“And the communications?”
“This is part of the diabolical portion. Somehow he’s come up with a new language, a shifting mathematical abstract that serves to carry thoughts and process memories, but its basic code randomly shifts several times a minute. I would say that all of her memories and basic personality are intact, but the language is so abstract and complex that it bears no relation to ours, and since it constantly shifts, it’s impossible by the present arts to decode. I would almost say it is a language better suited to machines than humans, although what machines would need languages I don’t know, nor can I guess where he got it. Even duplicating the language spell won’t help unless you know and start with the exact same coding as she’s using at the moment—and even if you matched it up, it would require reorganizing your mind. You would be thinking in her language and not your own. The two are simply incompatible. Nor could you talk to her, since the language is so abstract no human throat could utter it. She can neither read, write, speak, or understand, and since her linguistic frame of reference is so different, she could not relearn ours.”
“Diabolical indeed,” Kasdi agreed gravely. “It would be interesting to know the source of that language. It’s not the kind of thing anyone might make up.”
“I agree. Much time will be spent on that question, I assure you. But his evil mind runs deeper than I’ve yet explained. Again, it is in the nature of the language. She simply cannot use or develop or understand the use for human artifacts. Anything made by humans. Nor use domestic beasts. Oh, I have no doubt she recognizes and knows these things intellectually, but she is prevented from comprehending them. It is a trigger spell that only comes into force when she is faced with the situation. In this she is less than the animals, most of whom can instinctively use certain tools or make certain constructs or at least learn some simple mechanisms. Her life is the basic human needs and no more. She is not permitted to do anything else.”
“It must drive her nuts. Poor Spirit! What have they done to you?”
“Coydt’s even ahead there. She sleeps a lot, and I doubt if she dwells or broods or thinks very long on any one subject. She’ll sit and watch a bee or a butterfly for hours. This isn’t to say that she’s dumb, only that she’s been totally adapted to her condition by the spells. We’ve already pushed the sign language as far as we can without using spelling, I suspect. She’s a good pupil and catches on fast. It’s basic, and that’s all it’ll ever be. It helps that she has such an expressive face and that she seems now, at least, to wear her emotions like a signpost.”
“So how long will it take you now to break the spell?”
“Never. And I mean that.”
“What! But that’s impossible! Even Coydt can’t be that good!”
“He isn’t. No, if he had imposed this spell, rather than just written it, it could be peeled off, layer by layer, although there would be some problems, because of the language system, and some danger. But he didn’t put it on her. She put it on herself, with the binding spell.”
Kasdi was suddenly on her feet. “What? But how is that possible? She doesn’t know enough to use that spell!”
“You know she has your old Soul Rider.”
“Yes, but—you don’t mean it did it?”
“No, as far as I can tell, it was its usual passive self. And since it didn’t take on Coydt when it had its chance, that means this is only the first part of a much larger plot. In fact, it’s the most downright diabolical thing of all. You see, there is a way to break the spell.”
That statement was almost as great a shock to her as Spirit’s condition. “But you taught me it was impossible!”
“There is one way, but it’s a hard one, and I think Coydt knows it. If someone of equal or superior power voluntarily takes on the spell, and if the spell will fit the volunteer, it can be moved. That was almost certainly the bargain. He ran her through three days of terror using Flux power, then offered her this way out with the chance it could be broken. She took it. I would have, too, under the same circumstances and with her ignorance of the limits of Flux power.”
Kasdi sat back down again, looking weak and drained. “I see. And that’s really what this is all about. Coydt sends her back like this, knowing it will tear me apart.”
“Not to mention embarrass you through the empire,” the wizard pointed out. “You can take on Fluxlords but couldn’t save your own daughter. It sows nervousness and insecurity.”
She nodded. “I don’t really mind that, though. It’ll pass. But the real kicker is that the spell will only really fit Spirit or me—right?”
“He seems to have arranged it so. Are you considering it?”
“I’m tired, Mervyn. Sick and tired. If this thing can’t go on without me, it isn’t worth doing at all. Don’t I owe her that?”
“Perhaps. I will not argue politics with you. It is still not a solution, as Coydt well knows. It’s his final joke on us, so to speak. You see, the self-binding spell is a rather simple one, as you know, and it is always the same. It is the spell or spells that attach to it that are the important ones. Should you take Spirit’s binding spell, the mathematics would balance and the flow would go in both directions. You would get Spirit’s binding spells—and she would get yours.”
