He sighed. “And so, still I look at the alternatives,” he went on. “I do nothing, and, inevitably, the cancer of New Eden spreads. I would not like to live in a world without Flux, and New Eden’s mix of animalistic humanity and ancient technology is worse than evil—it is incredibly boring. Their society is boring, their culture and values are simplistic and boring, and once they achieve that system throughout World they will become a static society, without imagination or creativity, in which everyone will be perfectly happy, essentially identical—well, they might as well all be dead.”
“Do you actually believe they will do that?” Gabaye asked, appalled at the thought.
“As our newest member can assure you, they can and they will. Oh. because it is so spiritless and mechanistic we can take it over in time, but what do we do with it then? Do any of you have a vision for humanity? What fun is there in being the one who orders the animals to jump through hoops? We can be worshipped by masses made in our images now. Would it mean any more if those masses were larger? I can only see to the horizon: the number of multitudes beyond that horizon are irrelevant. It has become a simple decision for me. Eternal boredom, death, or—take a chance. Open the Gates. They know Flux— they must know it far better than we, for they are coming from the source of all Flux. They promised to make us gods, and we are already gods as far as World is concerned. What do they mean by the term? What kind of beings are they? What kind of place do they come from? These are the only questions left for me. the only challenge, the only game. With that much power they certainly did not grow bored. It is a chance, one I am willing to take.”
“And if the other side is right, and they are here to kill or enslave us all?” Varishnikar Stomsk asked worriedly. “What then? With their knowledge and power we could hardly stop them.”
“True. It might be some monstrous version of us out there, more powerful than we could ever know. So then my choices are death or death. So, of the possibilities, two are death and one is godhood. Two to one odds against are not the best, but they are the best I have. And if you have not reached my point—where I would grab those odds and embrace them with all my heart and soul—you will one day, and the votes might not be there to save you. either. Discussion?”
There was a telling deadly silence, with each of them looking not at Ivan or each other but within themselves. For many, being so brutally honest with themselves was a new and revealing experience. Finally it was Gifford Haldayne who said, quietly, “Let’s take a vote.”
Ivan nodded and looked at them all, his expression still grim. “Rosa Haldayne?”
“I’m getting a little sick of it myself. You’re right, Zell—it’s all or nothing. Open them.”
“Gifford Haldayne?”
“Why not? All the interesting enemies are dead.”
“I take that as a yes. Chua Gabaye?”
“I never would have considered anything but a yes vote. All or nothing, darling—always.”
“Ming Tokiabi?”
She hesitated a moment, as if still undecided. Finally she said, “Yes,” without elaboration.
“Varishnikar Stomsk?”
“Our ancestors sealed the Gates almost twenty-seven hundred years ago now, and World as we know it and see it today is the end result. Had they been able to see what we’ve become, they would never have closed those Gates— never! Better the end, better slavery, better anything than this! Hell, yes!”
All eyes now turned to the seventh and newest member, Coydt van Haas’ replacement. He alone would now decide, and he alone had the most stake in keeping things as they were.
“I know what you all are thinking,” he said. “With burgeoning power and new discoveries being made almost daily, and with me ranking high on the side that will win, why should I? It might interest you to know what I am really like, inside. I want a different thing than the rest of you; I want the ultimate power. I want to know everything. It is not enough to know that something works, or how it works—I must know why it works, what forces and principles guide it. I want to know everything. That is power to me, and that is my dream. Godhood is not being worshipped by slaves, nor is it creating a little world of your own design by sheer force of will, as if you just told a machine to do it and then it read your mind and did exactly what you desired. Godhood is knowing how to build that machine, how it works, how it does what it does. Wizards aren’t gods, they are machine operators—lowly operators; button-pushers and switch-throwers—and they’re too ignorant to even realize that fact. I want to understand why and how it works.
