“Well, ma’am, that’s the only thing that saved us down there. They had to draw everything from the mother ship. When the mother ship’s connection to the Flux from the Gate was severed, they had no power and it all came tumbling down. Up north they weren’t so lucky. That’s why so many millions died up there. The ship could draw direct from the grid. Still, when they blew the two other mother ships, they blew whatever brain was controlling the creatures who ran the things and they crashed in confusion. If it’d been us in those ships, nothing could have stopped us.”
Both Matson and Suzl could visualize it: New Eden operators, flying above Flux and tapping the grid, overwhelming any forces on the ground behind an absolute shield, robbing even the other wizards and amps against them of the power to attack. Armed with their conversion programs, used so devastatingly in conquering the southern cluster, converting those of Flux into perfect New Edenites, Fluxlords and stringers, masters and slaves alike.
“But you never figured how to make it fly,” Matson noted. “So what’s the range of this thing?”
Verdugo shrugged. “It’s never been fully tested. That was for the big full-field tests that were to start next week. Allowing for it being earthbound, at least line of sight or so, they figure. Maybe a circle thirty kilometers out. Maybe a lot more, but at least that. Now you’re getting too technical for me, and I don’t know the answers, and I don’t think those who might would be allowed to give it out anyway, considering how easy it was for these bastards to learn what they did.”
“I think we got to figure a lot bigger than that.” Suzl told them. “I mean, if a single Fluxlord can make a consistent world a quarter to a third the size of an Anchor, and three or four can make ’em bigger than Anchors, like they have been doing, you got to figure this is at least that strong.”
“I agree,” Matson responded. “I rather suspect, though, that it depends on who’s in the operator’s chair. Just like some wizards can make a small Anchor, while others can only make big pockets, I think this would be the same. A wizard strong enough to make a Fluxland the size, say, of Freehold, would be able to do a lot more than that because they wouldn’t have to worry about stability. The projector would provide that. And, right now, we have no evidence that they have anything like a world-class wizard. The ones we interrogated suggested that most of the band had some wizard power but were only world class when working together. That’s not enough. I assume that only one person sits on that chair as operator.”
“That’s the way I understand it, sir,” Verdugo replied.
“Then they need a wizard. If our guesses are correct, Ayesha draws from Flux but it’s a fixed program. She has no power to cast spells, nor the ability physically even if she had that power. What about Habib?”
“A false wizard, like you,” the major told him. A false wizard could cast spells and create anything quite convincingly—but it wasn’t real. It was all illusion and would fail if tested. The best a false wizard could do was scare you to death, since it was impossible to tell if the monster coming for you was false or true until it caught you—but false wizards could see and read strings and make some use of them.
“Then if it takes a hundred of ’em combined to make one good wizard, they aren’t much of a threat, even with the chair,” Matson noted. “That means they’ll take their strongest and use her strictly as a mobile shield. Oh, they’ll play with it. Test it out on little things, maybe each other, but they won’t be able to do much damage. They’re gonna need a world-class wizard to do real mischief.”
“More than one, sooner or later,” Suzl said. “After they learn about it, and if they have enough horses to transport more, won’t they just create more of the projectors out there? One wizard, one chair. Ten chairs need ten wizards.”
“No, ma’am, that won’t happen,” the major explained. “You see, it’s not something our ancestors thought of. It’s not something they knew how to do. They depended on fixed programs and big amps using the grid directly. They couldn’t project it, except the way we know—one wizard calls up one spell. This thing uses a whole different principle. It was designed by the Samish, and our version was built in Anchor. There’s just no spell for it. Some genius could probably write one, if he knew all the details, and had a lot of testing on it, but it’s not likely these folk will. If there’s no way to interpolate a complex duplication command, and the thing isn’t in the big computer’s memory, it fills in the gaps for you. It’s like nobody can ever think of all the details that would make a Fluxland really work. They just command the basics, and the computers fill in the rest. If you tried it with this one, it would make the power plant a big amp, and if we were told right, you made it so big amps don’t work.”