Kasdi sighed. “I see,” was all she managed. It was all too clear a vision. Spirit would be bound to all the vows of the Church and to the ascetic lifestyle that Kasdi had imposed on herself. It was the sort of existence she could never imagine for Spirit, particularly without the job or any sense of commitment. She would be able to talk, and to learn to use and develop her Flux powers, but she would also not be allowed any possessions of her own, would be denied sex, would be bound to the kind of simple drudgery Kasdi now was, bound to obey all the vows, rules, and laws of the Church absolutely and to the letter; yet she would not be a priestess. She would want and feel all the things a seventeen-year-old wanted and felt, but she would be unable to attain any of them. Instead of merely condemning Spirit, he would condemn them both.
“So what can we do?” she asked him pleadingly. “What will become of her? I mean, the way you talk, she is going to be like that ten years from now, a hundred, perhaps forever.”
He nodded. “I can see no other way, although we shouldn’t underestimate the Soul Rider. Remember, it got you out of some impossible situations doing these things that we all were certain was against the rules. Coydt’s way of dealing with that is quite interesting, but untried. Since the Soul Rider can act only through its host, he has limited her access to Flux power. She is passive, prevented from using any power or even committing any act to force her will on anyone. That’s why she came along with us so readily. Her power is only available for self-defense or self-preservation on a conscious level, and while it is considerable, she has the preset spells to call upon only under those circumstances. Since the whole set of spells is integral, all must be broken to break one. He’s counting on that spell holding, so that the Soul Rider, trapped in an immortal body, can not use its powers and knowledge against anyone, including them.”
“Will it work?”
“We won’t know until and unless the Soul Rider tries and succeeds. But the other key is in that bizarre language. If we can discover its origin and original users or intent, we might be able to mitigate the spells somehow. In the meantime, though, I would let her go.”
“What?”
“I mean it. The word is already spreading. In a few days all of World will know of the spell and its nature. She’s in no danger. There is a shell over the spell that maintains it absolutely. She is as immune from Flux power as anyone could be. Let her do what you always wanted to do and what I’m told she did, too. Let her walk the length and breadth of World and see what there is to see.”
“But—like that?”
“She must learn to live with it. People will recognize her and let her go. They will tolerate in her things they would not tolerate in themselves, for she’ll be a curiosity and something of a celebrity.”
“A freak, you mean.”
“So? She’s already restless down there. Sooner or later she’s going to go away. Let her adjust and let World adjust to her. She is going to live like that for a very long time.”
It was a sobering thought.
It was a bar in a Fluxland up in the north wilds called Hjinna. Like many of the Fluxlands in the wilds, away from any Anchors, it tended to be populated with people in the business of Flux— minor wizards false and true, retired stringers, and a fair number of fugitives. Powerful ex-stringers usually established the places in reality and relaxed to enjoy them rather than rule them.
The bar was Flandy’s Bar, and inside tough-looking men and women were drinking and talking and showing off and even gambling, something not usually possible in Flux, but possible here under the rules of the Fluxland’s proprietor, as he liked to call himself.
Through the swinging front doors stepped an enormous man, well over two meters tall and weighing, it seemed, better than two hundred kilos. He was clearly a dugger, with a purplish complexion, a misshapen, hairless face, and a permanent, insane grin, while his skin seemed all mottled and full of discolorations. In many places he would have been the object of horrible fascination and some fear, but not in Hjinna. Lots of retired duggers and those taking a break between six-month-long stringer routes were always about. In fact, although this one was a stranger to almost all of them, only one, an elderly man who’d been drinking pretty heavily, eyed the newcomer with recognition and then growing fear. He got up and made his way quickly to the back of the bar and then stepped out into the alley behind, still clutching his bottle.
The alley seemed clear, and so he turned left— and suddenly came up against a solid wall that hadn’t been there a moment before. He cried out, turned, and started the other way—and ran into another wall. In fact, he was now in a high box, the only outlet being the door back into the bar.
The door opened and a figure dressed all in black stepped out. He was a big man with a long, drooping handlebar moustache. He was dressed in stringer fashion, complete with whip and sawed-off shotgun. He was not a young man—his hair was gray and his face worn and aged, with wrinkles around the eyes—but he was in pretty good shape.
“You!” the old man croaked. “But—you’re dead! A hundred saw you fall nigh on to twenty years ago!”
“Eighteen,” the man responded. “Eighteen years, three months to be exact. So if I’m a ghost, Gilly, then what’s that make you?”
“Hey! Wait! I always liked you!” The old man paused for a moment. “This is a trick, isn’t it? Who are you—really?”
“Does it matter? I want Coydt, Gilly. I want him bad, and I want him in Anchor.”
Gilly took a swig from the bottle to steady his nerves. “Coydt? You nuts? Nobody can take Coydt; you know that!”
“I’ll take him, Gilly, because he won’t know who’s after him even when you tell him.”
“I don’t talk to Coydt. Oh, sure, we was cozy once, but nobody’s really cozy with him for long. You wind up dead—or worse.”
