Suzl frowned. “Then if they were wizards, why didn’t they hit us when we were weak?”
“They had reason to be overcautious,” the prime minister told her hesitantly, and for the first time revealed everything about Morgaine. “By the time they recovered, we had exited Liberty and probably outpowered them.”
Suzl was upset, and the speaker said, softly, “Morgaine. Morgaine. How could you have been so stupid?” She recovered quickly, though. “What’s done is done. I don’t blame you for doing it at the time. In fact, I can not think of anything else that could have been done. I appreciate you telling me this, though. Anything else I don’t know and should?”
“No. Nothing.”
“All right, then. So now we know that it’s probably my friends and family out there trailing us. But how did they manage to track us this far in spite of all our precautions?”
“You have a string on you,” replied Ming Tokiabi with no more expression than Suzl’s electronic voice.
“What! Impossible!”
“Beyond the infrared. It is an old stringer trick, used very seldom lest it be discovered and countered.”
“Matson! Why, you son of a bitch. …”
“The Matson?” Chua Gabaye interjected. “But he’s forty years dead!”
“It was faked. The only way he could get some privacy. He’s back now, though, and the same as ever. That means trouble. There’s no mind quite like his on this world.”
Gabaye thought for a moment. “If that is true, then he is but a false wizard. Is that not correct? A master of illusion, but nothing real?”
“Yeah. So?”
“Then he is as defenseless against any of us as were any of the Eves.”
“Tell that to Coydt van Haas.”
“That was different. He had a wizard almost as powerful as Coydt to keep his quarry distracted.”
“He probably has several with him now, if I know his relatives.”
“So? Separate him from his wizards, eliminate his protection, and the same mind that sat at a console he did not comprehend, unable to contact the master computers or directly use their powers, who nonetheless was the one who determined exactly how to beat the alien Samish, a horde beyond his imagining, and got everyone to do it. Such a mind could easily find New Eden a snap, the whole of World no challenge, If he could be turned.”
“It’s not that easy,” Suzl told her. “The man and the mind are all parts of a whole. Tamper with anything and you change it, maybe lose it forever. Any involuntary spell would destroy those very things that would be most valuable to us. No, forget it.”
“Bosh!” Gabaye responded. “The operative word is “involuntary.’ There is no one, least of all a man, who can not be turned given the right incentive. You need only have a lever. For some, it’s money; for others, power. Yours is a dream, a revolution of greater magnitude than the one that caused World’s culture in the first place. For others it’s ego, or family and friends, or some code of honor. There’s always something to use. His turning interests me a great deal, if only for personal reasons. Let me ask you—if you could get him to join us, with his mental powers intact, would you take him?”
Suzl thought about it. “I—I’m not sure. He’s been very close to me.”
“Consider this, then. If you are not willing to run your program on your family and past friends and associates, you are doomed to failure. No Matson could ever be allowed loose even in this Fluxland, let alone the new world you envision.”
“Remember, my darling, that you were forced into New Eden,” Ayesha added, stroking Suzl’s hair. “He chose to live there, and took Fluxwives as well. He is—attractive. Magnetic. But when push comes to shove, he’s on New Eden’s side. He is here because he opposes us. Perhaps the others are here because of you, my baby, but if we fall, New Eden wins the world. And if he’s really as good as his legend, he might well be the only one who could stop us. Think of yourself, as you are, but a New Eden slave forever. Did he try and foil them when they made his own daughter a Fluxgirl? No, he moved in and joined them. If they win, you and I will be changed once more, in the mind, where it counts, and we will become animals, sexual whores for carnivals and freak shows. Matson may even visit, may even partake, for old times’ sake. You must put all the old loyalties aside forever.”
She knew Ayesha spoke the truth, but until now she hadn’t had to face the problem squarely. Her family and friends, and his, would all be changed. All of them. It could be no other way and work, and it was the only alternative to New Eden forever. She realized that she was being romantic, not practical, about Matson. He had butted, fallen, into this situation not because he really cared but because he loved the game.
“If you can figure a way to get them all on our side, I give my blessings,” Suzl told them. “However, we have other priorities, too. We must find a way to duplicate the projector. We need animals—we must send up to Anchor Gorgh and beg, buy, borrow, or steal them. We’ve got all the useless birds and insects and the like from the Garden, but we need some cows, and horses, too. Lots of them. Gil, you take charge of that. Gabaye, you and Tokiabi have the projector as your primary project. Whatever else you do comes second. Beth, Cissy, Debbie—I want you to fine-tune our new citizens. Also, see if you can develop some of them to replace our losses, although I know that’s a real challenge. We all have big challenges. Let’s get moving. Jodi, if you’ll help me up and guide me, we’ll go over and see those two poor wizards and talk to Krita about you.” She paused a moment. “Oh, and Tokiabi— break my damned string!”
Jodi did so, and with the aid of a guard they made their way out of the tent. All were aware that the clock was more than merely running.
“Is it true,” Jodi asked hesitantly, “that you have . . . in your mouth, that is . . .”
“Yes. I have two, and I’m also a fully functioning female. One day I will give you a kiss you will never forget.”
“And they are both . . . potent?”
“Yes. They were taken from functioning males, then a gland was added that prevents male sperm from surviving ejaculation. We did the same thing to the Eves with the material from the Adams. It is a complicated process.”
