“I can’t deny that revenge played a big part in founding this place, but it’s more than that now. A lot more. Among the ancient writings that fell into our hands were the holy books of our ancestors. Not the stuff the Church dishes out, but the system it replaced. This is God’s will, His way of returning the human race to the right path, to purging humanity of all that went unholy. Hell did rebel, and it won. Now we are here to make it right again.”
She realized from long experience as a religious leader that the man’s tone was matter-of-fact and definite. He really believed what he said.
“I’m sorry,” she responded. “I don’t believe in my own old holy writings anymore. I’m certainly not ready for something like yours.”
“We will convince you, too,” he told her flatly.
“You can do many things to me, but you can’t work your Flux changes on me as you do the others. Surely you know that.”
“You underestimate us. Do you think you’re the first world-class wizard we have dealt with? Wizardry is a horror we will one day eliminate from the face of World. The books showed us the ways, and they work. We wanted you particularly and for a very long time, you know. Not for your looks, certainly, although you are, I admit, quite a bit more appealing than your pictures. You’re not just anyone. You are a symbol, recognized and recognizable, now as before. Wizards know your power, and your very presence in our system will demonstrate ours, generating fear in them and respect as well. This enhances our security and insures their cooperation with us when we need them. Word will grow and spread of this far beyond our little cluster. The Church will not fall because of it, but it will rattle a great deal. We were ready for you a while ago, but until now your capture had not been possible.”
“H—How did they do it, if I may ask?”
“You may indeed. A simple ray projector of our creation that uses Flux energy to concentrate enormous power on every cell of the body, but without destroying any of those cells. You might call it a near-electrocution. It is instantaneous through the whole nervous system, so there is no time to counter it. A very powerful but evil wizard has been trying to get in our good graces for quite a while. We told him that you were a prize that would make us think more kindly toward him, and he delivered you. Zelligman Ivan is his name.”
She started. “But he’s one of the Seven!”
“We are not stupid. This land was founded by Coydt van Haas, remember. We know what Haas was, and who and what Zelligman Ivan is and what he wants. I said the Church was a perversion, not something out of whole cloth. We know what Hell is, and we know from whence its influence flows. He is as powerless as you in our Anchors. He may gain a lot of friendliness from us so long as his power suits our needs, but neither he nor his agents will get near a Hellgate. Not from our side.”
She didn’t know whether to feel relieved or not. At least now she could understand the cold pragmatism of the Nine in allowing this abomination of Anchors to exist. If they guarded their end as zealously as the Church did, it was not worth the thousands of lives to retake and clean up this place.
And where did that leave her? She shivered slightly, and he saw it and read her thoughts.
“Don’t worry. God’s object now is to provide happiness and contentment. You will have both.”
Ax a blade of grass is happy, even when it is cut, for it knows no other way, she thought sourly.
They pulled into a nondescript building in some town not far from the Anchor gate, and she was lifted down and walked with this strange man into the building and up a flight of stairs. It was slow going with the leg bracelets, but she was determined not to falter or fall. They placed her in a room that was no less a cell for being clean and comfortable. All restraints were then removed, but she had no illusions that she was not under constant surveillance.
In all, she found the place surprising. Electric lights here, in the boondocks! Some kind of powered air filtration system that kept things dry and comfortable at all times. She knew she was in for a great ordeal, but she had been through ordeals no human had ever before endured and she was still here. Suicide did not really occur to her; if she’d been the sort, she would have done it years ago.
There was a tap of drinkable water in the cell, and the first food they delivered was quite an excellent meal, She knew it was probably drugged, but considering the air system and the water it hardly seemed worth starving to death to avoid it.
She worried about Spirit, but she knew that Mervyn and Jeff would take care of her, at least see her through the tough times. It would be rough on Jeff, and she hoped he wouldn’t try to rescue her. Not here. She was not convinced that they could make her become what they wanted, and she knew she would look for escape if she could, but she knew she would probably die in the effort. Oddly, that idea did not disturb her, and she fell fast asleep.
If they’d put anything in the food, water, or air she certainly couldn’t tell. The next day they introduced her to the collar, a very nasty little device. Although it clipped on, it was very securely locked and appeared seamless. It was tight around the neck, but not so tight that it would interfere with eating or breathing. What it did was deliver the most horrible, painful shock she had ever known every time anyone pushed a button, and black-clad men pushed the button frequently. It was a textbook conditioning technique; not something that would induce permanent changes, but would give them control of her behavior, that was certain. She tried to stand it for a while, but the pain was simply too excruciating. After a bit, anyone would do anything to avoid it, and anything meant doing exactly what they said exactly when they said. Even the smallest infraction was punished.
