They went down stairways and walked dark halls, the only sound in the the temple complex the noise of their bare feet on the cold floor. Finally, they reached their destination, and the emergency lighting came on to aid them. About twenty meters from the small area which was the switching center from temple to Gate had been sheathed in bright metal; floors, ceiling, and walls were all covered.
“They rigged it as an electrocution zone,” Suzl told them. “Anything coming out or going in without somebody on a remote switch upstairs holding down a button was zapped. In a way, it was their version of the tunnel defense system, and it’s been pretty effective. Don’t worry about it now, though. There’s no power to the mains.” She stepped onto the metal, and, after a nervous moment, Matson and the twins followed. It was always chilly in the basement area, but the metal made it more so. Still, they made it to the spot, now clearly marked on the floor, where the transfer could take place. “Huddle in close together,” Suzl told them. “We all want to go at the same time.”
“Go where?” the twins asked nervously.
“Down. Down to where the others are, in the master control room.”
“What others?” Matson asked. “Who else is involved in this?”
“I haven’t the faintest idea right now, but we’ll find out in a second. Ready? Here goes!”
Suddenly all reality seemed to wink out, and they felt as if each of them were floating in a black void, without bodies or any sensations. Then, just as abruptly, they were themselves again and it was light.
They were in a circular room perhaps twenty meters across. There were banks of alien-looking equipment lining the walls, and above them screens on which, at the moment, nothing showed. The entire ceiling was a source of soft but adequate light, and somewhere there was a soft rumbling of air being recirculated. Spaced evenly around the room, facing the equipment, were large padded chairs, at least two dozen of them.
“Daddy!” a woman screamed joyously, and before he knew it Matson was being hugged by a familiar figure. Sondra still looked like a Fluxgirl. and had a singular lack of self-control. The twins just gaped in amazement at the place, while Suzl walked forward and across the room to where a tall figure turned in one of the chairs and got up.
“Spirit!” she breathed, awed and suddenly hesitant.
Spirit looked at the other woman and shook her head in wonder. “You’ve sure changed a lot, Suzl.” Then they hugged and kissed and cried a little. Suzl’s small form was almost smothered by Spirit, yet she was the first to recover. “Damn!” she said, voice cracking. “You made me break my two remaining cigars.”
Spirit sighed and smiled and looked down at her, wiping away the tears. “Well, finally it all makes sense, doesn’t it?”
Suzl nodded. “Yeah. Personally, I think our ever-loving ancestors were a bunch of paranoids.” She stopped, spotting another figure behind them. “Who’s he?”
“That’s Jeffron.”
Suzl almost choked. “That is little Jeff? Holy shit!” Jeff looked somewhat bewildered, and Suzl immediately realized that he had no idea who she was. How do you explain to a big, strapping guy like that that the voluptuous little Fluxgirl with the foul mouth and cocky expression is his father? She decided that Spirit was right to leave it for another time, if there was another time.
Matson, who understood the situation, stepped in. “Well, I’m glad it all makes sense to somebody,” he growled. “Now will you make sense of it all to me?”
And as they all began to check out their systems, they told him.
The sealing of the Gates had been an army decision, as he knew, supported by the non-Company authorities and the fearful general population. Once sealed, this had given the military authorities time to set up defensive actions.
Each Anchor was established and held firm by a master computer so huge and complex it was larger than the temple above it and went down several hundred meters below the foundation. These computers were the products of two hundred years of development since the first crude computers had been developed; they were self-repairing and self-aware, and each in its memory sections could contain much of the sum total of humanity’s knowledge.
There was another universe outside their own, a universe as different from theirs as a flower was from fire. At certain points, apparently because of the interplay of gravity and other forces not fully understood, the two adjoined, creating at once a weak spot and, if need be, a way to punch through from one to the other. How scientists had determined this and how they had managed to punch through without intermingling the two was in the computer but really beyond any of their abilities to understand. One such spot was in the region of space near humanity’s birthplace; another was right here, on World.
