Cassie and Tilghman had “loaned” him the twins when they were fourteen to come out, every once in a while and straighten up his place and do housekeeping chores. He liked them a lot, and they began to let down the guard on their intelligence around him and ply him with questions to which there were no answers in New Eden—except from him—and he discovered their innermost fear. So far, they shamelessly admitted, they had been able to satisfy themselves on each other, since each knew exactly what the other liked, but the tension and pressure was still building, and they knew they would soon have to be married off. They feared being married off to different men and separated.
Still, he was surprised when he was asked to dinner one evening and found himself the only guest; not even the children were at the table, although both Cassie and Suzl were with Tilghman. After dinner, when everything had been cleared, and the Tilghmans all remained, and Adam startled Matson by saying. “If you’d like to smoke, use the saucer there as an ash tray. You have my permission to do so here.”
He took advantage of the offer, but wondered what bomb was about to be dropped on him. He looked at the three of them and had to marvel at them all. None had changed one bit since he’d first met them, and he no longer had any real feeling that the two women were in any way the same people he had once known. They were now friends, but they had been strangers.
“Matson.” Tilghman began, “you’ve pretty well settled down here now. I know you don’t go along with everything we do, but you’re still an accepted part of the community.”
Yeah, he thought, amused. I’m the one group eccentric.
“I know that none of us can know the future, but you seem pretty well settled and content.” the Judge continued. “Our daughters think highly of you, you know. In fact. I suspect they have a very strong crush on you.”
It must be in the genes, he thought, but aloud he said. “Yes. I’m very fond of them myself.”
Tilghman smiled. “As you know, they pose a problem of sorts. They are more like one person in two bodies than two individuals, unusual even for twins. They’re also a bit too bright and curious to fit into the usual social scene around here, and because of who their parents are there is a lot of contention over who will marry them, something that can’t really be avoided. The other kids pose less of a problem, but I’d rather they didn’t become the wives of one of my colleagues on the Central Committee or of one of the top army officers, if you understand what I mean.”
He did. Once married, they could by their very intelligence be a gun at Tilghman’s head, since their husbands could literally do anything with them, including arrange for mind-dulling injections, and they were clearly his favorites. Rather quickly. Matson guessed where this was leading.
“Adam. I’m as old or older than you are, and I have kids three times their ages.”
Tilghman looked at Cassie and Suzl. “It didn’t stop me. and it did me a world of good. You’re the only one I’d trust them with, truthfully. We’ve all three discussed this, and we all agree it’s the best solution.”
He sighed. “Look, all of you. I’ve never been the family type. The only time I was a husband I was a poor one. I think of them like I think of my own kids, not any other way. I’ve got a one-room shack and I’m on the move a lot.”
Cassie looked him straight in the eyes. “Please.” she said softly. “For my sake.”
He cursed her silently, even though she didn’t understand the meaning or the import of what she’d just said. Finally, he sighed. “Let me sleep on it. Let me think about it a bit, will you?” He hesitated. “Uh—have they been told about this?”
“No.” Cassie replied. “Anyone who tells ’em will be punished bad. Only if you say yes will they know.”
He got up from the table. “As I say, let me think on it a little bit. How old are they now?”
“They’ve just turned fifteen.” Tilghman told him.
“Let me wrestle with it a bit, and I’ll let you know.”
He left the house, but he didn’t immediately go home. He had gotten a signal earlier in the day and now rode just a few blocks to another house as spartan as Tilghman’s currently was, and just as drab.
Sondra was glad to see him. They had married her off to General Levett, now Chief of Security forces for New Caanan, which had pleased Matson from an information point of view and apparently had pleased Sondra as well. The general was hardly known as a wonderful fellow—he was, perhaps, the most feared of all men in New Eden because of his job—but he was ruggedly handsome, very much a lover of beautiful women, and he’d wanted children. He must have—he was away quite a lot, yet Sondra already had two sons and a daughter by him and was noticeably pregnant now. The number of youngsters afoot kept her constantly very busy and she assured him she was never bored for lack of work.