For someone who was as intelligent and strong-willed as she was, it was incredible how easy it was to break her. Every mistake, every little error, got a jolt from the collar.
It took less than a week for Cass to realize that the only way to avoid such pain was to begin to think the way they wished. Even though she knew what was happening, it proved impossible to resist, and this helped destroy her self-confidence all the more.
The men who administered the system were highly skilled experts and they were very patient. It was impossible to fool them for long, and they proceeded in a methodical manner, never advancing until they were positive an earlier plateau had been reached.
At the start it was reduction and disorientation. No set schedules, no set feedings, no sight of the outside, and no prolonged or regular sleeps. The total disruption of the biological clock, the total absence of time sense, and sleep deprivation and consequent eternal fatigue coupled with the shock collar were as effective on her as on the thousands before her. She was human; that was all they needed.
There were the lectures, which she was expected to memorize, lectures given again and again, asleep and awake, and on which she was constantly quizzed, with any hesitancy or wrong answer producing a jolt. The only way to avoid it was to quite literally incorporate what was being said into her thoughts.
Not that she didn’t try to fight it, but short of committing suicide there was simply no way to do it for long. The techniques used were thousands of years old and they worked almost every time. The old Church had found them quite effective.
Eventually, she found herself waking up automatically when the light came on, getting up, washing herself at the basin, brushing her hair, and waiting for the guards. All of the thoughts in her mind were consumed by the whole of the Revealed Truth upon which she would be endlessly and dispassionately quizzed. When all of your waking thoughts are directed to the same texts, you tend to begin to believe them.
World circled an enormous planet shrouded in poison gasses, held to this orbit by natural forces. In the beginning. God had created the heavens and World and also created out of Flux all that was. Ultimately. He had created the first man in His own image and set him in a paradise called Eden, which was World in the first days. When the first man was lonely, God created the first woman as his opposite and complement. A true, divinely ordained social structure was in that way created.
But God wanted them tested, and allowed Hell the Tempter into Eden, and the demons failed to tempt the man but succeeded in getting the woman to disobey God’s commandments, and then she was able to get the man to do the same. Because of this, God dissolved Eden into Flux and created World as it is known today. It was commanded that woman be the subordinate to man. as she was more easily corrupted; that because the woman alone could bear and rear the children the man would be the provider and the protector, the woman the nurturer and keeper of the home and family. Being created out of man rather than God, the woman had no innate soul of her own but could attain heaven by a proper life and service to a man, becoming an adjunct to his soul. To do so, she must follow God’s plan and keep to the divine role assigned to her, one of subordination and service, as she had demonstrated in Eden that power and authority were not proper for her. Still, any woman who served God, obeyed His divine rules, and joyfully accepted and dedicated herself to service could attain divine bliss.
For thousands of years this society had existed, until finally the demons of Hell had cracked it, driven as they were to test all of God’s creations. Misguided men allowed women too much power and freedom and this corrupted them. The men were overthrown for this, as God’s punishment for their own weakness, and a corrupt perversion of society replaced it, one in which women set up an exclusive and false Church and used it to dominate and run all of human society. It was a period of misery and stagnation for human kind, in which all of the ancient knowledge was lost or hidden and all of society was devoted only to maintaining the status quo.
Now God had allowed, after all this time, some of the ancient knowledge and writings to reappear in the hands of men—the men of New Eden. God had delivered into their hands the means of deliverance from the blasphemous system that had oppressed World and the means to once again set up the true path according to Divine Will. This was New Eden.
After a while—she could not know how long—the initial treatment stopped. She was allowed to sleep and was given time to think and relax, but the collar stayed on and the tests always continued. Now, though, there were more structured sessions with a variety of people. She was taught the proper methods of dress and makeup and expected to make herself not merely presentable but as attractive as possible before leaving her room. She had always believed herself plain and unattractive, but they showed her all sorts of ways to enhance her looks. She did not even then see herself as a sex goddess, but she found the reflections in her mirror more attractive now and she liked it. Something deep down began to stir in her, something she’d never really suspected was there. She craved to be attractive, to get those looks from men. to be seen as someone sexy and desirable.