Humans had built gates and controls for these points, much like the Hellgates and the Gate locks and transformers. The other universe did not have stars and planets, but was filled with a massive yet plastic energy which was popularly called the Flux. They learned how to convert that energy into other, usable forms, assuring limitless power resources. They learned, too, that under the right circumstances and controlled by a computer complex enough to hold in its memory every single detail of a thing down to its atomic structure and beyond, Flux could be converted from energy to matter. Computers were developed with chambers that could take something, break it down into its smallest components and store it as infinitely complex mathematical formulae, then restore it—while keeping the formulae on file.
And, eventually, they learned that this method could be used to transmit almost anything, even human beings, through the Flux universe, whose speed of light was almost a million times greater than in their own universe. Probes could be broken down, cast into Flux, then trailed by an energy “string,” where they came under the complex and not understood forces of that universe. They would eventually be attracted to the next weak point, where they could be reconverted to matter and survey what they saw. Time and distance seemed to have different meanings there, not understood and perhaps not understandable by any from their own universe. The star patterns might be unfamiliar for the first dozen or so “stops” the probes made, then be recognizable on the next. In many cases, such as World, they had no idea where exactly they were.
Some were nowhere useful; only a very tiny number were in solar systems—another concept all in the room had problems with. None of the solar systems contained planets suitable for human beings, but experiments with planets in the home system had shown how Flux could be used and shaped to artificially create what was called a “life zone,” with sufficient heat and the proper mix of air and water for humans, plants, and animals. World was one of these.
These were, in essence, Flux factories, in which experiments could be conducted and new discoveries for all humanity made and transmitted to all the human race. Some were established by private companies; others were established by governments of the individual nations that still existed and competed on the home world. Because these nations were not always friendly, and were historically highly competitive, even the private companies had to work first through the military commands of their own nations. Eleven nations that were friendly with one another and allowed multinational companies were involved in World’s project; a combined military force, headed by two branches, a Space Defense Command and a Signal Corps, went first and established the basics. Defense handled basic security, prepared mostly for enmity from the projects of other, unfriendly nations; Signal used Flux to establish communications and routes, since maps were useless in a Flux void.
It was also the first opening in centuries of a new frontier, for once the system was built it was labor-intensive for the first few years, after which a stable population was desirable from the company or government’s stand point: farmers could make the projects self-sufficient; limited trade and manufacturing, particularly skilled trades, would also serve the project and the people, so that things would not have to be imported and an overall level of self-sufficiency could be sustained.
For the first time, space was a frontier where the poor, the destitute, and the desperate could go—and were welcomed, even needed.
But it was not without risk. Building worlds to order was a very inexact science, and one slip in controlling the massive Flux power could vaporize everything. For that reason, the home system, which wanted the benefits of Flux, didn’t dare play around much with it in its own back yard.
Humanity, however, was not the only race riding Flux between the stars. There was clearly one other, one which, against all odds, had intersected one of humanity’s strings and wound up at the same point. The Gates had been closed against this race, for none who encountered it were ever heard from again, nor did any emissaries or military forces return. One by one, the bright colonies of humanity were winking out, and as the Enemy’s home was linked through only one already-lost colony, there was no way to carry the fight to the Enemy or even find out who or what the Enemy was. But that Enemy was also a captive of natural forces; it traveled the Flux universe in converted form, as energy and equations, and depended upon its own or human’s bases for reconversion to matter. It could not get through, nor take any action, while in converted form.
Once the Gates were closed, the army ousted the company leaders who had decided that dealing with the unknown was preferable to a life trapped on World, and set about a two-pronged program for security. It took an odd locally grown cult religion and made it the centerpiece of its Anchor policy. It attempted to sequester or destroy all documentation, all history, advanced science, and Flux knowledge, knowing that the army monopoly on the computers would give it a monopoly on that knowledge. The Church began a pogrom wherever it seized control against those scientists and engineers who knew how to build and work the machines.
