22
VISIONS AND SPIRITS
A lone rider sat atop a black horse on the apron outside the ancient gate of Anchor Logh and looked momentarily back, deep in reflection. The old gate had plenty of holes in it now; it never had been much good to those who’d built it to keep out the horrors of Flux, but it had made the inhabitants feel safe and secure. He felt a great deal of kinship with that old gate and its old attitudes. Both of them had shared a lot of experiences and both were rather old-fashioned and out of date in the world today.
Another rider, coming hard, emerged from the gate and rode up to him, halting expertly. “I hoped I’d catch up with you,” Spirit said to him. “It would be hell finding you in the void.”
“Well, you made it.” Matson responded dryly. “I can’t say I’m really surprised to see you, daughter.”
“What were you doing that slowed you down here, if I might ask?”
“Just—remembering. Wondering if an old fossil like me is going to be able to survive in this new world of ours.”
“You’ll always survive,” she assured him confidently. “Besides, you’re a hero to World. Even Fluxlords who hate everybody and everything, even themselves, and Anchors suspicious of their own, call you a hero—the man who saved World. Even New Eden will build statues to you, maybe as big as the ones they’re building of Adam Tilghman.”
He laughed dryly. “Well, that’s what the old boy wanted. And, sure, I’m safe enough now—anybody who’d draw down on me would be killed by his best friends. The thing is, I’m not any hero. I’m the same crusty old hellhound son of a bitch I always have been, no different. There were hundreds of people on World who came up with the same ideas I did. The fact is, I stole all those ideas and all those plans from other folks. Mostly women, too. Didn’t figure out a one. Only I mouthed them off around a Soul Rider, a Guardian, and big-shot wizard so the computers knew my name and let me in where I could talk ’em up.”
“It doesn’t make any of it any less true. Shall we go into Flux a ways? I want to be well away from here when disengagement comes.”
He nodded, and both figures eased their horses through the reddish-gray curtain of the void. They were in no hurry, and he, at least, hadn’t decided just what to do next. He wondered about her, and asked her about her plans.
“None, really,” she told him. “I have a lot of hard decisions to make myself. I figured a little time out here would help me make them.”
“I gather that one of them wasn’t to stay in New Eden and see now it all comes out.”
“Hardly. Dad. I may be old in years, but the fact is that I’m really just going on eighteen, so to speak. I’ve never really been out here in full possession of my wits, as a real human being. My entire adult life, except for the brief period in the takeover days of Anchor Logh, is a total blur. I could relate to some people and some specific incidents, but it seemed entirely like a dream. Now, suddenly, I wake up, and I have to take up a real life again. I like it, but I’m as jittery as any schoolgirl.”
“You ought to travel around a bit, see the place,” he told her. “It’s interesting, if a little depressing. Even when you lose your friend you’ll still have enormous power and that beautiful fine-tuned machine of a body.”
“I’d like to, but that’s one of the hard choices to make. Dad, I’m pregnant.”
He and the horse stopped dead in their tracks. “What!”
She nodded. “When that terrible change came over Pericles and Jeff, and I was forced to run, I grew terribly depressed. I didn’t have much of anything, but I did have a son I loved, and I felt I’d lost him. Oh, I know it was a silly, emotional action, but it’s done.”
“How far along? And who’s the father?”
“Barely three months, if I guess the timing right. And the father’s Mervyn. Oh, don’t look so shocked. He was very kind to me and pretty good looking near the end.”
“It don’t look like Mervyn’s coming back. You’ve got a fatherless kid holding you down. You’ve got the power. It doesn’t have to be that way.”
“I know—for some. But this is the last of the Hallers in direct lineage, and that’s a responsibility, I think. And to use the power to transfer it and walk away—not even my mother did that with me, under her circumstances. And if I have it, I’ll bring the child up. It’ll be the great-greatgrandchild of a founder, the child of a great wizard, and the grandchild of Matson and Cass. That’s quite a proud line.”
“Sounds like you’ve already decided.”
“On that, anyway. Where and with whom I’m not so sure of. You said it yourself, though—we’re practically immortals. I have time. I can’t just have it and abandon it, like I was abandoned. Oh, don’t look so guilty! I know you didn’t know about me, and I know the reasons for it all, but this is different. It’s a matter of choice.”
