Empires of Flux & Anchor

8 WONDROUS PATHWAYS

The experiment had worked out very well indeed for all concerned except, perhaps, Sister Kasdi. Spirit loved the excitement and animation of the stringer train, the animals and people, and they also took to her. Her picture had made her familiar to almost everyone during the kidnapping episode, and her story and her curse were also common knowledge.

At first people did treat her as something of a freak, and there was a great deal of pity as well, but it soon passed as the novelty wore off and she was simply accepted. It was tougher on the men than the women, for she was beautiful and alluring, but the few who tried to force themselves on her in Flux found that merely touching her when she didn’t want to be touched could produce a painful electric shock. The more someone persisted, the more painful and prolonged the lesson. None persisted for very long.

Spirit seemed endlessly fascinated with the void as well. It looked different to her now, the continuous random sparkles of energy not only beautiful but somehow not at all the random effect that everyone else assumed. There was a structure, an order, to the whole of Flux that seemed suddenly clear to her.

She quickly learned the stringer’s secret and art. The void was no void at all, she found, but an intricate network of crisscrossing lines of weak but permanent energy. Following these “strings” was like following a road, although she didn’t have, and would probably never have, the stringer’s knowledge and skill to be able to read exactly where she was on a string in relation to the next destination and in relation to the whole world. Still, she wondered at the fact that these strings were certainly human-made; yet she could see and understand them in apparent violation of the spell. She could even tell which ones were main strings and which led to water pockets and emergency supply caches, for these strings were coded both by color and by a mathematical structure that not only said what they were but also left a signature of sorts of their maker—and other signatures were overlaid in fascinating complexity atop the primary one.

Every time they progressed along a string, a new, very faint ghost signature was etched into the thousands, perhaps millions of others. She began to realize that in the strings was a record of all who had ever used them, all very minor and very faint but nonetheless present. One could even, on the closest of study, read the exact order in which those string echoes had been laid down and identify a pattern unique to each individual. She, too, left a slight signature as they progressed, a mathematically unique coding. With knowledge of a wizard’s or stringer’s symbol and the sense of time laid out mathematically in the record, she realized she could actually track someone across the void by taking only the freshest trace or retrace their path and tell from whence they had come.

In just the few days of travel to Anchor Logh, she had intuitively and deductively learned more about strings than all but a handful of people ever learned with years of teaching and experience. She could not know this, nor that even the best stringers and wizards could read and sort out only the most recent paths, the rest blending into the original pattern. It was not her degree of Flux power alone that gave her this ability to read, see, sort, interpret, and remember those millions of traces, but also the new internal language and manner in which her brain now processed information.

Anchor was different, yet in some ways the same. A blade of grass was not simply that, but a complex structure built in a specific pattern. She felt as if she could peer into its very makeup, which, in a sense, she could. Each tree, flower, leaf, even a blade of grass was unique and different and those differences were endlessly fascinating to her. Her behavior seemed often odd, unusual, and childlike to those watching her, but it was instead highly intellectual and highly complex. She was seeing in a way they could never see and understanding in a way they could never understand.

Anchor Logh was at once wondrous and painful. Here she had grown up, and here she was well-known. The pity and grief from family and friends was very hard to bear, and she longed for some way to tell them that it was all right, that she would not go back to being one of them even if she could.

She drew crowds in Anchor, of course. Lots of pity mixed with an endless fascination with the bizarre that was a part of human nature. She didn’t mind it from strangers at all, and the children were wonderful, treating her as some sort of magical fairy sprite. She played silly games with them and drew out their laughter and felt well-rewarded.

And yet, the more human she was in the basics of emotion, the less she became in other areas. The psychological changes in her accelerated with the trip, and the journey home had gotten out of her system the one last link to her past. She liked people and enjoyed being with them, but she could no longer in the least understand them. Slowly but systematically, the bits and pieces of what it was like to be one of them were being erased or shut off in her mind. At Hope she had separated herself forever from their form of existence. Now, in Anchor Logh, she crossed the last mental hold to the past. She not only could no longer remember not being as she was; she could no longer even conceive of it. Once she left the farm with Suzl for the gate and Flux once more, she erased the past completely from her mind. All of the human culture into which she’d been born and raised was now irrelevant to her, and what was irrelevant did not exist.

The last link was broken with the return to Hope. The point had been made and proven. Short of her mother using her powers to force her to remain, a prisoner, she would not be contained, and she wasn’t even sure if her mother had the power to restrain her. Kasdi, however, had no intention of doing so. She surrendered to the inevitable and let her daughter go.

