” ‘Dear Freeholders and other parties,’ ” Spirit read. ” ‘As an example of our good faith and as a further example to any others who wish to try this, we herewith return Morgaine the Wizard to you. We allowed her to live and remain in sound mind because we wished to show you what you face if you try and hinder us. She was one of your most powerful wizards. Think of what we can do to you. We send her back this way because she refused to even consider our own position, let alone join us. Any woman who can not see our just cause is a woman in the service of New Eden. Since she chooses still to oppose us, we have remade her in their image, so that she can see just what side she is truly on. We have even tattooed her name to her rump and assigned her Suzl’s old number, since Suzl no longer needs it.’ It’s signed, ‘The New Race.’ ”
Morgaine nodded. “It sounds like them. Come on— catch me if I fall. If she can walk this way, then so can I.”
It did take some practice, and several falls, but she quickly mastered the moves necessary. It was like riding a bicycle. Difficult at first, but, once mastered, it became automatic. Still, the balance problem was never gone; she knew what she looked like, ass swaying, hair billowing, breasts moving slightly, when she walked, and she knew what effect it might have on others as well as herself. Even the brush of the thick hair against her back and rear produced a tingling, turn-on feeling.
“Well, you’ve certainly joined the club,” Sondra noted. “I have to admit I was never that—extreme—and I thought I was something impossible as a Fluxgirl, but it seems to be a curse in the family that every woman falls into one way or another. Until we can find a way out of it, you’re stuck, maybe for a very long time.”
“I’m stuck, period, unless we get invaded again, and you know it,” Morgaine responded. “It’s a machine-language binding spell, and an old one from the feel of it. Flux will continue to automatically renew it and Anchor will freeze it. It’s all right. I expected worse, and while I hate it I’ll learn to live with it. At least I’ve still got control of my own mind and direction, if I can keep from falling down. Where’s Matson? It’s time I filled him in.”
“Not far,” Spirit told her. “We decided to keep the men apart until we knew. …”
“I understand. Well, get him. Just him for now.”
Matson, it appeared, was quite close, and arrived in only a couple of minutes and on foot. He stared at her. “Um um! And I was just trying to get used to you the other way.”
“Enough for now. I’m turned on just looking at you and I’m not used to that. I want to tell you everything that happened, and everything I know about them, while it’s still fresh in my mind. They were preparing to move out as I left.”
Matson nodded. “We know. We located them, but didn’t dare get close. I sent Verdugo out to keep a careful watch. He’ll get back fast along my string if that bubble starts to takeoff.”
Patiently, clearly, and sparing no detail, she told them everything she had observed and everything she had heard or surmised. It was valuable, informative, even vital information, although it was also pretty discouraging.
“You don’t have that male—thing, do you?” Spirit asked, concerned.
“No, Mother. They wanted me to be a sex object. It’s part of the way they see everybody. I won’t guarantee anything in the future, though, particularly with Suzl on her side and in command of that projector.”
“But you said she’s blind,” Matson noted. “How the hell is she gonna run that thing?”
“You don’t need to see to cast spells. You don’t even need numbers for the simple stuff. Remember, Grandma and Suzl blew hell out of that Invader ship by sheer emotion. I can’t put spells together anymore and do all that fancy stuff, but I could still blow them to hell if I saw them. You ought to remember that there are two kinds of magic in Flux—the deliberate, mathematical kind with which we do the exacting details and play god, and the emotional, gut spell that requires no thought at all. The mathematical one is more useful, but the gut one is much stronger.”
“Well, Suzl had Spirit and the Guardian feeding the math, but on the whole you’re right,” he agreed. “The big question is just how much self-control you have. The original Fluxgirl spell had a reversal in the way women acted and reacted. Their emotions controlled them, overrode their wills. Suzl removed that—for Weiz, too, apparently—but that’s why our crazy girl could do nothing as a whore.”
“I don’t know,” she told him honestly, “but I’m too mad to cry right now. I’m not putty in your hands because you’re a guy, but on the other hand I’m horny as hell right now and that’s something new to me. You can’t imagine what it feels like.”
“I can,” Sondra responded. “It keeps building and getting worse, too, and there’s only one cure. After you take the cure, we’ll know how much real control you have.”
