“But you wouldn’t remember, either!” Morgaine protested. “You’d be just another brainless nobody! What good would that do?”
“Only so long as the master spell held,” she pointed out. “If they break it, I will be once again as I am now.”
Matson shook his head negatively. “Uh uh. Forget it. The wizards in there would spot you as a wizard in a minute and figure ‘spy.’ You could stand up to any one of them, but you couldn’t stand up to the trio in the Garden, let alone what’s in there now. They’re gonna run a hell of a spell on everybody there and you know it. Fight it and you’re exposed anyway. Don’t fight and you become one of them. Besides, you said yourself you can’t lie, cheat, or steal. This job might require all three.”
“There are problems, yes, but there is a solution. A series of conditional spells. I would remain Eve, or become whatever they command, but retain a subconscious memory of everything I see and hear. Only when certain conditions are met would I reconnect and become myself, and I would disconnect automatically at any problem. I would never be sinful, because I would be totally true in both cases.”
“You might never have the conditions to switch,” Morgaine noted worriedly. “Besides, how could you get messages out to us? And if they run a physical change on everybody, you’ll stand out and they’ll know at least you used to be a wizard and they’ll probe and finally find the spells. The only way you could save yourself from being converted is to run a binding spell that would make you literally become Eve—forever.”
“There’s always a big risk in doing something like this,” she pointed out. “—Being executed, being permanently turned into something hateful—all sorts of things. There will be thousands of Adams and Eves. They won’t have the time or take the trouble to run a restore on more than a few. I’m much more at risk as an Adam than as an Eve from this bunch, anyway. They won’t be expecting a spy. And if I wind up an Eve forever, at least I’ll be happy. Whatever, if I can get in and get information out it might make the difference between a New Eden victory, or their victory, or stopping both of them. It’s better than sitting here. If anybody has any other ideas, please tell me.”
She looked around at all their faces but found no answer.
“All right, then. Help me work out all this complicated conditional stuff, all of you. And, Dad, you put one of those strings on me like you have on Suzl. If they don’t change the Eves, I want you to be able to find me in the mob.” She stopped a moment. “Come on—I’d rather be Eve forever than one of those New Eden Fluxgirls. Besides, in the end, Suzl would never hurt me.”
“Suzl,” Morgaine pointed out, “didn’t even know I was there.”
“It’s just too damned dangerous,” Matson told her. “It’s out.”
“We’ll see,” Spirit replied. Still, she and the others discussed the various spells that would be needed and how best to do them. It could be done, but there were so many variables it was extremely risky.
Later on, Spirit took her normal turn at guard, but when Dell returned from patrol he found no one awake and Spirit gone. He quickly roused the others. Sondra went down to the Garden area, but found only a horse there.
Matson was visibly upset, and Morgaine was almost beside herself. Still, the patriarch of the clan had to adjust, as always, to new situations.
“O.K., she’s in, and she’s left us a string, and we have to assume she’s using the conditions you so obligingly worked out with her. We have to accept the fact that the most level-headed person in the family has gone crackers and go from there.”
Still, he couldn’t get the tremendous worry out of his voice.
“What if they don’t attack the Garden?” Morgaine grumped worriedly. She hadn’t fought to get her mother out of there only to have her march back in of her own free will.
“Then these two and you will have to follow her string in and haul her out again,” her grandfather replied. “I don’t think there’s much danger of that, though. I think I understand all they’ve done so far, and they might have surprised me here and there but they never disappointed me. I—”
He stopped dead as Dell’s great flying form came in, circled, landed, and blurred into his own familiar form. He wasn’t due off patrol for a couple of hours yet, so they knew something was up.
“They’re going in!” he shouted. “You ought to see it! It’s damned impressive! They’ve contracted the shield to cover no more than a hundred meters, and they’re lined up in formation. All women, I think, and almost all mounted. Only three infantry units, all no more than a company each. They were spreading out when I left.”
“Wizards?” Sondra asked.
“One strong at the rear, one medium at the point position in each of the three formations. I figure it’s the three newcomers and the three from Liberty.”
They all nodded. “A good system. Apparently they knew more about the rulers of the Garden than we did,” Sondra said approvingly. “Each of them is one and a half versus the three inside, but it’ll take two out of the three Fluxlords to defend any position, leaving one weak and one penetrable. And Suzl behind her own shield doing searches until she finds and neutralizes each of the Fluxlords.”