For the next few weeks, Spirit stayed with Ravi and Suzl’s stringer train, making stops at three more Fluxlands and one other Anchor that was quite different than Anchor Logh. Everything was different, everything a wonder, but still she began to feel confined. As long as she was under their wing, she was trapped, in a way, in a culture she could no longer understand.

The duggers, of course, treated her as if she were one of their own, which in a very real sense she was, but they, too, were part of a life different from hers. The old Spirit would have found most of them horrible, grotesque, bizarre—but she just found them a new series of unique wonders. Suzl was the biggest shock and wonder, though, since she didn’t seem to be a true dugger at all. Yet, once, when they had set up tents and camped out for two days in a Pocket waiting for the main stringer train to rendezvous with them, she had playfully peered inside Suzl’s tent (although she would never enter it) and seen her in the midst of changing clothes. She’d been bending over, displaying the largest ass Spirit had ever seen, and it was a shock to see those enormous breasts actually touching the floor of the tent. Spirit could not imagine what having that sort of frontage would feel like. Then Suzl had heard her, straightened up and turned around, and she saw the male organ so huge that it almost reached the dugger’s knees. Suzl grinned at the shock on Spirit’s face, and then the girl knew that this was a dugger indeed, in her own way as inhuman as the most deformed of the ones on the train.

Suzl started to reach for her special undergarments needed to manage and work with her enlarged deformities, but then stopped, winked, and came out of the tent just as she was. Ravi was off, and there were only a few duggers about who paid no attention at all. Suzl was so short without the boots that the top of her head barely came up to the nipples on Spirit’s breasts, but there was something in the strange man/woman’s bizarre appearance that was strangely erotic. Both were a bit surprised at what went on, but Spirit was amazed at both her own near-insatiable enjoyment and Suzl’s nearly infinite capacity and variety.

For Suzl’s part, she had never intended it, but found it inevitable; Spirit was so beautiful that it had seemed impossible not to lust after her. Suzl was neither sorry nor ashamed, but instead felt some of the envy Cass had evidenced. She loved men and women equally, for she was partly each, and she enjoyed being the way she was. What she had not enjoyed was the confinement of Ravi and sidebar stringing, or the necessity for all those special undergarments and all that play-acting at normalcy. She was far more of a freak than Spirit, but unlike Spirit, who never thought of herself that way, Suzl loved the very idea of it.

I must leave, Spirit mimed to Suzl. I can see the strings. I am strong.

Suzl nodded understanding, and at that point something just snapped inside her. It was hard figuring out the proper way to get her reply across, but she did. I want out, too. But I can not see strings. I have no power. Out there I am helpless.

Spirit was stunned to realize this. The idea that few could see as she saw or draw power from Flux, and nourishment, and all needs, just had not occurred to her before. It explained everything to her at once, and now she felt pity, not merely for Suzl but for all those at the mercy of the few. She looked at the dugger and suddenly realized that, for all her fascination with detail, she had never noticed that the strings on Suzl and the other duggers weren’t their own traces but variations of Ravi’s pattern. Curious, she reached out with her mind at one of the strings and touched it. It wavered and faded away.

I have power for two, Spirit mimed. Do you want to come with me? You will be my speech with humans. For, she realized, she did not want to be alone. It was not that she really needed any interpreter, nor was it really pity, either, that caused the offer. But she would be different, forever, in this world, and with no others of her own kind she badly needed a friend. This would work out well, too, for Suzl was as much a freak in human culture as she was, and far from being confining, it would be Suzl now that would depend on her rather than the other way around.

For Suzl’s part, it was the kind of break with all that was secure in her life that she might not ever make if she thought about it too often. Spirit’s wizardry was supposed to be restricted to self-defense only, and that wouldn’t include her. But for eighteen years she’d traveled and had some laughs and a lot of hard work, though Ravi was the best of her bosses. For much of that time, too, she’d lived a lie with uncomfortable devices hiding the fact that she was not a normal human woman but really a freakish dugger, the second race of World all of whose members were unique. Now she was thirty-six and stuck with the lie more securely than ever, riding around the same old circuit as Ravi’s respectability and window-dressing, going nowhere. And Spirit was going to leave regardless. Better she go with someone who knew her and whom her mother also knew. I will go with you, she mimed back.

Ravi returned a bit later and she was waiting for him. “Spirit’s going off on her own,” she began.

He nodded. “I expected that sooner or later. Frankly, it will be a relief.”

“I’m going with her.”

For a moment he seemed not to hear, then he finally said, “What did you say?”

“I said I’m going with her. I resign from the company.”