“Far easier to make man female,” she agreed. “I’m afraid I’ve done that quite a number of times. Any time I had relations with any man of lesser power. It was automatic, but it made me feel good, somehow.”
“Defense mechanism,” Suzl responded. “We’ll take a good look at that spell.”
Krita was there, expecting someone, but not necessarily either of them. The Adam and the Eve wizards were under guard in a small tent nearby.
“You are sure that they won’t bolt or cause trouble if their power is turned back on?” Suzl asked her.
“Positive. They’re very scared, and very scarred inside, and deeply disturbed. I used the deepest hypnotics on them.”
“Prep them, then. Light hypnotic only. I want the actual decision to be clearly voluntary. When they’re ready, we’ll turn their power back on. If they hold, I’ll feed them what they have to have. Fortunately, in their case there’s no real experiences to preserve and no memories that they would want. Jodi, you stand by and be ready, though. If they’re putting us on anyway and jump at the power, there will be hell to pay in here.”
But there was no resistance. Krita had been right, as usual.
Suzl unleashed their nightmares, and they proved if anything more ugly and horrible than the reality had been. These kids needed help.
My name is Suzl, she told them, using Flux rather than radio. I can free you from the nightmare forever, the ugly dreams, the confusions, and give you peace and purpose.
They both rose to the bait, eager to please.
I will give you both a spell. It will be a big one, but you don’t have to know what it does. You only have to take it and where I tell you add some numbers to it. Any numbers. When it’s done, you’ll still have all your powers, but all the bad stuff will be gone, and you will be able to live out your long lives in peace and contentment. If you trust me, do as I say.
The spell was the Ayesha spell, as modified, with the New Human attribute as well. She wanted them all to have children, lots of children, all of whom would have the average wizard power of the two parents and all of whom would grow up to look just like Ayesha, Suzl, and the rest. Suzl would have liked to also have given what she called her “mouth organ attribute,” but it would require running that complex machine-language string with the bug in it. One blind wizard was enough.
They took the spell, and it worked its magic quickly on them. “Jodi, meet Fawn and Flower,” she said, bringing the two up and out. “I couldn’t think of any name with ‘E’ offhand except Eve, and that’s more than taken.” They adjusted to the new bodies naturally, as if born to them, which, in fact, they now believed was the case. They looked much like the others, except that their skin was quite fair, their eyes baby blue, and their cape-like hair was a straw-colored blond. There were differences with the others, but the pair were absolutely identical twins.
They retained their language and math capabilities, and their full, considerable powers, but they had absolutely no memories of anything before Suzl made her introductions, nor any curiosity about the fact that they didn’t. They were so perfectly matched they talked in unison.
“Mistress,” they both said, in soft, sweet, high-pitched voices, “what would you like us to do?”
“Go around, explore, talk to people, see what it’s like,” she suggested. “Later you will start training to bring your wizard powers up to the world class they can be.”
They laughed and scampered off. Suzl turned to Jodi. “Now—let’s see about that spell.”
Every wizard had it drilled in her from the start that binding spells could not be broken, and for most that was quite true, unless someone got into a master computer room and cancelled the new file and read back in the old, as had happened to Suzl, Cass, and others. Binding spells were built with huge bunches of nulls in the commands in which the one being bound inserted strings of random numbers. They had no effect on the spell, but as soon as it took effect those numbers were erased from the memory of the bound one and from the actual spell itself. To reverse any spell, it was necessary to know all the code, but the number of variables involved made it impossible to find.
Suzl’s spell had hundreds of missing numbers; Ayesha’s had even more. The spell she’d just enacted had hundreds as well, and they could be any number of digits. Jodi’s spell, however, had only ten blanks, and that made Suzl wonder. She remembered being a true Fluxgirl herself, as Jodi had been when the bind had been forced upon her, and she well remembered that she needed both hands to count her children. She thought Haldayne had pulled a clever fast one on the girls, one she was surprised nobody else had thought of. Of course, maybe they had.
“I will wager that I can break your spell the first time, if you let me,” Suzl told her. “However, I have a price. You must take one of mine. Otherwise, you will remain as you are forever, even if you break the spell yourself at some point. You are as niched as I was.”
Jodi wanted desperately to break it, but after seeing those vacant-eyed smiling blondes she wasn’t so sure she wanted to pay the price. “May I ask what the new spell is?”
“Nothing much inside will change. You will still be you, with all your memories and all your powers and abilities. However, you will be one of us, body and soul. That way I can be sure of you, as I can never be of your friends.”
“You mean—look like you? Or them?”
“More or less. If you have any preferences, tell me. I’m blind. I can’t see it anyway, only write the code.”
“And if I take it? What then?”
“After that performance a couple of days ago, you would become my second-in-command, my adjutant. You would be in charge when I am indisposed. You would be my general of wizards. You would speak in my stead, and you would be my successor should anything happen to me. I can offer no more than that.”
She thought about it. “Those two—they have their own peculiar code of honor. They owed me for their lives, so they sheltered me, took care of me, and let me have something of a life these past decades. But they really don’t care about me, not a bit. They’ve been hoping to get rid of me almost since we left New Eden. They don’t even really like each other much. That’s why I find this place of yours so attractive. What the hell? Why not? I must trust someone sometime or kill myself. Uh—you’re not going to name me something with a ‘G,’ are you?”