They rode a while more in silence, each deep in their own personal worlds. Suddenly Matson said, “The Samish could have been us, you know. I think about that a lot.”
She nodded. “Yes, I know. No matter how horrible they looked, or what hellish world spawned them, they were in many ways only one step further on than us. That, the time lag they never did seem to know about, and our sheer numbers were all that saved us, even with what we had to fight.”
“It could still be us, if everybody hadn’t agreed to disengage.”
She shook her head. “Not now. We’ll be free to laugh and cry and love and hate and be our own petty selves. Still, it wasn’t unanimous.”
“So I heard. I wonder if we’re not seeing it start all over again. The overwhelming majority for disengagement and blocking the Gates, a small but passionate minority saying, ‘No, stop—the price is too high. We can handle what they couldn’t.’ The Nine versus the Seven. The army versus the Company. It’s all there, just as they must have faced it long ago.”
“Oh, I hope not! God! I hope not! I hope we’ve learned this time, and that the technology and knowledge we do have will keep us in perspective, at least. There’s nobody lurking at the Gates any more that we can’t prepare for.” She sighed. “It’d be different if we knew how to build and use ships of our own and go out there ourselves, but for security reasons that wasn’t in the computer files, and the three ships of the enemy are too melted down and burned out to figure out. Even if they were perfect, it still wouldn’t help. We don’t have the programs, the cosmic stringers, to keep us riding out there to a destination or get in anywhere else with the proper entry codes. So all we can do is close the Gates, shove the garbage in there, wipe clean the memory records of the Guardians and Soul Riders so they’re back to their command shell states, and disengage. Unless human beings show up and give us the stars, our future has to be made right here.”
“Unless some new wave of religion and knowledge suppression knocks us back again. New Eden still has that potential. Changes in that system will come slowly, and with much suffering. The system that ultimately emerges may be something entirely new, but maybe not anything we’d like. Whether it’s just another Fluxland variation or something really radical and new remains to be seen.” He paused a moment. “You’ve talked with your mother?”
She nodded. “She’s changed. She’s really changed from the person I knew.”
Matson gave a sardonic smile. “No she hasn’t.” he said. “With the possible exception of me, she’s the most consistent person I’ve ever known. You know she expects me to come back and marry her, and Suzl.” He sighed. “I’m surprised and my ego’s a bit bruised that she let me get away so easy this time.”
“I don’t know. I don’t think I’ll ever understand either one of you. You, for example, have been so busy practically running New Eden the past few weeks I’m surprised you didn’t stay. Maybe she expects you to come back and protect New Eden from the re-emergence of the worst elements of the old leadership.”
“Most of Coydt’s bad boys were at the Gate when the ship blew, which was mighty convenient. They didn’t trust anybody, not even themselves, to be anywhere else. The junior officers, most of which grew up in this sort of system or spent most of their lives in it, are shocked by the evil of their leaders. They really believed in the dream and feel betrayed. Using Tilghman as a model and a martyr was simple because of that, and the officers proceeded to do their own purging. They’ll be the power brokers now, the men who make the decisions, and they’ll do it from the framework of this master program. None of them considered leaving for a moment.”
“That’s another depressing thing, I think. Even on the borders with Flux, most of the women chose to remain there even knowing what they do now.”
“Yeah. In fact, more men left than women. Remember, almost all of the women are Anchorfolk with a longstanding and deep-seated fear of Flux. It’s the old Anchor Logh proposition all over again. Better the devil you know than the hell you don’t. Most of ’em certainly don’t understand the full ramifications of what they’re choosing, but that’s par for the course. Many had young kids and no alternatives for them or themselves. Most of the ones who did understand knew they’d probably just wind up slaves of some Fluxlord. and there were quite a bunch that really bought the new faith’s line. You know, as bad as the new system sounds, when you consider the alternatives for most folks it’s really not that awful, and now that the women have their pasts, their skills, their self-control back they’ll gamble on changing the system from within. It may be a bad gamble, but who knows for sure?”
“I gather you don’t put much stock in their new faith.”
“I put great stock in it as a driving force for a new culture, but if you mean believe in it, no. I believe in machines and people. I believe that machines will keep on doing any dumb thing they’re told even if it doesn’t work, and I believe that people, when faced with critical choices in their lives, will always do the safest and easiest thing— and it’s the wrong thing ninety percent of the time.” He took out a cigar and lit it. “I gather Suzl never told Cassie that Tilghman could be ressurrected if you went along.”
