“I’m glad you came in, but I’m very sorry it had to be Spirit who was the lure. She was crazy to have tried that. She could have died.”
“We all have to take risks on occasion for what we believe. The fact is, while I’m glad to have her out of this, I think this was inevitable anyway. As I told Chua Gabaye, we have a common enemy to defeat before we can even start arguing about the winners.” There was a pause. “Chua Gabaye! And Ming Tokiabi, too! You sure got in bed with some strange partners!”
“That was set up before I even came on board,” Suzl told Matson. “Even so, we needed them. We needed their experience and their technology base.”
“You trust ’em?”
“No. But I believe they are as committed to the overthrow of New Eden as we are. New Eden is as much a threat to them as to us. After? I don’t know.”
“I think I do. They want the projectors. They want New Eden out of the way, and then the projectors in their hands to keep the Guild at bay. When New Eden goes, I wouldn’t trust them one second more.”
“I’ve tried to guard as much as I can. The wizards here are bound, by spells I myself put on, not to betray me. Also, I make everyone carry these radios so I can contact them and they can contact each other. I can listen in if need be.”
“I’ll have to keep that in mind.” Definitely. If Suzl could activate anybody’s radio and eavesdrop on them, it would be good not to make any comments that might sound threatening to Suzl or the group. Stringers were well-versed in electronic eavesdropping techniques—and fooling them.
Suzl seemed lost in thought for a moment, then asked, “Why did you come in? You surely knew I would never harm Spirit. I couldn’t.”
“I know. That’s why I didn’t bring Jeff along. I didn’t want you to have to face your own son. Dell was a good help, although I’m afraid Chua embarrassed him all to hell.”
“You’re avoiding the question.”
Matson sighed. “I’m here because I think I know how to win. No guarantees, but if my ideas work out then it’s possible. It’s another big challenge. It’s what I do best. And, of course, I don’t relish the idea of becoming a Fluxwife myself. Those programs will be like the old ones—indiscriminate. And even if I got out of it, there’s a lot of folks close to me I wouldn’t like to see that way. I saw what they did to Sondra and Jeff—and to Cass and you, too. So, here I am.”
“How is Cass?”
“Doing well. She’s a hell of a horse breeder and she worked hard and finally got her vet’s degree. She doesn’t dare travel much, because we can’t fix her in Flux if anything happens, but she’s been all over anyway and done everything. The twins keep house and act somewhat as her bodyguards in a Flux environment. It’s not a bad life.”
“But it’s not your life.”
“Yeah, it is. I’d like to get back to it when this is done, if I can, and if we all survive. It’s a nice way to spend the time between crises.”
Suzl gave an eerie electronic chuckle. “And so here we are again. You realize I don’t intend to stop with New Eden.”
“Yeah, well, that’s somebody else’s problem, not mine. My people have worked out accommodations with the damndest sets of people. Me, I’m old military. My ancestor was the first general of the Signal Corps. It’s a tradition. I leave all the politics to others. My job starts when the politics fails.”
“Do you really think you can beat them? I mean, really beat them?”
“If you mean can I destroy New Eden utterly and break their system for good, the answer’s probably ‘no.’ If you mean can we win this battle and force them into an accommodation to our liking, the answer is ‘maybe.’ ” Quickly Matson sketched in the geography and demographics of the problem.
“Winning the battle will depend on some tests we’re gonna run with your projector as soon as we can, and you being able to scare up enough wizards and ground troops to make a difference,” the stringer told her. “Winning the war is going to depend on your unpleasant friends. I’ll know more after we make those tests.”
For the first time, Suzl had hope. The depression she’d been in when talking to Morgaine seemed far away. Still. Matson was as much or even more of a threat than the old wizard allies. Anyone who could fight off alien invaders and thought nothing of taking on New Eden wasn’t going to leave out of planning how to keep Suzl’s dreams from being realized as well.
“Matson—you were the last true man I had inside. Want to test out that body and get the favor returned?”
The stringer sighed. “Not now. And not with you, Suzl, although I feel the genuineness of the offer. You’re a wizard—and a strong one—locked in a body of passions. I’m at the mercy of that power. If I feel the need and have time, I might try some recreation with somebody, if only for the novelty of the experience, but it won’t be with a wizard. You understand? It’s just too important not to screw up.”