“I almost feel sorry for them,” Morgaine noted, sounding a little surprised at herself. “They almost went nuts rationalizing me. How does an omnipotent God explain why it suddenly has no powers at all?”
“The war between Heaven and Hell, good and evil,” Matson told her. “It’s an old theme. They’re not going to be any pushovers. They’re crazy enough that they have total emotional commitment to their world view. This will enrage them, create a fury, and make them much stronger than usual. You see any of the chief wizards’ faces and forms, Dell?”
“You kidding? Big tits and swivel hips look great on some people, but I can’t see myself wearing ’em.”
“Fair enough. Damn this sparkling shit! I’d give anything for a clear field and one good hill to look down from right now.”
“I’m going up,” Sondra told them. “I think maybe I can use some binoculars to get a better view. I want to know if we know those big powers down there. If not, we should.”
“I’m going back, too,” Dell announced. “See? That’s why we never voluntarily take binding spells. We don’t need hills to get a good view.”
“You two be real careful and keep well away from either side,” Matson warned them. “Both sides won’t know who you are if you’re detected and they’ll act against you as an enemy.”
Sondra nodded, although she was clearly eager to see some action after all this time in the void. “Don’t worry. If Spirit couldn’t even handle those nuts in the Fluxland, both of us couldn’t handle either side now. They’re going after a Fluxland, though. They won’t even check their backs.”
“Famous last words!” Morgaine called to them, and they were both transformed, airborne, and gone.
The battle had commenced by the time Sondra and Dell got to the area, and it was fascinating to watch. Sondra had seen the raiders one time as defenders, but this was the first time she’d seen them in an attack. The situation was quite different than before, because their primary weapon, the projector, could be used only when the shield was weakened enough to allow its signals to penetrate and override the master spell, or program, that created and maintained the Fluxland.
“I still can’t figure out why they’re doing it at all,” Dell called to his mother. “There are easier targets that will yield more than this.”
“Experiment and practice,” Sondra told him. “Everybody’s scared to death of a dozen or a hundred New Eden projectors being deployed, but they have to know just what that really means. The projectors don’t amplify, so they can’t break a strong shield any more than we can. Everybody’s been talking about the New Eden threat like it was running a master Anchor program, like they did to create New Eden in the first place. They can’t do that—they don’t have all the masters and they don’t know where they fit together—so this will tell the raiders just what would be faced in a Fluxland situation. The Garden has no allies, no friends, and won’t accept any, but it’s no pushover. They didn’t want a pushover. They wanted them against power with no surprises.”
The three groups below had deployed in traditional triangular fashion. The Garden was large enough that no leg could actually see the other, but they could get pressure on three points at once, using Suzl and the projector to reinforce any weaknesses. That was the value of the projector: one strong wizard, sitting in one place, could apply his or her power wherever needed.
That the ground troops, which would move in to occupy any point where the shield contracted, were heavily armed was no surprise, either. A Fluxlord pressed to the wall was still absolute; those Adams and Eves could quickly become an army of God—devout, fanatical, even suicidal, and armed with whatever the Fluxlord provided. It was only now that the two circling wizards realized just what sort of risk Spirit had taken.
The Fluxlords of the Garden might have been crazy, but they were also extremely good wizards. For a very long time the contest was a draw, with neither side gaining a clear advantage. A rider was dispatched back to the raider shield from one of the chief wizards, and soon after they saw raw Flux power flow out of the grid and reinforce the nearest side of the triangle. The combination gave that leg only slightly less power than the defending trio, and forced the defenders to commit most of their resources to block the assault. When that happened, the other two legs pressed forward, sensing weakness, and the shield began to lose its stability. Clearly there was no longer any way to support such a large shield, and the defenders were forced to contract it to better manage it. The shield shrunk, going in a good five kilometers all around, and the troops cheered and pushed forward into the exposed jungle-like foliage.
Both Sondra and Dell were having trouble viewing much of the action. While the void was intangible, the air flow carefully regulated and monitored, it was both visually and aurally quite dense. Both were forced to be closer than they actually would like being, although Sondra had been right. The raiders were not particularly concerned with an attack from the rear, shooting off only occasional random sweeps that were easily avoided.