“No. Suzl is a competent and sometimes smart person, no matter what she seems to be. She knows I’ll never do it, and she knows she can’t talk any of the others into it, and she sees no reason to drive a permanent wedge between Mom and me. And—she understands. She admired Tilghman, that’s clear, but she loves only her own children, Mom, and me.” She sighed. “You know, if Suzl had ever had any goals, any ambition in her, she could have done or been anything she wanted to be. She doesn’t, though. She just always makes the best of what she’s stuck with. She didn’t even care what happened to New Eden—she let Mom decide that.”
“Well, most folks are that way,” he said philosophically. “I never had any real goals, except personal and temporary ones. I doubt if you do, either. I don’t judge and condemn, like Mervyn did, and I don’t want to change the world like your Mom. I’m too old and cynical to believe people can be fixed up to the good. I’m satisfied if it leaves me alone.”
“Even if it’s New Eden and its computer-derived religion?”
He chuckled. “I don’t know where religions get their pedigrees. Certainly I kind of believe in some God someplace, if only because I just can’t believe all this is an accident—it’s irrational. I kind of suspect that the reason women are more religious than men is that they get to see it start with a good screw, then develop as a lump, come out a baby, and see that baby turn into a complicated human being. I just can’t take the idea seriously that it’s the way the science fellows say, that it was all chance and good luck, and neither have a lot of other smart folks. But going from that to any one true religion is just as bad to me. In those records old Tilghman studied there were dozens of religions back on old Earth, and a good many here. All disagreed and all were sure they were right. He tried to reconcile them and give the result direct application to World. It’s not as crazy as it seems.”
“What he came up with was.”
“No sillier than praying to a planet that’s nothing but a big ball of gas, I don’t think. He started with the notion that we were part animal and part thinking creature, and he decided we were maybe sixty percent animal and forty percent think, which might be generous. He looked at World from his own background, and decided that all the animal urges could be covered but one—sex. Gender, actually. He decided that this was at the root of our real headaches. Maybe it wasn’t for the ancient folks, but it was for us. He came from a society that had a female empress-goddess who dominated all the males, remember, and he was liberated by Coydt, who sure as hell had sex as his reason for doing everything he did. The Anchors were dominated by a women-only clergy. But the old religions had men running the society. Women could get high up by exceptional ability or accident, but mostly it was a male-oriented society. That got him to thinking. The fact is, the way us humans are made up, women are superior to men and men know it, deep down. The male strut and roar covers a basic inferiority complex.”
She stared at him. “Come again?”
“Yep. Men only exist at all on the biological level to serve one purpose, and one man can serve that purpose to a lot of women. Other than that, men aren’t really necessary. Women think as sharp as men, can do just about anything men can do, and can run a church, a society, a government, an army—you name it. Because of child-bearing, you actually have a better tolerance for pain and better reactions. Left alone in Anchor with no spells, you naturally live longer than men. Not that you’re any better at governing or running a business or a church or even a battle, but you’re no worse, either. And, deep down, most men know this. You see where it leads?”
“I think you’re making too strong a case against your own sex.”
“Nope. It’s clear. Oh, I got more arm muscles and bigger chest muscles, but two or three women can lift what I can or use a rope and pulley just like I would. That’s why human society went the way it did. Men had to be the boss, had to run things, had to have all that responsibility— otherwise, they had no reason for being at all. Just screw a lot until they made a bunch of babies, then curl up and die. In the old days. Anchor men committed suicide ten times more than Anchor women. They were sick and lethargic and only running the play government and playing soldier on the walls gave ’em any feeling of worth. That’s why most of the male Fluxlords are so devoted to women being sex objects or slaves.”
“Is this you—or Tilghman?”
“Both of us. But old Adam, now, he was an intellectual and it drove him nuts. He finally decided that it was illogical for men to live past procreation at all unless society had to be male dominated. Since this didn’t seem fair, he took from one of the old religions the idea that sexes alternate, that we live as both before going on to the great reward. Believe that, and the rest is logical. It gets rid of the moral problem.”
“So his male ego, his inferiority complex, led to the subjugation of women in New Eden?”