“We’ll send you back to New Pericles,” Matson suggested. “You can ease your way in from there. Either there or Freehold.”
She felt a rush of fear. “No! I’m still going with you!”
All three of them sort of sighed and gave her pitying looks. “Honey, you can’t go out there like that,” Spirit tried to tell her. “You’re just not—equipped—for this sort of thing anymore.”
She began to get angry again. “Yeah? So what do I do? Go over to New Eden and play whore? Go back to New Pericles where the staff will all treat me like a child and I won’t be able to read a single damned book or work a single one of my damned machines? Go to Freehold and take Suzl’s place? I’m not a supermommie. You seem to forget Suzl awful quick, too. You stick me, like this, in a static situation in Flux and there’s nothing for me to do but screw and be a wet nurse. You know that. I’m more open than most to a new niche being created because I can’t do much of anything I used to do. Can you imagine me cooking with these boobs? Or cleaning or doing chores with this balancing act? Don’t you see that that bitch Ayesha knew it when she left me all my power? This body is designed to do just one thing. The only way to save my sanity, save me from myself, is by self-exile into Anchor, and the only Anchors around here are New Eden and its twins, and most of the Anchors up north are even messier. Of course, I got to admit I’d never starve or want for anything with a body like this in Anchor.”
“Morgaine!” Spirit was shocked.
Matson calmly lit a cigar. “Go on,” he said calmly.
“I don’t know how good I can be on a horse, but I figured out walking with these things pretty fast. I’ve still got power and a powerful hate and anger to direct against them, and my power’s also available to the others in full force if somebody else supplies the spell. These new laser guns don’t weigh much, and I can shoot with one. Don’t you see? This gives me a reason not to give up. I’m at less of a disadvantage than Ayesha, and look what she’s managed. And, this spell has one advantage. It’s permanent. The worst thing they can do to me is kill my power, and I know how theirs operates. I’m actually at less risk than you all are.”
Matson nodded. “And after?”
“What do you mean?”
“After it’s done.”
“Ayesha has an official scenario of what New Eden plans for everybody and she immersed me in it. They’re still the most probable winners, and, if so, I’ll be better off than most of the rest of you. If Ayesha wins, I’ll probably wind up being a queen bee someplace. Both are likely. If, by some miracle, we manage to beat them both, then I’ll find some Anchor someplace and go from there.”
“Don’t be so defeatist, honey. There’s always a way. Nothing’s ever permanent here. Both Sondra and I were as locked in forever as you are and we got out of it.”
“Mother! Stop! I will live the way I have to live and do what I have to do. If a miracle comes, I’ll take it, but I’m not going to live my life depending on it. It’s over. I can’t be Little Miss Mervyn any more. I’m your daughter, too, and you always worked with what you had.”
The response disturbed Spirit, but she had no response. In point of fact, she did not understand it, and still couldn’t face the fact that it wasn’t Morgaine’s future, but her vision of Morgaine, that was being affected.
For Morgaine, it felt good to get it out, and she sat back a moment and reflected. It was crazy, but the fact was that she felt less horrified at her new condition than somehow— relieved. The pressure was off. Now she couldn’t be what her mother forced her to be, and couldn’t suppress herself if she wanted to. She felt, oddly, free of Mervyn’s ghost. It wasn’t under ideal circumstances and conditions, but it was there none the less. She felt oddly—kittenish, like a young girl again. Uninhibited. By god, if she was stuck with this body, she was going to use it and enjoy it. Ayesha had gone far with this combination. The hell with her mother.
“Well?” she asked. “Do I come along or not?”
Matson looked at his two daughters. He saw disapproval in Spirit’s face and Sondra gave him a fatalistic shrug. He didn’t answer, but went over to Spirit and took her aside, hand on her shoulder.
“Father, you can’t let her come along!”
“Why not? Can you answer any of her arguments? Can you give me one good reason why not?”
“She’ll still be at the mercy of everything out there! She’s not used to the feelings that body gives her, or being out there at the mercy of stronger wizards.”