“You know, Gilly. You keep track. I haven’t got all night either. You know where they are. You know where they all are. You’re too scared of them not to know.”
Gilly drained the bottle, but it didn’t help. “He’s down near Anchor Logh. Half a world from here.”
“Yeah. He pulled a job down there, Gilly, and he doesn’t know it yet, but he pulled the wrong one. He woke up the dead with that one, Gilly, and now I’m going to get him.”
“What was that business to you?”
“She’s my kin, Gilly, though I didn’t even know about her until this. I can’t let people do that to kin. You know the code. You put the word out. You tell any dugger along the route that’s going out. It’ll get to me. If it’s good information, I’ll make it good with you, Gilly, I really will. Cross me, and you’re dead, too.”
Gilly laughed. “How can I cross you? Who’s gonna believe after all these years that a dead man’s out stalkin’ Coydt?”
“You give him the word if you want. He’s so puffed up and egomaniacal that he’s liable to set up a meet just to see for sure. You go ahead, Gilly. You tell him Matson’s back from the grave.”
7
SIDEBAR STRINGING
Stringers did not usually ask for Sister Kasdi when they called on Hope, so it was with some curiosity that she decided to go down to the reception hall and see these who had. For lots of personal reasons she loved the taciturn loners who plied the trade routes between Anchors and Fluxlands, not the least of which was her envy of their freedom.
Two figures waited in the temple reception room. One was a small, thin young man barely Kasdi’s height and almost as thin, although he wore the black of his profession. The other was an even shorter individual, perhaps one hundred and fifty centimeters, who was very fat, although her ample stomach was not nearly matched to her enormous breasts. She had long, thick black hair that fell down her back almost to her waist, wore unusual dark blue denim pants that seemed quite baggy, and a white tee shirt, obviously made for a very large man, but necessary to keep her enormous frontage covered.
“Suzl!” Kasdi almost screamed, and ran to the small, fat woman, hugging and kissing her. Finally, they stepped back and looked at each other.
“Cass, you look lousy,” Suzl told her.
Kasdi laughed. Of all those on World, friend and foe, only Suzl refused to call her by anything but her original name—and was probably the only one who could get away with it. “You seem to have made up for what I didn’t eat,” she shot back. “You’re fat!”
“Well, I enjoy life. Oh, uh, Cass, this is Ravi. He’s my boss, so to speak, and, well, sort of my husband.”
That caught the Sister off-guard for a moment. “Husband?” She was well aware that, as a result of a misfired spell long ago, Suzl was physically female only to a point; she had a male sexual organ and was, despite appearances and manner, really a man.
Ravi looked a bit nervous for a stringer, but said nothing.
“Yeah. I keep him respectable. We both have what each other wants most, but I have two big bonuses.”
Kasdi got the drift, and wasn’t sure whether to be shocked or understanding and tolerant. Suzl had always gone both ways sexually and was unashamed of the fact—even before her strange spell. But she had been born and raised a woman and grown up that way, and could hardly be impugned for being attracted to men. Ravi, on the other hand, was obviously a lifelong homosexual, and that was a different moral problem. It was tolerated in Flux but suppressed in Anchor, and the Church frowned on it as interfering with the prime mission of procreation. Still, Kasdi was not one to make preachments now. She was very glad to see Suzl, the only person alive who could and would tell her to her face exactly what she was thinking, no matter how blunt or uncomplimentary it may be.
“Come! Both of you! Sit down over here and talk a while!” Kasdi invited, and they took chairs in a corner of the room. “How long has it been?”
“A couple of years at least,” Suzl replied. “We were through once about ten months ago, but you were off conquering someplace or other. Actually, we’re a little off the route here, but when we heard about the ugly business, I just had to come by.”
Kasdi nodded, some of the euphoria fading as reality was brought up. “Yes. So it’s spread through the network.”
For the first time, Ravi spoke, in a thin, reedy voice that was somewhat grating. “It has spread through all of World, and not merely from this source. There is every evidence to show that Coydt’s own people are also telling the tale to get maximum effect.”
“He would,” Kasdi said angrily. “Some day we’ll meet, he and I, and he’ll learn the price of his work.”
“You’re not the only one gunning for Coydt, Cass,” Suzl told her. “Somebody else has the whole stringer network out trying to track him down.”
“Oh? Who?”
“You’re not gonna like this.”
She felt an odd chill. “Why? What do you mean?”
“Well, those that have seen him say he looks like and claims to be Matson.”
Somehow she both expected and feared those words, words she had somehow suspected to hear despite all evidence and experience for eighteen years. “You know Matson’s long dead. He died in my arms from a hole in his chest the size of a grapefruit. You know. You were there, too, that day.”