When he’d first met her after her reconditioning he feared that all of the old Sondra had been vanquished forever, but much of it was still there, under the surface. She had thrown herself into her new role of mother and housewife as intensively as she had ridden strings in Flux. To her surprise and satisfaction she found that the iron man of security wanted a wife who really ran the home, and, in fact, was bright and somewhat forward with him. She found it easy: she said she just let the conditioning take automatic control and stopped fighting the body and let it run. In six years the feared and efficient security chief, secure in the knowledge that his wife was permanently deep-programmed and could not read or write, never dreamed that she was still interested in far more than her family and concerned with issues far beyond his own welfare and hers. When she cleaned in his study, she observed. While it was frustrating not to be able to read the documents, it was less so to look at drawings and photographs, and with her father supplying an incredibly small and simple camera, even the documents could be passed along. And nobody was going to be mean, nasty, or in any way question the Chief of Security’s wife, particularly when that Chief was almost always the guard’s boss. And could anyone question the occasional visits of a father to see his daughter and grandchildren?
“What’s new with you?” she asked him, while rocking the youngest in a rocking chair. The boy was nodding off, more interested in his thumb than her breast at this point.
“Would you believe the old man wants me to marry both his twins?”
Sondra giggled. “Now that’s something! You’ve needed a woman’s touch for some time. Are you gonna do it?”
He sighed. “I’m being engineered into it. Damn it. when Cassie looks into my eyes and says. ‘Do it for my sake.’ I feel a cannon at my head. If I just didn’t feel my age . . . .”
“The spell’s not holding?”
“Oh, it’s not the body, it’s up here.” he told her. tapping his head.
“If you act old, you feel old.” she chided him. “Maybe this is what you need to get young again. Me, I feel like I been reborn. Oh, I still wouldn’t like to be out there pickin’ tomatoes or whatever it is, and I feel sorry for most of the girls, but for me it’s O.K. I don’t have the dreams so much any more, and I keep thinking of all the Fluxlands I knew. Maybe one in ten was better than this, and things keep getting better around here.”
He nodded. “It’s too big for them. They can’t keep tight control and they don’t have enough of a labor pool to manage it the old way. They made you girls so you can’t handle a pick or a sledgehammer or do that kind of heavy work, so the men are doing their share and marrying the farm girls. This place has long-term possibilities, I’ll now admit, if we live long enough to see them.”
Her expression darkened. “That’s what I wanted to see you about. There’s some very secret project going on just east of the Hellgate. Lev had to send about a third of his force up there to seal it off from the public. I don’t know exactly what it is—I’m not sure he does—but it has something to do with welding a lot of steel girders, and using a lot of very heavy cable. They’ve had to secure shipments of those from the west.”
He sighed. “The broadcast tower. They’ve gotten to it at last.” He got up, then bent down and kissed her on the forehead. “Good work, honey. You keep your eyes and ears open for anything else on that, but don’t take any chances. Now that I know it’s on, and where. I have other means of following up. You take care—you hear?”
She nodded. “You, too. Daddy. And you might as well marry them. If all hell’s gonna break loose they deserve at least a little fun.”
Spirit had remained in New Pericles with Mervyn. It seemed to make him happy, and he was otherwise in a state seesawing between depression and despair. She herself was quite depressed at times, thinking of all the people close to her who were now changed and gone. Although Matson visited her when he could, the move to the center of New Eden had made it a major expedition and thus cut down the frequency. He had, through signing, managed to convey to her that Sondra was doing as well as could be expected under the circumstances, and that her mother was well and seemed happy, but there had been, according to him, no real sign of Jeff.
And that was almost literally true. Sondra had, of course, accompanied him until they met up with a larger band of men and women, but by that point she’d no longer been able to distinguish individuals, particularly men. A records check had indicated that he had indeed checked in, and had been assigned to duty somewhere in the west, but records now went with the individual—they could no longer be centralized—and Matson had not pursued him after hearing Sondra’s story. He was afraid he’d kill him, and he didn’t want that on his conscience.
When the Soul Rider had wanted to get a sense of the country, she’d ridden with Sondra and the train. Now it seemed only to want to be as close as possible to New Eden, although it wasn’t sure why. Orders. It did, however, in due course, admit to a few things that shocked Spirit, and showed why Soul Riders had never before been allowed to communicate with people directly.