“And I cannot know,” he sighed. “We have sunk too far. We hold the end product of thousands of years of accumulated knowledge in our hands, but that chain of accumulated knowledge is denied us. It was cut off when the Gates were closed. In thousands of years we might be able to reinvent it, but as friend Zelligman points out, we are mortal gods, liable to be victims ourselves eventually or victims of our own minds. Human culture is not going in the direction of rediscovery, either, but into a permanent dark age of the mind. I am pessimistic, and I am impatient. That chain of knowledge exists, somewhere—on the other side of those Gates.
“There is a fellow in New Eden right now, the very same Matson who killed Coydt van Haas. He suggests a fourth alternative, Zelligman, one that may be far-fetched but which nonetheless tips the odds a bit more in our favor. He suggests that it might be possible to defeat them if they are an enemy. If we defeated them, we would be capable again with an irresistible lure to discover and link up once more with our relatives who created this world. Not two to one, but perhaps three to two—still against, but I am willing. No. I am compelled to vote yes.”
Zelligman Ivan sighed and sank back in his chair. “The resolution is adopted unanimously with the chair, obviously, voting yes. Now I’m going to tell you exactly how we are going to do it.”
Neither Mervyn nor anyone else had ever seen pain and anguish on Matson’s face before, but it was certainly there now and he couldn’t conceal it. It had taken almost five months to find Sondra in the still rampant confusion of the enlarged New Eden, and Matson still could hardly believe that the one he had was his daughter. She neither looked nor acted in any way like her, and only the tattooed name on her rump indicated any connection with the woman he’d raised.
After months of relative inactivity while he got the lay of the land and determined his next movies, Mervyn was suddenly in a hurry. Still he would not, could not, desert Matson and Sondra at this time.
The wizard identified her at once, and took her inside his small office in his new and increasingly permanent Flux haven, but before he went to work he talked with Matson.
“This won’t be easy,” he warned the stringer. “Even with all my power and experience, the fact is I revert to that New Eden body I have every time I sleep or relax for a while. I’ve found, too, like many other wizards caught in it who got out, my power is diminished. It’s part of a worldwide situation—that much Flux removed has caused perhaps a fifteen percent overall decline in everyone’s powers and abilities. Those caught inside when it blew lost additional power, since whatever power was needed to stave off complete domination by that damnable program was quite literally lost.”
“What’s that mean in layman’s terms?”
“It means, first of all, that their attack and assimilation spell, being written in the same language as the landscape spell, got appended to it. Everyone caught in it was essentially made a part of the new reality, so that my default body, my genetic makeup, is not my old self but this new one. That’s why I’ve kept it—it takes a lot of will to keep any other form.”
“You mean that what’s in there now may be a spell creation, but it’s replaced her real self? There’s nothing of me or her mother in her?”
Mervyn nodded. “I’m afraid so. Second, my powers are still considerable, but they are perhaps sixty percent of what they were. That’s still better than almost everybody else’s eighty-five percent, but it’s a major decrease. As strong as I was, look at how much damage it did to me. Sondra had great power, but we never knew how great because she never developed it fully. Her own protective spells and reaction time were a hair too slow, as was Jeff’s, and he had far more training than she. What I’m saying is, I’ll do what I can, but I don’t know how much that will be, particularly after nearly six months and some preliminary conditioning. The mental spell is far easier to work with, since it wasn’t complex or in what I call machine language, but as I’m finding out myself, behavior has far more physiological causes than I would have believed. Uh—she has a husband, children?”
“No. She spread that rumor herself to get folks off her back. After she quit the trail she tried retirement, went nuts after a few months, and was back out as a linesman for the Guild.”
“What about her mother?”
“I’ve sent word. They weren’t particularly close after Sondra joined the Guild, and her brother’s her mother’s boy all the way. You know her mother and I split years ago. The kids were grown, and I decided to go full time into the Guild officer corps.”
“No, I didn’t know, but it explains why you’ve been down here so long with no rush to get home. All right— I’ll see what can be done.”
