Suzl had been on the projector, with just two brief breaks, for the entire time. She was in agony; her whole body screamed for sexual release, and she looked somewhat monstrous there, totally turned on, both male organs extended. Yet she forced herself to think, forced that horrible pent-up tension into the grid by sheer force of will, knowing that only if she got the Fluxlords could she find relief. She swung into action, analyzing the lines of force feeding the head, and traced them down, doing a quick sweep until she localized one wizard and cut him off from the grid. Even as the troops on the near leg were being bowled over and in some cases caught and transformed by the fury of the Fluxlords’ desperate attack, they were being weakened by a wizard they could not even see. The young Adam’s face in the eerie hologram vanished.
Reduced by a third, their attack continued, and Suzl followed a second band down, swept the area, and to her surprise located a female wizard, who was also then neutralized. Only the bearded patriarch was too emotionally furious to be directly localized in this way, but now he alone was subject to the pressures of all the attacking wizards. The bearded face seemed to flicker, then lose definition, and finally turned into a furious whirlwind. With a start and a sudden realization that the old boy wasn’t on the ground, but airborne, she tried an upward sweep and found where all the lines of force emerging from the grid converged and then tagged and disconnected him. He plummeted to the ground, but the other wizards caught him and brought him to a less-than-lethal stop, no longer a god nor even a wizard, except at their sufferance, but a mere mortal man.
Suzl did not wait for anything more. The Garden’s master spell still held, but it now was merely an open spell, nothing more, with a force of will behind it, and even a junior wizard could take hold of it and modify or eliminate and replace it easily. Suzl now could think only of Ayesha.
Dell flew close to Sondra. “Well, that’s it.”
“Do you see any trace of Spirit’s string?” Sondra asked him.
“No, I—yeah! There it is! She’s in, now! Well I’ll be damned! It worked!”
“You continue to observe,” she told him. “I’ll go back and report to Matson and Morgaine. Take care, though. They’ve got eight wizards down there along with the projector, four world-class at least, and now they don’t have to all focus on one thing.”
“They’ll be too tired to care much,” he shot back.
“You’re tired too. Be careful or you’ll wind up Morgaine’s twin!”
Dell, however, was more fascinated than concerned with what was going on below. He’d never seen a Flux war before, and it was awesome to watch, although he decided he’d rather be a spectator than a participant. The death toll had been appalling, mostly on the side of the victors since the Fluxlords had chosen to the last to protect rather than commit their own people. Had they done so, particularly in that final onslaught, sending waves of humans out behind the force fields, all shooting, they would have certainly run right over the attacking troops and probably killed both the lead and adjutant wizards as well. Long ago, Matson had felled Coydt van Haas, the most powerful wizard ever known, with a shotgun—in Flux.
The primary wizards had withdrawn back into the raider shield, leaving mop-up to the backup wizards who’d once been some of Liberty’s defenders. Wearing special binoculars, Dell saw that they did look like Morgaine, with subtle differences in coloring and the like, and they were all definitely much shorter. He could never remain still enough to get a real look at the big wizards, but he got enough to know that they were certainly all female but not Ayesha look-alikes. They were allies, not part of the group, and they were certainly old, seasoned veterans. This hadn’t been any of their first Flux war.
The wizards basically turned off the master spell, leaving a featureless plain on which naked men and women, all looking somewhat bewildered but who were unnaturally passive, as far as the eye could see. Dell was shocked at the number so revealed. They weren’t all alike, though; he could clearly see three spots where the grid was dark. One moved, and the darkness followed it. The wizards below could also see the positions, although they had a harder time of it, and they moved with some troops to wade through the mob on horseback and get the trio of defeated Fluxlords.
All three submitted without a fight, and allowed themselves to be bound and marched back to the raider compound. One looked just like all the Adams, another like all the Eves, but the third was a tired, feeble-looking old man with a full beard in a tattered and dirty robe that once had been white. He wondered who they had once been. A wizard and his two children, perhaps. Their powers were equal and well-matched, although the father had the will and had been the obvious driving force. Dell suspected that the old man was finished, but he wondered if the other two, freed from his domination, might not be turned. The amount of sheer power that would represent in the raider camp would be awesome. One could build a good, solid Fluxland; five had built a massive Anchor-like one like Liberty. In relative power, they now had between seven and ten down there.
It hadn’t taken much to analyze the master spell and isolate some of its primary components. Clearly a master substitution spell was being hurriedly created now that they knew what they were dealing with and what they had. Although all were tired, there was no question that they couldn’t afford to rest as yet. They had taken this huge number of people, all totally dependent on Fluxlords who could no longer help them, and they had to at least be provided with basic food, water, and a means of hygiene.
One of the big wizards came back out. Dell guessed that she’d taken the time to get a bite to eat and maybe a quick splash of water before finishing up the job. She wasn’t about to waste much time with the business at hand, though. She conferred with all three of the raider wizards, then ordered all raider personnel out of the immediate area. With a shock, Dell saw that she was using some kind of device to talk into. He knew what it was—a two-way radio—having seen them in New Eden, but he’d never seen them used in Flux, nor had he realized before that it was possible to do so.
Now, with everyone not of the Garden out of range, as it were, all four wizards, aided by another on the projector— Dell could tell by the difference in strength that it wasn’t Suzl—began to create a new Fluxland on the ruins of the old. He was fascinated. He had heard his mother tell of what the master program for New Eden had been like, but he himself had never seen a Fluxland created before.