The system might have been complete, but for a totally unexpected and previously unknown phenomenon that might well have been unique to World’s experimental programming. Those who used the Flux devices, the heavy amplifiers linked to the main computers, had themselves been placed somehow in the chain from Flux manipulation to computer program. The master computers seemed unable to distinguish between these people as human beings and the amplifiers themselves. Thus were the wizards born. In the void, within the influence of the Hellgates and their Anchor-based computer complexes, those with strong wills, some mathematical ability, and the ability to concentrate almost to the point of excluding all else, were able to send commands to the nearest computer in much the same way as their programs, and the computer had responded. Whatever genetic changes had occurred to cause this seemed due to overexposure to amplified Flux on World. In other experiments, people had died or been twisted or deformed, but not here.
Matter and energy, machine and operator, were one to the computers, and they did not have access to the scientific heart of mankind back home to solve the problem. The military had always feared the computers even as they used them, and had always insisted on a “human link” between any self-aware computer and major actions. They could not “fix the bug,” as they called it, but they could render the computer useless to the company men by fragmenting its consciousness. They placed a human link requirement between the computer and its defensive systems, which were considerable but still had obviously failed elsewhere; they placed another human link between the master programs that maintained World and any attempt to change that program.
Thus, the computers were split; the massive part they could not touch, but they could limit access to the “wizard” structure. They elected to not cut it entirely, not quite seeing all the implications, because the Signal Corps insisted on maintaining the strings and its monopoly on commerce and communication as an additional safeguard—and a way to survive under these new conditions. To permit the strings was to permit “wizards” to exist. But these could tap specific mechanical data; the programs themselves could not be altered, nor was there sufficient Flux allowed through the Gate to keep World warm and habitable, as it was a huge moon of a gas giant so far from its sun as to make that sun just another star. Once the locks were off, however, sufficient Flux would be available. Someone would have to decide the manner and level of its use.
In case the Gates were opened, it was necessary to keep all defensive systems at the ready, but again those in the hands of the company or madmen could make World a hell of its own. And, of course, there was always the chance that the invasion would be terminated, or home would get through, or even that the invaders could eventually be dealt with through friendly or hostile means. Again, a human being would be required as a link in the chain, to decide if those systems should be unleashed.
By splitting the self-maintenance program from the master computer, they thought they had it contained. By feeding specific criteria into the defense systems that had to be met before activation, and by giving that system remote capability to monitor World and decide whether or not to call in its human link, they thought they were safe.
But the master maintenance system and the remote sensors of defense somehow developed their own self-awareness. Unable to tap into the main computer directly, they did their jobs as they were programmed to do, but changed and evolved as they did so. Clearly the engineers and scientists were not the only ones altered by the balance of Flux on World; the army also hadn’t reckoned with the possibility that communication between wizards and the computer could go both ways.
Thus the “maintenance shells” became the Guardians, and the remote sensing programs became Soul Riders. Originally just complex programs in Flux, they took on a logical reality of their own as symbiotic creatures, attaching themselves to and living within the bodies of those with strong Flux power. As information evaluators, they fed the master program data it had no other way of acquiring. As information gatherers they were unneeded; every single human being with Flux power beyond a certain level broadcast as well as received from the data banks.
That was how Jeff, Suzl, and Sondra had been restored. They still had their peculiar physical limitations, but the computers did not.
The Soul Rider’s primary mission was always to provide a human link with sufficient Flux power to interface directly between it and the master computers. It knew it had to have such a person, and backups easily accessible if need be, but aside from a sense that it was a defender of World against enemies beyond the Hellgates it did not understand why, nor could the computers with which it was linked tell it—except through a human interface, and then only when certain criteria were met. The Guardians, too, needed a proper human interface on hand, but as their jobs limited them to Anchor and the Hellgate machinery, they required the Soul Riders to bring them suitable receptacles.
Nobody, but nobody, thought it would go on for two thousand six hundred and eighty-two years. The Church was supposed to provide the interfaces. The nine district commanders would work hand-in-glove with the Church to insure that suitable personnel, including a powerful wizard, were always on hand. That was why the Nine trained and selected the High Priestesses. And nobody, but nobody, realized that the Soul Riders and Guardians would develop personalities of their own.