The sessions, too, challenged her, turning her inward. The Church was a sham; it could not be reformed, as she had thought, for it was innately corrupt and bankrupt. She had long ago lost her faith but there had been no alternatives; now she had one. and it seemed to fill a tremendous inner need to embrace it and believe it. She had been appalled by the corruption and stagnancy of the old Church, yet in reforming it she had killed tens of thousands and reached an empty end. She had sacrificed her life, her friends, even her daughter to a hollow idol, a Church that served nothing but the narrow political ends of nine powerful, amoral wizards.
Carefully they took her back to the original, innocent Cassie of Anchor Logh, dreaming of romance but trying to be content with a mediocre career that would replace it.
She fought it, fought it all the way, but her own internal counters to their arguments and philosophy were hollow, too, dead ends of unhappiness, loneliness, despair. She was in turmoil, unable to really think straight or counter any of it. In the end, it came down to alternatives. Accept this, totally and completely, or—what? More unending misery, loneliness, and despair? The carefully measured pressure built up inside her, based upon the groundwork laid, unknown to her, by Ivan and Haldayne in Flux.
Ultimately, one evening, something finally slipped in her mind. All arguments fled, all questions faded, and she prostrated herself and prayed to the God of New Eden to grant her happiness and peace.
Then they introduced her to Adam Tilghman. the same craggy-faced former sergeant she’d talked to when first awakening in New Eden. Somehow she’d seen something she’d liked in him even then, and the more she saw of him the more she liked him.
Human contact with anyone other than Tilghman was kept to an absolute minimum and was always done in silence by both sides. Tilghman alone became her sole source of conversation, punishment, and praise. He tended to be apologetic for the shock technique, yet he defended it as the only way to break through decades of conditioning without physical harm. “We are still feeling our way, and searching for the true grace of God,” he told her.
The more time she spent with him, the more she looked forward to the next. In many ways, on both a conscious and subconscious level, he reminded her of her father— kind, wise, tough, strong, self-confident—a man sure of himself and secure within his own mind. In other ways, he was much like Matson—world-wise and somewhat weary, sure of power and radiating authority and confidence. He was the Chief Judge, the most powerful man in New Eden, and he was interested in her, interested enough to transfer much of his office and schedule to this outlying area.
After a while, he began to take her out of the place where she’d been secluded for how long she couldn’t pinpoint. He was set up in a small house just outside the nearby village, and she relished the relative freedom of movement and the looks of the men and other women when it was obvious that she was with the Chief Judge. She had begun to fantasize just what it would be like to be the wife of the Chief Judge. She was aware that this part, too, was still a trial period for her, and that everyone was watching her. but she was beginning to realize that she didn’t feel particularly demeaned or uncomfortable now. She began to feel that God had given her one last chance at redemption and personal happiness. No matter what doubts she might have had about the overall scheme of things, it was no longer right to think about society or broad roles and major causes. She’d done it herself, lived for others, her whole life up to now. From now on, she decided, someone else must save the world. She was going to do whatever she felt like doing, whatever gave her what she personally needed.
She had fallen in love with Adam Tilghman, and when you didn’t resist the system, didn’t think about it but just lived it, it was so easy and so peaceful. If the system wasn’t perfect, well, neither was it a horror chamber, at least not for her.
Tilghman himself almost apologetically admitted that New Eden was not yet the society the faith demanded, and that many of the original men who’d taken over the Anchor were slow to accept change. He was confident, though, that change was inevitable, that even now a new society was emerging that reflected the ideals of the faith. Eventually there would be a society without want, without fear, in which people could live out God’s tenets of living. He did not deny that there was a lot of oppression of women, but said that she would see the changes being made. He, supported by the younger generations raised in the faith, would see to that.
The faith took hold in her, not so much as a result of the conditioning sessions as because it gave her something to believe in that answered most of her questions and provided an easy way out of her guilt. It rang true when compared to many of the Church-suppressed documents in the Codex; it was far older than the Church, and it absolved her of guilt. She had been the product of an “unnatural” society; she could not be blamed for its results. With that acceptance she began to rationalize virtually everything she had detested about New Eden’s society. The fact that Tilghman and the new faith both recognized their own failings and imperfections and pledged changes held great promise. Although she saw the hand of God in the death of Coydt now, she realized that his evil had corrupted many, but by no means all, of his lieutenants and that excising such evil would take time and care.
Tilghman was a big part of this realization. She had faith in him, believed in him and knew his sincerity of vision. His strength, intellect, and determination gave her a whole new reason to live and to hope; a product of oppression who wanted to build a more perfect world for all, not just be another petty Fluxlord.