The troops met no resistance coming in. The Fluxlords appeared to have withdrawn their people from the outer areas when the battle began and did not choose a face-to-face assault. Just because the shield was contracted, though, didn’t mean that the master spell was affected. To do that, they would have to nail and defeat the Fluxlords themselves.
The Garden became a vicious trap. Trees came alive, their branches swinging like arms and knocking troops from their horses; vines and other innocent plants lashed out snake-like, picking off attacking troops and constricting until they squeezed the last breath out of them. It was no longer time for wizards; now the generals had to act.
A general retreat was sounded, which probably heartened the Fluxlords, but it was for a far different purpose. Matson’s group had always known that the raiders possessed some sophisticated new laser-type weapons, and now these were deployed. The wizards now became support troops, keeping the pressure hard on the shield from all points so that the Fluxlords could not reconstitute or recreate what was being destroyed.
Lines of infantry now stood just beyond the Garden’s edge, and on command they began firing into the growth from all available points. The void was lit with countless streams of violet-colored light, and where they struck the Garden growth smoldered and burned. “Somebody,” Sondra noted with the detached admiration of the professional military, “really knows her stuff down there.”
Soon a wall of flame and smoke was created and burned inward, creating huge, dark gashes in the soil. Within the Garden, plants writhed and slashed like trapped animals, but they died all the same.
Battles were not brief affairs, but once an attack commenced there was no rest for the offense until it was done or they withdrew. Giving the Fluxlords just an hour or two to recover themselves would possibly mean facing this whole thing all over again.
In front of a minor shield thrown up by the supporting wizard who protected them against the heat, the ground troops moved forward onto the scorched earth. Huge cracks began to appear in the scorched earth, trying to block their progress or even swallow them, but they were ready for it. Now, though, through some of the cracks closest to the shield, bubbling, molten rock seemed to rise to the surface and start flowing out. It was not, however, the coup de grace that it appeared to be, for to do that the Fluxlords had actually had to go in and alter their master spell. They had effectively surrendered control of the unshielded area to the offense, and Suzl at the projector took full advantage of it. She counter-spelled all along the affected radius, turning the molten rock to cool, smooth ground.
The advance had not been without cost. Fully ten percent of the offense had been killed, but the initial gain made victory much closer. No wizards had been lost, and now they were able to move up and take on the shield again in the same pattern as before.
Sondra and Dell began to take breaks, and to report back to Matson and Morgaine, frustrated by being unable to observe themselves what was happening. The Garden at the start had been roughly twenty-four by sixteen kilometers; after seventeen hours of assault, it had been reduced to a roughly circular area about six kilometers across, and the shield, while it held, was now mostly transparent, allowing the attackers to see inside and see what they faced. At this point, the defender was lost but might still hold a while and take an even greater toll. Of the five hundred or so attack troops at the start, there were about three hundred now.
Suzl had mostly used the projector to reinforce attack positions and to spell each of the wizards for a break so they would continue fresh and clear-headed. The Fluxlords, on the other hand, could not rest or relax for an instant. It was a test of endurance now; who was relieving Suzl, however, was not clear.
The attackers looked in on more thick Garden, but this time heavy with people. All the men and all the women looked alike, and none showed any really great concern for what was happening. They were, however, getting pretty crowded with all that brush, and the master spell was never designed to feed and water that many people in such a confined space. The more attention they required, and the more adjustments necessary, weakened the Fluxlords even more.
The Fluxlords, too, seemed to understand this, and decided on one last, desperate, all-out gamble. At this point they could have escaped, but that wasn’t in their character. Their move was sudden, although not totally unexpected, and it relieved Sondra and Dell’s minds a bit when it happened. Both had feared that these Fluxlords would destroy their people when they themselves faced defeat.
For those with the power, high above the garden there formed the outline of a head, a head with three faces. The center face was that of an old, stern, bearded patriarch; coming out of his left side was a young face, the Adam face, and out of his right the face of his Eve. Trailing from the head were enormous, thick bands of flowing energy, feeding the faces from the grid below, sucking up all the power that was available.
The shield suddenly vanished, and all power by the three was pushed with maximum force against just one of the attacking groups. The wizards from the other two groups could see what was happening, but each would take a couple of minutes to get into position to support the leg under assault; far too long to make any difference. After all these hours, this thing was going to be settled in about seventy seconds.