The woman arose and did as instructed, her eyes blank, her face a limp mask.
“We will leave you now,” the bald one told them. “When it is certain that we are not being followed, we will send the third one to you. As you see, we keep our bargains, and that will be the end of it. Take the children back to your camp and get them home. From that point, we will show no mercy to you. We know that Matson and perhaps others will attempt to find us if they can, and he is known to be skilled. Both you and he should know that we hold him in no special regard, and will deal with him as we would with any other collaborator of that abomination of New Eden. You women are fools if you help them. You will either die serving New Eden’s horrible ends or you will succeed and deliver World into their hands. You do not know the power of what they have. If we fail, you and all women now and in the future will be slaves forever, no matter how much Flux you may command.” She turned to Suzl, sitting straight in the saddle. “Suzl—follow us closely and do not allow us to get out of your sight.” And, with that, they rode off into the void, with Suzl behind.
“Damn! I’d love to try something right now!” Sondra swore, not particularly to Spirit. “Those—horrors—I just felt their—evil.”
Spirit nodded. “I know what you mean. New Eden is an empty and banal evil. Those dugger women have no morality, no code, no sense of right or wrong, good or evil, no matter how intellectual they want to make it.”
It was nothing they could explain, nothing that came from Flux power or intuitive magic; both had just felt the same thing in the presence of the trio. These were the kind of people who would slit their own children’s throats without regrets, without even thinking a moment on it, if it served their immediate purpose.
“A real nice choice we got,” Spirit remarked acidly. “A world full of Fluxgirls or a world full of them. We always get such nice choices on World. I think I’d slit my own throat first before giving it to either of them.”
Sondra sighed and nodded. “I hope to God it never comes to that. Or that we have the option if it does.”
Spirit looked around. “I wonder what the hell Morgaine is doing? I hope she doesn’t do something rash. In this element, she’s no more controllable than her father was.”
They heard a sound to the left of them, and turned, ready for anything. It was instead the arrival of a third sleeping form, this one Carel, the oldest. In spite of their instincts, they had heard nothing this time, and that gave them a sense of urgency.
“Let’s get these kids back to camp on the double,” Sondra said worriedly. “I wouldn’t trust this bunch to keep their word on anything now that the deal’s made.”
Morgaine circled on great, leathery wings, keeping well back from what was below but being careful to maintain vision of everyone. She waited until she saw the three children returned, and Spirit and Sondra move them quickly back to the camp, then she turned to follow the string below, which few but she could see.
There were five raiders below, two more than the trio that had showed itself. All were strong, well-built women, yet all were deformed in some way. This was common for dugger cults, of course, and always had been, but the uniformity in their bodies and builds and the fact that they clearly had sufficient Flux power to transform themselves and thus control what they looked like was worrying. They were either that way because they wanted to be, or because some greater wizard commanded it so.
Morgaine was surprised to find them heading back to the New Eden border. She had expected them either to return to some base carved out of the void or to turn towards the great Fluxland just to the west, but they had done neither.
She could have attacked them right then and there, and felt certain she’d have no problems with them, but that wouldn’t locate the main body of the raiders and certainly wouldn’t locate the stolen projector. Still, she was beginning to worry that they were in fact heading back into Anchor, where they’d be harder to track, leave no strings, and where Morgaine would have to drastically alter her form to follow. This flying creature was not aerodynamic in any sense, just convenient, and it would crash her to earth quickly in an Anchor environment.
The camp was, in fact, right against the borders of New Eden and the Fluxland of Liberty, just barely in the void, but it was very large and contained the strongest shield Morgaine had ever seen. Either they had an illegal big amp down there, which was highly unlikely, or they were using the new device itself with someone of adequate power and control sitting in it.
She realized suddenly that she had everything that she needed. She knew where the raiders and the device were, and that projector couldn’t be moved very far or very fast. She had to move, though, before the women below entered the shield, because it was certain that even someone of her powers couldn’t break that one without a lot of help.
She began to throw a spell at them, one that would grow a wall around the riders below, but she had barely sent it when she saw that they had all stopped and all but Suzl was looking back and up in her direction. They saw her, knew that she was there, in spite of the fact that they shouldn’t have been able to.
The spell rose from the grid floor, but did not take hold. There was a damping effect placed on it from somewhere and it was simply cancelled out, although she couldn’t tell its source. Certainly it wasn’t from those below, who, even with Suzl, were no match for her.
Now she was aware that lines of force were snaking through the grid below. She knew the program—diagnostics. Whoever was in command down there was very sophisticated and was trying to locate her, block by block.
For the first time in her life, she was faced with the only thing strong wizards feared: superior and more-experienced power. She had only a second, perhaps less, to decide what to do—to turn and flee into the void or to confront her attacker. She began to bank, but, unused to this sort of challenge, she banked right instead of left, right into the creeping grid survey. It had her in a moment, and she felt a sudden, near-paralyzing electric shock. Knowing she couldn’t outrun it, she made for the figures below, still just watching it all, and found herself being pulled down towards them. When she reached the ground she quickly negated the flying spell and assumed again her own imposing form. It was barely in time; incredulous, she felt every one of her Flux senses go dead; power, and even the sense of power, drained out of her with incredible speed.
The duggers were unruffled and seemed slightly amused. Baldy came over to her as she stood there, suddenly helpless against anything they might do.
“We were told you might try and cause trouble,” the bald dugger commented. “We were ready for you.”
“You know who I am, then.” It wasn’t a question.