“You might say that. He didn’t see it that way. He started with the woman. She had to have the children, because men couldn’t, and he felt kids needed a full-time parent to turn out right. Now since the man was always number two in that situation, it was his job to earn the living and provide the other basic needs—food, shelter, clothing, whatever—and protect his home and family. He was also expendable—we could lose a lot of men and still have the same number of kids, but we couldn’t lose a lot of women and do that. So he saw them as complements, and opposites, in every way imaginable. To make it even fairer, he wanted every girl to be shapely, sexy, and pretty, and every guy to be tall, muscular, and handsome. He believed that system would produce a balanced world of peace and plenty.”
“You don’t think so, though.”
“Well,” he said, thinking it over, “I don’t know. I kind of doubt it. But for me, the worst part is that it won’t get a fair chance unless all of World is brought under the system, and I don’t like that idea any more than you do. The system they eventually export won’t be the one that’s there now, but it’s still going to be one I wouldn’t like to live under, and no matter how the male-female relationships wind up it’ll be a technological powerhouse.”
“Do you think they’ll win?”
“No. Tilghman and New Eden unleashed a force that won’t be stopped on World now, but it isn’t their system. Their system’s pretty tame, when you think about it. They broke down the Church, they broke down the unifying culture that kept us pretty much the same for all those centuries, and they introduced science and technology and a lot of the ancient philosophies. Their system has no chance of filling the void, but even now all over World others are thinking of their perfect societies and perfect forms, and learning to use what we’ve rediscovered. These will all study how New Eden did it and they’ll form their own radical systems and try and extend them. There’ll be a lot of conflict and eventually through war and alliance other systems will emerge that make New Eden look like Tilghman’s heaven.”
She shivered a bit. “You sound like we’re going to lose our humanity and turn this place into a Hell.”
“The possibility’s there, along with a thousand Adam Tilghmans, female as well as male.”
Spirit changed the subject because it was getting uncomfortable. “What do you think of Sondra’s choice?”
“Sondra has seen and heard just about everything there is on World. She’s had a hell of a life so far. Now she’s discovered that the Soul Rider fooled around with her Flux power and she’s a much better wizard than she thought and it’s brought back the self-confidence. Her mind and abilities are completely restored. She kept the body because she has young children now and didn’t want to wrench them, but she can look any way she wants in Flux so it makes staying the same easy.”
“I still don’t like her settling down with the kids in Flux, though, power or not.”
“Settling down with Jeff, you mean. He’ll be working off his guilt complex about her for years, maybe forever. He’s a powerful and trained wizard, and she’s got him wrapped around her little finger. They’ll do all right. Sondra says that Flux might be a real nice place for a Fluxgirl who’s a wizard, and a nice place to raise kids.”
“I still think it’s like, well, incest. She’s my half-sister.”
“She’s no genetic kin to either of us anymore. Jeff didn’t like to see his Mom rolling in the hay, and you don’t like your son settling down with her. As long as she retains the body and spell that the master program gave her, there’s no physical relation to anyone. She’s been pretty much lost since giving up the trail, and now she’s got something new. Beats hell out of running a basic training class for new stringers, anyway. She was ready for a big change and this is it. In a way, you might call their new relationship inevitable.”
“I couldn’t stop it, that’s for sure. I know you’re heading out now to that new Fluxland they created. I’ve been— hesitant—about going there myself right away, considering my feelings, but, damn it, I want to get to know my son a little, too.”
Matson nodded. “Mostly I have to be somewhere where I won’t be made into a saint or a statue. Besides. I have to go by there. The twins went with them to learn how it’s all done.”
“Dad! I didn’t know that! I thought that when all marriages were declared invalid—well, they didn’t seem the type to choose independence over New Eden.”
“They don’t need New Eden. Give ’em a few years to learn Flux wizardry and they’ll be more dangerous than New Eden. Only the fact that I’ve kind of grown fond of ’em and they seem to really like me gives World any real hope for the future. They’re already starting to loosen up on their cultural roots, too. Once they tear into reading and math—watch out!”
“Then you’re not going back to New Eden.”
“Sure. For visits. To give some advice and nudges where I can. But not if I have to accept their system. Not unless I get a few thousand acres and some cows and horses and total ownership including a guarantee of being left alone.”