The vacant, servile girl who was there showed no trace of anything going on in back of those beautiful but empty eyes. Only a dozen or so wizards had managed to stave off complete domination by the program; for the others, it seemed the harder you resisted the more extreme the result. Mervyn placed one hand on each side of her head and probed.
Eliminating the mental block that caused a sensation of pain when any but the most basic thoughts were formed was easily dissolved—it apparently was set to slowly dissolve over a year’s time anyway. But six months of that might shatter anyone’s ego, no matter how strong. He had to try to rebuild it. He probed and poked and stimulated memories, and was not surprised to see her fight against his efforts. The amount of fear and conditioning was enormous, but so was her subconscious, madly fighting to keep from facing those last six months. It was long, difficult, careful work, and he was soaked with perspiration at the effort that still was, basically, mental, but in four and a half hours he achieved a breakthrough.
Sondra began screaming hysterically, and Matson rushed in to see her pressed up against a wall, looking wild and terrified. He started to move towards her, but Mervyn put out a shaky hand and prevented him. It went on interminably, until both men thought they could bear no more, but finally she collapsed into a sobbing heap. Then Mervyn allowed Matson to go to her. But it was another day before she came around enough to even recognize him.
“They took me and they made me into cattle,” she managed to utter at last. “They took from me all that was human and made me an animal!” She sat there on the bed, legs up, arms clasped around them, as if trying to shrink into a tiny ball. “I was raped, even gang raped, so many times I can’t count. Raped and beaten, too. I hated it. I felt filthy, degraded—but I couldn’t resist them,” she said, with a faraway look in her eyes and a flatness in her tone. “After a while, all that’s left of your mind just surrenders. You just don’t care anymore. Your mind stops working, and only your senses are left.” She paused for a moment, then added, “You wind up doing any disgusting thing they want—and they want a lot. We ate human flesh near the start to stay alive. They killed her and we ate it raw.”
Mervyn looked over at Matson. “Some friends you got. Some real high ideals there.”
Matson just shook his head sadly. “It only hurts real bad ’cause it’s kin. I have to be honest about that. You and me and even her spent a lot of our lives going to and even working with places just as depraved. It just wasn’t us, or our people, and when we got sick of it we could quit or go into Anchor and drink some sanity. Now it’s come to Anchor. Seems to me it was inevitable.” Sondra didn’t even hear him.
“You’re still going back there?” the wizard asked.
He nodded. “When it’s necessary. There’s a big Central Committee meeting next week to address the problems that’ll develop when the main Anchor populations are moved inland. They’re talking about defense and an early warning and navigational system using wireless transmission. You be sure and tell them that where you’re going. You tell ’em, too, that if they want to crack New Eden they better do it quickly. In another year it’s going to be as permanent as that new land out there.”
Mervyn nodded. “Remember, it’s taken six months just to assemble this conference at all, and it would never have happened even now if they hadn’t all received detailed reports of the truth. They’re suspicious of and frightened to death of New Eden, but they’re also scared and suspicious of each other. We’re talking a coalition of twenty-four Anchors and all the Fluxlands in between. It’s unheardof.” He sighed. “I wish you were coming with me.”
“My place is here. Sondra’s gonna need me for a while, and I’m better off in New Eden, where I can give them the shakes and they don’t even realize it.”
Mervyn left the next day, since he had many stops to make before reaching the conference, which by default was being held in the only Anchor with no army—Holy Anchor itself. It was a long trip for a weary and weakened wizard who could only stand there and scream, “I told you so!”
Sondra improved daily, although it was when she saw Spirit that things seemed to get much better. Spirit was shocked at what had been done to her half-sister, and she felt the pain and humiliation. She pleaded with the Soul Rider for some help, but the Rider could do little. Only a master computer could undo the matrix, as it called the spell, and master computers could not alter such a prime matrix without specific instructions from a human commander. And there hadn’t been a human commander for almost twenty-seven hundred years.
