“They’ll probably breathe what we do. Otherwise, why be interested in this place? It’s no threat, particularly as we are now, so they either want our world to use for themselves, which is why they’re attacking, or they’re missionaries willing to kill us if they can’t convert us. You seem sure they’re not people.”
“I’m sure.”
“Then I doubt if they’re missionaries. So they want this place, either to live on or because we’re blocking traffic, I don’t know, but it’s a good bet that they’re air breathers. If they’re not they’ll have to carry their air with them or make it from Flux, and that gives them a real weakness. If they are, then anything that breathes can be stopped by making it stop breathing. There’s a thousand ways to do that. I don’t know about the rest, but enough to do any harm will probably have to fill up the big hole, not that puny little inside Gate. You pile those tunnels with several tons of high explosive and a detonator triggered through the passageway or whatever it is to the temples. The explosion won’t hurt those walls—we haven’t been able to carve so much as an initial in whatever those temples are made of. So what you get is the biggest damned cannon in the history of World, and if we figure that the Gate end is damped—otherwise all that stuff would just keep shooting into World and do nobody any good—you ran it all right up the ass of anybody sitting in that big hole in the ground. Then you attack them from outside and pick up the pieces.”
“You make it sound so easy.”
“No. it’d be a hell of a dirty, messy war.” countered Matson. “They’d still have their weapons and all that knowledge like you said, and we would have cut off their retreat. They’d have to win or die. I’m betting on sheer numbers. Way long ago, when they sealed up the Gates, there were probably not many people here on the whole planet. If there were, we’d be up to our armpits in people now. I figure. Now there are maybe forty, fifty million people in Flux and Anchor, and all of them have the same problem as the enemy. Backs to the wall and no place to run. There are only seven Gates and those holes are only so big. So you take forty million against maybe a few thousand very well-armed, well-trained combat troops with nothing to lose. They might take out half the population, but we’d get them.”
“What a fascinating concept. Matson, I wouldn’t have believed that you of all people would be such an optimist.”
“I’m no optimist. I may be way off the mark in my ignorance of the enemy and the Gates. All I can do is look at what we do know and what I can see and create the best possible military scenario. If you want the truth, what I just said might work, but it won’t. All seven tunnels aren’t packed with high explosive ready to go off. None of them are, or are likely to be. If you don’t get their bases or whatever they are and knock ’em out early, they’ll have defenses set up and be well deployed before anything can be brought to bear against them. If they control intact Gates, they can be reinforced. Or they just set up there with all the Flux power in the world at their disposal and a base that’s the biggest amplifier we can ever imagine and ignore our attacks, then just increase their perimeter as they can while feeding in reinforcements and material until they all meet up. That’s what’s going to happen someday, because everybody’s so bent on keeping the Gates closed they’re not willing to accept the idea that we can still win even with them open. You let an enemy confuse ignorance with stupidity and you just have another fat, powerful wizard begging for a shotgun blast in the back. You be stupid and ignorant, and they got you where they want you.”
Tilghman nodded, taking it all in. Finally he said. “I’m ready to discuss our problem with the Guild now. If anything, you make things easier, not harder, for me.”
“Yes?”
“I hope you can remain here another six days. In fact, I would advise it anyway. Flux in this cluster could become very dangerous at that time. It’d be two days, maybe three to the wall anyway. Stay around three days and we’ll go down to the wall together. I promise you that what we’re going to do will end the Guild’s primary objections. Seven days from now the network will be dismantled, and you can be on hand to assure yourself of that. We will also cease at that time making the full-scale amplifiers for outside markets, and repairing or renewing the ones now in the field. We have no more interest in opening those Gates than you, and every stake in keeping them closed and secure. All research and attempts at Flux communication will cease as of now. Will that satisfy you?”
Matson didn’t like the sound of that, and he hadn’t expected such a cave-in without a demonstration of power. It was too easy. The man was up to something, that was for sure, but he wasn’t going to say what. “Well, I’m sure it’ll be fine with the Guild. Me, I’m a little tired of being Exhibit A every time I walk down a street, like I got two heads and four arms or something, but I guess I can stand three days of it. I have to admit I’m a little curious as to what you got in mind anyway, and the closer I am to you the less likely it is to hurt me. Still, it bothers me personally. I got two daughters and a grandson out in Flux in this cluster.”