Soul Riders had the ability to influence others with Flux power without their knowledge, a fact that was well known, but the extent of such meddling was shocking, particularly when it was merely following orders and did not fully understand the reasons for its actions.
The Soul Rider had subtly convinced Matson to remain in New Eden.
The Soul Rider had reinforced Sondra and Jeff’s resolve to remain in old Pericles despite New Eden’s warnings, even though it knew at that point what would happen. And when Spirit had been comforting the “new” Sondra, it had blotted out much of the horror of her immediate past and had muddled her Flux power so that it was useless— although it was actually still there. It had also changed her mind from a determination on suicide to a willing acceptance of being a Fluxgirl. and had suggested to Matson the espionage role. It, or its master, had wanted Matson, Sondra. and Jeff in New Eden on a permanent basis. It was routine, it said lamely, and those weren’t the first. There were many others.
“Others! What others? My mother, for instance?”
Your mother and I go back a long way, it responded uncomfortably. I was her before I was you. Do not be so shocked. You, yourself, are the result of one of my actions.
“Don’t evade the question! Is my mother the way she is now because you caused her to be depressed and be so vulnerable?”
1 did not cause the depression. But your mother is no longer a prime component in the ongoing master plan. Because of her previous disgust at the war of the Empire, she is considered less certain to be objective when the time comes. She remains, however, a backup.
“What do you mean, ‘prime component’? What master plan?”
I don’t know. When the time comes to implement it, only then will I be told.
“Who are the other ‘prime components,’ then?”
Mervyn is important, of course, but I would have thought you would understand. It is why I am here. Inside you. You are my prime component. Your son, and then your mother, are backups.
That both startled and frightened her too much to press on for now. Instead, she changed the subject.
“I have been thinking of having another child.” She had near total control of her body, and could choose it or not as she wished.
I know. I wish you would reconsider. The time for action is drawing near, I fear. You are letting your emotions over Jeff’s loss cloud your thinking. Pregnant, you might not be as free to move as you might need to be. With a baby, even less so. Wait. There is time.
“All I’ve got are my fee/ings and you.” she retorted, “and I’m not so sure about you anymore. Will you stop me if I do it?”
In the absence of orders, no. I can only recommend against it. There is a good possibility that none of us will survive through the next year or two. Not even I.
That sobered her, but it didn’t change her feelings. What would be would be. You could never assume you were going to die, you always had to act like you’re going to live forever. You just might.
Sondra had been both right and wrong about the twins. He did feel great relief as the loneliness he’d borne all those years was lifted from him, and he greatly delighted in having two wide-eyed wonders under his wing, but having two fifteen-year-old virgins around whose genetic and hormonal makeup was designed to give and receive every sensual pleasure made him feel old and inadequate in many ways. It wasn’t quite like marrying two women, though; more like marrying one with double everything. Their Flux origins, however unintended, showed in a number of ways. They tended most of the time to talk in unison when together. If he told something to one of them inside while the other was outside, the other one seemed to know it anyway. This wasn’t the fooling around of many identical twins; he discovered that they actually thought of themselves as a single individual. When one hit her knee, the other’s knee bruised, too, in an identical pattern. And even when one was well away from the other, which was rare, each seemed to know exactly what the other was doing.
He did not have to teach them about sex. They seemed to know instinctively just what to do and they did it like seasoned veterans. The fact that he seemed to satisfy both of them made him feel young and vigorous; the fact that he was able to made him generally very tired.
He got them their own horses and saddles, and while they knew how to ride in a general sense he taught them how to do it effortlessly—and skillfully. They took to it quite well, although it was a problem getting them riding gear that was useful and yet didn’t violate even the relaxed dress codes. Pants were generally forbidden Fluxgirls, but the pairs they made out of some tough but flashy silver glitter material and the other pair out of orange fur passed muster, because while they served their purpose he had known few men in or out of New Eden who would be willing to be found dead in them. Together with their silver high-heeled boots and fur jackets—or nothing, if the weather permitted—they were certainly attention-getters on horseback.
