“Security’s ten thousand or so are spread over the entire planet, excluding the headquarters staff, who were the first to die. That’s only a few hundred per Anchor. Signals has twenty-two thousand, but they are spread all over the void, an even larger area, and concentrated only in a few spots. They had no more than a few hundred people in each Anchor either. Ngomo has used the military override commands to change the nature of grid energy, excluding the type that is used to power everything from the so-called god guns to the automatic cars. Their motors can no longer draw power from the grid. This has effectively cut Ryan off, as his troops must move on foot or on what horses they have—and it’s not enough—and even supplies must be moved the hard way. They are all designed to take a two-hundred-and-forty-volt, fifty-cycle direct current. The grid will no longer deliver that voltage, although it will deliver others.”
“Jesus!”
“This, then, gives Ngomo the only effective and cohesive forces on New Eden.”
“But—wait a minute! The direct computer interfaces and the big amps don’t run off the grid. They convert Flux directly.”
“Yes, but with a directive prohibiting power to the remote units and his people in control of all administrative buildings, what difference does that make?”
“A lot. Security may have blown it, but I can’t believe you’re this incompetent. Watanabe and her followers remained in their exile camp, did they not? They did not get back to the building, even under false pretenses?”
“Of that I will swear. Yes. Why is this important?”
“Because she couldn’t have done all her damned tinkering indirectly, feeding long strings of esoteric programs and chains to army people who then trotted off and enacted them. She needed a direct and secure interface. It’s the same way she fooled you. She’s got a big amp in the void right near that camp of hers that doesn’t register on anybody’s monitors. She’s got it totally hidden, its actions masked, and its power consumption buried in some other place so it doesn’t show. That’s the reason for her revival city out there in the east of X-ray.”
“But even if that were true, it wouldn’t function under the military orders,” Singh pointed out.
“Yeah, and no 7240 can ever be interfaced without a Guard. Bullshit. She’s somehow got the 7800 convinced that it’s not a big amp at all, and so not subject to the exclusion order. I bet it took her all of a day and a half to solve it, too, sitting there in her comfortable little prison all those months. Damn!”
“So?”
“Well, we’ve got a big amp here, too, just out there in the void.”
“But it is disconnected!”
“Sure—and so was hers. If we can figure out how to do that trick, we might be able to play hell with all this yet. What about Signals? Do they still have full communications?”
“Ryan has no direct interface with a 7800. but he does have a great deal of specialized equipment directly hooked up to the network and it is not two-forty dependent. Yes. He can talk—he just can’t act.”
“Maybe we can—if we have enough time to solve this thing before they come here with stakes to burn the witches and wizards and stick black robes and veils on the survivors.”
“I am afraid you might not be joking. The sentiment against the people here is getting that virulent, and Ngomo, of necessity, made his primary deals not with the moderate and modern Islamic communities but with the most fanatical and fundamentalist leaders. They are a tiny minority of the whole, but they have been handed the keys to power with promises of liberal rule and they are, of course, being believed in the main. By the time they find out just what they have been given the keys to, the conservatives will be in full control and will have sufficient technical support to convert the population to their way of thinking using the 7800. It has happened before, but never before have they had delivered into their hands the means for absolute conversion.”
“They’ll never do it. They are too few against a vast majority, and that majority includes some pretty devout people on their own side. The Hindu population here won’t stand for it at all. and the Christians will be equally indignant. They can’t mass-convert a population quietly. It will simply mean more blood.”
“But they can and they believe they will.” Singh told her. “That is part of the deal with Watanabe. She believes she has a master program that will actually alter the master Anchor programs, that will convert everyone in it to their way at once.”
Lisa Wu gasped. “But that would kill every living thing!”
“Indeed. Kill it—and resurrect it, all in a matter of perhaps three quarters of an hour, maybe less. Nothing will be changed except that all human beings within the Anchor programming matrix will be commonly filtered before being restored. In a way, we can say that they will know all but remember nothing. It must be admitted that while this has been done with individuals and even with very small groups, it has never been done or proven on this scale and even Watanabe is not certain that it will work as intended. She is a driven woman, however. She believes God guides her hand.”
“My God! Where’s Coydt? Where’s the opposition to this? Do you realize what you just told me? That twenty-four Anchors are about to be propelled socially back to the fourteenth century and that four others are about to be forced into the mold of a mad woman?”
“I know this. It is why I am here. Security is doing what it can, but Ngomo has the military command codes. All Security personnel have been disallowed access to the 7800 network. That is how Ngomo did it. That is what I have been telling you. There were enough traitors within Cockburn’s staff who, for their own personal reasons or for dreams of power and empty promises, gave our rebel general control. First he got the control codes. Then he killed Cockburn and all staff that he either could not or did not control or own outright. Then he cut us all out of the network, and only then did his troops and the civilian groups within the Anchors begin their ruthless takeover. All we can do is alert everyone we can and aid them in getting out to the void. We do not know how much time we have, although it is certainly not hours or even days but weeks at least we are talking about. There is an organizational plan, but it is a bleak one.”
“Go on.”
“We are trying to move as much in the way of books, records, programming modules—all that is central to our origins, our history, and our technology, even if we can’t use or access it at this time, into safe areas in the void. Ryan’s troops are instructed to assist in this. These enclaves are being established by all the Sensitives we can save, contact, or round up.”
“If we can just activate that amp and get into the net!”