For Sondra, it was difficult to look at the future at all. She could not change the way she looked, or the powerful urges of her body. She had been physically strong, and now she was weak. She had been a powerful wizard, and now she found it impossible to create the simplest spell. She had hardly ever cried, but she cried a lot now, and had trouble sleeping. It was the inability to fathom the printed word, though, that was most troubling to her. Not only did the scratches mean nothing to her, but she found she couldn’t even comprehend how they worked. She felt, somehow, less than human. Finally, Matson sat down with her.
“Look, honey, you’re gonna have to decide things now, whether you want to or not. I’m not gonna be a Mervyn and say ‘I told you so.’ because that don’t mean shit anymore. What’s done is done. Your first big decision is just who the hell you are.”
She looked puzzled. “What do you mean?”
“Are you my daughter, Sondra, who got wounded in a fracas and maybe isn’t what she was but she’s still daughter of Matson? Or are you Sondra the Fluxgirl, totally surrendering to what happened and giving up doing anything except being somebody’s slave?”
She felt like crying again, and fought back tears. “You don’t know what it was like. What it’s still like. Half of me wants to get up, find the biggest gun I can lift with these arms, go back in there and blast away at every man I see until they cut me down. The other half”—she did sob at this—”keeps saying, well, maybe I ought to just do what they say Cass and Suzl did. I think I can understand them now. The only thing I’m good for is a good screw, but that life would drive me up the wall.”
“Well, maybe that’s where you’re different from them. They gave up, but they were inside. You’re not.”
“You heard what Mervyn said. I’m going to be like— this—forever. My Flux power’s shot to hell, and those six months and this body are with me. too. O.K.. I’m outside— but what’s that get me? This Fluxgirl thing isn’t just vacant eyes and saying ‘yes, sir’ to everybody. My mind always ran my body, but no more. The body—this body—runs the mind. It’s like a drug you have to have all the time, one that you’ll do anything for. I’m still an animal—I’m just one who knows.”
“There are still possibilities. You could stay here with Spirit and the staff. No matter what I think you’re still better off than she is. You could go home, or take refuge with the Guild.”
“I—I couldn’t go back, not to where people knew me. I couldn’t stand it. The Guild would just be a constant reminder of what I’ve lost. Anyplace else and I’d be a traveling whore or a captive of some Fluxlord in no time. And staying here wouldn’t give me what I have to have. So I kill myself, or I go back. That’s not much of a choice.”
He thought about it. “What about being a spy and a hostage?”
“What?”
“The big shots of New Eden know who you are, and they’d like very much to trust me but they just can’t— quite. They need something to hold over me, and I need something for them to hold over me so I can crack their inner council. That’s the hostage part.”
She was suddenly very interested, and he could see a little of the old fire coming back into her eyes. “Go on.”
“You think you could act the part? I can’t know what you’ve gone through, or how you feel—how can anybody who didn’t go through it? But I get the feeling that you’re looking for any excuse not to stick a gun in your mouth. Could you be a good little Fluxgirl among the upper crust? Good enough to not only fool the men but the other Fluxgirls, too?”
“What are you getting at?”
“Fluxgirls can go places men can’t. They’re safe. They’re servile, obedient, fearful, and, besides, they can’t read or write or understand complicated machinery. They service and clean the science building, and they also clean the offices of the important. Nobody cares if a Fluxgirl’s around when they’re discussing plans, politics, and projects. That’s the way Mervyn and the others have gotten their information from the start, but nobody has ever had direct access to the top. But that’s just where they’d want you, so you were always around my haunts. It’ll be rough. They’ll re-run you through a conditioning program that’ll make the other one seem tame, just to be on the safe side. You might have to marry a big shot, and if you survive all that and get caught, well, they’ll give you one of the dumb drugs and don’t even think of what’ll happen to me.”
“But one reason it’s so safe around Fluxgirls is they can’t even read. Some spy I’d make.”