They camped for a while, to feed themselves and give their horses a rest. It was simple for Spirit to conjure up whatever was required, so they needed no pocket. While Matson was drinking the last of his beer, in fact, he looked over and saw his daughter shudder.
“What’s the matter? Morning sickness?”
“It’s done,” she said quietly, and with a trace of sadness. It was the first time since she’d been conceived that she was totally alone inside her mind and body, and she didn’t realize until it was gone how much of a hole it would truly leave. Still, she felt a measure of peace as she sensed the Soul Rider leave her body and fly up and away into the mists of the void. “The Soul Rider is free once more to roam. I wonder how long it’ll be before it learns how to think again?”
“Not long enough to suit me,” Matson responded. “Well, let’s get going. It’s only a few more hours to the place. If you want to tag along, that is. You’re hung up enough about this business that maybe you need some time alone.”
“No, Dad. Just the opposite. I was alone for a very, very long time, and I’ve never felt more alone than now. I never want to be alone again. I’ll come—for a visit, anyway. As you said, I’ve got to be somewhere, and I have to live a very long time in this new world. If I can’t start with my own family, I don’t know how I can cope with the outside.”
“You know your big trouble? You really got it in the head with your parents. The more I listen to you the more I hear myself, only contaminated a little with your mother’s idealistic streak.”
They rode along, getting to know each other better as they did so. She liked him a lot, and felt a growing pride and inner glow at being his daughter. If she had only a fraction of his magnetism, his wise pragmatism, and his incredible inner strength, she felt lucky indeed. Yet he wasn’t perfect. He was an ornery, stubborn man who could be warm to her yet cold and callous to injustice— and to many people. As he said, he wasn’t a saint or a monument, he was a human being—and that was what made him great.
The sidebar string to Jeff and Sondra’s new land was well concealed even for an expert, but Matson had no trouble in finding and following it. He had a lifetime of experience doing just that.
Like most Fluxlands, this one had no permanent shield to drain the reigning wizard’s power, but the moment the void began to clear and form itself into vague shapes, then turn into clear landscape, both Jeff and Sondra would know who had arrived and where. Any enemy or stranger crossing that boundary would meet a firm shield soon enough.
“It’s big,” Spirit remarked, both amazed and impressed. “You know, in a way, that deep blue sky and the forests and glades and streams remind me of . . .”
“Pericles,” Matson completed. “Yeah, it’s a new New Pericles in a way. It figures. He worshipped the old man, and I arranged to have Mervyn’s people and records moved over here since their temporary got shaky. Some nice touches, though. Lots of flowers, and the hills over there; I think I see a lake off to the left.”
“I see it! It’s beautiful! Looks even better without all the marble buildings.”
“Well. I’ll kind of miss the naked statues, but that’s not much of a price to pay. I wonder how far we got to ride into this place before we find a human being?”
It was, in fact, almost four hours before the solitary dirt path led them to the settlement. The great lodge, made apparently of hardwood, was set on wooden stilts up high against a hill and partially in it. The place was multistoried and enormous, yet it retained a genuine rustic air, and it was framed by two waterfalls cascading down into a pool below and then running off as a river. The noise of the falls was obtrusive at first, but you quickly got used to it.
Below, on either side of the river, they could see smaller buildings—cabins, mostly, although some seemed rather large—going off into the woods. There Mervyn’s surviving staff of probably no more than thirty or thirty-five lived and worked.
There were stables below, and several horses were in them, but they were able to see to their own mounts and then head for the redwood stairs under the house that led up to it. Matson stuck a cigar in his mouth and went up with Spirit—there was room for more than two on the stairway.
When they reached the top they found themselves on a broad deck, or porch, leading to the first floor. There were mats and recliners around, allowing anyone to relax in the warmth of the outdoors without going far, or just to enjoy the magnificent view.
Sondra came out and greeted them warmly with hugs and kisses. “We were wondering how long it would take you to get here,” she told them.
“How’re you doing?” he asked her seriously.
“Wonderful! How do you like the place? Jeff and I designed it together.” She meant the Fluxland, not merely the house.
“It’s beautiful.” Spirit put in. “You may have two freeloaders here for quite a while.”
“Everyone’s welcome,” Sondra responded, obviously delighted that Spirit had come. “I have to go back in and check on things. That noise you hear that sounds like the second invasion of the Samish is the kids. Come on with me. Dad. I’ve got a lot to say to you.”