Thus it was that when the previous “interface” the Anchor Luck Soul Rider had selected met an untimely end, it followed the route back to its computer source until it found, in Anchor, one with the proper power potential and mind-set, even though it didn’t know that that was what it was looking for. It had selected Cassie, and then manipulated her to get her into Flux, where her power could be trained and developed.
Cassie had not worked out in the end. Its own internal programming told it that, if it came to the choice between surrender or the destruction of humanity on World, she might well surrender to save it. So this time it had taken a different tack. This time it would create its own human interface from conception on. And so Spirit had been born, and bred, and molded for just this job, and had been effectively removed from human affairs so that what happened to her mother would probably not happen to her.
Then Suzl and Spirit had come to the Hellgate, and the Guardian saw in Suzl the power and personality it decided was correct for its own interface. It, however, was limited to Anchor, and required that she remain there, so it had arranged for Coydt van Haas to be fed the spell that would keep her close at hand. When the opportunity came for Cassie to be likewise held, it took it, considering her a more than adequate backup. The Soul Rider, by that time, had shifted its primary backup status to Jeff.
As both Soul Riders and Guardians had sensed from their master computers that the time of danger was drawing increasingly near, they both took every opportunity to increase their backups just in case. Sondra was one such case that could serve for either. She could be chained to Anchor but had experience in Flux. There were others, including many they didn’t even know about and might never know, and there were four Soul Riders and four Guardians per cluster, one per Anchor, and twenty-eight of each in all.
And now that the vast amount of information had been computed and the master program had determined that all the criteria were met and that the danger was real, the Soul Rider, the shell, had merged with Spirit, with Spirit in control. She now had access to the whole of the computer, and she did not have to understand it to maintain constant two-way communication with it. She had then evaluated the danger as real and ordered the Guardian to merge with its primary, which was Suzl. It was only chance that Suzl had been in Anchor Logh, and it wouldn’t have mattered where in the great Anchor she had been. Like Spirit, she would have gone to and through the Hellgate, and nothing could have stopped her, for she controlled the master program that made Anchor real.
Because all that happened to those with Flux power was recorded, it had been a simple matter to restore the minds and repair the physical damage to Sondra and Suzl. They could do it to anyone. It frightened Suzl a bit to realize that if Spirit wished to form the likeness of one who was dead out of Flux, she, Suzl, could probably provide the life record.
They were more powerful than any two human beings had ever been in human history—but two of fifty-six equally powerful humans now on World. Suzl could do literally anything with Anchor and pure data files; Spirit could command Flux within her quadrant to the exclusion of all else. Together, they were the Holy Mother incarnate— for at least one more day. After the Gates opened, nobody knew what would happen.
“If you’re so damned powerful, why can’t you just vaporize that tower of theirs and put an end to this?” Matson asked them.
“We could,” Suzl responded, “but that’s where it’s tricky. I’m not the power in New Eden; I’m one of four. Originally it was just supposed to be Anchor Logh, but now we somewhat control all of New Eden—by unanimous vote. Those ancient soldiers believed that with the kind of power we had at our disposal, we ought to be able to meet and beat any threat like this. But the Seven have had twenty-six hundred and eighty-two years to figure ways around it, and they have. If I break the power connection to either the timer or the tower, it’ll cause a massive short. They’ve reversed the polarity of the Gate lock. Pure Flux power will come pouring out of that hole, and it’ll devour the entire cluster and us with it at the very least, maybe destroy all of World in one big overload. Right now the computers all say there’s only one way to get it back to normal. See, it’s like a spring-loaded switch. It has to be reset, and the only way to reset it is to open the damned Gate and close it again. We have power over Flux and Anchor, but the Hellgate’s neither. It’s our connection with the other universe and with our relatives out there someplace. It’s out of our jurisdiction. I can repair it—but to do that I have to open the Gate, so what’s the difference?”
“Some goddesses!”