That was news to him. “Didn’t they get the warnings?”
“Oh, yeah, they got them. One of ’em you can’t get much through to, and the other two are determined to ride it out.”
“Well, if they’re not in a known Fluxland they’ll probably be safe. If they are, well, it’s too late to warn them and talk them out of it anyway now. I’m sorry, but we did all we could to warn people. You yourself have noted just how hard it is to convince a wizard of anything.”
Matson sighed. “Well, you’re right, there. I can’t say I’m gonna feel good until I know they’re safe, though.”
“Understandable. As for remaining here. I can’t do much about people’s stares but I can order that you be unmolested by the authorities. I can assign an officer or even a Fluxgirl to you, if you like.”
“I’m not too keen about any more junior or middle officers, and I might have some reservations about a girl.”
“Oh, don’t worry about that. There are several unattached ones around who know the city as well as anyone and will cook, clean, or do anything else you want—or not, if you don’t want it.”
He protested, mostly because he didn’t want somebody going through his things, and he thought he’d settled it when he’d left for the evening, but when he returned to his apartment he’d barely begun washing up when there was a knock on the door. He opened it, and found a Fluxgirl there. She was perhaps a hundred and fifty centimeters tall in high heels, with curly, sandy-colored hair tumbling over her shoulders, and deep, huge green eyes, and was at least 115-50-95, which seemed even when looking at it to be anatomically impossible. She wore a backless, shiny satin slit dress of a green that matched her eyes and clung like a second skin, leaving nothing to the imagination.
“Hi, I’m Sindi,” she said in a soft, sexy voice. “I’m to be your companion.”
He was, in fact, more human than they thought. “Come on in,” he managed.
12
ON LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE
Matson found himself fascinated by Sindi, the spelling of which he only found out by reading it off her, in spite of himself. He suspected full well that she would be required at some point to search just about everything he had, and to report on his conversation and activities, but he also knew that this was why he now had a certain measure of freedom in the city. Sindi was not a gift—she was the requirement.
Her life story was interesting, although possibly as authentic as the life stories Cassie or Suzl would now tell with full conviction. She had been born and raised in the city, and really hadn’t been more than a few kilometers outside it. She had an immediate, but no long-term, time sense. She could tell if it was late, or early, and roughly what time of day it was, but she had no idea how old she was or how long ago some past events were—and, more important, she didn’t care. She was a Fluxgirl but not a Fluxwife, an important distinction that had up to this point eluded him. She could not have children, about the only thing that bothered her even a little but something she accepted as part of life, and she was more or less married to a place, not a person.
She was, she said, “a part of the bachelor officer’s quarters in which he now resided. She was basically a porter and maid for the place, although she also, in the evenings, provided company and whatever for visiting young officers from elsewhere in Anchor or from other parts of Tilghman’s empire. She was actually quite happy about being able to provide for such a variety of nice young men, and the variety couldn’t be beat. She lived out of a service closet on the second floor; she always spent the night with someone there, or in rare cases in an empty room. She thought that was kind of neat, too, and in a way she considered herself freer than any of the Fluxwives, who were limited to one man and didn’t have the fun on the town she had. When asked where she got the clothing and jewelry, she responded quite matter-of-factly, that “the men like to buy me things.”
Like all the Fluxgirls, she was totally sexually uninhibited. She seemed to need and crave sex for her own sake, and not just because it was part of her function in life. She appeared an avid listener, but it was soon clear that anything she didn’t understand or didn’t need to understand went in one ear and out the other with no stops in between. Part of her function was to listen if somebody wanted to talk; comprehension wasn’t required. She had no concept of, nor interest in, anything beyond her narrow life and what she had to know. She took her society totally for granted and had no real interest in it. Her concept of government was that it was “something that ran things, I guess” and an army was “a bunch of guys who go off someplace and beat up on a bunch of other guys ’cause that’s one of the things you men do.” No, she didn’t ever want to be a man because she couldn’t think of a single thing men did that girls didn’t that she wanted to do.