It was not a sudden thing, no matter what the conditioning process, but rather gradual. One day she woke up and simply realized that Tilghman was right, that he offered the only positive vision in a stagnant and evil world. It was in every way a deep, emotional, religious experience which she was convinced came from Heaven itself. She bowed down and prayed that she be allowed to participate in this vision, and vowed she would try to attain perfection as a woman in God’s eyes. She knew war, and hated it. Henceforth she would be passive. She had known sex, once, but never love. She would seek love. She had always been ashamed of her looks; now she would try to emphasize what God had given her and be proud to be feminine. She had given birth but denied herself motherhood; now she would seek that. She had competed all her life; now she would seek consensus.
When she told him of all this, he seemed greatly pleased, but he grew serious. “Cassie—I know you’re telling the truth, and I know you think you love me. It you didn’t know, I think I’m in love with you, too.”
That remark sent feelings through her she never knew before.
He sighed. “Cassie, if we marry there will always be those who doubt and remember the old days. They wouldn’t trust you, and that would weaken me. If you truly love me and wish to be my wife, would you be willing to make the ultimate sacrifice?”
She was taken aback. “I—I don’t know what you mean, Adam.”
“I mean to marry in Flux, and make the oath binding. To trust me so thoroughly that you will place yourself completely in my hands and accept whatever spells are offered you.”
She hesitated a moment. Flux. . . .
“Yes. Adam, I’ll do it. I want this so very much. Let me wipe the slate clean and be born anew, as your wife. your lover, and the mother of your children to come.”
“Then we will do it tomorrow, at midday. And all who witness it will know and be content.” He knew he was taking a calculated risk in allowing her into Flux, but it was the final step. She wouldn’t know it. but there would be an amplifier out there anyway, sealing them off from the rest of Flux and preventing escape. Ivan and his own people had done a great job. but this was the ultimate, and final, test.
“There is nothing for me out there anymore, if there ever was.” she told him. “I will take any binding spell you wish to prove it.”
He smiled, and drew her to him and kissed her, for the first time. She did not flinch or hesitate, and it became prolonged and more passionate and she felt herself getting terribly aroused. And it felt good.
The next day they were picked up by a fancy carriage and taken to the Gate, which proved to be less than a half-hour’s ride away. There were witnesses there, who’d been conducting one sort of business or another with New Eden, and all were invited to the apparently impromptu ceremony. Some were wizards from nearby Fluxlands, and not all were in the employ or under the complete control of New Eden. That was the way they’d wanted it. If the gamble worked and the timing was just right, word would soon be spread all over World, with confirmation by unimpeachable sources. Not by coincidence, the crowd included one Zelligman Ivan himself, who had been around for weeks killing time just to see the end result of his handiwork for himself. And, of course, insure his investment and collect his rewards.
The book on Cass said that she was subject to emotional rushes and that during that period she was pretty much willing to do almost anything. Mervyn had chosen such a point to get her to lead the Reformed Church movement and to take spells against ever being so receptive again. Coydt had removed those restraints; now, they gambled that she was at a similar point.
She was smiling as they faced the void, and they held hands and stepped into it. With them went the witnesses and a powerful Fluxlord named Constantine who would perform the spell. She seemed at that moment to have eyes only for Tilghman, but she did look around briefly at the void and at the witnesses, and there seemed a little flicker, a bit of hesitancy, in her eyes.
“Cassie,” Tilghman said seriously, “I will take you as my wife, and swear that I will treat you according to God’s will, that I will love, protect, provide, and cherish you always, ’til death. But it must be done freely, and you must place your faith and trust in God and in me. Will you?”
“I will. Adam.” she responded, looking up at him. “I swear that I will love, honor, and obey you so long as we both shall live.”
“If you love and trust me, then take the spell that is offered and bind yourself with it.”
Constantine fed the spell, but clearly it was more complex than even he could actually divine. It was a spell such as Coydt had spun, in the impossible mathematics no human mind could follow.
She looked again at the crowd, and then at Adam Tilghman. and then out into the featureless void, and many held their breaths wondering just what she would do.
She accepted the spell, even though she had no idea what it contained, and bound herself with it.