“Look!” Spirit snapped. “It wasn’t meant to be us! I was supposed to be a general or something, and Suzl was supposed to be a scientist or engineer. Things went all wrong with their plans no matter how smart they were, or how advanced they were, but their biggest mistake was in not being able to imagine that it would hold for so long. They figured years, maybe decades or even centuries, but not this! It’s amazing so much of their organization has survived. The concentration of power in the hands of a few and the near-immortality the most powerful achieved did it, at the cost of never growing, never learning, never experimenting.”
“So they were planning to open up themselves some day! How were they supposed to know it was safe?”
“The Gates were made back in the home system and shipped and assembled here by machines. Obviously, the lock codes were set there as well. When Earth, as it called itself, won, it would show up with the codes from the other side.”
Matson clapped his hands. “That’s the best news I’ve had in years!”
Everyone turned to stare at him.
“Don’t you see? If this Enemy took everybody else, it would have captured the codes and unlocked us! That means there are other human worlds out there!”
“It also means the war might still be going on,” Suzl noted. “They never came back to reclaim their long-lost children, either.”
“Well, we’ve got our war here and now. If you can’t mess with the Gate or fix it, can you help out Tilghman?”
Suzl seemed to freeze, as if thinking of something far away, then snapped out of it. “He’s moving on the position right now, but he’s outnumbered four to one. He’ll be able to break through initially, but they’ll be able to push him up against the Hellgate with no place to run. He can get in range, but he can’t get that heavy stuff he’ll need close enough before they’re on him.” She shrugged. “You’re the fighter. I’ve seen you in action years ago, remember? Relative to a wizard our powers are enormous, because we can tap directly into the big computers. But my power comes from the power connection between here and the Hellgate; Spirit’s come from the remaining Flux, and there ain’t much of that between us and the Gate. I’m geared to defend an Anchor; Spirit was supposed to try and keep me from ever being used. Nobody counted on a landscape program being activated—they ruled that out. That’s real stuff out there. If we make any changes in it it’ll kill a hell of a lot of people, us and them.”
Matson thought a moment. “What can you control?”
“There’s a cold front moving down on them. Nasty thunderstorms, lots of hail and mud. I could stall it out between Tilghman and the encircling forces, maybe buy him half a day or more, but weather’s kind of funny. It might bog him down, too, at least his heavy stuff. It’s not easy, but weather is one thing that can be directed, to a degree.”
“Pour it on!” he told her. “Make it miserable!”
“Yeah!” Jeff added. “They’re pros—they’ll make it, but the encircling forces have farther to come, and they’ll drop their heavy stuff just to increase speed. That gives ’em a slight edge. And the storm’ll make the defensive ray setup useless. They might overrun the fixed positions.”
“What about a lightning strike that’d knock the top off that tower?” Matson asked, thinking furiously.
“I can’t make weather all that specific,” Suzl replied. “Besides, it could cause a surge through the whole line that’d break the connection and cause the regulator to crumble. In fact, Tilghman’s boys have to disconnect that cable, not cut it. Disconnect and ground it. Then we can deal with it.”
“Excuse us,” the twins put in. They had kept very silent through this, but they were paying close attention. “But shouldn’t somebody have told Daddy that?”
The others all stared at each other. Then Suzl exclaimed, “Holy cats! We forgot Cassie! She’s out in that mess!” She looked at Spirit, and Spirit looked at Suzl. and then they both looked at Matson, who nodded, a disgusted expression on his face.
Spirit simply gave the order. “Activate restoration program,” she ordered, and the computer acknowledged the individual she wanted and found the proper file.
“Can we get a direct link with Cassie or Tilghman in the field?” the stringer asked.
“Not through the computer, no. We could do it, but she wouldn’t recognize it for what it was,” Suzl responded. “If this was Flux it’d be easy, but not in Anchor. To do it here and now we’d need somebody with even more power than I have and a genetic link to Cassie so close the computer might not be able to tell the difference.”
Matson looked over at Candy and Crystal. “Girls,” he said, “get ready to go to work!”
19
THE HELLGATES OPEN
Cassie was bouncing along in the carriage, her head against Adam’s shoulder, and in spite of the speed and bumps she managed to nod out. She generally dreamed basic, erotic dreams or dreams about the children, but now the dream she was having seemed to fade, and she heard a strange voice talk about a “restoration program” or something. . . .