Girls were the opposites of men. They did the things men couldn’t do either physically or by their natures, or that men didn’t have the time to do. No, she didn’t want to be a man—she’d seen ’em come in here all banged up and depressed and nervous wrecks, and she’d never been any of those things. He found, somewhat to his amusement, that she actually felt sorry for men, who paid a big price for all that responsibility and for all that power and playing those silly power games. They kept everything bottled up inside them, while girls let it all out. In that one area, he wasn’t really sure that she wasn’t right, and he had both the scars and the latent ulcers to prove it.
He liked her, partly because he thought he understood her, but he still took the opportunity later on to remove the small cube from its hiding place in his pants and push it down into the bottom of the small jar of skin cream in his travel kit that he carried for use against burns and minor wounds and bites. He hoped that would be sufficient to avoid any nastiness during the next couple of days. He wouldn’t like to harm her, and he preferred to worry only about whether Adam Tilghman might get the urge to look at Toby Haller’s journal while he was still here.
Sure enough, late into the night, after they had both supposedly fallen asleep, she slid professionally out of the bed and began a very silent but very methodical search of every inch of his possessions. As an old stringer and true survivor, he’d awakened the moment she’d moved, but pretended to sleep on. Confronting her was meaningless— she’d only say she was going to the bathroom or something like that—and it would be far better to get a clean bill of health than to thwart a search and imply there was something to hide.
She did check the travel kit, and even took the lid off the cream jar, but the odor was unpleasant and the stuff had the consistency of axle grease, and she didn’t even think of swirling her finger around in it. He had carried that cream, or one just like it, for all these years, and never once used it. He had no idea if it really worked or not, but it definitely had always done the job in concealing small objects.
Matson idly wondered just what criteria she’d been given concerning what to look for, and how she could possibly recognize anything suspicious for what it was with her world view. She could come across a detailed written plan on how to assassinate New Eden’s leaders and the mathematical combination to open the Hellgate and wouldn’t have any way to tell them from a book of the latest dirty jokes and a record of his gin rummy scores, and since half his possessions would be unfamiliar to her simply because they were from another culture she might well have dismissed the cube in any event as a good luck charm or something while reporting on the sinister substances like the cream and the jar of wax for the bullwhip.
It was, of course, simply a case of the root nature of this society—and that made it easier than usual to beat if you really wanted to. He relaxed and went back to sleep.
Sindi took him on a tour of the city over the next three days, and he had to admit some interest in it purely on comparative grounds. It certainly was true that the thing worked economically—there was food in abundance in almost infinite varieties, including fine cuts of meat both fresh and preserved by a process known as “freezing,” rather than by magic. The pedaled vehicle was everywhere and in constant use, sometimes hauling surprising tonnage, and there were not only regular garbage collections but a block-by-clock campaign in which the women living or working on a particular street got together at the end of each day and almost scrubbed the exteriors clean right down to the streets themselves. Littering was a social crime that provoked instant stern lectures, and there were plenty of public waste baskets about covered with slogans about pride and cleanliness.
All transactions were now through credit accounts at the central bank. To buy something, you handed in your identification card and the vendor punched in your number and that was it. His “visitor’s” card seemed to have ample credit; nobody ever called him on it, but he resisted the temptation to abuse it. Not one single cop or authority figure challenged him, though—quite a change from when he’d arrived. When the Judge gave an order it was instantly received and obeyed to the letter. The stares he could put up with; stringers were used to being stared at out of fear or suspicion by Anchorfolk.
The old temple looked pretty much the same, and pretty much as all the temples looked, although, of course, it wasn’t a temple any more. Sindi called it the “Bigbrain place” although she had no idea what went on in there and no interest in it, either. In any case, it was off limits, not only to him but to anybody without specific business there. Matson suspected that he could get in if he really wanted to, although he wasn’t so sure about getting out again. He’d once held that temple against the entire New Eden army and he knew how tough it would be to move around in there undetected.