Immediately she seemed to glow and shimmer, and there were dramatic if subtle changes in her. She was shorter, barely a hundred and forty-seven centimeters and perhaps forty-one kilograms. Her figure, which had always been slight, even boyish, filled out. with perfectly proportioned, firm breasts; a body tapering dramatically down to an extremely narrow waist, then out to large but ideally proportioned hips. Her skin remained bronze but became creamy smooth, without blemish of any sort, and her reddish-brown hair became waist-length and seemed interwoven with strands of gold. She was still recognizable to those who’d known her. but her boyish face had been subtly altered as well to erase all traces of the maleness in it; the lips had been thickened and sensuously shaped, the eyes very soft and seemingly huge, with long lashes and thin, feminine eyebrows. There was no body hair, save pubic hair, beyond the face.
All the women of New Eden bore an identifying tattoo on their left rump, and this, too, was there, although with the usual addition. “CASSIE T1LGHMAN,” it read, and underneath in much smaller print, “AL6-466-080N.”
They kissed, and walked back into Anchor, where she was given a small case with clothing and jewelry in it, and a makeup and mirror kit. She gasped when she first saw herself in the mirror, and seemed pleased.
She wasn’t quite sure how she felt inside. Certainly no different than she’d felt when accepting Adam’s proposal, yet she remembered who she had been and, she thought, all that had happened. And yet, as she put on the silver fine-mesh garment, the decorative belt that secured it and hung on her hips, and the glittering silver high-heeled shoes, as well as the sparkling earrings, necklace, and bracelets she found and admired, she realized she couldn’t read the small words engraved on the bracelet—and, curiously, it didn’t seem to matter.
She basked in the looks she was getting from all the men, and felt very happy and at peace. The essential content of the spell, however, was not apparent to her, and would not be for some time; but it was set forth in a basic text of New Eden she would never read.
“In New Eden.” it said, “the mind rules the body of the male: the body rules the mind of the female.”
But most men did not have spells to enforce that holy rule. Fluxgirls did, and now, by her own choice, Cassie was a Fluxgirl, bound by a spell as tight as any and one she could never break.
The Brotherhood had been formed by Coydt van Haas as part of a project for the Seven, to undermine the credibility of the Reformed Church and show its vulnerability. For that task he’d recruited determined men from all over the planet, most of whom were tough and ruthless when they had to be but were, nevertheless, also highly intelligent and experienced. They also had one other thing in common with Coydt: they had all at one time or another been victimized, exploited, enslaved, or, as in Coydt’s own case, mutilated by women in matriarchal societies.
In the end, Coydt had died not from sorcery but from the shotgun of the stringer Matson, out for revenge. But Matson, understanding that these desperate men would fight to the death and take a civilian population with it, also made a deal with them to relinquish Anchor Logh to New Eden without massive bloodshed. The deal that they accepted, though, was one to contain them, predicated both on a strong Empire to enforce it and on the impression of the invaders as a gang of murderous thugs. Both proved unfounded.
Coydt had brought with him his valuable collection of ancient writings and devices, and the team of experts who deciphered, attempted to interpret, and created practical applications from the vast amount of material in that collection. These were not merely the written works of the Codex, but included small machines that drew their power from unknown sources and provided illustrations and instructions. They did not understand how the devices they made from these sources worked, but they learned how to build them and found that, once built, they worked as advertised.
The initial year of their conquest was one of unremitting brutality, particularly towards women. Massive purges were conducted of the Anchor’s indigenous population: the rest were indoctrinated into the new system by all of the new devices and a lot of old methods some of the conquerors had learned the hard way, on the receiving end. They had little Flux power themselves, but as much as they hated it they also coveted it. and were not above trading some gadget or scrap of knowledge useful to a wizard in exchange for services. The devices in particular were very clever, such as the small booster of Flux power that could be carried in one’s hand or on a belt. Yet any attempt to open it to see how it worked caused it to fuse into a mass of goo; transforming it so it wouldn’t do that also rendered it useless. All wore out after a while, and had to be replaced. The Brotherhood had created a marketable niche for itself, limited only by its inability to do more than small-scale manufacturing without wizards to transmute required materials. Anchor Logh had been primarily agricultural.
By the end of five years in power, the Brotherhood felt secure, and had also seen the Empire crumble and its guardians desert it. That time was also well spent in learning the complexities of running a government. The ancient holy books found by Coydt had given them a mission and a justification for it all, but it said little about practical administration.
Men ran the government and the religious institutions, fought wars, protected property, planned, studied, engineered, and administrated. That left women to do the basic work. Seventy percent of Anchor Logh’s males had been killed in the takeover or the purges that followed. Those women not taken by party—meaning Brotherhood—leaders or the thirty percent of the men who went along with the new system were, therefore, reindoctrinated and in many cases transformed in Flux into a new underclass of dim, docile women to do that work.