“Now, I said you had to look like Fluxgirls, and that’s not the same thing as being one. Anything that doesn’t obviously show is all right. I have very strong arms and I keep them that way, not just with spell but with weights.” The stringer rolled up a sleeve and flexed the muscles. The arm had looked smooth and normal until then, but now it showed raw power. “See? There lots of tricks like that. Still, I want you all changed as quickly as possible. I want you to feel that Fluxgirl-like body, know what it can do, and be natural with it. I don’t want anybody forgetting that they’re not quite as tall as they were, or misjudging a leap, or pausing to doubt whether or not they can pick up something or punch someone out. Although I’ll be directing from the rear, when the time comes I, too, will take on a Fluxgirl body. Not only will I share your situation, but I don’t want to stand out for some bright New Eden sharpshooter in case I have to come in close.”
And that settled that.
The building up of forces proved easier as time went on. Ecksreh was in a shambles, and there was widespread lawlessness and starvation in many areas. Gorgh had also been ravaged, and, while stable now, you couldn’t grow food and raise new livestock overnight, particularly in Anchor. The wizards of what Suzl now called New Harmony could manage a ghoulish but mutually profitable trade: surplus human beings who could not be fed and whose livelihoods had been destroyed in the wars and revolutions in exchange for massive quantities of fruits, vegetables, and developed food plants created out of Flux.
Also, Gillian and others visited smaller Fluxlands, ones still run in the old ways by single Fluxlords and none too secure. Extortion, Matson had predicted, would win cooperation. A slice of your army, or we might come and take your Fluxland down and take it all.
They spread the word of the army they were raising and for what purpose, and to their surprise got some major volunteers. A number of female wizards volunteered their own services and those of their people in the cause, although they were not willing to take on Suzl’s spells for themselves. Their armies, however, were easily modified and integrated into the main body.
At Suzl’s suggestion, New Harmony agents still posing as Fluxgirls inside New Eden used their own places and the corrupt male officials long ago bought by Borg Habib to run record checks on known former female wizards who were now Fluxgirls. A number of those, including most without small children or enormous in-home families, were abducted, smuggled out, and then deprogrammed by Krita and her devices. These proved to include both of Jodi’s old Sister-wives, Giml and Honnah.
The army swelled to the largest number of female troops in World’s history, perhaps forty thousand, all made equal in Flux and given, through Flux spells, the latest in modern weaponry and what training they needed to be coordinated units.
Suzl’s own personal ranks of Ayesha-like wizards pledged to her swelled, with the Fluxgirl additions and the actual commitment of some former Fluxgirl wizards who caught the dream, to thirty-four. In addition, counting Chua and Ming, there were another twenty allied wizards. Other than not allowing the outsiders on or near the projectors, they had the same rank and duties as other wizards.
Under Matson’s skilled direction, they formed the most powerful unified army since the Invasion, and in wizard power were stronger than the armies of the Reformation. It was not, however, a one-person job. Many of the newcomers had some sort of military backgrounds, mostly in Fluxlands or in the Anchor civil wars, and knew how to do things.
What had been accomplished in a mere ninety-three days stunned them all. It also stunned Matson, but that wasn’t for anyone else to know. The amount of fear and resentment against New Eden had been badly underestimated by them all, that much was clear.
Matson used the allied wizards to survey New Eden, and used the internal network of New Harmony spies and corrupt officials within the country to keep track of progress. The numbers didn’t look good, and it was time to move.
“I would prefer another six months,” the stringer told the general staff of New Harmony. “At this rate, we would have a hundred wizards and an army of a quarter of a million. With that, I might try taking part of New Eden itself. The fact is, though, we don’t have it. We must close down here and move south as an advancing wave. We’ll put into practice what we’ve learned here as we go, against targets of opportunity. New Eden has its own allies and spies, and we must assume they know what we have and why we’re doing it. If we don’t move on them now, those projectors and forces will come out at a time and place they decide instead of where we want it to be. We need them all together, bunched up in one predictable spot.”
“It seems to me that we’re the bait in our own trap,” Morgaine noted nervously. “If they don’t take the bait, all this is for nothing.”
“They’ll take it,” Matson assured her. “They have to take it.” But the confidence in the old stringer’s tone belied deep-down fears. The fact was, they not only didn’t have to take it, they shouldn’t. The only thing that would make them take it was their pride and their ego. It had to be enough.