“You still got your brain, and it always was a pretty good one. You’re still tough as nails—and anybody but you would be broken and hopelessly insane from what you went through. You got eyes to see pictures and maps and diagrams; you got ears to overhear all sorts of chatter. You can get lots of stuff from sheer girl’s gossip—who’s come to town, who’s leaving town, all that. Only you can decide if your wounds are fatal.”
She smiled, then hugged and kissed him. “I’m your daughter, remember! I won’t get caught!”
The Central Committee meeting had gone on for days. The large-scale building projects were going well, and thanks to the Glider Corps and the science team’s use of the new field of photography they had a pretty good, if somewhat rough, idea of what the New Land was like.
The Great Sea, as they were calling it, was enormous—it cut an irregular shape from the former Anchors Logh. Mantzee, and Mareh, and seemed to cover about sixty percent of the old void. It also appeared quite deep, although nobody knew how deep, but while much of it was still unmapped they had the outlines and the positions of some major islands.
The Hellgate remained intact, although all the amplifiers the Nine had established to seal it had been destroyed in the program. The sea came almost to the Gate, but stopped short by a kilometer or two. The Gate itself retained a flat, greenish apron not heretofore visible stretching about three hundred kilometers around the saucer-like depression. While some Flux power was possible there, it was quite weak and limited: only in the rear part of the tunnel nearest the swirling Gate itself was the old magic possible. Since it was so limited in area but accessible from all four former temples this was considered quite handy. The link between the four temple basements also still worked, which simplified communication and interaction between commands enormously, but since traffic could enter only from and between the temples, and not from the Hellgate due to the defense mechanisms, it would not be as useful if the centralized capital were moved near it, as they had planned.
Although they were still finding small knots of people, they basically knew what they had to deal with now, and even Champion was pleased and impressed by the thoroughness of the transformation program. The prior population of all four Anchors had been 1.4 million males and 1.9 million females. They had thought they’d known their own Flux neighborhood well, and after the Great Sea they had dramatically reduced their expectations, and they were pleased, if a bit shocked, to now count over seven hundred thousand new men and almost nine hundred and fifty thousand new Fluxgiris. While there had apparently been some period of infertility after the transformation, it appeared that almost half being processed now were pregnant. It was a sizeable population, but one that they felt they could feed and clothe. The problem was adequate housing. Most were now living in makeshift camps with primitive shelter and facilities, doing extensive cultivation and planting, while several battalions of men were erecting temporary and prefabricated housing units far inland. It was hoped that they would be ready for occupancy, if not exactly cozy and comfortable, by the time cold weather set in, which would not be too long from now.
These things were proceeding well, but basic communications between the outposts and settlements was still dependent on hastily strung wires that often as not didn’t work, and hardly covered more than a fraction of the distance. Matson had ingratiated himself with them for suggesting that while one couldn’t walk into a Hellgate one could most certainly walk out, and they’d strung wires from all four temples into the tunnel and back up, giving them all communication with the still-primitive new capital, between the Hellgate and the Great Sea.
Their mind-set was such that they had accepted Sondra back without even being surprised. They had insisted on a thorough reconditioning by their top experts, and he sympathized with what she had to be going through but knew that it couldn’t come close to what she’d already survived. If that old spark could be rekindled after her first horrible experience, it was not likely to be extinguished by the usual methods; but the further conditioning would serve to make her instinctively act as this society thought she should. That was good for the safety of them both.
Finally, the Committee got around to the nub of the problem.
“Gentlemen, this new land is so vast—we must have near-instant communications. We must know when we’re being invaded, not three weeks after the fact. We must be able to coordinate schedules, goods, food. We need faster means of transportation and we need instant communications. Dr. Sligh?”