There was nightlife in the city as well, something that surprised him. There were limited gambling parlors and private clubs, some bars—but for men only—and some entertainment establishments, including a couple of places with small bands and dancing. He wasn’t much of a dancer, but he liked to sit and watch the others, particularly the nude and nearly nude Fluxgirls, gyrate all their ample body parts into erotic frenzies. Even there, though, it was the cleanest, most antiseptic public area he’d ever seen, with the girls who worked there practically catching spills and scooping up trash and even buffing scuff marks off the polished floors by hand before you could even blink.
He could see the Judge’s vision, but he wasn’t sure about it. Certainly this was a society that worked; there was no crime, no poverty, no apparent disease, no dirt or filth, plenty of all the necessities and more of the luxuries than had been available to the general population in the Church-run Anchor Logh days, full employment, and apparently ample leisure time. The price, of course, was a different matter, but there was always a price. For the men it was regimentation, which also meant that you did what your superiors wanted the way they wanted it done no matter what you might want; for the women it was a dual reduction to menial laborer and/or sex object. The society was directed from the cradle so tightly and efficiently that each sex believed it had the better part of the deal; that was the trick and quite an accomplishment.
The population, all of it, he realized, would be terrified if they one day awoke free to do whatever they wanted— and free to do or get nothing as well. Theirs was a society in which you did what you were told and in exchange were provided with everything society could give you, including cradle-to-grave security and the basics of life.
After three days he’d decided that Tilghman was right in one thing at least, that if the Judges and the Central Committee suddenly all died, but the system and bureaucracy remained untouched, this society could and would by this point go on indefinitely. Still, that was where Tilghman the idealist and dreamer and Matson the sour pragmatist and cynic parted company, for the Judge really believed that such a state would come to pass, where Matson knew with conviction that any gaps in the top leadership would be instantly filled from just below. The state would never fade away or retire because human nature loved power most of all, and there would never be a group tough enough and ruthless enough to get to the top who wouldn’t hold on to that power and use it themselves. The Fluxlord never surrendered; he or she clung to power until deposed by an even stronger and more powerful Fluxlord.
The only free people he knew or knew of were those so powerful they could not be challenged, yet also smart enough to be bored playing tinpot dictator or god. Even he was not really free, or he wouldn’t be in New Eden now or anywhere near the place. He’d retired and gone to work for a powerful Fluxlord who’d also been a pretty nice guy—but he was still the Fluxlord’s man, dependent on him for everything. Then he’d gone back to the Guild, and there he was a colonel, which always seemed to him when he was young a high and mighty rank and position. But the first thing a colonel learns is that there are five ranks above him, all able to give colonels orders, and there were an awful lot of colonels.
He spent one last night with Sindi, then rose early in the morning on the fourth day and started packing up. She seemed genuinely sorry to see him go and her affection seemed quite genuine and touching, but the cynic in him wondered how many times a year she played out the same scene with equal sincerity.
His clothes had all been neatly cleaned and pressed, and when he walked over to Temple Square in the predawn chill he found they’d taken very good care of his horse and apparently had cleaned and waxed his saddle. Even the old shotgun looked brand new. He hoped it still shot.
Tilghman was there in full uniform, as was a whole troop of spit-and-polish cavalrymen. It was really impressive when you stopped to look at it. He was escorted over to the high-ranking group and Tilghman spotted him and greeted him warmly. The old guy seemed in exceptionally high spirits, and was quick to introduce him around. He met too many men to keep track of them, but he knew that there were three other Judges here, just slightly less powerful than Tilghman, and Gunderson Champion was impossible to miss. Only the general seemed less than overjoyed to be there on what Tilghman kept referring to as a “historic occasion,” but he was a good soldier. Champion knew of Matson but did not remember him, but the old stringer remembered the general well. He’d been Coydt’s chief henchman, lieutenant, and troubleshooter. the only man as psychotic as Coydt himself and. therefore, the only one Coydt trusted to run his operations and affairs while the chief was away. Elsewhere around had to be the man who was Coydt’s “left hand” as much as Champion had been his right, but there was no trace of Onregon Sligh this morning.
