly. She sat up and looked down at herself. She was normal again! If anything, a little slimmer, a little shapelier. It was odd. She didn’t feel any different. She remembered everything clearly, the good and the bad. Mostly bad, though, she knew. A depressed, unhappy, unnatural and abnormal life that had accomplished very little. Flux had been cruel to her, and she hated it. Still, she had the power, and, interestingly, she now knew a couple of spells. She got up and gestured at the void, and a shining mirror appeared. No taller, but she was shapelier, sexier, better proportioned. The breasts were still big and sensual, but after what she’d been cursed with, they were just fine. Big and sexy—not deformed.

She made her hair longer, so that it came down on both sides of her face and, pushed forward, kind of hung down sexy-like over the breasts. She gave the image a sensual kiss. Big eyes and sexy lips. She liked what she saw there. The earrings with the tags had returned, but nothing else. She used the power instead. Rosy lips, shadow, eyebrows… everything. She created clothing by using very fine black mesh that hugged tight and hid nothing, not even the tattoo. To this she added open-toed shiny black shoes with thin eighteen-centimeter heels, very high, but they made her seem taller and gave her such a walk!

Lengthen and paint the fingernails and color the toenails to match; set things for no unwanted body hair—and she decided she was ready. It was, she thought, the first and only positive help the power had been.

She turned and faced the Anchor border, and something inside her whispered that, even now, she could turn around. Some ghostly link, perhaps with the Soul Rider or the Guardian, or some corner of her mind the spell had missed? She knew she could, realized that there was a certain chance here at freedom, but if she walked back into Anchor, it was for keeps.

She walked into Anchor with a strut and a wiggle that was worthy of any Main Street entertainer. There was a new temporary set of stairs there and two soldiers standing guard at it. Their eyes looked at all of her in a way she had never been looked at before, and she found she loved it. She walked up to them and waited.

“What do you wish, lady?” one of them asked.

“Sir, my husband, Captain Weiz, is somewhere in this area. I would appreciate it ever so much if you could take me to him,” she said in a voice that was high, yet soft and sexy, and rather helpless-sounding.

“We’ve been told to expect you,” one of the soldiers replied. “Allow me to help you up the walkway here.”

She allowed it, even enjoyed it. She had seen other women do this and be treated this way, but she had never been. The trick, she decided, was in never letting men know what suckers they were for this sort of thing. This is what I’ve always wanted, she realized, and didn’t even trouble herself about whether it was the spell or her real self thinking. Whichever, it was true, and she neither looked back at the void nor had any regrets.

Dannon and Cloise brought Spirit to the apron with them. Cass watched them come, and still she felt nothing but contempt for the pair she’d entrusted Spirit to all those years. Dannon was wearing a military-style uniform with second lieutenant’s bars sewn on. Cloise walked behind him, looking just as ridiculous in her hooker’s outfit as she had before, but also looking very strong-willed and confident. Behind them was Spirit, on whom the same sort of outfit looked absolutely stunning. She, however, did not look happy about the whole thing.

Cass had taken Mervyn’s advice, with the advice and help of a few others. She had filled herself out a bit, trimmed off those boyish edges and flattened chest, kept the smooth bronze color on her skin, and made her hair a light brown streaked with blond. She wore a light tan pullover shirt, blue work pants, and a pair of riding boots. She had smoothed her faced and skin a bit as well, and made herself look attractive but thirtyish. She wanted to give the onlookers, particularly those on that wall, a look at a strong, independent woman who was in every way their match. It was the only blow she had left to strike.

They came up to her and stopped. “Hello, Sister Kasdi,” Dannon said, clearly not happy to be there. “You look quite different now.”

“Not Sister Kasdi, just Cass,” she responded coolly. “I no longer represent the Church or the empire. I’m here as a concerned mother and grandmother.” She paused for a moment then looked at Spirit. “No drugs or hypnos, and she’s been told the truth?”

They both nodded.

“Spirit, how do you feel?” Cass asked her.

“Sick,” the woman replied, and Cloise and Dannon both looked startled.

A man came out of the void behind Cass with Jeffron in his arms. That, too, had been a little rub in the noses of the onlookers. The boy wasn’t crying, just sucking his thumb and looking around wide-eyed.

“Here is your son. Spirit,” Cass told her, taking the baby from the man and walking up to her daughter, whose height, with the shoes, was towering in proportion. “My grandson. The real one.”

She took the boy and held him close. Then she said, “They told me Suzl was dead. Is that the truth?”

She thought a moment. “Yes.”

Spirit looked around at all of them. “What am I to do now?”

“Choose,” Cass told her. “Remain here if you wish. Or we will arrange to take you through the temple and into one of the other three Anchors and get you and the boy settled in.”

She stepped forward and looked at the two whom she’d loved and thought of as her parents almost all her life. “You make me sick,” she told them, and they both looked shocked. “Most of the people I can understand, but not you. I loved you and you betrayed us! Out there in Flux I thought how nice it would be to be back in normal, loving Anchor Logh. I felt cut off, lonely, insecure. But not nearly as cut off, lonely, and insecure as I felt this past two weeks. There’s more love out there than in all of Anchor Logh.” She handed the baby back to a startled Cass, kicked off her shoes and removed the rest of her clothing. She was still a lot taller than Cass. “Coming, Mother?” she asked the woman with the child.

All of a sudden they all realized what she was going to do, and all for reasons of their own yelled out, “Spirit! Wait! Don’t!”

Cass looked at her, feeling not a little pride and admiration for her courage, but she wasn’t sure if the result was right. “You don’t have to. There are three other Anchors. It’ll hurt them, certainly, but it’s for keeps. They’ll recover. You won’t.”

“I’ve been there before,” Spirit replied. “The first time I wasn’t prepared for it, mentally or emotionally. I am now. Hard as I’ll try, I won’t be able to forget what happened this time. But, you know, maybe I’m better off not understanding what you people are saying and doing. Maybe it’d be a lot nicer if everybody saw the beauty in a butterfly’s wing or the wonderful patterns in a blade of grass and if everybody spent a lot more time on love and had no more time for fear and hatred.”

“I could lift that spell, you know,” Cass told her. “I could take it on myself. It would be far better than what I had all those years.”

“No. Jeffey’s got to know both worlds. He needs a wizard’s protection, and he needs experience and guidance I can’t give.”

“There’ll be no men in that little Fluxland, you know.”

“Oh, World’s full of men, just as nice and just as rotten as the ones we’ve known so far. If we need them, either of us, I’m sure we can find them.”

Cass felt everything drain away to be replaced by new and far different emotions. She wanted to hug Spirit, but couldn’t because of the baby. Well, there would be plenty of time for hugging later.

Dannon and Cloise still seemed in a state of shock. They could no more conceive of Spirit’s choice than she could of theirs. Cass grinned at them and looked back at Spirit. “If you ever want out, just let me know, somehow, and I’ll switch with you. I owe you that.”

Spirit smiled back at her. “You just want in,” she replied, took little Jeffron and stepped into Flux.

Cass turned back to the gaping pair, stiffened, clicked her heels together and saluted. Then she turned and followed her daughter and grandson. She’d just been offered a very nice job, and this choice wasn’t hard at all.