Suzl was disappointed, but she understood the problem. One-sided wizard powers in the heat of passion could do strange things to the other partner, some positive, others very negative, that would be hell to fix or sort out. As much as she wanted, and feared, Matson, she wanted that mind just the way it was.
“All right. Oh! I guess we better warn Morgaine who you are. I’ll have Gill get you settled in, and then I’ll arrange a meeting between you and the top staff here. Then you can go to work.”
“Sounds all right to me. Some wizard’s gonna have to find me fresh clothing and the basics, anyway. Funny, too. I’ve only had this form for a few hours but I really feel like I need a bath.”
Suzl sat on the active projector, listening, as the entire staff of wizards and military commanders sat watching. It was, however, Matson’s show.
“Up to now,” the stringer told them, “it’s been impossible to move around World using the grid no matter what your power. That went for goods, too. We could create things through energy-to matter transfers, but the network couldn’t carry and transmit a complex person or thing and reassemble it to our command elsewhere. Part of that was because of the relative signal from the wizard to the computer, and part was the nature of the switching network from one master computer to another that limited such things to line of sight, or maybe fifty kilometers, and only for inanimate objects. Last night, Suzl, Morgaine, and I, along with our two allies, worked out a different approach using the projector. The computer interaction point is always with the wizard, not the objective. The wizard establishes a spell, or program, checks it for errors and problems with the computer, then sends it. The computer then runs the spell. The old methods didn’t work, because to work the wizard would have to be in two places at the same time—transmit point and receive point.
“With the projector, this is possible. It is possible to initiate a matter-to-energy conversion program, or spell, at the transmit point, and then a complementary receive spell at the desired location. That’s the theory. I didn’t come up with it. I had it handed to me as a theory by the Guild. Now we can test it out.”
“At a predetermined location fifty kilometers south of here,” Suzl told them, “are several target objects. I have them located with no problem. One by one, I am going to issue commands at the remote site and if this theory is correct they should appear in the grassy field over there. Let’s do it!”
They all watched, unable to really follow the projector’s actions but waiting, all eyes on the field. Suddenly, there was a saddle there. Then a tree appeared next to it. Finally, a brown horse appeared, looking somewhat confused but otherwise in fine shape. There was some applause. Matson walked over, checked the horse, and nodded, then walked away.
Suzl waited for radio confirmation. “They all vanished just like I was there on the spot, then reappeared here. I converted them, placed them in files, then read the files out to these coordinates. The elapsed time seems to be about twenty seconds.”
“We’ll have to cut that way down,” Matson told her. “We’ll have to cut it further than you think it can be cut. This is only the first stage. I want every wizard here to do it—again and again. Practice and train on it. When you’ve got it down, then we’ll try for objects without a predetermined location. You’ll have to find them, mark them, and do it. When that time is down as far as it can be pushed, then we’ll do the tough stuff. Random moving objects to be located, trapped, filed, and read out here. Finally, we’ll try those random moving objects with some wizards aboard expecting the attack.”
There was muttering among the wizards, and the word “impossible” was heard more than once.
“Listen,” Matson said sternly, “this is your fight. It is not impossible because we must have it! Everything depends on it, and not just on it being done. It depends on it being done very fast and instinctively, without even taking the time to think. Without this, you can’t win. All the power and all the troops we might get won’t make one damned bit of difference. There’s no time for doubting or slacking off. If we just once are forced to go on the defensive, we’re through, and we might all just as well get our numbers on our asses and start keeping house for big men in black leather uniforms. This not only has to work, it has to work the first time and every time. They’re not dumb down there. They may not have thought of this trick yet, but once they get victimized by it, it won’t take them long to figure it out. If they get to withdraw their own projectors and equipment back into Anchor and then wait until they have the trick themselves and work out a defense against it—and there is always a defense against anything— we’ve had it.”
It was blunt, but it made its point. Even the roughest of those who watched, the most insular and suspicious, were impressed by the stranger’s cool, professional manner that dripped not only with authority but with confidence. They might not give their total trust, but it became somehow easy to believe that if everyone followed instructions, drilled, drilled, drilled, and pushed themselves to the limit, wizard and nonwizard alike, they might just win this thing.