Like their mother, they preferred generally to wear as little as possible, and nothing around home, unless they needed it for warmth or protection. Although pampered all their lives, they considered the rough life an adventure, even to going out and pumping the water, then heating it on the stove, then carrying it over to the tub to take a bath. They did not mind getting dirty in the least, but it seemed that that was because it gave them an excuse to take another bath, trouble or not.
They were curious about the outside world and the past, and he was free and honest with them, within reason. There were, however, disconcerting cultural problems, such as when he described independent women who led independent lives and did many of the same jobs men did either as well or better.
“Why would they want to?” they asked him. Try as he might, and he tried mightily, he could not convince them that the role of women in New Eden was limiting, or unfair, or even undesirable. For a woman not to want a husband and family and to prefer to work at whatever career she wanted they considered sick, a mental illness. Like Sindi, long ago, they actually pitied men the roles they had to play. Men’s lives were all work and worry and pressure, and society gave them generally uninteresting bodies. Even their dress and manner was dull and boring. Girls, they told him, were far more free in society than men were. “Let’s see you kiss a man in public and not have everybody drawing all the wrong conclusions about you,” they taunted.
He told them, with some hesitancy, about their own origins. He felt he had to, when he figured out the right way to do it. He told them about Cassie’s origins and her legendary rise and fall, and he even eventually told them about Spirit and who her parents were, and why they hadn’t married. “When your mom came here, she fell in love with your dad. but she had too much of a burden on her mind, too many memories, and, I guess, me, too.” And that was why, he concluded, both their moms had chosen to have their memories just wiped away. He emphasized that they chose to do so, and did not describe the coercive nature of both their arrivals in New Eden.
They were fascinated by the romance of the adventures but unable to reconcile the two women who’d raised them as having done all that in the past, and they ultimately rationalized it as two girls who’d been raised in a sick society who’d been forced by accidents into roles girls shouldn’t ever have to play, who’d eventually found true peace and contentment here.
Sondra found the twins fascinating and delightful, but she also continued to play her other role. “There are very strange things going on,” she told him. “Lev’s been meeting with Champion and a bunch of other old officers from the early days. Secret meetings, mostly at night and away from the city. Some of the names are commanders of places that are very far from here. None of the Judges know, I’m sure, but I’ve heard Sligh’s name and somebody named Conrad.”
“Sligh’s chief administrative officer,” he told her. “That fits.”
“But the craziest thing is that in Lev’s study I saw some pictures taken by balloon, I think, showing what they’re doing at the Gate. It looks like a tower all right, but there’s no power lines anywhere. Not even poles. Just a big. ugly black line like a snake going right down into the Gate!”
With that, he went to Tilghman, making certain that there was no one who could overhear. “My stringers have been taking a good look at the broadcast tower at the Gate,” he told the Chief Judge.
Tilghman frowned. “How could you do that? That’s off limits to everybody.”
“We have our methods in the Guild. You should know that.”
“Or expected it. What of it? You knew the plans.”
“But your power cable doesn’t run south to the city or to any generating plant we can see. It runs into the Gate. That’s how they’re going to tap the required power. They’ve found out how to patch into the step-down transformer that feeds Flux to the temples. It’ll black out everything left that runs on Flux, including the west’s factories, but it’ll send one hell of a signal. It’ll send a signal straight out of New Eden and straight through Flux in all directions all the way to the poles. It’ll trigger remote control devices on the other Gates that I’ll bet are either already in place and booby trapped like mad or soon will be. I warned you, Adam!”
He shook his head in wonder. “But how is it possible? I mean, any downward shift on a cable that size, and even gravity will cause some of that, would activate the defenses and vaporize the cable.”
“There’s some kind of signal you can send to turn it off. Coydt knew it, so I assume that it’s somewhere in those records of his and the Seven finally discovered it. I know that signal exists because I’ve walked in a Gate just that way myself.”
“My God!” Tilghman breathed. “I’ll get the army on this right away.”
“No. That’s why I made such a search of this place. I’m using a gadget now that scrambles our conversation beyond a few feet and plays hell with all listening devices. There are a half dozen in this room. The major army commanders are all in on it. Sligh, too. He’d have to be, as well as all the old Coydt loyalists except you politicians who would oppose it.”