The main road led to the east and west Gates, always the only real entrances and exits from Anchor Logh, but the great banded multicolored orb that the Church called the Holy Mother was barely a third of the way to mid-Heaven before they turned and took a side road through the rolling farms almost due south. Even at the slow pace such a huge group had to take on these roads and under these conditions, they would arrive at the wall fully a day ahead of deadline if they continued in this direction.
Matson tended to be quiet and rarely initiated a conversation. He was a guest of the big shots, but he wasn’t privy to their councils or secrets and he really didn’t like Gunderson Champion in the least, so he stayed with the men of the headquarters company on the frequent breaks. He learned very little, except the fact that not one of them, including their top sergeant and their commander, knew what the hell all this was about, either.
When they arrived at the wall he found that it had actually been breached in this location, and professionally, too. A new, if primitive, gate had been cut in it with a steel mesh bridge carrying patrols over the rectangular opening. Sturdy temporary wooden stairs had been built on both sides of the opening, and up top he saw where a section of wall had been widened into a platform a good thirty meters long by twenty wide. The timber was fresh and untreated, but the thing was sturdy as a rock. He saw grooves and holes in and around it, indicating that something was to be put on it, but what that something was turned out to be platform walls, or shields, perhaps three meters high, also of wood but with metal sheets nailed firmly to their outsides. There appeared to be only three walls. There was a fourth stacked up against the wall below, but it seemed the wrong size and shape to fit anyplace up top.
Below, a tent city had already been established, and now the various parts of the VIP detail found their temporary homes and stables and proceeded to move in. There was no specific place for him, and he was told pretty much to pick his own spot and just stay out of the way. He found an empty spot in the tent with the detail who’d been here setting all this up for weeks, apparently. They knew who he was, and seemed amiable enough to talk about their work. After several hours he had a very good idea of their orders and the layout of the place, and found out that none of them really knew what was going on, either.
He had to admit, though, that he was increasingly worried, not for himself but for Sondra, Jeff, and Spirit. In Flux they felt that they were in their element and that nothing except an attack by a stronger wizard was to be feared. Of course, he knew that you could blow a wizard’s head off with a shotgun just as easily in Flux as in Anchor, but he also hoped that Sondra remembered her own experience in the attack on Spirit’s refuge. One strong wizard—Zelligman Ivan—and one New Eden amplifier had collapsed a Fluxlahd maintained by both Cass and Mervyn—two of the strongest—sent Sondra in flight and knocked Cass cold for maybe days. Mervyn was hooked to the old, pre-amplifier days and the pre-amplifier reflexes. Could he and the other two wizards withstand a power that might be three, or even thirty, or perhaps even three hundred times the power of one amplifier? New Eden had warned the entire cluster. Clusters were 3017.5 kilometers across, no matter which way you sliced them. Let’s see, that would be that number times itself—nine million square kilometers! Could that be right? Or was he rusty on his math somewhere? At any rate, it was one hell of an area. What could they possibly do to it to affect it all?
It was to be another day and a half of waiting and worrying before he found out.
The platform atop the wall resembled a cross between a war bunker, a command post, and a parade reviewing stand. It was all decked out with chairs, table, lectern, and some sort of powered sound system. In the center, however, was a motorized winch to which were attached a series of cables along carefully delineated aisles. The three metal-covered walls were attached to the main platform on great hinges, and by cable to the master winch—or winches, really, although one motor served them all. He had watched them test it out several times in the past day.
Apparently they had been told no rear wall, facing Anchor, was needed. The fourth section was to block the passage blasted or dug out of the old wall itself. Matson, smelling something lethal for those still in the void, mounted the wall nervously and took a seat well away from those cables, which he didn’t trust, and about halfway back in the grouping of chairs. He began to wish that he’d relented and allowed Sondra and Jeff to accompany him here. They would have presented a sticky situation and a potential danger to him and to themselves, but now it seemed they would have been safer in the hands of the enemy.
Just inside the void he could barely make out the hulking shape of one of the amplification machines, with a lot of wires leading back to a small temporary building on the Anchor apron. Some wires then ran from the building to the wall and entered the platform through the floor where it jutted out from the wall and over the apron, and where the hinged section would not interfere with them.