For the original troops, the family who led the rest, Matson had another shock. “I want you all to look exactly like Fluxgirls,” they were told. They protested vehemently, and it took a while before the explanation could come.
“In war, you exploit your own strengths and your enemy’s weaknesses. The fact is, we’re not very strong in a relative sense and the enemy doesn’t have many weaknesses. They’re tough, battle-hardened, and driven by a religious fever. They firmly believe that if they die in battle they will go immediately to one of the highest heavens. They’re not above losing an engagement, or even a battle, and remaining all right—but to show cowardice, to surrender as opposed to withdrawal, to show a lack of will in battle, is to condemn yourself in this life and send you to Hell in the next. That’s a pretty tough enemy, and they have a million like that. Fortunately, with so large a country to guard, we won’t see a fraction of that, but we will see troops who are that way.”
A map was spread out on the ground showing the northern and some of the eastern New Eden border. “Now, being good tacticians, they’ll come out along here in a broad front. Probably committing half or less of their men, wizards, and projectors, keeping the rest in reserve just behind in well-protected Anchor.”
Gillian frowned when looking at the map. “How can you be sure they’ll come out there? Their border is over fifty-six hundred kilometers. They could come out anywhere. Play it safe, come out down in the southeast or southwest and consolidate. It’s what I would do.”
“Me, too,” Matson agreed, “but we are going to insure that they come out between Liberty’s eastern border and Logh District. We are going to move down to this position when we’re ready and we won’t be secretive about it. In fact, we’ll be a rolling tide, and there might even be some battles in between. We will have to have more troops and we have the power to get them, by battle or, hopefully, extortion, from the smaller Fluxlands in the way. The key border districts are the old Anchor areas—Logh here and Nantzee to the west—their science and technology center, and the original old industrial base. The land is still developing inward; the rest of the prime targets are in near the Gate, in the New Canaan district. They know if we take Logh we’ll have a big prize, and we’ll also have a way to send nasty little things through the Gate that might go boom. There’s also pride. New Eden started in Anchor Logh, and it was Tilghman’s home and the old capital. They’ll defend it, and that’s what we want. We want them always on the defensive. That forces a fight here, in a region you know well. The Logh area is heavily fortified, but the Liberty border area is hardly defended at all. That gives everybody some running room.”
“Yes, but why Fluxgirls?” several wanted to know.
“Their strength is also their weakness. Pride and ego. As good military commanders, if we manage to pull off an initial battle victory, they won’t want to commit their reserves and their remaining wizards and projectors. Conventional wisdom would be to hold off, since there’s no immediate threat to the interior, to pull back to Logh, and find out what went wrong and fix it. We can’t allow them to do it, and our wildest dreams of troop additions wouldn’t permit a successful assault on Logh Center if all their forces are concentrated there. That means forcing them into a tactical mistake. Doing something stupid. The only means of doing that is to put ego and career on the line. Think about it. You’re one of those men in the army, born and bred in New Eden and a true believer. Now the survivors of the first assault who get back into Anchor tell you that you’ve been defeated, not just by an army of militant women, which is bad enough, but by Fluxgirls in rebellion. What do you do?”
“If they’re smart, nothing,” Gillian responded. “Surely they’ll know it’s a trick, that it’s exactly what it is—a way to draw them back out.”
“Maybe. Probably. The officers and senior noncoms, at least. But the troops won’t be that reasonable. They will be humiliated, threatened, and angry. I’m betting that this, and one other thing, will force the officers into a second breakout. With their troops demanding it, to order a withdrawal would mean official protests up the ass, and all the reports would say that the officers refused to let them fight a horde of armed Fluxgirls. Even if their political chiefs know they did the right thing, that kind of news would mean ruin at the least for the officers in charge, maybe show court-martials. Public sentiment would demand it. They might smooth over being beaten by a bunch of women, because it’s Flux and the people understand Flux power and fear it, but by a bunch of Fluxgirls? It’ll drive ’em nuts even though they will know they’re being had.”
They were impressed. They were more than impressed, in fact.