Suzl nodded. “I know, although I never saw him. You and lots of others did, though, and I don’t doubt anybody. He’s officially dead, that’s for sure. But whoever this is has taken his form and knows all the stringer codes. Anybody with power can seem to be anybody else in Flux, you know that, but one thing’s sure. Whoever he is, he has Jomo with him.”
The huge, misshapen dugger came immediately to mind, so brutal and grotesque on the outside, but so very gentle and understanding on the inside. Jomo had been Matson’s chief driver, the train boss, and fiercely loyal to his boss. Jomo, too, had been there that terrible day, and he had been the one to pull her off his lifeless body. She’d heard he never went back to the trains again, refusing to work for any other stringer, but had retired and gone to work in one of the old dugger communities in the wild. She had not seen him either, not in eighteen years, except in the nightmares she had off and on to this day, reliving that horrible scene.
“Jomo could explain a lot,” she told them. “He always liked me, and he worshipped Matson. He’d know all the people and all the codes. If he found somebody up there with a grudge against Coydt, and they are legion, and with Flux power, it might be a way to throw Coydt off balance. Maybe— maybe he th’inks he’s revenging for Matson, to pay off the injury to Matson’s child.”
“Could be,” Suzl agreed. “It’s sure got old Coydt’s boys running around, though. Coydt seems to feel the same way you do, and he’s moving heaven and hell to find out who it is. Word is that three of his best people have already turned up dead, so I guess they found out.”
This was getting interesting in more ways than one. “Suzl—Ravi—do you know where Coydt is now?”
“He is in Anchor, certainly,” Ravi responded. “He has altered his appearance and has appeared in a number of Anchors just southwest of here, mostly under old and familiar guises and aliases. You will not catch him unawares in Flux, if that is your thinking, and people are far too frightened of him to betray him in Anchor—even to you—pardon me, but you see how it is seen elsewhere. He even kidnapped and cursed forever your own daughter.”
She nodded. “I know. But he still knows I’m looking, and now he has a different enemy as well. In a way, Jomo is doing me a great service. If Coydt fears ambush in Anchor from Jomo and his companion, whoever he really is, he will spend most of his time in Flux, where eventually he will have to come to terms with me. But if he wants no fight with me right now, and he doesn’t seem to, then he has to expose himself in Anchor to an unknown assassin. I wonder if he’s feeling uncomfortable for the first time in his life?”
“I would doubt it,” Ravi replied. “I do not think Coydt can feel very much anymore. Do not ever believe he is afraid of you, even if he should be. If he chooses not to take you on, it is because he has other things to do. He loves only fear in others and the power it generates for him. He is quite cautious in Anchor, but he walks where he wills and when he wishes. It is for others to fear him. Nothing else is acceptable to him.”
“Still, the pressure is on him, all the more if he is up to some new evil plan. If that’s so, it’s directed against me and the Church, and Jomo can queer his plans. If he’s not afraid, he’s at least being overcautious, and that’s better than nothing.”
Suzl decided to change the subject back to the original. “How is Spirit doing?”
“She’s adjusted well, although it was very hard on her at first. She’s restless, though, being trapped here. Mervyn thinks I ought to let her go into the world, but I can’t see how I can in good conscience. I mean, in many ways she’s like a baby. No shame, no embarrassment, and very little communication or understanding. Come—let’s go out and see her, and you’ll see my problem.”
Her weeks in the garden had given Spirit the time to think and sort things out as the complex spell worked its way into every fabric of her and became in a very real way a part of her.
In a way, understanding was due to Coydt. His demonstration in his office back in the Pocket had shown her that attitudes, which are taken for granted, were not the same as reality. Having the time to think and reflect on her life and attitudes before the spell and compare them both to her behavior now and to other people’s reactions to that behavior had given her an understanding of just what had happened to her.
Clothing was normal. People did not walk around in the nude and it was considered immoral behavior. She knew and understood this, but could no longer accept it. Clothing, any form of covering, seemed immoral, unnatural, even repugnant to her now. She knew that her beauty combined with her nakedness would make men lustful and turn folks on, but she didn’t mind—although once she would have. She would never again apologize or feel inhibited by anything that was normal and natural.
She slept a lot, and it seemed that every time she awoke things seemed different to her. Small things she’d never noticed, like the sound of a quiet breeze in the treetops or the shapes of clouds or the rustling of wind in the grass, were beautiful and endlessly fascinating. Nothing that other people prized or worried about seemed the least bit important to her anymore, not even any of those things that used to worry and concern her. She wasn’t even sure now if she wanted the spell broken. Time no longer had meaning, nor did ambition. Her wants were simple and her needs were few.