There had been some delay, and it was well past the appointed time; the assembled big shots of New Eden and their one lone visitor began to get the fidgets. Matson regretted his seating choice now that it was too late. He had to go to the bathroom and was afraid he’d never get out, get down to the outdoor privy, and back up in time. The old law applied—if he didn’t go, they’d sit for hours; if he did, it would start when he started his business down there. He decided he would hold it until he blew up or until they were told to take a break.
Finally, though, Adam Tilghman emerged from the old stone guard house near the platform flanked by two white-uniformed men. He looked annoyed and kept saying things no one could catch and nodding occasionally to the two in white, but he continued on to the platform and up to the podium.
I bet he went to the john just before coming here, Matson thought grumpily. There was no greater personal demonstration of power to him than this. Tilghman’s Utopian dream would never come about because no man in his position would pass up being the lone individual able to hold up the proceedings while he took a piss. Sit here with a full bladder, Judge, and see what equality really means.
The sound system came alive with a screech, and a couple of technicians leaped to adjust it. The screech stopped, and there was only a buzzing noise and the vague sound of some nasty-toned conversation in the air. Tilghman turned to the crowd and began, his voice surprisingly easy to hear.
“Gentlemen, we are here, finally, to witness a true revolution, an act that is irrevocable and which will change our world forever. Some of you know what we are about to do. but most of you do not, for security was essential to this entire operation.
“I have now been informed that, after some technical problems, all is now in readiness for the act. We are doing nothing here, today, that our ancestors did not plan and design. For various reasons they were unable to carry out the full operation, but we will do our part today.”
He paused a moment, mostly for dramatic effect, and then continued. His audience was all ears.
“We have used the amplifiers whose plans and designs we discovered in the ancient papers mostly as weapons to this point, but they were not designed as weapons. It was never the intent of our ancestors to promote the conditions under which we’ve lived for twenty-six hundred years. Flux is a tool, not an end; a tool to be used by these machines to accomplish a specific task. For various reasons, some of which we do not fully understand, that task was not carried out—until now.
“Nine years ago. a research project of ours discovered, quite accidently. a series of modules designed to instruct and operate the amplifiers. We’d not known what they were for, as they were classified under the general term ‘Landscape Architecture,” with their use guide making reference to various machines we didn’t until now understand. For unknown reasons, we found that these and many other modules were called ‘programs’ by the ancients, which means that they are incredibly complex sets of instructions intended to be fed automatically to the amplifiers and which the amplifiers will then carry out.”
Again he paused, and except for the buzzing in the public address system there didn’t even seem to be the sound of breathing.
“Now, then,” he went on, “these modules, or programs, were originally given to the botanical group because of the name, and it was a young, bright botanist named Kerr Endina who finally put it all together, mostly in his spare time and at the cost of some ridicule from his colleagues.”
Matson wondered what remote outpost those colleagues were now staffing, and what Endina would be doing if this, whatever it was, didn’t work or didn’t work like he said it should.
“We have deployed one hundred and twelve amplifiers in the cluster,” Tilghman told them. There was a collective gasp at this. “This number, or so the scientists tell me, is the largest number that can be used within a cluster, since all of them use and modify Flux and there is only so much Flux. We actually don’t need but a fraction of these for what we will do, but the rest are deployed with a different purpose. Once the signal is given, every Fluxlord and every Fluxland population that remains in the cluster despite our warnings, and this is a very large number, would be against us. General Champion was brilliant enough to come up with what we think will be a solution which involves the other amplifiers.”
Matson glanced over at Champion and saw the general smile and nod. No matter what you could say against Tilghman, he was one Hell of a politician.
“The great work that we do today,” Tilghman told them, “is nothing less than the conversion of an entire cluster from four Anchors and Flux to solid Anchor!”
Suddenly everyone was talking at once, and it took a while for Tilghman to calm them down. When he did, he continued.
“Think of it! An Anchor the size of a cluster, stretching from where we stand to the southern tip of Mareh and to the westernmost point in Nantzee and all the way to the easternmost point in the former Anchor Bakha. Those names in a moment will have no meaning. There will be only one—New Eden, largest and dominant Anchor on this planet!”