Even as they started to move, all but the Eves and a few holding personnel abandoning their beautiful new land, Matson sought out Gabaye and Tokiabi.
“I understand you plan to shoot yourselves up into orbit and find the old master builder computers,” the stringer said. “I assume you haven’t yet successfully sent a human being up?”
“Only some inanimate matter and a few small animals, darling,” Chua responded. “The tests so far have been prototypes only. After all, we’re not going to get in until we’re positive it’s safe and it’ll work and we can bring it back if need be.”
“But you have the proper file programs and machines to guide the things now?”
“Oh, yes, dear. Of course!”
“We’re going to need them down here. Guidance and programming experts and whatever is necessary to create and launch the things.” Quickly the plan to reduce New Eden’s industrial and transportation network to rubble and force an accommodation was outlined, and the rationale behind it.
Chua was entranced. “Darling! What a positively diabolical concept! We simply never thought of it that way! You know, making a woman out of you was a fine touch. Stripped of your male orientation, one could almost get to like you!”
“I pretty well doubt that I’m the first one who ever thought of it or used it. If there was any alternative, I wouldn’t use it now.”
“Ah! Compassion! Such a womanly value. One of the reasons New Eden made such doormats out of them.”
“Your group created New Eden,” the stringer reminded her. “Coydt van Haas created it, and you and Haldayne and Ivan and the others helped shape and direct it because you needed it to open the Gates. Now your monster’s turned on you, like in the old children’s stories, but it’s your monster all the same.”
Chua smiled, but made no reply.
Matson could see her mind working, and knew what implications had just been planted in that twisted mind of hers. With the projectors for protection and for Flux use, and guided projectiles for Anchor, World was theirs for the asking. What these two would do with it if they got it was something the stringer didn’t like to think about. Both Gabaye and the almost-totally-withdrawn Tokiabi were insane in a sense beyond any he had experienced before. Normal standards and expectations just did not apply. At one time they, or particularly Gabaye, could be reasonable and normal and just seem eccentric; the next minute, her reactions would be totally incomprehensible. For example, there was no question that they genuinely hated Matson for beating the Samish, even though the Samish had been about to incorporate them into their mass computer-organic mind. They were eager to leave World for the stars, yet they relished the idea of controlling it completely.
Matson directed that they avoid trouble with the stringers and they moved south. The Guild was a third force, able to mobilize huge forces, and it would do so if attacked, even at the cost of a New Eden victory. The Guild had compromised with New Eden before. Best to leave that force neutral. This was a chancy enough operation as it was.
Anyone else was not so lucky. Although Matson didn’t like to do it, there were priorities involved, and the mind sets of those at the top would overrule any moral qualms anyway. Weaker Fluxlands were simply punched through with the force of fifty-four wizards, at least half world-class: they were hardly even a problem, more a mild training exercise. Unable to even escape from such power, the wizards, faced with death, took the binding spells and became part of the force. Their populations, having no choice in the matter, were quickly converted and added to the ranks, although as reserves because of the lack of real opportunity for training. Still, it was another twelve thousand, and the force stretched back for kilometers across a broad front. Any New Eden man would have blanched at the sight of fifty-two thousand apparent Fluxgirls, armed to the teeth and riding and marching in disciplined columns, backed by fifty-four female wizards.
They were not in position until the hundred and twenty-first day after Matson had taken over and reformed them; behind schedule, but not dangerously so—or so they hoped. Their remaining contacts in New Eden—many of the officials had been scared off and some of the agents captured by this point—indicated, however, that the huge Anchor was taking the bait. Trains were rumbling from the interior towards the northeast border, and at least five projectors had been seen near the old walls of Anchor Logh by their allied wizards flying reconnaissance, and the movement of large numbers of troops and both heavy and light ordnance. The heavy population in the Logh area was being moved back as well into temporary holding camps.
Suzl sat on a wagon seat, Ayesha behind her, arms around the blind woman’s neck, nuzzling her. “Oh, I wish you could see all this!” the consort gushed. “It’s more power, more people, than many cities, my darling! All of them women, all of them ours. It passes my wildest dreams!” Ayesha was pregnant and just starting to show. So were most of the New Harmony wizards, except Suzl and perhaps the new ones picked up on the journey down. Suzl had used her powers for birth control, not wanting to add pregnancy to the pressures, although she was certainly responsible, as father, for some of the others. New Eden had taught her how to proceed with a social and physical revolution. This would be merely a base to build on, to create a whole new race which would one day conquer and revolutionize World even more than the First Spell had done. She would hold her fifty-four, and add to their ranks. Never before had so much power been permanently committed to a single set of goals.