Pandit Singh stared at her. “And do what? Perhaps, just perhaps, we can save Anchor Luck. Even more of a perhaps is saving Region Four. We get a terribly bloody and divisive civil war in each and in the end the others simply ride down in some kind of jihad and take the survivors. Face it. We have been so busy spying upon and fearing one another that we failed to see the competent and dangerous idealist in our midst plotting our overthrow. Security is very much to blame, I admit. We were so busy ferreting out secrets that we discounted the invisible man sitting there in plain sight casually learning what had to be learned and doing what had to be done.”
“Then we should just—surrender? Abandon millions of innocent souls to this?”
“No. Try to find a way to beat them if you can, of course, but at the same time prepare for the worst and always consider the consequences. What is done by computer may be undone by computer.”
“And what of you and Coydt and the rest?” she asked.
“Our own Special Projects people managed to get an enormous load of material out of the headquarters before it became impossible. They trucked it down to the Gate transmission room and out to Gate Four. I am going there now, if I can. I have enough contacts and blackmail and knowledge of secrets that I believe I can penetrate the headquarters and use the transmission system. There is a secret exit from Suzuki’s office that leads through walls and down to the basement area, for example. I have a number of identities, including one as an officer of the Anchor Guard. I believe I will succeed. There, what has been taken out will be dispersed as best we can to existing redoubts, and Signals will keep track of what and where as best it can and move it as needed. I will be coordinating there as best I can. When you establish your areas in the void, contact Signals or the Gate as best you can and we will attempt to establish a network of resistance groups. Others here and in all the other Anchors are attempting as best they can to convince people of the impending doom and to rise and act, but few truly believe it is even possible.”
“But something should be done to begin evacuating all that do buy it to the void!”
“They won’t go. Some will, and we will use them, but most will not. This is their land, their home. They did not go back to Earth when they had the chance in a crisis they could see and understand; they will not abandon it now because of some political coup and a lot of speculative nonsense that they will somehow be changed as a group. They are ready to fight for their land, Arab and Hindu and Nigerian and Argentine and Aussie alike, but they cannot believe or even accept that they will have no chance to fight. Many are now rejoicing at the spreading news that the so-called military dictatorship is ended and the dreaded Security is destroyed or impotent, and their liberators are clever and patient and extremely intelligent. Do not confuse their fundamentalism, their religious rock, their total belief that they do the will of Allah, with stupidity. They are brilliant and they know they will never get a second chance.”
“Maybe not even a first one if they’re foolish enough to trust Watanabe to do their program right.”
“She will do it their way, for as I said, they are not stupid and the distances are quite large between Anchors. They will try it one Anchor at a time, and test it carefully. Watanabe, too, is no fool, even if mad. She knows as well as they that there is no second chance if she tries to cross them. One false move and they will cut her lines absolutely, then physically overwhelm her even if they must kill every man, woman, and child in Region Three. The programs, if they work at all, will work as they wish. Watanabe is a good politician. Her madness is always tolerated so long as Signals and we and the directors and the rest are out there in the void, with powers and some contact with one another and the network, they cannot afford not to have her. She is patient. She will bide her time, which might be considerable, then strike only when success is absolutely assured.”
“Ngomo must know that too.”
“Indeed, but he has little choice. I only know that it is far easier to make a revolution than to keep it, and that it will in the end be a question of who strikes first. We consider the odds to be even.”
“And Coydt? Where is she in all this?”
“That, I’m afraid, is an unanswerable question. I only know she took Suzuki, several of Suzuki’s staff, and a number of Pathfinders and rode off. I have my suspicions, considering that all in her party were women, but I do not want to know any more.”
Lisa Wu sighed. “I think I better call a meeting now. How can we contact Signals if we need them? If nothing’s running out there, we’re gonna need horses, mules, wagons, whatever, not to mention manpower.”
“The security troops here know what is happening. They will be with you. The officer of the day has communications equipment to reach Signals personnel in the area if need be.” He paused, looking sheepish. “It was necessary to monitor you in the void.”
“We figured that out long ago. Don’t worry. It might pay, though, to get some people to go into Anchor and beg, borrow, buy, or steal some horses. They’ll be in very short supply out there for quite a while and not critical here yet since everything’s still working.”
“It is being done.” He got up and offered his hand, and she did likewise and shook it. “I must go now. Go with God’s blessings and protection. I hope to see you once more, out there.”
“It better be. I’m a Buddhist and I certainly don’t want to be reincarnated in one of these Anchors.”
“Remember the lesson of the Flux,” he said sagely. “No matter what things are, nothing is permanent. Nothing. All things change, and all things are mutable. So long as we remain keepers of the ideas and seekers of truth and justice, we will eventually prevail.”
“That’s my line,” she responded sourly, never more depressed in her entire life.
He sat there in his black uniform and black bush hat atop a horse just as dark, relaxed and smoking a big cigar. His bodyguard was all around him, although many were invisible to the onlooker and certainly to the approaching riders.
In the old days of just a few weeks before, the journey the women now approaching had undertaken would have taken perhaps four days. Instead, it had taken them almost three weeks of constant riding and prearranged horse-switching and minimal sleeping and eating.
The leader of the women showed her exhaustion in her face as she approached him and came to a stop: She nodded. “Hello, Mike. You haven’t changed a bit.”
“Brenda, you look like hell,” replied General Michael Ryan dryly. “Come on and follow us. We’ve got a small pocket over here with all the comforts of home.”
To one who could not see the invisible energy bands, the strings, of the Signal corps, finding the pocket would have been next to impossible. Even those who could see the strings had to know their complex code to find anything of value. It had kept the duggers away and retained the transport routes through the void pretty much intact, although at a snail’s pace.