“He finally caught her with somebody and went bananas,” Ayesha guessed.
“Yes, at least that. She was probably the equal of him in power, judging from the offspring, but she couldn’t counter his jealous rage and hurt ego. He froze her, then took a butcher knife and carved her up alive. Only when he’d done with her did he realize that the children had heard the screams and come running and witnessed the whole thing. He turned to them, dropped the knife and picked up some book off his desk, and there was a blaze of light. After that, they can’t remember much of anything, although they do have an awareness that much time has passed.”
There was a strange electronic sound that was Suzl sighing. “Well, that explains the Garden and the system. What about them?”
“Pliant, very pliant,” Gillian put in. “They seem shy and a little confused when awake, but they have horrible nightmares. We got the real story out of them using a mild drug. They don’t really remember the gory part at all, consciously. Krita, who’s the closest thing to a psycho-geneticist we have—she works the Flux chambers—believes they would eagerly accept binding spells just to get oriented and get rid of the nightmares. She says that if any one of you will stop by, she thinks she can set things up without having to go to any artificial extremes. Neither of them has the faintest idea what a binding spell is, so they won’t resist trying it.”
“I’ll handle it personally,” Suzl told them. She wanted to make sure it was done right, but also she wanted the insurance that they would be hers. The addition of those two, along with Beth, Cissy, and Debbie, would give her far more power than the three foreign wizards here. More than enough to offset their greater age and experience. “And the father?”
“We can play to his delusions and possibly turn him, but it would have to be in a chamber, and that means Anchor. Gorgh is not that far away, when you can spare the people.”
“What about the Eves? Is there anything really there?”
“The spells are quite strong. Not only were their original selves erased, but in apparently a last gesture towards us their marking programs were also erased. There is no way to ever find whose file belongs to which body. For now, we’ve simply modified their existing master program,” Jodi reported. “First we erased the concept of Adam, and we replaced the concept of the God and the Garden with a divinity based on your own form. We also introduced the idea of the joy of work and the division of labor, although your own people are having to show them just what to do and how to do it. Give them a routine and they’ll do it, time after time, day after day.”
“What about sex?” Ayesha giggled.
“We altered them to the New Human format, as intended. They are either sex, as inclined. We found a few—perhaps five or six so far—who would not take the program, and we conclude that these are former wizards who lost out in the Garden and were forced to take binding spells for some reason. We’re removing them as we find them and trying hard to re-establish them as wizards, but so far no luck.”
“Their binds may have permanently cut them off,” Debbie put in. “If so, they become the least of the captives, since they’ll always be just the way they are: dull, innocent baby factories, no more. The rest have the potential to become real people someday, if we do our jobs right.”
“It is perfect,” Suzl told them. “A race physically identical, so there is no chance of jealousy or envy about what another looks like, and with no concept of personal property and no sexual divisions. If we can teach them to think correctly along our lines, they could be the model for the whole new world we build.” She paused a moment. “That brings up a major question. I know why we are all in this, but why are you three here? You share neither our form nor our goals. What do you wish out of this?”
“I’m too old and too jaded for ideals, darling,” Gabaye responded, “but Ming and I have our own little project, one that doesn’t involve you directly at all. You see, after Jodi saved our necks at Gate Four, we got out—fast. All three of us. Onregon Sligh had access to Coydt van Haas’s research staff and library, and we managed before the big invasion to find out where it was. We’ve been up there since, working on a different idea. You see, up there in space, orbiting around the old Mother just like us, are three huge—ships, I suppose we must call them: The original computers who transformed this place from barren rock into what we have today. They’re shut down, in a holding state, pending their need in an emergency. That meant the failure of one of the big computers here, but that never happened, so they’ve been up there, preserving themselves, just waiting.”
Even Ayesha was fascinated. “And you think you can get to them and make them obey you?”
“Get to them, yes. That, darling, was never a problem. The programs for the vehicles were in the master computer, to be triggered in an emergency. The invasion opened everything up, of course, and some of Onregon’s bright boys got them before the shutdown. Turning them on and making them obey is a different question. They weren’t designed to carry people, for one thing. Still, we have hopes. Hopes that their files will show how to use the Gates, or perhaps to do without them. I mean, dears, they had to get here somehow.”
“And if you can do all this?”
“Then we will go traveling down the big strings towards the old home place, of course. I mean, we only opened the Gates at all because life here had become so damned boring. There was simply nothing else we could have that we didn’t already have. This is the new thing that has Ming’s and my heart beating fast again.”
“And what do we give you?”
“Darling! Can’t you see that under the current situation our dreams are threatened? We are, perhaps, two years from getting this thing started, and we also still need some data that perhaps New Eden has but we do not. Look at what you’ve done in a few short weeks starting with one full wizard, one group wizard of moderate strength, and the projector! Just think of what New Eden can do, and how fast! They will be an unstoppable army on the march! Of course, they will be able to make use only of the male wizards unless they get smart like you and convert what they have to what they need, but that will be more than enough. They are already using Hoghland’s war with Liberty to train their own in Flux warfare—and helping out Liberty as well! They egged that war on and keep it going just to give their top people experience. They already have a hundred or more fully trained and qualified wizards committed to the New Eden cause. In far less than two years they will beat a path to our doorstep and we will not be able to deny them entry!”