“I have put our best minds on these projects,” the scientist replied, “and we have solutions, but they are not immediate ones. I fear. Communications is easier. You can imagine our chagrin when we discovered, after working there for over twenty-five years, that the intercom system in the old temples is wireless! A signal is broadcast and it travels by the easiest and best route to the assigned destination. A large system could broadcast through the air to every corner of the land from its center—and vice-versa. It is a matter of power. We have the diagrams and small systems with which to build it, but we have no sufficient power source as yet. The ancients depended far too much on Flux, but they knew exactly how to use it. We do not. and unless someone wants to suggest opening the Hellgate we can’t get to it anyway.”
There were chuckles all around at that.
“However, in the historical library in Holy Anchor, of all places, are many books with basic principles apparently dating back far before Flux. They are elementary physics books, possibly teaching aids for the young, but they are most fascinating. We know the principle of the storage battery—even the city’s Flux-gained electricity comes from there. We know that steam under pressure will generate great force, and from those books we have the principle of what they call the turbine. They will be tricky to build and trickier, and very dangerous, to test.”
“Where are you going to get the steam—boil the Great Sea?” one Judge cracked. “It must be there for some reason.” They all roared.
“No, although perhaps someday you’ll eat your laughter. But we do know how hot peat and coal can get. Many Anchors have it—Mareh is full of the stuff. There is a lot of it as well in the new areas. We will dig it out with machines now being manufactured in our western factories.”
“That’ll take tons,” another Judge pointed out. “How will you get it to your turbine or whatever the hell you called it?”
“The very same principle. In the van Haas collection is a toy that is quite clever. It’s a small vehicle that runs on steam directly turning the gears that turn the drive wheels. It chugs around on tracks, and it can pull quite a toy load, It was either a toy or another instructional model, but there seems no reason why that scale has to be the limit. Again, tricky and dangerous testing, and a fairly long time to lay tracks, but we first have to lay them only two hundred and twenty kilometers from the main source of peat and coal to the capital. There it feeds our generator, powers our city, and eventually powers our broadcast and receiving tower as well.”
“Incredible.” one of the Judges said. “I thought the ancients just relied on Flux like super wizards, but this is really advanced!”
“The coal and peat will eventually be limited, but by then we should have many other ways to get our power. And these steam cars will run on wood as well as coal, I feel certain.”
Tilghman was fascinated. “How long would something of this magnitude take with what we have now?”
“Mining could begin as early as three months from now. We have the equipment, and the new men can he put to work there. A working turbine and generator system is far more complex. We have the theory and the plans, but it might be three to five years to get a basic system up, seven to ten to produce really adequate power for both the new city and the broadcast system. The same thing goes for the steam vehicles—three years to build, test, and produce, another two for laying down the track and that’s not going to be easy. Much as I hate to do it, we can still use amplified Flux west of Nantzee to duplicate rails and cross-beams that require precise size standards, as we are now doing with the housing kits. Still, I feel that within a decade we can criss-cross the new land with at least two rail lines and have full, steady broadcast communication.”
Tilghman and the others nodded, impressed. The Chief Judge looked over at Matson. Many still had strong reservations about him. but as he himself had predicted they needed every outsider they could get who was not automatically against them. “Mr. Matson, you had some objections to this in your status of observer?”
“Just one. The rail thing I don’t know much about but I can’t see any but good from it, but the broadcast system tells me that ten years from today the Gates of Hell will be opened, and without even a risk to the Seven. You just take the remote control devices, or improvements on them, that you used for the big project, set them to trigger at a specific signal, and that’s that. They all key in the combinations at once, and there we are.”
“Impossible!” Sligh retorted. “The broadcast system does not go far in Flux. The amount of power required for a worldwide broadcast is beyond any hope of generation even if it did. There is no danger. We have already tested and retested this.”
Tilghman looked at Matson. “Do you know something we don’t?”
“I will tell you that it’s possible, that’s all. And what’s possible will be done. In ten years. I tell you. whatever is on the other side of those Gates will be here.”
“Over my dead body!” Champion snapped.
“Very likely.” Matson agreed.