She nodded, a little relieved. “That’s right. They don’t. Oh, I see now!”
Matson looked disturbed. “I still don’t like it. Out there, what if one of these Soul Rider things got hold of one inside a wizard? First thing it would do is analyze it, send all the data back to the big computers. That’s partly what they’re for—to keep learning and feeding information to the big machines. They might well decide to give the key to whatever group was in charge at the time just because it might be convenient to have a single, unified culture again. Convenient for them. And they wouldn’t care which one, either. Those creatures got a habit of deliberately falling into these things, too.”
“When we get this one, we should blow it up, and all the records, too,” Suzl told them. “And make spells on all the scientists so they forget how to do it, too.”
“Won’t work,” Matson responded. “Damn near impossible to uninvent something once everybody knows it exists, it’s possible, and it works. No, this is a pretty nasty present those creatures left us. In a way, it’s more dangerous than they were. And sooner or later somebody’s gonna figure out how to make ’em fly and mass-produce them in spades.”
Verdugo gave a self-satisfied smile, and Suzl, for one, understood it. Under these circumstances, New Eden would, even now, be rushing into production of these things, this time behind all the military protection known. On the whole planet, only New Eden had the vast industrial base to produce these things in huge quantities and it had a system that could demand and get any sacrifices to make them. Production-line plans were probably even now being drawn up.
While before New Eden was secure and lazy behind a certainty of exclusivity, now it maintained only a technical advantage that would someday run out. If it did not attack and conquer first, it would eventually be attacked and conquered by these machines, perfected by other smart minds out there in Flux and Anchor. Although generals down in the capital were probably even now mapping out their plans and scientists were adapting their programs to the new system, the threat was not immediate. These would have to be built, tested, then deployed with trained personnel. Still, New Eden had the population and industry to do it. The chairs might not even need to be deployed. Right now, they just looked like variations of the big amps. They had to be more than that.
A grid, Suzl thought. You just tell it the numbers on the grid. . . . Sure! That was it! That was what Verdugo wasn’t telling! Any grid number! Any one! The grid linked all of Flux, all the Gates, all the big computers. That’s why it was called a projector. No limits. You could be sitting a few kilometers out in Flux from New Eden and command an area as big as a Fluxland maybe halfway around World! She wanted to say something, to tell Matson of this, but there was no way now, not with Verdugo present.
They would be slow to build and train, but it would be a quick war. They wouldn’t have to go very far—perhaps a hundred meters into Flux from the vast New Eden border, all under impenetrable shields. Then you tap into the grid, all at once, and send not to Gate Four but to Gate One, and divert all of its excess power, and send it outward by feeding in the grid numbers: The Fluxlands crumble, the wizards lose their power, and all of Cluster One becomes one big Fluxland, all in the image of New Eden. All the men become like Major Verdugo, and all the women become like—well, Suzl Weiz had been. But the land would still be Flux, and the male wizards would retain their power, but would have a will to defend and preserve New Eden’s system and its philosophy. You could give it back to them; they would sustain it themselves. Then the same projectors tie into Cluster Two and repeat the process. With all the Gates secured, you’d move projectors to each and then fill in the gaps between the clusters. With all World of one New Eden mind save the twenty-four Anchors, most weak, divided, and cut off from one another, you’d have a dedicated army large enough to conquer them one by one.
New Eden would be the soul of World. No longer fearful of Flux, they would control it utterly, and all human beings within it, even in the void, would be New Edenites by fixed program.
Suzl thought of what she had been like as a Fluxgirl, what she was fearing being like one again, and she knew one thing: She preferred any vision, no matter how grotesque, to condemning every single woman on World now, and those yet unborn, to permanent status as ignorant, childlike servants and sex objects. It was all well and good for Matson to take the long view and hope for a way out, but he was a man. He would never understand, not on the gut level, as she could. She understood his vague plan, to get rid of Ayesha and Borg Habib and capture the projector for the stringers, no mean scientists themselves. But they had no vision of controlling the world. They would learn how to defend against it and to protect their own. That would probably include Freehold, but how much else? They had been more than willing to accept and deal with New Eden before; they would compromise again, and let the rest of World go hang.