“We know. Your father spent his whole life keeping people in bondage to a corrupt religion he knew was false. Your mother serves New Eden even though it victimized her. Your grandmother went over to them for a long period and your grandfather is an egomaniac who believes he is god and emperor alike and immune from harm.”
“And what the hell are you?” she retorted bravely. They had her. What did she have to lose?
“We are the children of Flux and Anchor,” the bald woman responded icily. “We are your children, and your parents’ children, and your grandparents’ children. You don’t like us? Well, we’re the product your own people made. We’re the inheritors of your cesspool egos and the beneficiaries of your damnable system.”
“All I see is brutality and hatred,” she said firmly.
“And what in hell else did we get? We stay in Anchor and we become mindless chattel slaves. We stay in Flux and we choose between madness and becoming the toys, the playthings, of people like you. You taught us that love and honor and charity don’t count. Only power counts. Well, now we have the power. What do you think of it?”
She stared at the dugger. “You mean the projector did this?”
“Run by one of our weakest sisters. Weak but for her hatred. It was hatred that caused New Eden, and it was fear that vanquished the Invaders. Your power may be great, but like your father’s it is intellectual. There is no passion in you as there is in us. There is no passion left in New Eden, either. That was all killed off. That is why we will win.”
“And do what?”
“We will eliminate all that corrupts us. We will transform humanity into what it should be. Come. You wished to go in, then come in with us. Whatever block you stand upon will be without power.”
She had no choice. Refusal meant only that they’d knock her cold and take her in anyway. She walked with them to the shield, then through it.
It was one of those places that looked larger on the inside than it did on the outside. More Fluxland than pocket, it stretched out in all directions, a small city of tents populated by a host of duggers, all women, all looking in many ways quite similar to the five in the party, all deformed or defaced in some way.
In the center was a tent larger and a bit grander than the others, and in front of it was the projector itself. A woman sat on it, one covered in reptilian scales of slimy green, looking rather casual and serene. The thing itself looked like a great, blocky chair of gun-gray metal perforated with thousands of holes. Four antennae arose from the block in back of the chair depression itself, each about three meters tall.
Morgaine was still an imposing woman in fine physical shape, and she briefly considered rushing that chair. She was anticipated, of course. There were several nasty guns trained on her and other guards around. She knew she wouldn’t make it.
Two guards rushed up to her and rudely pulled her arms in back of her. They were damned strong, she noted, maybe as strong as she was. The manacles were on before she could make any move to protest.
The others dismounted, and Baldy and Sneer-Face ushered them into the big tent. It was quite luxurious inside, for a tent. There was the smell of sweet perfumes and perhaps some incense, and the area was partitioned into more than one room, each wall lined with ornate silks and velvets. Inside the front “room” Morgaine was startled to see a man sitting on what could only be called a throne.
He was a big man, handsome although in late middle age, with thick white hair and a ruddy, worn complexion. If his eyes hadn’t been so ice cold, he’d have looked like somebody’s grandfather.
“Who’s the other one?” he asked rather casually, in a low, gravelly voice.
“Morgaine, daughter of Spirit and Mervyn,” Baldy responded. “She tried to take us just outside.”
He nodded approvingly. “Well, well. . . . Ayesha! Come, my love! Your guest has arrived, bringing unexpected company!”
There was no response for a moment, but then curtains parted behind him and she stepped into the room.
Morgaine’s jaw dropped a bit as she stared. She didn’t know what she had expected, but this was more than anything in her imagination.
Ayesha was not just a Fluxgirl; she was rather every extreme of what that twisted vision of womanhood could mean. She was about a hundred and fifty centimeters tall, but it was difficult to judge her true height with the nearly impossible twenty-centimeter spiked heels and the billowing mane of thick, lush hair that grew upwards from her head and then flowed down her back all the way to her ankles. She had so much hair that some flowed forward over her shoulders without causing any gaps in back, and the whole looked almost like a great cape. The effect was stunning, although Morgaine couldn’t help wondering how Ayesha ever sat down without pulling on it. Its color was golden rather than blond and seemed almost to sparkle in the flickering lantern lights, gently and naturally streaked with slightly darker and slightly lighter bands.
The face was naughty, not angelic; it seemed to embody every trait of sensuality and youthful merriment that was possible to imagine, topped off by deep, light green eyes that seemed almost to shine. The proportions of the body were outrageous as well, with firm breasts that must still have extended twenty-five or more centimeters out, hips that were wide but lean, not fat, and seemed to have an almost-infinite movement capability, and a waist that was so small that it seemed incredible that the top could stay connected to the bottom. She required no makeup: the lips were broad and sensual, crimson and smooth; the cheeks had just a light natural flush; the eyes were large and naturally shadowed and framed by dark pencil-thin brows and lashes that were thick and extended outward like small, fine brushes. It was clear that she could not physically stand in one position for long; the body required constant adjustments for balance, yet those moves were all in their own way adding to the sensuality.
Morgaine had never had much time for sex; she’d sublimated it to her work, as her father and the other great wizards had before her. Still, she had never before, even in Flux and New Eden, seen a creature so absolutely sexual, so totally and sensually animalistic. Ayesha was quite literally built for one thing and one thing only, and she was absolute in that.
She wore some golden jewelry and bracelets, but otherwise was clothed only in a matching golden bikini-style brief and those shoes. With a start Morgaine realized that the shoes were not merely adornment; they were a small physical compensation for balance that allowed Ayesha to walk at all. She was not a woman in other than the sexual sense; she was a creature of Flux, an impossibility created by spell, and a cartoon of male sexual fantasies in the extreme.