Tilghman looked suddenly very old and very weak. “Champion, too?”
“And Levett, I’m very sorry to say, and most of the district commanders.”
“Not all,” the Judge said, suddenly growing firm and angry. “I made certain of that early on. Few know I’m much of a wizard at all, and only a very few know just how powerful I am. I can count on at least ten thousand good men from West Borough—if I can sneak them through.” He paused a moment. “You’re certain about this?”
“I wish I wasn’t.”
“How long do you estimate until they’re ready to go?”
Matson shrugged. “I didn’t see the place myself, after all. When did they tell you the master tower would be completed?”
“In ninety days.”
“Count on that, then. Right now they’re probably planning a whole charade, with you and the others lined up to cut the ribbon and make the first broadcast. They’ll probably put up four walls and string some meaningless wires that’ll look convincing. But that broadcast will be heard ’round the world, and you’ll still be standing there when whoever or whatever shows up in that big hole out there.”
Tilghman was all thought now. “What will you do?”
“I’m overdue to visit Spirit, and the twins have been anxious to meet her and also see what Flux looks like. I’d like to use that as an excuse to coordinate with Mervyn and see what steps can be taken to dismantle those remotes on the other Gates or, failing that, to prepare for invasion. They’ll think it’s normal and be glad to be rid of me. Stringers might also try, if we have the time, to jam or disperse that signal. But I’ll be back here in plenty of time for the deadline, no matter what.”
“I’ll start things in motion as soon as I can devise a safe way to do it. If it’s this pervasive, though. I don’t know if anything will work short of bombing the thing from spring-launched gliders.”
“That’s a chance. As a last-ditch attempt. I doubt if the big boys have told the ones in on the plot that the opening of the Hellgate is the plan. They must think they’re going to overthrow you for some reason—old grudges, going too fast, whatever. I can’t imagine why Lev would make four babies and then go open the Gate.”
“Matson—take care of my daughters. Leave them with Spirit for the duration if you can.”
“No, Judge. For one thing, I can’t hide anything from them. You must know that. For another, they’re very loyal Fluxwives. Where I go, they go—remember? Besides, if these idiots actually open those fucking Hellgates what difference will it make where any of us are?”
17
TWISTS AND TURNS
For one with rank and position, getting to the border was not the ordeal it had been only a few years earlier. Matson didn’t really trust the steam trains, as they were being called after the stringer trains of Flux, but he had to admit they were faster.
The driver car in front didn’t look like much; a giant steam boiler on wheels with a large stack a little more to the front than center of the boiler. In the rear was a platform for the driver and the fueler, whose job it was to haul wood from the platform on the next car back and get it into the boiler furnace at a steady rate while keeping from knocking the driver off the platform and controls. In the rear, held to the engine by heavy steel pivot bolts, were a half-dozen cars each the size of the engine, one of which was for carrying horses and other livestock, one for passengers which was basically four thin wooden walls and a wooden roof atop a flatcar base to which ten benches that must have come from some Anchor park were bolted, and a series of wooden cars with low or no sides to which was lashed cargo.
The first line had been from the coal fields and peat bogs of the northeast to New Canaan, passing through much virgin forest which provided a lot of wood for fuel and construction. The second line had been to West Borough, so that the industrial products there could be easily shipped to the center of the country. They had not yet gone all the way to North Borough, the former Anchor Logh, but the land was flat, track-laying had been easy, and they were only thirty kilometers south of the old wall now, close enough to cut the time north for passengers from twenty days’ hard horseback riding to just about thirty hours at the engine’s average speed of fifty kilometers per hour. That meant New Canaan to Anchor Logh in just about two days even with the ride at the end, and that was blinding speed to any of them, although many of the strongest men quaked with terror at the thought of going fifty kilometers per hour.
It was still a very uncomfortable ride, being shaken and tossed all over by the minimal springs on the car. It was nearing the end of the hottest season, which meant that the car soon became stifling if you kept the windows shut, but filled with foul-smelling smoke and occasional cinders if you dared leave them open for the breeze. If you had to go to the bathroom you had to wait for one of the fortunately frequent stops for the engine to take on more boiler water and use the open pit toilets usually found there, or, considering their smell and condition, bushes or fields. You ate and drank what you brought with you, although there were usually water towers supplied from rivers and streams available to fill up canteens.