She thought perhaps it was time to make some plans of her own.
6
CONTACT
The old wall was mostly in ruins and much of it had been torn down to make way for more modern and effective border controls, such as nasty fences, guard towers, and mines, but the old and forbidding Gate still stood, and near it now a large and comfortable inn had been made out of the old converted headquarters and barracks complex.
It was still a busy place. New Eden still imported from Flux what was most convenient to import, and this was the end of its small rail line and the start of freight from Flux up into Logh Center, first, and from there to the main rail lines to the interior.
Matson seemed surprised when Suzl asked for a room of her own, but he offered no resistance nor arguments against it. The decision bothered her far more than it did him; she still got shivers from just thinking about the night before, and she very much wanted more of the same. Had it just been her, under the old conditions, she would have never left his side again, but other things had intervened, as usual. Millions of people all over the planet lived out their whole lives without interfering in the scheme of things one way or the other. She, on the other hand, always seemed to have things of great importance fall into her lap, and she could never feel secure enough to forget it and hope somebody else would do the job.
The place was bustling, that was for sure. The staff alone numbered perhaps sixty or seventy Fluxgirls, overseen by a half-dozen male managers. It was difficult for either the men or the women to accept Suzl as an independent guest, unescorted and with her own room. She wasn’t even allowed in the dining room or lounge without Matson, which was inconvenient. It wasn’t so much that she was a woman, since she knew that some of the coming female guests would be treated as virtual equals with the men, but that she looked like a Fluxgirl. It was damned inconvenient, but it did give her a chance to question him with no personal situations attached.
“What happens if you get these raiders but New Eden attacks?” she asked him. “I think you understand what this thing really does.”
He nodded. “Yeah, I do, and thanks to some messages I sent out today through the strings I think the Guild does, too. The answer is that we do what we can. New Eden won’t find setup and deployment so easy once word gets to all those Fluxlords about their plans. They have to get them out and set up and shielded, remember, and they’re not as good at that as we are. If worst comes to worst— well, New Eden’s a mighty big place. They can’t defend a lot of it when they have to defend their projectors.”
She nodded soberly. “Then it’s war. Almost a world war. It’s gonna be the Samish all over again, only it’ll be us on both sides.”
He shrugged. “Better war than what we would have had if we hadn’t gotten this break. The trouble is, we need that stolen machine, and we won’t be the only ones after it. No doubt, though, it’s going to get bloody before it ends.”
The conversation confirmed everything she’d feared after hearing the details and guessing the rest. War. . . . Millions dead. World in ruins, and the victors would still be free to impose an absolute system on Flux and Anchor— whoever the victors would be. Even if they were good enough to defeat New Eden, and they might be when unified, as soon as that happened the various armies of Flux and Anchor would turn on one another to keep from being dominated and to dominate the rest. It might be even worse. A Flux only of mad duggers reduced to primitive savagery, and Anchors in ruins, wastelands from which it might take generations to rebuild, if that.
Being taken as a Fluxgirl had some advantages, too. She spent the evening making friends with the staff and talking with the girls, and she learned a lot, not the least of which was that some of the girls were new. She thought she could spot the ones who weren’t legitimate—a little more standoffish, a bit more assertive, a little secretive. A few might work for Verdugo, but what of the ones who didn’t? The security man, by bringing in a few girls as spies, had also made it easy for the very ones they sought to also infiltrate the inn.
Still, there was nothing she could do for a while. She finally went to bed, and was awakened from a troubled sleep by soft but insistent knocks on her door. She went over to it and said, “Who’s there?”
“Matson. Something’s come up. I think we have to talk.”
She let him in, and saw that he’d pulled on his pants but obviously had been recently asleep himself. He carried a small piece of paper in his hand. He took the chair while she sat on the bed.
“I’ve had contact,” he told her. “I figured they’d move before everybody got here. After all, I made us coming down here as loud and public as possible.”