Together they entered the house. Spirit started to follow, then heard all the commotion and decided she’d stay outside a bit and just relax and admire the view. The sound of the waterfall might be intrusive to some, but she found it soothing, almost carrying her back to a different existence.
A screened door opened behind her, and she turned and saw a small, slight, yet very familiar figure there. She was taller than any Fluxgirl although still far shorter than Spirit, of very slight build, thin and somewhat plain-looking, but still a little cute. It was, in fact, a familiar boyish figure from the past, still looking nineteen or twenty, with only a few subtle changes. She had sandy-colored hair now, fluffed up and curled and reaching to her shoulders, highlighting her face. Her skin was a coppery bronze, her eyes brown. She wore small, dangling earrings and had a touch of makeup on. which seemed just right to highlight her features. She wore a tight-fitting dark brown body stocking and a pair of dark brown leather boots with thick high heels. The outfit showed such small breasts that they would be totally concealed with anything looser fitting, but her figure was firmly curved and athletic.
Spirit gaped. “Mother? Is that you?”
Cassie smiled. “Who else?”
“But you’re back to normal—sort of.”
That brought a laugh. “Sort of. Actually, except for the hair and skin color this is just the body I had before being tossed into Flux that first time so long ago.”
“But—I’ve seen pictures! You looked like a boy! That figure isn’t the original, is it?”
“Yeah, it’s hard to believe, but it is. The truth is, the way you see yourself sometimes—most times—is reflected by your appearance. I was never very conscious of my figure because I didn’t think I had much of one; I always dressed like a boy. kept my hair real short, never wore makeup or jewelry, always loose-fitting clothes to conceal what I thought of as my lack of a body. It’s sure as hell not the body I did have for a while there, but I finally had a chance to see myself from one of those glamour girl perspectives and I found that it’s more a matter of how you present what you have than of trying to crawl in a hole. That goes for men, too, if they want to take the trouble. I had my fling as a sex object; now I thought it was time to stop the fantasy stuff. I don’t need it any more. I just decided I was going to be what I really am, and not run and hide anymore. I finally decided it was time for me to grow up.”
“But—what are you doing here? I thought you and Suzl would be back in Anchor Logh for disengagement!” Spirit persisted.
She shrugged. “Why? We sure as hell didn’t need to be there, and there was nobody we had to come home to. I talked it over with Sondra and Jeff, and some of the staff here moved me and the kids in three days ago. Suzl will be along when it’s all over, which I guess should be any time now. She kept her Fluxgirl body, but she’s got all her wizard’s power again. For me to come back to myself I had to pay a price.”
“What?”
Cassie nodded. “We had to leave those millions of women in New Eden looking like they had since they became Fluxgirls, and there was a general feeling among the Guardians that it should be a hard and fast rule, just to be fair about it. Particularly for me. But if I stayed that way I’d stay in New Eden forever, and I’d be expected to remarry and to serve as some kind of example or living monument. I couldn’t take that. So to appease both the Guardians and the government that would want to use me, I had to pay a big price. I agreed to it. I’m totally disengaged, totally cut off from Flux power. I can’t even see strings. I’m not a wizard any more, not even a false one. That way, I’m not threat now or in the future to New Eden or to anyone else.”
“That’s terrible! It’s unfair!”
“No, it’s perfectly fair. Any other way I’m a threat to them. If I can no longer live under their system and endorse and be a shining example of it, I become a threat. I have a hell of a track record, remember, for upsetting the established order. Without Flux power of any kind. I’m safe. They can all rest and so can I. With that power they would always be nervous, like New Eden was at the start, and they’d be out hunting me down. They locked me into the master program—the absolute master. I won’t age, they agreed to that much when I agreed to surrender all power, and I’m not only totally without Flux power but totally immune to it as well. No wizard can alter my body or my mind, because to do that they would have to go through the computers, and the computers are instructed to keep me just this way. It was a nice gesture.”