And yet, oddly, she didn’t feel the thrills that Ayesha felt, or even get excited over the vision with which she had inspired the rest of them. When Ayesha asked if Suzl minded if she went down and looked it all over more closely, there was no objection. Morgaine, who was on a break from her own training program, saw the lonely-looking figure sitting there and came over. With some effort she hauled herself up and sat next to Suzl.
“Why so gloomy? Nerves? Me, too.”
“No, not nerves. Or, I don’t know, maybe it is. I feel like—what did they call that thing back at the carnival? A roller coaster. One of the little cars on a roller coaster. Sometimes I’m way up, and the world is mine and nothing can be wrong; then I’m down, all the way down, and nothing seems right. At first I thought it was just having to sit around, doing nothing, so much of the time. That’s a lot of it. The fact is, even when I’m on that projector, there’s lots of stretches of just plain dull. Sex is still fun—just turn on and shut down the world—but Ayesha doesn’t find me so alluring anymore, even with my attributes, and anybody else so inclined, if there are any, are too busy. Most of the time I just sit, in the dark, not doing much except eating. I’m getting fat again. All of us should weigh sixty-five kilos, and all of you do. I’m certain of that. I have the same frame, the same bones, and I’m the same height as the rest, but I weigh twice that, as must be evident.”
It was true and evident, and it had gone almost exclusively to her already-oversized breasts, rear, and stomach. Morgaine knew that the spell was supposed to maintain the body as it had been created, and had wondered and worried about it, and said as much to Suzl.
“Oh, it’s the spell, all right. Ayesha bought it from somebody who thought they were better than they were. She didn’t know, and the rest of the bunch couldn’t tell. I’ll never be sure whether the blindness wasn’t deliberate, to make sure I’d always be dependent on her, but the rest of the spell isn’t perfect, either. One of the new girls is something of a Flux doctor and she looked me over. She said it was an overdose of both types of hormones. I got body hair I have to have shaved off because my spells work on anybody but me. That’s also partly causing these mood swings, or so she thinks. The worst part is, the bigger this gets the less I’m a part of it, or even needed.”
Morgaine gave her a kiss and a hug. “That’s not true. Any time I’m on a break or after this is over, I’m available. I’m pregnant, though, so I wind up being the male all the time.” She laughed. “I really do like this bisexual-ity, by the way. Funny thing is, I was so mannish for so long that I like looking and feeling this way. I like the feel of big breasts, the glamour part, all that, but I get more of a charge out of giving than getting. I don’t know if it’s the spell or me, but it works so well I think if I were free to choose again I’d stay the same.”
“It’s not the spell. That only makes you comfortable with it. Some people, maybe most, will always tend to be one or the other. It’s personality, really, but this way the choice is on the individual. Take Matson, for one. He’d never be female by choice. That’s why I made his spell totally female, an exact duplicate of Sondra. He’s just not tempted that way. The real Sondra, on the other hand, has her father’s masculine toughness but is all female. Your mother, I think, would be the opposite of you. She prefers the look and company of women to men, yet she’d never be in the masculine role sexually. But, again, under my system, it’s the individual’s choice and personality.” She sighed. “But all these things have never been for old Suzl. Do you believe in fate?”
“Chance. Not fate. Not if you mean things are predestined to happen.”
“Well, I believe in fate. I’m predestined to be a freak. I wasn’t in Flux but a couple of months when I picked up a real, regular male prick. I was little, fat, kind of cute in a way. So I wound up taking up with a guy who liked other guys. To him, I was the best of all worlds. Then things went nuts and I wound up a real dugger. Tits as long as my arm that stuck straight out and a prick just as long that about dragged the ground when it wasn’t turned on. The more they tried to fix it, the worse it got. Then I got a choice: be a Fluxgirl, all the way, physically and mentally, or stay that way forever. I saw the looks in even my closest friends’ eyes, and I took the Fluxgirl route. Thing was, I hated the system, hated the people, but I loved being a Fluxgirl. I just didn’t feel that anybody else should be forced to be one. Is that crazy?”