His cool demeanor was betrayed by the nasty, bitter edge in his voice. “You are insane. You have no powers in Flux. She might be able to conjure food and drink, but not the kind you like so well. She can certainly offer no protection against other wizards’ spells.”

“Neither can you, for that matter. She can read strings and protect me from the usuals. Besides, I think she needs me.”

“I need you.”

“No, you need window-dressing. A cardboard woman for your business image. She doesn’t need that. She needs someone to care about. She needs a friend.”

Ravi’s face was turning slightly purple. “If you do this, I will see that you never work for a stringer again. And in a few days or weeks, when you go mad from having no one to talk to and cannot even keep pace with that wild primitive, you will have no place left to turn. Have you considered that?”

“There’s always the dugger havens up north in the wild. I’ve made up my mind, Ravi. I’m going.”

“So you wish this, do you? You prefer her, do you? Well, let us see how well you will truly do. If you think it is so bad to pretend, then I curse you to pretend no more. If I had the knowledge, I would make you just like her, but I cannot. But this clothing business I can manage. All of your clothes are made by my magic. I withdraw that magic now.” The clothing that she wore vanished. “Know now that you have a simple spell, but one that is hard to break. Like your girlfriend, you cannot conceal, but while she has nothing to hide, you do and will no longer be able to. I take the bit of spell from her and link it to you, so that you may wear nothing that she does not. I purchased the spells that made you as you are, and those will remain, as will you. They are tied to your curse and cannot be changed even by your Sister Kasdi.”

She felt anger boiling up. “Are you finished? Or do you have a few more curses to lay on me?”

“You will not reconsider in light of this?”

“Not now. Not ever. Not after this.”

“Your resignation is accepted, then, immediately. Without the special undergarments you could not ride a horse, so I will credit your account with the price. You both have ten minutes to leave.”

He stalked off, and she went to find Spirit. Come, let us go.

Spirit was surprised that Suzl had nothing on and nothing with her, and stared a moment. She saw the spell then, linking the two of them, its stamp not Ravi’s but someone strange. She realized now the depth of the sacrifice Suzl was making, and the total trust the dugger had placed in her hands. She hugged Suzl and there were a few tears in her eyes.

Suzl gestured and said, although she knew Spirit couldn’t understand, “Come on. Let’s blow this crummy joint before I come to my senses.”

Together, with nothing, they walked off into the void.

They spent days walking in the void, following a randomly picked string. Spirit cleared all old strings from Suzl and put on her own so that, even should they get separated, she could be found anywhere in Flux. Suzl had good stamina considering her fat, but her stride was short and she could hardly keep pace with Spirit’s energy. For her part, Spirit began to experiment with just what she could do with the Flux power. Up to now, she’d taken the accepted wisdom that her powers were strictly limited, but those limitations were not that precise, as her handling of the strings showed.

Any attempt to alter or change Suzl physically was a failure, although it wasn’t clear whether it was Spirit’s curse or Suzl’s doing the blocking. She could, however, divert Flux energy from herself to Suzl by touching the dugger, such as by grasping a hand. The linkage Ravi had forged was the next experiment, and she found that she could direct the power through that linkage as easily as through a physical contact. Unknowingly, Ravi had done Suzl a favor. She found, for example, that she could alleviate the bad chafing that inevitably developed under Suzl’s breasts and in her crotch, and she made a small scar on Suzl’s arm vanish. She could, indeed, offer help and protection, something which relieved Suzl as much or more than it did Spirit. Food could be materialized when needed, and although it wasn’t fancy, it was filling and could be consumed by both.

For Suzl’s part, she had, in the first hours away, felt very much the fool, cut off and alone, but no longer. Instead, she began to feel what she had not felt in a very long time—free. The flow of energy from Spirit to her encouraged her, and interested her as well. She became convinced that some closer links were possible, and they spent hours trying things without either quite knowing what the other was doing—or what they themselves were doing, for that matter. She sensed that Spirit was attempting some sort of link and tried to go along. For quite a while, though, the thing seemed to elude them, just out of reach. The only true non-miming communication seemed to be music, with Suzl whistling tunes and clapping time and Spirit dancing to it. Still, for all its frustrations, the dugger had not felt happier or more at ease in years.

Finally they happened on somebody’s Pocket, a fairly nice little place much like a tropical garden. Whoever had made it was not at home, and it was uninhabited. Suzl suspected it was one of the Pockets developed by stringer wizards for breaks on those routes where there was far too much distance between destinations for good health, and places like this provided a break for everyone.