The conference in Holy Anchor did not go well. The Fluxlords, fearful of their loss of power and control, were determined to attack New Eden, but they hadn’t a prayer without the combined support of the Church and the Anchors, who were used to dealing in an Anchor environment. The Church, too, was upset, but the scars from the old Empire ran deep, and memories of the massive losses and inconclusive ending to the struggle produced a great deal of reluctance to commit themselves again to a massive military campaign estimated to cost up to a million lives. They’d have to go entirely in Anchor against a foe whose approaches could be guarded by amplifiers and whose terrible weapons had been so well demonstrated at Bakha.
The greatest shock was from the Anchors themselves, many of whom found the weakening of Flux an excellent idea and some of whom, although a minority, were tempted by the landscaping program themselves. There was never any love lost between Flux and Anchor, and old hatreds and suspicions ran deep.
Mervyn had expected far more, particularly from the female leaders, almost all of whom found New Eden extremely repulsive, but he received backing from only a small fanatical handful within the large groups. Like the others, they were fearful that they could not succeed in an attack on an area as vast as New Eden now was, and they seemed far more concerned with protecting what they had than in stamping out what they had not.
The most damaging argument was that New Eden was not any longer, or in the foreseeable future, a threat to the rest of World. It was still only six percent of the inhabitable area, only a seventh of the Anchors, and, after a strong expansionist period, it by necessity had to turn inward to build and develop what it had. It was also forcefully argued that their technology and development would be entirely Anchor-oriented, and that they would be even less a threat to Flux in the future. New Eden itself sent a message saying as much, and also stating categorically that the landscape program could not be implemented much beyond its present extent without serious risk to World’s overall climate and perhaps other conditions as well.
Mervyn and many others argued with equal force that, while New Eden was in fact opposed to the opening of the Gates, its research into communications and alternate power sources would bring the means of such an opening within reach of the Seven within a few years. Flux was inadequate as a power source or transfer medium, but the New Eden scientists were learning—or re-learning—fast, and while refusing to go into details the stringers affirmed that such a communications system was not only possible but probable.
This was countered by the bulk of leaders who, it was found, didn’t really believe in the existence of the Seven, considering it an old tale designed to reinforce control by the Church in its areas. When named as one of the Seven, Zelligman Ivan himself appeared and did a virtuoso performance mocking the very concept.
All of this was most disturbing to the Nine, who saw and felt the hidden strings of the Seven in much of the attitudes and fears reflected in the group. Clearly the Seven and the Nine agreed on New Eden’s potential, but the Seven wished that potential fully realized.
In the end. what they decided upon was not war but a policy of containment and watchfulness. New Eden could survive and prosper, but it must not expand its borders. An attack on any remaining Anchor was to be considered an attack on all remaining Flux and Anchor and would automatically trigger war. Otherwise New Eden could continue, and even export its technology. While uniformly deploring the theology and morality of the place, a pragmatic approach was prudent to keep it from spreading.
Mervyn gave a stirring speech before the final adoption of the agreements, reminding them of his prior warnings and stating flatly that if New Eden were given the time it would become invulnerable. He pointed to the large Church leadership and the female wizards and warned them that it was their future they were seeing in New Eden. He made them uncomfortable, but the issue had already been decided.
About the only accomplishment he made was in getting copies of the Haller journal to Ivan and to Gabaye and Stomsk as well, both of whom were also present and active behind the scenes. As Haller’s great-great grandson, he thought he had the right and the duty to show them what had happened. They were fascinated, but undeterred. They were completely amoral and egocentric. To them, only what they did or what happened to them was important or even relevant. They were willing to open the Gates no matter what the consequences because they were bored or wanted something different. Absolute power had so jaded them that they were willing to risk their own lives and the possible annihilation of humanity just to see what happened.
