“What’s that signify?” Verdugo asked. “They don’t trade?”
“They don’t do much of anything, if memory serves,” he replied. “The Fluxlord there got hold of some of the old religious books and became convinced that he was the Lord God come to purify the good in people. Both the old Moslem and my old ancestral Catholic Church have the same story. The one about the origin of man without sin in a perpetual garden. Ten to one that’s what we got up there.”
Only Verdugo, whose own new religion was partly based on a rather odd reading of parts of the old texts, knew the story. “You mean there’s an old guy in there who thinks he’s God walking around a beautiful garden inhabited by a bunch of naked worshippers?”
“Seems like. Nice and peaceful, though. They don’t go out and just about nobody goes in. I can’t think of what they’d have that these people would want.”
“Five hundred Eves trying to get the rest to take the fall with them,” Verdugo muttered.
“Dad, how many people you figure are in there?” Sondra asked.
He shrugged. “Hard to say. That size place—could be a thousand, maybe a couple of thousand or even more. Depends.”
“There’s been a lot of activity behind the shield,” she noted. “You think maybe they’re looking for more converts? A bigger army?”
He scratched his chin and considered it. “Could be. They’d be damned near defenseless. You saw the border of the place, Spirit. How strong would you say the old boy was?”
“Pretty good. As good as I’ve seen, from the size and strength of it.”
“Could they break it?”
“Oh, sure—but it wouldn’t be any picnic. They’d have to have fully punched through before the Fluxlord could even be located, and if he’s as crazy as you say he’ll be in a rage that’ll multiply his powers. Still, yeah. There’s no way he could hold them, even without the projector.”
“But why do it?” Morgaine wondered aloud. “Why them and why here?”
“I don’t know,” Matson responded. “They haven’t been following the script much since Liberty, but something’s afoot. They have five wizards, but they amount to three strong ones. Only Suzl has real world-class power, and she’s more intuitive than trained.”
“She looked pretty damned trained in Liberty,” Sondra shot back.
“Uh uh. That’s not what I mean. The question is, Do we watch? Do we try and warn them? Or do we try and help the old boy whether he wants it or not?”
“Oh. I see.” Sondra thought about it. “If they lose here it’d be a crushing blow to their morale. They might even be vulnerable to an all-out assault by us, or by us with a little help. But with that projector, and multiple wizards, the odds are it’ll be a draw but that at least one of us will get hit or taken.”
Matson looked around. “Anybody else?”
“I say we ought to go down and at least try and warn him,” Morgaine replied strongly. “If he won’t take a warning or help, then he fails. If he will, we have a moral duty to assist. You know what those people are like.”
“O.K. So we play it by ear. I don’t want everybody from our side down there, so who goes?”
“I’ll go,” Morgaine said. “From what you say it looks like a place where I won’t even be noticed.”
“Then I will go, too,” added Verdugo. “I must admit I am curious about this place, and Morgaine will need an assist here and there. I have been getting lazy and indolent so far.”
Spirit glared at him. “There should be one full wizard along in control of her powers and able to talk to this character. I could go alone.”
“Uh uh,” Matson responded. “I agree that you should go, but the other two should go as well. Morgaine may put them more at ease, and I really think the major, here, ought to see one of the quirkier Fluxlands. O.K., you three go, and we three remain between you and the raiders. Don’t commit us, and if they attack before you can get back out, use your own judgment. If that happens and we don’t see you scooting out as the shield folds, we’ll hit them from the rear. Got it?”
They did. Verdugo had mixed feelings about having Spirit along. On the one hand, she would be in the way of any extra opportunities that might come along, but on the other hand, as much as it galled him to depend on any woman for protection, a crazy Fluxlord was not somebody you could dismiss as a threat.
They had made a wide circle to come in on the border of Garden well beyond the sight of the raider camp. Now, as they approached the shield, Spirit halted them.
“Normal Fluxlands only use shields when they’re attacked,” she noted, “or at war, like Liberty. This one seems to be more like New Pericles, though—permanent. It’s porous, though, and selective.”
“What’s that mean in real words?” Verdugo asked her.
“It means that you can get in without having to knock,” Morgaine explained, “but not everybody can get in, and if you enter you agree to abide by the master spells in effect inside.”