Because Suzl had been a dugger in Flux for so long, she did not dismiss Spirit as childlike at all. Seventeen—no, eighteen now—yes, but no child. She knew that Spirit’s endless fascination with all the little things was curiosity and wonder, and the more closely she observed, the more closely she came to believe that there was real purpose in those seeming lapses. She wished hard that she could see the wonders she suspected Spirit could.

But there was a childlike quality to their existence which neither minded and both exploited.

Life was fun and games, curiosity and answers, without worries or responsibilities. Spirit awakened in the usually cynical dugger feelings long buried and assumed lost.

Inside Spirit, the Soul Rider manipulated the probabilities through Flux, establishing the proper situation.

Suzl was aware of subtle changes in her own attitudes. Before, she had always thought of herself as female, for that was how she’d been born and raised and that was the role culture dictated. Now, though, she began to think of herself more and more as a male, as Spirit’s sexual opposite despite the rest of her body. Although she would never look any different, her sexual orientation was shifting firmly to the male side. She realized, suddenly, that for the first time in her life she was sincerely, deeply, and madly in love with somebody other than herself.

Spirit had never thought of herself as abnormal or unusual, always going for the handsome men, but Suzl filled a deep need in her new consciousness for solidity and companionship. What had seemed freakish and odd now seemed cute and endearing. As she could no longer imagine her old life, she could not now imagine life without Suzl, nor did she want Suzl to look or be any other way than the way she now was. The dugger who had sacrificed all to live with and like her now became the one and only important thing in her whole life. Passion replaced lust and need, and they both knew it and felt it in each other.

And the Soul Rider’s equations continued to work themselves out.

They were still in the Pocket, lazing on the cool grass, lying side by side, and Suzl’s hand reached out and touched Spirit’s, and they squeezed. Something flowed from within to within. The love and devotion that had built up flowed from each, met, and merged into one. It was not something that was a shock or which caused sudden realization; it simply was. But, somehow, on a basic level, each could feel what the other felt, and, in a sense, each knew what the other was thinking. Not clear thoughts, and not specific ones, but general senses of things. Not only was miming no longer necessary, it seemed terribly slow and cumbersome—primitive. Their link did not even require looking at the other. Only their language, in which they thought, separated them. Beyond that level, they could read each other as easily as Suzl could read a sign.

Both were aware that something important, even vital, had happened that went beyond their own selves, but neither knew just what or how it applied. Somehow Suzl could now feel Spirit’s wonder, and neither was afraid anymore. And so, one day, they simply decided it was time to leave and follow another string to where it led. There was a whole world to see and explore, and an infinity of wondrous paths to take.

The first Fluxland they encountered was called Galikin, a huge forest in which all the inhabitants seemed to live in trees. Not just in them, although some of the trunks were huge enough and hollow to make comfortable and spacious homes, but atop them as well, in often elaborate but just as often simple tree houses. The local Fluxlord was neither mean nor imaginative as some of them went, but did seem to have the idea that she was the queen of trees and forests. Everybody wore green outfits, and in fact, although they looked quite human, they all also had green skins. The difference was more than skin deep, however; they seemed to get all their nourishment from light, like the plants, and eagerly left their homes to be in the open every time it rained. They spent their days planting, pruning, trimming and all the rest, and the whole place seemed to Suzl to be a forest that had a manicure.

It was a good place for a first test, and it served additionally to tell the dugger just where they were in relation to every place else. They knew who Spirit was, and were properly fascinated, although Suzl made Spirit seem rather less extraordinary by her own odd appearance.

Spirit liked Galikin, although Suzl found the place rather dull. At least at night, they feared no embarrassments even in the middle of a public place.

They left after a couple of days and made their way along a route Suzl suggested but could not follow or see. She was well aware of how terribly slow their pace was because of her, and she was determined to do something about it. They ran into a stringer train at one point, and while she found that the word had been put out not to hire her on, that did not interfere with business. She had a substantial credit account, and she could use it. The stringer drove a hard bargain, but she came off with a strong, healthy young mule, a pair of saddlebags, and an extremely worn “guest saddle,” as they were called in the trade. With a little help from the duggers rigging some leather straps, she was now able to ride sidesaddle, if not in speed at least in comfort. Although things still seemed very slow, the pace picked up considerably now, as Spirit could match the mule’s pace with an effortless jog.