Suzl considered it. “I see.” It all made a horrid kind of sense, particularly the idea of fermenting a Flux war and using other people’s blood to train their best. “And if we win?”
“A hands-off policy until we leave, together with cooperation, sharing of new discoveries and documentation, and support personnel as needed. To do it, we need someone big helping us along, and New Eden is, of course, out of the question.”
It sounded fair and reasonable, almost too much so. She would never trust these two, who had the blood of millions on their hands, but she was willing now to use Hell itself if it furthered her goals. “You are all three going?” she asked, mostly curious.
“No,” Jodi responded. “I will not be going. I have no desire to be squirted into atoms by some big machine I can’t trust, and I don’t really care who’s out there, if anything. I was a Fluxlord, and a strong one, inside Cluster Four when they ran that master Anchor program. This is the way I came out, only without power, without literacy—the works. Some of the Seven knew in advance what was going to happen and where to go and who to look for in female former Fluxlords. Gifford Haldayne located me and two others, and married all of us.”
“Haldayne!” Suzl remembered the slippery, evil master who’d been her first encounter with one of the Seven.
“Yes. The shock was very great. I, frankly, lost all memory and sense of identity, and I wasn’t alone. Before Haldayne was through, he had us jumping through hoops. He had a theory and he eventually tested it on us. He believed it wasn’t necessary to even comprehend a binding spell and have it work. Somehow—to this day I don’t understand how—he was right. He took us eventually down into the Gate itself, and enacted the programs, and ordered us to accept the programs and let them flow into us and we did. So long as Gifford lived we were his slaves. In Flux, he could draw on our power to enhance his own without ever worrying that we could change or refuse. It’s because of that that I was at the Gate when the Samish and the Seven made contact.”
“Lucky for us,” Gabaye put in.
Come to us, the Samish had ordered, and the six members of the Seven present had followed, up to the ship lying slightly askew in the Gate depression. At that moment a huge explosion, a massive force, had come from beneath the alien vessel, blowing it upwards and disconnecting it from the Gate power source. The tremors had caused the huge transmission tower, with which the Gates had been opened in the first place, to fall, and it fell inwards, right on the advancing six figures. Jodi and the other wives had rushed forward as everyone else had fallen back in panic, concerned only with Haldayne. They found Gifford Haldayne dead, his skull crushed beneath one of the tower beams, but of the six, two were still alive. Freed from any obligations to Haldayne but still under the Fluxgirl program, they did not think about who was lying there, they just pulled the bodies from the wreckage and brought them to the Gate lip, where live Samish were still scrambling about in panic and confusion.
They managed to bring Gabaye to consciousness, where she was able to use the power of Flux first to heal herself, then to restore Ming, who was mangled and near death. Not wishing to meet or take on the Samish and not knowing what might be below that caused the explosion, they fled right through the lines of people and soldiers and eventually made it back to Haldayne’s ranch in the northwest part of New Eden. There they remained while everything changed, not daring to move.
“Thanks to your reformat, I regained my literacy and my powers,” Jodi told them, “but I discovered, to my horror, that none of the three of us could be anything but Fluxgirls. The binding spell, of course, had been done in a Flux environment, so it became a part of our regular coding. The old, original spell holds. Not even today’s Fluxgirl! I dress this way because I have to. I look this way because I have to.”
“Believe me, I understand, dear,” Ayesha sympathized. “Suzl, too, had something of the same problem, although self-inflicted.”
“What happened to the other two?” Suzl asked, curious.
“They—couldn’t stand it. They went back. I—couldn’t. Every time I saw a black-clad man I saw Gifford. I hate his guts, and all their guts, but I still love him, too. It’s crazy.”
“No,” said Tokiabi, speaking for the first time. “It is magic.”
“These two saved me, as I saved them,” Jodi told them. “They kept me busy, kept me going, kept me from killing myself. I’ve stayed with them in Flux and tagged along when it seemed I could do some good. You needed wizards who could fight. I looked around here and decided that you were well worth fighting for. Both of them—well, pardon, but they’re very old and very experienced. Me, I may be old in Flux terms but I feel cheated. If I could find my Sister-wives, they’d be here too, now. I’ll always be grateful to the two of you, but I think I’ll stay, if you will have me.”
“Then welcome,” Suzl responded sympathetically. “I know what it is, what you have gone through, and we can certainly use you. You have studied the binding spell, though? It is in fact unbreakable?”
“Hopeless!” responded Chua Gabaye. “It’s a clear blind code spell, just like yours. You know there’s no point in going further with it. It could only injure her.”
Suzl thought about it. “Still, I’d like to take a look at a binding spell that can be forced on someone who is both reading and math illiterate. Come with me to see Krita. Would you mind?”
“No, I’d be pleased, but you know they’re right. A binding spell is a binding spell.”
“So I have heard,” Suzl responded, “but, somehow, I’ve never been able to totally accept it.” She paused a moment. “Anything else?”
“Several,” Gillian replied. “First, someone watched us do all that we did. Not long after the Fluxland was completed, someone attempted entry and was denied. The entry was aerial, so it was a wizard of high power, and the entry was denied, so we know it was a man although we don’t know anything else—as we would have if penetration had succeeded.”
“Any idea of who or where they might be from?”
“No way to tell, but it had the same feel as several other quick sightings over the past weeks, just beyond real range. We must assume that we have been followed by the same people all the way from New Eden.”