Verdugo shrugged, got down off his horse, walked up to the shield and tried it. It seemed as hard as a rock to him. “So now what?” he asked.
“When Morgaine says you agree to the spell, she’s talking as a wizard,” Spirit explained. “In effect, you have to go native or you don’t get in, and if you violate any of the rules the spell will enforce them. It’s pretty standard.”
“So what do we have to do?” he asked.
“Stark-naked and with no artifacts,” Spirit responded. “Take it from an expert. What’s the matter, Major? Afraid to display your body in public? Your girls do it all the time.”
“It is immodest and against our ways,” Verdugo snapped, obviously disturbed. “Such displays can evoke immoral behavior.”
“By the women, you mean. Well, go ahead, Major. I’m not modest and I think I can restrain myself.”
He did it, grumbling all the way. He didn’t, in fact, have a bad body at all. Nobody, male or female, in New Eden had a bad body anymore. He was slim, muscular, somewhat hairier than expected, and very well endowed, facts that Morgaine already knew. Still, he seemed somewhat let down when neither woman fell into a passionate frenzy. Spirit, he found, had one hell of a body as well, although when she flexed her muscles it was somewhat bizarre.
“This is an active spell,” Spirit warned them, “so it’ll have some effect on us at all times. It’ll try and make us conform. You’ll have to be constantly on guard mentally to ward off being taken over. It’s not deliberate, just the way it’s set up. Most Fluxlands don’t have this with visitors because it’s very complex to set up, so this guy’s really good.”
Not even the horses were allowed in, and Spirit had to actually use a spell to remove some of Morgaine’s jewelry. She needed some assistance making it to the shield, but all three passed right through and she found the going better. She had discovered back in Liberty that she could run on tiptoe for short distances, and only needed some support, something to hold onto, when standing still.
In fact, when passing through the shield, which became like a fine mist to them, a curious feeling of peace and contentment settled upon them; all worries and stresses seemed to fade, and it took some doing to keep one’s mind on the matter at hand. The place was truly a garden, stretching out as far as the eye could see: thick green foliage, small streams and babbling brooks, here a grove of wonderful flowers, there a near-musical waterfall.
All around, scattered here and there, were trees offering bountiful, ripe fruit, and in the ground, when you wanted, all you did was pull to get raw vegetables. There were animals, too, and birds, and buzzing insects, but you knew somehow that none of them would harm you and you had no desire to hurt them, either.
There were no trails, and apparently none could really be made in this dense beauty, and the further they went into the forest garden the less of a sense of direction they had. Spirit and Morgaine, at least, could use their sensitivity to the grid below to find their way out if necessary, but neither wished to leave right now.
They heard the sound of people laughing, and made for it, coming upon a small lake fed by a waterfall at one end. A number of human beings were swimming or wading in the waters, playing like children and splashing around. As they drew closer, they saw that all the men were tall, extremely handsome, very muscular, with long, light-blond hair to the shoulders and neatly trimmed full-blond beards. They were incredibly sexy, both female visitors thought, but they looked exactly alike.
The women were shorter by a head than the men, had nearly perfect female proportions, and beautiful, innocent faces framed by hair as blond as the men’s but going down below the shoulders. They, too, were lean, tan, and somehow just right, but they also all looked exactly alike.
The group took little notice of the three newcomers, even though they looked so different and out of place here. One woman was nearest them, lying on the grass and letting the warmth of a bright, overhead heat and light source dry her. They approached her, and she looked at them with big blue eyes. They all had blue eyes.
“Hello,” Spirit greeted the woman, trying to sound friendly. “What’s your name?”
The woman laughed a nice, pleasant laugh like music in the wind. “Eve, of course. All women are Eve just as all men are Adam.”
That was startling. “How do you tell each other apart, then?”
She stared blankly at the stranger. “Why would you want to?”
That got Spirit good. The frame of reference of these people was so different that there was no way to keep going along those lines. Best to change the subject.
“We are visitors from beyond the Garden,” Spirit told her. “We are here to speak with your Lord.”
“Then why not speak?” the Eve responded. “He is everywhere in the Garden always. He is as near as your thoughts. Pray to Him and He will answer.”