In three days they reached Anchor Kaegh, the first Anchor they had approached since going off on their own. Suzl approached it with some trepidation. Duggers, once forbidden in Anchor, were now permitted there, but permission did not mean that everybody liked or agreed with it. Duggers were feared and mistrusted, and most still believed the old teaching that their disfigurements were the curses of Heaven on blighted souls. Always before, the careful clothing had masked her as just a very fat woman. Now she could not hide her true self, and she was, naked, clearly misshapen even without the added male organ.

They entered through the high gate that was no longer sealed, and the customs man could not hide his distaste. “Names?”

“I am Suzl, a dugger of Flux, and this is Spirit of Anchor Logh.”

The man softened a bit as he recognized her from the pictures and it was clear he knew the story. “Oh, yes. Fascinating.” Clearly he also found lustful rewards in the seeing. He changed back to the other, more ugly tone for Suzl. “You are traveling with her?”

“Yes. Uh—I know her mother well. You understand.”

The official did—sort of. At least it was true, and saved a lot of added embarrassment and questions. It was clear, however, that the official could not understand why Sister Kasdi would entrust her daughter to a dugger, particularly one with so prominent—well… “What do you wish in Anchor?”

“I have a dugger’s account. I need a few small things from a decent market, and I would like to register the two of us at the temple to simplify things in the future.” Such registration would give her documents which would prove her citizenship and secure more firmly some legal rights. With the stringers such stuff was unnecessary, but as they were to travel, perhaps to many Anchors, they would need it.

“Um, I know about her,” the customs man commented, “but can’t you, ah, put on something? It’ll make life easier for you.”

“It probably would,” she agreed, “but I’ve got an involuntary spell against it. That’s one of the reasons I need the registration.”

They passed through and spent the first night in a small park off the main road. They drew gawkers and lots of curious stares, but had no real problems until they passed through a town near the end of the second day. A crowd of young toughs cornered them and started yelling epithets, particularly at Suzl, who felt very defenseless. Spirit, however, knew what was going on and stood between Suzl and the toughs. Three of the men started discussing what they would like to do with the mute girl, then rushed her. Spirit slapped the mule and it bolted quickly down the street, then took them on. It was half a block before Suzl could bring the mule under control and look nervously back, but what she saw she hadn’t expected at all.

She had never seen a human being that limber or with reflexes that fast. Spirit’s physical strength didn’t show except in her hard thighs, but it was enormous. She ran at the three, jumped, turned, kicked one hard in the chest, a second in the groin, and caught the third with a blow to the Adam’s apple, all seemingly in one fluid motion. This galvanized the rest to converge on her, but she gave a leap that must have been more than two meters in the air, kicked off one attacker’s back, and sprinted towards Suzl, who needed no more encouragement. She rode as fast as she could, which wasn’t fast but was good enough, while Spirit passed her on the run as if she were standing still.

It was funny, but the mute girl seemed enormously pleased by all that, and as surprised at her strength and skill as Suzl and the attackers had been. Suzl, however, felt depressed. She cursed her body for its inability to do much of anything. She couldn’t even get on the mule without Spirit’s help, although she always had been able to mount a horse before. Maybe Ravi was right, she thought sourly. I can’t even defend myself or help the only person I care for. I’m weak as a baby, move like a rock, and my grossness draws violence. There would be many more incidents like that one, she knew, and one time even Spirit probably would need help.

They endured a lot more insults, but no more violence, on the way to the capital. Suzl went first to the temple to attend to business, then planned to buy what she needed and get out fast. Spirit, of course, was far too claustrophobic to enter, but remained in the square chasing and playing with the birds and drawing a crowd.

The priestess administrator, at least, seemed charitable. Suzl submitted to a full identity photo series, showing front, back, and both profiles of the whole body, and submitted to an examination. It took several hours before it was through and she received the document. She glanced down the vital statistics. Height, 144.62 cm.; weight, 108.86 kg.; sex, male. She—no, he, for now it had been made official and was in fact the way Suzl felt—stared at the weight figure gloomily, although he knew that some of that was in the special bone and muscle support supplied by Ravi’s paid-for wizardry and more was for the stomach that supported the breasts and the rear that counterbalanced it. But it was still higher than it had ever been. What particularly shocked was the height. It was 6 cms lower than it had ever been. Now that he thought of it, though, his head had originally come up to Spirit’s breast line, and now it was below. He voiced his misgivings to the priestess.

“I think you ought to see a spell doctor in Flux,” she suggested. “It sounds to me like either you’ve got spells you don’t know about or some are becoming unravelled.”

They were very nice, agreeing to go out for him and get the few items he wanted, and then showing on the map a quick way out of the Anchor that would avoid major population. They understood.