It began with a single center square of the grid, right in the midst of the captive population. Then it spread, slowly at first, to all adjoining squares, then a bit faster to the squares that adjoined them, and so on, gaining size and speed as it went. It was clearly being fed in by the projector, and was merely managed and fine-tuned by the external wizards. As it grew, it drew energy from the grid and transformed it into matter, also transforming any matter on top according to a formula. Grass, trees, landforms— all formed outlines in energy and then solidified into reality. At first he couldn’t see any changes in the Garden’s population, and it took him a second or two to realize that the Eves had not changed, but that there were no more Adams where the program ran. Just Eves. He watched, wondering if they were simply killing them, but then he realized that they were being transformed. Everyone would be an Eve.
The program expanded until it covered the whole captive population, but it stopped as it reached the raider troops and wizards. A modification was then made, and the program was allowed to run again, past them and out well beyond, further in fact than the old boundaries had been. From this point, though, no people were involved. The program ignored the conquerors.
The Fluxland program continued on, and Dell had to decide whether to let it overtake him or to continue to retreat. He decided to move back in the direction of the other three, afraid it might overtake them as well. Then whoever was running the program would sense the presence of three wizards they didn’t know about and come running—fast.
It didn’t go that far, though. What was interesting was that they didn’t even bother with more than a warning shield except for the center area where the projector was. It was, in effect, an open Fluxland much like Liberty, although extending in a roughly circular shape only about thirty kilometers across.
Dell decided to do a quick pass just inside the Fluxland and back out, to get a general idea of the place. He couldn’t put his finger on it, but parts looked vaguely familiar to him. There was a risk, of course, that he’d immediately be drawn to earth or bring the wizards running, but he felt it was worth it for the information. He did not, however, fall to earth or even get engulfed by the spell. Although the shield was but a warning one, weak and only for the purposes of alerting the Fluxlords to the presence of intruders, it smacked him hard and he ricocheted off, stunned. It took him a moment to regain his wits, and when he did he circled back and studied it. It looked like an ordinary shield. Why didn’t it admit him?
It must be a conditional, he decided, but under what conditions did it allow admittance? No wizards? No, it couldn’t be that selective and be that large. What, then, was different about him and set him apart from the wizards inside?
Women! he realized with a start. It won’t admit anybody but women!
He rushed back to his own camp to tell his people the updated news.
11
TAKING THE BIG RISKS
Ayesha sat on a fur-covered mat, clinging to Suzl, and looking around at the others seated on low mats around a table of sweets and vegetables. Across from them sat the three wizards who looked much like them, whom Suzl, strictly for convenience, had named Beth, Cissy, and Debbie—Ayesha starting with “A.” Their spells were absolute and had proven themselves in the battle. They remembered who they had been, and so had the advantage of their military training and experience, but they didn’t want to be anyone or anything other than who and what they were now. Gillian was there, too. She was quickly growing into an amazingly talented politician with a sure grasp for what was necessary. Although her personal Flux power was quite limited, she was quickly making herself indispensable, and with each success she’d become more of a believer in Suzl’s dreams.
To their left sat three other women who couldn’t have looked less alike. One was tiny and looked extremely delicate; she was attractive, but not overwhelmingly so, very slightly built, with a slight orange in her complexion, a tiny, turned-up nose, and eyes that seemed slanted inwards and somehow cat-like, and deep black hair cut very short and combed into neat bangs in front. The second was a big woman; naturally large rather than fat, dressed exhibitionist-style in garish garments and looking more like a northern Anchor whore than a powerful wizard. She had big eyes whose pupils seemed jet black, and a virtual mane of hair that was zebra striped, with streaks of white and jet black alternating all around.
The third was the most curious looking of all, for she looked just like one of the original New Eden Fluxgirls: exaggerated proportions, long brown hair, big light-brown eyes, and even wearing the heels and the net-like pantyhose of the old days, with no above-the-waist clothing of any sort. She even had a tattoo on her rump complete with number that announced that her name was “Jodi.”
Ayesha had described them all to Suzl, and she could only wonder if her mental image of the trio was more or less outrageous than they really were. She did know what they were—two of them, anyway—and it pained her that she’d needed them at all. She certainly didn’t trust them for a moment.
Suzl now wore a radio constantly on an elastic belt around her waist. It could be used for relatively broad communication, and was, but it also served locally as her non-broadcast “voice.”
“A wonderful operation, darlings,” gushed Chua Gabaye. “Neat, thorough, and professional! Worthy of the old Nine or the Seven, rest their souls, if they had any. Wouldn’t you say so, Ming, dear?”
Ming Tokiabi, who rarely said much of anything, did not reply this time, either.
“The Fluxland program worked out, then?” Suzl asked in her eerie, electronic voice.
“Fabulous, darling! Simply fabulousl Lots of nice vegetable farms and fruit trees and all the rest. The Eves seem delighted with being happy little farmers, once we reoriented them a bit.”
“How many were there?” Suzl asked. “Anybody count them yet?”
“The program total showed three thousand nine hundred and seventy-four,” Jodi told them. “More than we expected, and quite a number are pregnant. Not a single one showed any Flux power or any connection to the grid at all—except the two Fluxlords who look like them, of course.”
“What about them?”
“The old boy is crazy, completely crazy,” Jodi reported. “He’s withdrawn completely into a world of his own. He has to be force-fed, and we’re keeping him well-sedated just in case, and under constant guard. The other two—you won’t believe this—seem perfectly normal if somewhat confused. The man thinks he’s fifteen years old, the girl fourteen. The last they remember is pretty gruesome. They lived in a small, reclusive Fluxland in the gap between Clusters Two and Six. Their parents were rather stern and strict with them and with each other, but not crazy. Their father liked farming, but was also a student of the old texts he’d bought copies of from some merchants going through.”
“That figures,” Suzl commented. She wasn’t too keen on having any religions in her new world, either. “Go on.”
“Well, it seemed Mommie appeared straight and true, but she had—affairs—with almost everyone who stopped by. The kids knew it, but their father didn’t. You can probably guess what happened.”