The Nine could do nothing now on their own against New Eden, although they now granted Mervyn’s point, previously rejected, that it was the real threat. Their power was in Flux, not Anchor, and New Eden had effectively placed itself outside their control. They would guard the Gates they could. As for Mervyn. he was beginning to come around to Matson’s point of view. As hopeless as it sounded, they had better prepare to defend World from invasion from an enemy they didn’t know, couldn’t understand, and which was as technologically far ahead of them as man was from the horse.
16
MAJOR STORM WARNINGS
New Eden had changed a lot in the six and a half years since Matson had moved there. Anchor Logh, called simply North Borough, was still agricultural, but it was now a backwater save the science and technical research complex in the old temple, and even that was mostly a library and university-style facility, as were the other three. The population had shrunk from more than a million to now just under a hundred and eighty thousand, and that counted the soldiers on permanent duty there. It was amazing now quickly the old capital had become a provincial backwater, and how quickly it had gone to seed.
As he’d predicted, it had taken Sligh’s group almost three years to perfect the steam boiler and generators, but once that had been done production proved easy, particularly when the shortcut of Flux was used for mass production. Determining a proper weight-size ratio for the steam vehicles before producing one had permitted the production of and laying of track almost from the time of the decision, and in fact a rail line was already in full operation using horse-drawn cars and spring-assisted handcars long before the first steam engine was placed on line. The new capital city of New Canaan rose from the plains between the Hellgate and the Great Sea in record time, using timber from the virgin forests and rock quarried from the canyons and fissures to the northeast. By the end of five years there was a single-track rail line from New Canaan to West Borough, the former Anchor Nantzee, and they were hard at work on the northern line, first to North Borough and then to the former Anchor Bakha. The Great Sea blocked direct access to Nantzee, but eventually a rail line down the shoreline was in the plans, and a study group was looking at the feasibility of large ships, possibly wind-powered, that would be even cheaper and more efficient in that direction.
The bulk of the men with nonessential skills were put into mining and construction; the women’s role was broadened again so that they did almost all of the agricultural work, and a clear division of labor was developing.
New Canaan still wasn’t luxurious, but it was serviceable. Long lines of poles connected it through telegraphy with many of the centers of civilization, and while the streets were still mostly dirt and the buildings more utilitarian than homey, it was taking on the look of a growing and bustling boom town.
During this period Matson had arranged for stringer aid in the telegraphy system and had established a network of trails and regular trade and supply routes which were handled by New Eden locals but under stringer supervision. Matson had to admit to himself that as much as he had doubts about the people and the system, he found this new land an invigorating challenge and was somewhat caught up in the excitement of the pioneer experiment. The fact that they had cut the stringers in, in exchange for exclusivity on some technology, seemed to satisfy all and was a very smart move on New Eden’s part.
Matson himself had chosen to live in a log cabin about five kilometers north of the town itself. It was a spacious but single-room affair with fireplace, hand-hewn furniture, and. incongruously, an electric line going in, a telegraph line spliced in. but with no indoor plumbing. He did have a well, with a creaky hand pump in the front yard, and that was all he needed.
After all his services and all this time, no one in any way questioned him. He was quite well known, and enjoyed official protection. Even Cassie and Suzl had warmed to him to a great degree, which he found gratifying although he couldn’t explain to himself why. Cassie’s twins. Candy and Crystal, were well past puberty now and they were startling in that both differed from each other only in their tattoos and their fingerprints, which were direct opposites. Both also were almost physical carbon copies of their ageless mother except for higher-pitched voices and thicker lips. The pair were very close, often seeming to be thinking the same thoughts, and one often completed the other’s sentences.
They had been raised as upper class Fluxgirls. so they had no education to speak of and had learned how to behave and how to sew, cook, clean, host functions, and that sort of thing. They were, however, far brighter than Fluxgirls were supposed to be, and experts at concealing it except around the home. They did. however, have the Fluxgirl’s curse, as Matson thought of it, in that no matter how smart they were their bodies increasingly ruled their minds. In the end it was that, and not any fancy conditioning or machines or spells, differentiating the sexes and their roles in the present and developing New Eden.