The supplies consisted mostly of two boxes of cigars, a huge box of safety matches, a generalized map of World, and an octarina—a small instrument made from a specialized type of gourd. He had learned to play one on the trail and had lost it long before.

It took two more days to exit the other gate through the route the temple had suggested, but there were only minor incidents and no trouble. They headed now southwest, towards more familiar territory again. Suzl had decided that if he needed a Flux doctor, he might as well satisfy an old curiosity itch and visit Pericles, home Fluxland of the wizard Mervyn, the only publicly known member of the Nine Who Guard.

Pericles itself was off the usual beaten track and visitors were generally discouraged, although it was closer to the four-Anchor cluster in which both Suzl and Spirit had been born than to any other.

The map that Suzl had was pretty barren; it showed only some major Fluxlands and all the Anchors, but it was still something that simply would not have been permitted in the old days. The Church and the stringers had kept geography as much to themselves as possible, so much so that the amazing pattern even this bare-bones map showed was unknown to most of the population, Anchor and Flux.

Anchors varied in size from as small as twenty by forty kilometers to more than a hundred-and-fifty by two-hundred-and-fifty kilometers, and they varied widely in shape as well—Anchor Logh reminded most people of a shelled peanut, while Anchor Kaegh was an irregular crescent—but the twenty-eight Anchors were clustered in groups of four, all four’s closest inner point being equidistant from a Hellgate. It was evidence of intelligent design that gave skeptics like Suzl pause.

The prime function of the Nine was to guard those Hellgates from any intrusions, and one lived near each cluster in a private Fluxland, although only one let it be known that he was, in fact, one of the Nine. Mervyn was the oldest and the dean of his group, as well as an instructor in Flux power both privately and in the wizards’ mad university town of Globbus, where Suzl’s original curse developed so many years before. Most Fluxlands were open; a few were closed off by a permanent shield of force maintained by the Fluxlord and could be entered only by permission. Pericles was one of the latter.

Because of the shield, the only thing visible to outsiders was a huge, ornate marble archway into which had been set a massive bronze set of double doors. Only this was apparent. One could walk around the gate and even see the other side of the door, but nothing else but void.

Before Suzl could even knock, though, the huge doors swung open to reveal a beautiful scene within. It was green, rolling countryside with lots of trees and what seemed like thousands of different kinds and colors of blooming flowers all around. Insects buzzed about, and the air was warm and humid, the sky a light blue with a bunch of fluffy white clouds. A creature approached them, a creature of Flux that was strange indeed, having the head and torso of a beautiful woman and the hindquarters of a spotted pony. She trotted up to them and stopped, and Spirit gaped. Suzl had seen stranger, of course.

“Welcome to Pericles,” the centauress said. “I’m Melana. I’ll take you to Mervyn.”

“I gather we were expected,” Suzl commented.

Melana smiled. “He knows whatever he wants to know, and what he doesn’t know he devotes the bulk of his time to finding out. Come.”

Suzl urged the mule onward, and Spirit tagged along, keeping pace and just looking at the beauty of the land.

Here and there were columned structures of fine marble and statuary. Museums, libraries, and special collections, Melana told them. The statues and buildings were copies of things Mervyn had seen in some of his treasured ancient books.

Around and about were other centaurs, and there were half-human fish in a wide lake, sunning themselves on rocks. There were many races of strange creatures in Pericles, it seemed, most of them half human and half some animal or another. They all seemed happy and friendly and content, something which Suzl envied. They were as perfectly adapted as any human stock could be to new form; he, on the other hand, was an example of how not to put somebody together.

He had stared again and again at those four photos on the official document, and liked what he saw less and less. He couldn’t understand what Spirit saw in him, and he loved her all the more for not seeing what was so evident. The profiles were particularly shocking, since the size of that belly and ass stood out along with the grossness of the breasts. It had been years since he’d been able to see down past those breasts, and he avoided mirrors. Without the stomach’s support, though, those mammaries now would droop literally to his crotch, and he would be unable to stand. Recently he’d been feeling some pain in the lower back, legs, and ankles, and this helped explain it.

Mervyn met them in a pleasant open glen near one of the marble buildings. He looked old and frail and his white beard was long and scraggly, but he had tremendous power in him, a power which maintained all this for hundreds of square kilometers with lots to spare.

The usual greetings were brief but warm, and Mervyn and Suzl sent Spirit off to frolick with some of the creatures nearby. He then materialized two stuffed chairs in the middle of the glen for them. They looked rather comic where they were, but Suzl sat gratefully.