Verdugo, who up to this point had been ogling the Eves—all of them—and trying not to get turned on while doing so, was jerked back to reality. He liked the Garden, but he was uncomfortable with this enforced blasphemy.
Spirit shrugged. Why not? she asked herself, although she didn’t really know how to pray. Religion was much too far in her past and much too false in her experience to matter much. She closed her eyes and said, aloud, “Lord, hear us. We come in peace and friendship, for the forces of Hell are marching upon you and we wish to offer our aid and support for your good works.” There. That ought to be sweet enough for the old hoy!
The line of Flux arose so quickly and forcefully it took them all by surprise. “I know of your purpose here, and of Hell without. I know all. I am the beginning and the end.” The force enveloped her. He was powerful— incredibly powerful—and she found herself locked in a mental combat with him that she was hard-pressed to maintain.
“Why do you fight with me?” she managed to yell at him. “We are not your enemy!”
“I do not fight with you, it is you who fight with me,” the self-styled God of the Garden responded. “I am the Creator of the Universe! You must be purified in my garden!”
With a start, Spirit realized that she was not grappling with just one Fluxlord, but with more. How many more she couldn’t quite determine, but it was why she couldn’t get a focus on any one of them. A multiple Fluxlord that thought and acted as one. . . . Now she realized why the maps warned of this place, and the mistake they’d made in coming in. The visitors had been allowed to get well in, where physical escape was virtually impossible. She was strong, very strong, but there were three of them, she saw now, and together they were far stronger. Despite her best efforts, parts of the spells being forced at her began to get through. She felt herself changing, becoming physically a twin of the bright-eyed Eve still sitting there, smiling sweetly and watching it happen.
My name is Spirit, daughter of Cass and Matson. . . . My name is Spirit, daughter of Cass and Matson. . . . My name is Eve, daughter of Cass and. . . .
The assault on the other two had been as sudden and as strong, showing just what power was here. For Verdugo, it was over before he realized it, and he became another childlike Adam, having no defenses to even slow it. Morgaine, however, was a different story. Spirit was so strong that they could not also take on Morgaine, being content to merely freeze her into inaction. Were she her old self she could have easily broken it and taught these old farts a lesson, but, as it was, she could only use the time to think things out.
For Spirit, the battle was finally over. Physically, she had been made over into the exact image of the blond, blue-eyed women nearby; mentally, all memory had been blocked, all frames of reference lifted. She was Eve, daughter of God. There was no place but the Garden, which was all. She was without sin, or concept of sin, and right and wrong had no meaning. Terms and concepts which had no meaning were automatically purged from her memory, so there was no confusion. Gone was all curiosity, all desire for anything but a total acceptance of what was. There was no past, no future, no time at all except here and now for all eternity. She rejoiced in the beauty of perfection, and gave thanks to God who made her and all of it to enjoy forever. She desired no existence but this. All else had been blocked off, gone as if erased, for it was irrelevant.
Now it was Morgaine’s turn, and she knew they were in for a shock. She could only wonder what the effect on them would be. Hers was not reality or some sorcerous spell, but a true binding spell, a complex machine-language program bound to a code she had created but did not know herself. If these Fluxlords really were so insane they really believed they were God, and it looked as if they did, then they would believe in their own omnipotence and absolute power. The spell had been so strong and effective, even on Spirit, because it was a stock spell. They would run it again on Morgaine, making the physical part the first part, and it would have no effect. They might be able to take over her mind, but there was a possibility they’d never get that far. In any event, they were about to be faced with something new.
Morgaine sat on the grass and waited for it. She felt sorry for Spirit, but she knew that all such spells in Flux were transitory types, as her grandfather had noted. Except for binding spells, which this certainly was not, anything done could be undone by somebody just as smart as the one who did it.
The attack on Morgaine began, and she instinctively and automatically resisted it, although her command of her power was far less than it would have been. The physical transformation spell slowly crept in, though, and tried to take hold . . . and would not. The force stalled, then tried it again, and again, and again, all to no avail. The spell seemed almost desperate now, but increasingly erratic. The crazed minds behind it were being faced with a logic loop that, according to their own lights, simply could not happen.