“Nice! I think it’s awful what they put you through!” Cassie sighed and took her oldest daughter aside for a moment, never more conscious than now of the gap separating them. “I’ve lived a very long time,” she said seriously. “I’ve been three or more different women in that space. Now this is the fourth and last incarnation. I’m going to look like this and feel like this and be like this until somebody kills me or I fall off a cliff or something. Sure, they took the power, and I have to admit that it’s a lonely and frightening thing to be in Flux dependent on someone else, but it’s no different than I started, and certainly Suzl coped with that condition for years until you linked her up. No, after you’ve been a genuine Fluxgirl for fifteen years or more this is a pure delight, and, in a way, I’m happier without the power.”
“I don’t think I’m ever going to understand that one.”
“Well, they’re right, Spirit. I would always be a threat to them. When I think of what I did do with the power— well, it wasn’t much that was positive. I fought a lot of wars, defeated a lot of Fluxlords, transformed a lot of bright-eyed girls into slavish devotees of a religion that was totally false, and built an empire. When Coydt took that away from me, I discovered something terrible about myself, something I really couldn’t deal with. I didn’t know how to be anything else. I was a professional warrior-priestess at a time when warrior-priestesses were out of date. Thinking about it now I realize that that was the real reason I accepted Adam’s spell and married him. I’d been a failure at everything except the warrior-priestess role—a failure as a lover, mother, even, in the end with Coydt, as a wizard. My self-confidence was shot to pieces. I needed some role, any role, that would let me just run away. You see. Spirit, in all that time I never really grew up. I never had the chance.”
Spirit shook her head in confusion. “I don’t think I’m going to be able to follow this.”
“Well, now I’m through. I’m trapped as you see me, and I don’t mind a bit. I’m no less a mother to the kids, who seem to approve of this new look—after a lifetime around nothing but Fluxgirls I am the one that looks exotic!—and I’m no less a human being for it, either. I really don’t want anything more from this life than the teenage Cassie long ago did. I think I finally earned the right to be a person, not a symbol or somebody’s tool. I might still get the urge now and then to save the world or mount a revolution, but I can’t—and no wizard or Soul Rider would want to have anything to do with me. For the first time in my life, I’m really free, and I understand myself better than most folks ever will.”
The daughter looked at her mother, and for the first time there seemed to be a glimmer of, if not understanding, at least respect passed between them.
“So what will you do now?” Spirit asked her.
“That depends on how things work out. I’ve still got the kids, and I’m not necessarily out of that business if I don’t want to be. Who knows? Maybe I can’t really grow up. Maybe I’ll always think on the grand scale no matter what. I mean, there’s a possibility in this new land here to start one hell of a dynasty. Just think of the pedigrees alone.”
“Mother!”
The door opened again with a crash and Matson came tearing out, saw her, stopped, and stood there for a moment.
Then suddenly, he felt an urge rising in him, and he simply couldn’t repress it.
“Matson!” Cassie yelled sharply. “Stop laughing yourself sick and kiss me!”
AUTHOR’S AFTERWORD
The Soul Rider saga was conceived as a single novel and then broken into three parts because of its length. At the end, I had intended to include appendices with much of the technical data and background on the physics involved, but in going over it and in particular the “history” leading up to World’s founding. I found that there was enough material to do a novel on it alone, a prequel of sorts which will involve the discoveries and construction of World and will. I hope, be a pretty good independent novel in its own right. Thus, in a year or so, expect to see Birth of Flux and Anchor from Tor Books, who also thought it was a pretty good idea.
Also, in concluding this novel. I discovered that we’ve raised a lot more questions about the dynamics of revolution than we’ve solved, and that there is a lot of World we haven’t reallv seen, trapped as we’ve been in Anchor Logh and New Eden. New Eden is obviously a bankrupt system and a failure, but it has certainly taught all of the power-mongers of World just how empires and revolutions are built. We have left World in ferment: as New Eden dies, and so too the fear of the Gates, we have a political system as much in Flux as Flux itself. I find I have more to say here, and I hope you would like a return trip as well. Tor has also agreed to a (hopefully single volume) sequel for the future, to come after our prequel.
My thanks to Tom Doherty for allowing this book to he the length it needed to be, and whether you liked or loathed the ideas we played with here, if it made you think then I’m happy. For those of you absolutely ill at New Eden’s methods and philosophy who don’t already know what we were doing here. I should warn you not to be complacent. New Eden was firmly based on a real theocratic government and its own writings, one alive and well in our own world as the book was written, needing neither Flux nor new technology to exist and even gain adherents elsewhere. Sleep well.
Jack L. Chalker