After explaining the problems and worries, Suzl poured out his heart to Mervyn, how he’d been feeling about himself, his total sense of helplessness, and his tremendous closeness to Spirit which by now was close to worship. The old man listened attentively, particularly at his account of the growing romantic feelings and the emotional bond that created communication and his tale of the curious linking spell.

Finally he said, “All right. While we’ve been talking, I’ve been analyzing both your mind and your spells. I find the rest fascinating, and hope that the two of you will remain here a while so that I may study your bonding. There is something afoot here that is beyond what Coydt intended or I or Sister Kasdi could see. But first we must address your current problem.”

“It’s a spell, isn’t it? Somebody threw another whammy on old Suzl when he wasn’t looking.”

“Something like that. Let’s start at the beginning. You were a normal human woman, short and pudgy, but that was all. Then you got involved in that attempt to remove Dar’s sexual spell and got caught in the crossfire, getting his penis and a variation of his curse. That curse is quite good and nothing for amateurs to deal with. You knew that at the time, and were told the possible consequences of trying to remove it.”

He nodded. “I understand the problem. Anybody who tries to remove it might wind up with nastiness back at them. But I accepted that. I really didn’t mind, after a while, although it took me years to decide on one direction and one identity. I can handle that. But this other…”

“And you really had few problems until you signed on with this Ravi a few years ago?”

“That’s about it. After all those years I just got sick of being on the low rung, and when he offered me a foreman’s job, I took it.”

“But there was a price.”

“Well, yeah, but I just figured he was doing that game with his own power to magnify what he liked. I never thought of it as permanent.”

“Apparently he knew this and decided to keep a hand on you. This spell is not something he did; it’s something he bought, and he also bought control of it. And you accepted it, even though you didn’t know you were accepting all of it.”

“Yeah, I—shit! You mean it’s one of those things like Cass has?”

“Well, yes and no. Yes, it is one of those self-imposed spells. No, it isn’t as absolute as hers or Spirit’s because you have no Flux power, so the linkage, while voluntary, was done for you. What if did was redesign your body and give him control of it. He could change what he willed, and the spell would adjust the body to cope. What he did when you quit was simply relinquish control of the spell to you. He knew what this would do. As you had no Flux power, you could not maintain a balance in yourself, and things began to go a bit wild. It is the same sort of thing that happens to duggers lost alone in the void that turns them into unhuman and semi-human creatures. You have been, I think, sexually hyperactive, so those were the areas that were stimulated, this time beyond the spell’s ability to cope. It’s good you came when you did. The sexual areas are receiving all the attention, and soon you would have been immobile.”

He shivered. “And my shrinkage and growing weakness?”

“There again it’s you. You feel ugly, deformed, unhappy. This goes to make you more so. You feel totally powerless, while always in the past you’ve been aggressive and in charge of yourself. You love Spirit.”

“She is the only thing of any importance in my whole life. She is my whole life, Mervyn. I couldn’t stand life without her now.”

He nodded sagely. “But to be with her, with her limitations, you must surrender yourself totally to her. She provides everything—food, water, love, protection—you see where I’m leading? You had never surrendered yourself before, but now the choice was surrender or leave her. You’ve placed all your needs directly in her hands. You killed your aggressiveness for this and, in the dugger way, this unconscious decision reflects in your physical self. You see yourself as weak and helpless, and so you become weak and helpless. In the void you would eventually become so helpless she would have to feed you.”

He gave a low whistle. “So what can I do?”

“Ravi’s spell is cleverly linked to your curse. At this time I would not like to remove it, but if you remained here and I could bring in others from time to time, we might eventually find a way to reverse it. I believe, after all this time, I see the internal logic of the curse and its clever traps, and I might be willing to take a crack at it. But this will have a result you might not like. It would take a massive voluntary binding spell that would supply an equal counter, and that would not only make you female once again, but would also lock that sex in permanently.”

He shook his head. “A while ago I’d have jumped at it, but I am different now. Spirit’s all oral.”

“It would end that part of your relationship,” he admitted.

“So what’s the alternative? I can change into a vegetable or I can lose Spirit. I’d rather die.”

“The only alternative I can see now is also a problem. I can’t say we couldn’t break that add-on, but it would take a very long time before we were confident. You can leave it as it is, and I’ll give you some easing spells that might slow the process down, and wait for a cure I’m sure is possible—if I can get time from the experts to work on it.”

“So you’re saying the same thing. A cure is possible, but it might take years during which time I’ll get worse, and there might not be a cure at all at the end of it.”

“There’s certainly a cure, but, yes, it might be long before anyone will risk those traps on your curse, and there is the possibility of the cure being worse than the disease. There always is. The point is, there is hope that way.”