What had started out as an exciting adventure for the twins quickly turned into the grueling ordeal Matson expected. There was no privacy, and there were always members of railroad building crews, army men, and the like jumping on and off at the water stops and forcing the girls to act the expected ways and not kill the time with Matson’s stories and general conversation as they did at home.
An extra ten hours were added as well because the trainmen still weren’t confident enough to run at night except in emergencies. The schedule was set so that they arrived just after nightfall at a small complex of shacks that was a now-abandoned former rail gang camp. Since the buildings were run-down and jammed with sweaty, tired men, once Matson and the girls had seen to their horses they elected to sleep outside under the stars.
Ever since reading Haller’s journal, Matson had been unable to look at the night sky without wondering what great strings between those points of light his forefathers had ridden. One intangible string at least reached from them down the years to him. The Signal Corps still existed, and still functioned as a service and fighting unit.
Although it was almost dark at the end of the second day and they all felt like they’d been shaken, battered, and bruised enough, they agreed to ride well away from the forward rail camp, with its rough, hard-drinking men and its “service girls.” He had no intention of being killed in a fight with some drunken railsmith over the twins.
Although it would have been a simple day’s ride to their old home, he elected almost immediately to head west. Once out and away from the sights and sounds of the new technology he felt very comfortable, and the twins were able to relax and treat it as an adventure once more. He wasn’t sure if they were just playing up to him or not, but they seemed to have a genuine liking for the quiet and emptiness of the bush and they certainly had taken to long rides as if born to it.
Six days after setting out from New Canaan, they reached the Flux wall, looking as solid and imposing as ever. Incredibly, neither of the girls had ever seen it before. They had spent their whole lives in the capital of New Eden, then rode south in wagons to New Canaan. They were awe-struck and a little afraid, as he’d expected they would be. To one who’d never seen it before, it looked as if the very planet stopped there. Looking at their faces, with so much of their mother in them, his mind flashed back to those earlier, simpler times. Then he said, “Come on. After that damned steam train this will be nothing, and it’ll be warm and quiet in there.” He went on, and they followed, but reluctantly.
The void embraced him and felt like an old friend. He saw the girls tense, then relax as they felt the peace and quiet without threat that was there. It was still about the same temperature here as in New Eden, about twenty degrees centigrade, but as they pushed in it began to rise as the conduction was lessened. Overall, New Eden’s creation had caused Flux to drop about half a degree.
They came to a blue string wound with great complexity, and from it he read its code which told where it went and where on it they were.
“What’s that?” the girls asked.
He was surprised. “You can see it?”
“Sure. A funny blue line of fuzzy light. A bunch of them, sort of all twisted together.”
“Most people can’t see it. It means you have the power.”
That excited them. “You mean we can do magic like you said?”
“Maybe. It depends on how much of it you have. When we get to New Pericles we’ll have Mervyn take a look at you, if he’s there.”
Mervyn was there, and he was fascinated by the twins. “Just as a guess, they’re each at least at their mother’s potential, but the fact that they’re so closely linked mentally gives an enhancement possibility that staggers even me,” the wizard told Matson. “They have a Flux bond so strong that they are essentially one individual.”
He nodded. “Yeah. Sometimes even they forget which one they are.”
“With the proper training and education, it’s my guess that either one could summon the power of both, and this is magnified, not diminished, by their uninhibited, irrational emotionalism. Even now, if they were really angry at somebody or something, and had a specific goal and target in mind, they could probably defeat an amplifier. Unfortunately, they will remain untrained and untrainable. Coydt’s spell was based upon the math of the master program. It’s fixed, even in Flux. You can add to it but not subtract from it. Their inability to read and write and do more than a toddler’s counting is physical, not psychological. It gets scrambled in the brain somehow, and won’t process. Still, if they were emotional enough and really wanted something, they could still level a Fluxland. Remember Cassie back in Persellus? You don’t need training and math ability if you’re powerful and charged-up enough.”