“She’s helpless and dead if she stays. Out there, she might lose, she might become a permanent victim, but she’s got a chance to find herself. I think you forgot something, Daughter. Forgot a bunch of things. Forgot for one thing that she’s almost forty-seven years old. She’s no baby, and she’s better off in some ways than your momma or Suzl or even you were. I think somewhere along the line you forgot the scared girl who couldn’t use a single tool or artifact, couldn’t wear clothes or understand more than simple sign language, but saw wonder in a blade of grass or a patch of sky and took control of herself in spite of all those handicaps. Just because your mother didn’t raise you, you were bound and determined to not just raise but control your own, even though you’d rather have pulled out. I’m being blunt ’cause I have to be. If she winds up the biggest damned Fluxgirl whore, then that’s the way it is. But she’s got to find her own way.” He paused a moment. “I knew bringing Verdugo along would be useful for something.”
Spirit went from anger at his words to shock at the comment. “You don’t mean that—viper! And Morgaine?”
“As her grandpa I wouldn’t feel right doin’ it, even though there’s no true genetic connection now, but I tell you that she turns me on a bit just to look at her. Dell might succumb, but only if we’re not around. She said it clearly: That body’s only designed for one thing. Just one. She might be O.K. otherwise, but not unless it gets it regular. If not Verdugo, or Dell, she’ll be driven to go off and find it. It’ll eat her alive unless she does. Cut her loose, Daughter. If you do, I think we might use her.”
He walked back to Morgaine. “You can come,” he told her, “if you can figure how to stay up on a horse. We got no way to fool with wagons or carts.”
Morgaine jumped up and kissed him. “I’ll get it if it kills me!” she told him.
Dell had been prepared for a Fluxgirl, but not for someone who looked and acted like Morgaine. He couldn’t take his eyes off her, and the feeling was more than mutual. She asked him to work with her on the horse, and after gestures and withering glances from Matson, they went off together.
In the end, they determined that she would probably never be able to mount one without assistance. Although she did manage to ride on a conventional saddle, Dell created one out of Flux that was more a sidesaddle with a back support which would work the best for long, slow treks in the void.
After a while, though, she could no longer see Dell as an individual, only as an object. She found herself caressing a saddlehorn and feeling herself all over. She radiated an overpowering sexuality that simply could not be denied, by her or by any object she chose, augmented by Flux itself. He could not resist her even if he tried, which he didn’t very hard. With some surprise she realized that no man in Flux could resist her if she desired him. Ayesha’s beliefs simply didn’t permit any woman to be totally defenseless. She, not the man, was in control, and always would be, and it was wonderful. Only the fact that Flux so thoroughly damped out sound beyond a few meters kept her shrieks of sheer pleasure from reaching the others.
When they rode back, both of them had dreamy smiles on their faces and looked more than satisfied, but Morgaine had the most reason other than sheerly physical to be joyful. She needed fear no man in Flux, and she knew it.
Verdugo had already arrived back when they returned, and the look he gave her was impossible to describe. She smiled sweetly at him and as much as said with gestures that he’d get his turn. She saw, however, that her mother was gone.
“The bubble is gone from the border,” Matson told her. “They’re on the move—and they moved right back into New Eden, would you believe? Cut the damned string before we could follow it. It’ll form again when they come out, but we have to find it first. That’s what Spirit’s doing now, the easy way. If you’re set and sure you can ride, I intend to move in to the border apron, then west until we intersect Spirit or the string.”
“I’m ready,” she told him. “You seem sure they’re going west and even more sure they’re gonna come out at all. They have lots of friends and cronies in New Eden.”
“They’ll come out,” Sondra responded before Matson could. “All their friends won’t save them if they get cornered in Anchor. East is pretty well covered, and there’s mostly hostile Fluxland through it. They want to disappear, not be seen by someone and reported in. To the west there’s a war and Fluxlands they’ve dealt with in the past. They’ll come out.”
Matson sighed. “It’s gonna be a long, long trip, ladies and gentlemen. I suggest we saddle up and get moving. Won’t do us any good if we wind up days behind them.”
Dell brought Morgaine a cold sandwich and a wine flask. She found that she was in fact very hungry and very thirsty, and wondered if that would be the pattern. After eating she felt tired, but she forced herself back on the horse. She wasn’t going to fail right at the start.
“Help me out for a while,” she whispered to Dell as he helped her up and made sure she was firmly seated. “If I nod out either wake me up or take my lead.”