“Big deal. Either way, I lose.”

“The other alternative is a drastic one, but simple. It would involve adjusting and fine-tuning your current body for the condition you now have. But to keep your own unconscious from undoing it, it would have to be strong and voluntary. Only you could change it, and without Flux power you never could. You would be frozen in your current condition forever. And I would have to insist that you agree to some psychotherapy spells to make it work at all.”

He sat there a moment, thinking. He could be a human woman again and lose Spirit. He could let his unconscious turn him from freak into monster and lose everything. Or he could submit to wizardry once more and be forever trapped an ugly freak. It was a rough choice.

He was suddenly conscious of Spirit nearby, and turned and saw the mute girl behind her chair, looking down at him and smiling, and he instantly knew the only choice he could make.

“Freeze it,” he told the wizard, and Spirit took and squeezed his hand.

“Well, sit back, relax, and make your mind a blank if you can. Be patient with me, though. This nonhuman biology is a bit complex, and you only get one chance to get it right.”

The physical process, however, was not difficult to do. There was a good deal of permanent muscle to build where there should have been only fat. The trouble was, he had to work around the curses rather than changing them, so the mass he needed he had to take from elsewhere on her. Removing much of the fatty, buildup from her face restored it very much to its original, cute appearance, which helped in several ways. The legs were needed for support, so material had to be taken from her arms, which were then shortened a little. Muscle had to be placed in the breasts, so the stomach could do more counterweighting and less supporting, but those breasts, thirty centimeters long, would stick almost straight out. That allowed him to bring the stomach in and force the mass to her spine for rigidity and counterweighting. The tremendous thighs and rigid, heavy-curved spine would carry the counterweight.

Mervyn was suddenly aware that Spirit was following everything he was doing and, more interesting, seemed to understand it in detail and even, it seemed, somehow was able to suggest something here, something there. Finally, the physical part was done, and he turned to the psychological. He needed a tool to rebuild her sense of identity and self-esteem. Suzl was male in one way only, but wanted to be more. He decided to make him/her more at ease. He sensed that Spirit liked the female aspects of Suzl, and so he addressed that problem first. Suzl had been desperately trying to think of herself as a “he,” when actually both were and would always be correct. He examined what made Spirit attractive physically to Suzl, and melded that image in with those areas, both physical and expressive, that would make her like that in herself as well.

Mervyn had much experience in what was the art of psychological adaptation. There was no sense in turning someone into a centaur if they didn’t love to be one. His handle on the matter was Spirit, who seemed again to understand the question. What did Spirit see when she looked at Suzl? He took a gamble that the unintelligible mathematical series she sent was what he wished, and used it. If it worked, Suzl would no longer fight battles in her own mind over whether he was she or vice versa. Spirit, it seemed, thought of Suzl as “she” and so “she” it would be.

The solution was frame of reference. Suzl loved Spirit, but now only Spirit, not Suzl or anyone else, would be her mental frame of reference. If her looks pleased Spirit, that was enough. If her split sexual identity was erotic and what Spirit thought made Suzl a unique treasure, then she would be content with it and no longer have any conflicts over it. It was the correct solution, and he knew it. Her ego was now based on Spirit and nothing else.

His only real worry about the spell was his inability to talk to or understand what Spirit thought. It was all well and good to freeze Suzl this way, but would Spirit always feel the same? The answer came from an astonishing quarter, and he almost reeled from it.

Something else took control, something that was from Spirit but not Spirit. Mervyn was so excited he almost lost his whole train of thought. For the first time, he was in a sort of direct contact with a Soul Rider! He stared with wizard’s senses at the faint double aura around Spirit and saw it work through her.

The mysterious and complex language Coydt had imposed, or thought he had imposed, on Spirit was the language of the Soul Riders themselves. As the Soul Rider worked, there were occasional flashes in the same language that seemed to superimpose again. At first it confused the wizard, but now he realized that, whatever it was, it was coming from yet another source. The Rider was getting, at a speed far too rapid for Mervyn to comprehend, instructions from an outside source. The strange language could handle the speed; human language could not.

The Soul Rider completed its work and seemed to sense the old wizard looking at it. He felt an eerie sense of awareness, and found his sense being directed to a different area of Spirit. He saw, and he understood.

The Soul Rider’s plan—or its master’s plan, whoever that was—would continue. Spirit was pregnant by Suzl, and had been for some time. She was so lean and trim that it was already starting to show, but it just hadn’t been noticed yet. And then the contact was broken, and Suzl slept.

She slept for three full days.