Slowly, strange thoughts and memories began to fill her mind, and in a matter of moments she was not one person but two, only one, she knew, was false. It was a horrible dream, and she fought it, fought back that other person, refused to face her, refused to—
She awoke with a panicked scream that jolted Tilghman, then sat up and looked around, eyes fearful. She knew who, and what, and where she was, and she hated it.
“What’s the matter, love?” Adam asked her, concerned that the experience was finally getting too much for her.
She shivered and let him hold her close. How was it possible? It was a binding spell and the old had been erased.
“Momma! Momma!” Now it was echoing voices in her mind. Had she died, she wondered? Was it all over, and were she and Adam on the road to eternity?
“Momma! Momma! You must listen to us! You must!”
She knew those voices now, knew that tone and inflection. But how could it be Candy and Crystal? What was happening to her?
“Momma, momma! You must tell Daddy not to knock down the tower! It’ll do something awful to all of us!”
What the hell? She concentrated hard on those voices. “Is that really you, children?”
“Yes! Yes! You got to listen! This is kinda hard! It hurts in the head!”
In point of fact, it was hurting her. too. “Who’s doing this? Mervyn?”
“No, no! It’s Momma Suzl and Spirit and Jeff and Matson and Sondra and all! Just tell Daddy he’s gotta— what’s the word? Dis-kenit the big wire from the tower and put it on the ground or something like that!”
“You mean to disconnect the cable and ground it?”
“Yes, yes!” they responded happily, and faded out, leaving her only with a headache and even more frightened than ever.
“Adam?”
“Yes, my love?”
“Adam—I—I don’t know how to say this, but I’m back. The old me.”
He stared at her. “Are you sure you’re all right?”
“No, I’ve never been more miserable in my whole life. Something reached into my mind and gave it all back. All of it. Without taking anything away. I couldn’t fight it, I had no choice.”
He could tell simply by her speech pattern and accent that it was the truth, but he found it confusing and ominous. This sort of thing was unprecedented anywhere, to his knowledge. “You want me to let you out?”
She clung to him. “Adam, I’ve been married to you for sixteen years. I’ve borne your children, and raised them well, and I have another within me that I pray will live to be born. But I love you, Adam. We live or die together in this.”
He hugged and then kissed her. “Then maybe it’s a good omen! Maybe we’re going to make it!”
“Uh—Adam. There was something else.” She told him about the eerie message from the twins.
He thought it over. “Wasn’t Spirit the one with the Soul Rider?”
“Yes, but she is mute and cut off from society.”
“Maybe not any more. Maybe the Soul Rider’s joined our fight. I wish it was easier, though. They’re saying we can’t use the big stuff. We have to overrun it.”
There were thick clouds obscuring the sky, but it was still clear that day was approaching, and the engagement must begin at that point. Suddenly there was the sound of rumblings, and thunder and lightning blanketed the sky just behind them. It began to rain, hard, cold, large drops of it.
Tilghman signalled for a halt and called in Borodin and his commanders. “Never mind how, I’ve learned we can’t knock it out. The whole thing will blow and take New Eden with it. We’re going to have to take it and get that cable off that tower.”
The general whistled. “That’s a tall order.”
Tilghman turned and looked into the dark, fierce storm whose fringes were just reaching them. “Drop everything we can’t use or carry easily in bad weather. We’ll slow to a march and let the storm catch up to us. The way it’s coming, it’ll be smack on top of us in a matter of minutes. We’ll move in under its cover.”
They had fought for fourteen straight hours, and in that time some forces of Flux had reached the Hellgate. They could do little, though, to interfere. Both Mervyn and Zelligman Ivan were exhausted and weak from their ordeal, having thrown at each other enough horrors and pure Flux power to crush half a cluster. And now they stood and faced each other, neither recognizable to anyone, including themselves. They were deformed, bloated creatures with burns, scars, and dangling limbs, as horrible as any two of the worst duggers lost in Flux.