The worst part had been after, when, in defiance, she’d really tried some radical changes on herself. She tried, she really tried, just to prove it false, to prove herself the exception to the rule. She tried changing herself physically, and succeeded, but all she got was a different looking Fluxgirl. Worse, she felt uncomfortable until she changed back into the old form again. Now, at least, she understood why Mervyn was always an old-man figure. It was his niche, his self-image. Oh, he changed himself into others at times, to carry out his purposes, but as soon as he could he always changed back again. She wasn’t as strong a wizard as Mervyn had been, and she didn’t have his motivations even for his temporary changes.
Worse were the changes inside. She had given up cigars years ago. They just didn’t give her a charge anymore, and the idea of doing it now seemed, well, wrong. She used to cuss like a soldier, but somehow that had gradually faded away. It had just become, well, embarrassing, a word the old Suzl wouldn’t even have known the meaning for. She liked personal privacy, but she didn’t like being really alone. She’d gone off for a bit into Flux after the sessions, but she’d returned very quickly to Freehold. With others, fine, but out there, even with the power, she just couldn’t stand being alone.
Even here, with servants to wait on servants, she had automatically and without even thinking about it made the bed, cleaned up any mess, and even wiped out the washbasin and tub with a towel. A smudge on the window that didn’t even look out on much of anything had so preyed on her that she’d wetted a cloth and cleaned it off, then did the rest of the window so it would all look uniform.
Not that she was a true Fluxgirl, of course. She thought and acted independently, and could control her emotions at least as well as the old Suzl could, which wasn’t all that much. She didn’t believe for a minute the divine nature of all this. She was literate and did good math, although neither skill got much real use out of disinterest. It was still nice to send and receive letters and notes from faraway close ones like Spirit and Cass, but her own notes were stilted, phrased in simple sentences and written in block letters, and she read the notes aloud, one word at a time. When you haven’t done something for fifty years it comes hard, and there was no incentive to improve. And, she was still pretty aggressive when she wanted to be. Any man who attacked her would find he’d attacked a tigress.
The bottom line was that she desperately needed someone to love and to love her, and that someone was not in sight, had never really been in sight except for all-too-brief moments in the distant past with people now far changed from that time. Not love as her friends loved her, or love as her children loved her, but real, personal love. She had never loved or been in love in New Eden, but it had been an easy, comfortable time, and the job and role was something she knew how to do and did well, unlike almost anything else. If anything, the one most important thing she’d ever done, being the Guardian, had humbled and frightened her. Such tremendous knowledge, such awesome power, such command of whatever skills were needed, seemed to her to magnify her unimportance in the scheme of things when not coupled with great machines. She would never really know, but would always suspect, that she was selected by the computers for the role not because she was superior at anything but because she was so unskilled and so insignificant that she posed no threat to the programs or to Flux and Anchor by having that role.
These dark depressions had been increasing in frequency in the past year, and so far New Eden hadn’t helped. The wizard had warned her that if she continued to fight it or put off either taking command or finding a place for herself, she’d better get out of Flux, for the power within her would consume her, spinning spell after spell, turning her more and more into her own inner self-image, crushing and extinguishing her ego. The insane, deformed, animalistic duggers were formed by the same process.
She sighed. Well, enough of that for now. Tonight she and the others were going to a carnival, a carnival in Anchor, and for a little while it would be all right to be a kid again. In a couple of days she’d have the pleasure of introducing some of the kids to the legendary Matson. After that—well, she wasn’t so sure. She only knew that for her own sake she wasn’t going back, at least not now, and she almost certainly wasn’t staying in New Eden. She would return with Matson to visit Cass and the twins and their kids and maybe, with their help and the help of the best minds in the stringer organization, she’d find an avenue.
If Suzl had had someone for comfort and support, she would have been the ideal candidate for a permanent ambassador to New Eden. Because she looked like a Fluxgirl and knew how to fit in, the men ruling the land neither feared her nor considered her a threat, unlike almost anyone else coming out of Flux. Because she was independent and World-wise, she made a good bridge between the two cultures, each of whom considered the other repugnant and dangerous. And, as a former wife of Adam Tilghman, the Prophet himself, she was at the top of society always and could get away with much that none of the New Eden women would dare and be treated more equally by the male rulers than any other female except, of course, Cass— who wouldn’t be caught dead here.
A Fluxgirl was waiting for her at the top of the grand staircase. “I am Sheva, my lady,” the woman said pleasantly, “current head of the household staff. I am instructed to show you around the estate and grounds or assist you in any way.”
“What about the kids?” Suzl asked. She had left them with the child care coordinator after getting in late the previous night. They’d been all in, anyway.
“They were up and about long ago,” Sheva told her. “It did not seem necessary to wake you. They ate well, and then went over to see the final touches being put on the carnival before the grand opening today. We will all join them there when you like, although they are in good hands and the opening isn’t for hours yet.”
Suzl nodded. She’d brought only five kids, ages eight to fourteen, all her own grandchildren, and all picked because they were very good in strange surroundings and cultures. The two boys would have no problems at all here, but the three girls might, so the boys were told to watch out for them and they were a responsible group. There would also be a lot of toleration shown for them because they were her own grandchildren and might also be grandchildren of the Prophet. Only one was, but she hadn’t told them which one.
“I’d like a little something in my stomach,” she told Sheva. “Then you can show me around the place.”
She had a hard time getting the girls of the house not to fix her a full formal breakfast. She wanted toast and coffee for now and that was all—with emphasis on the coffee. It might be an interesting, even enjoyable, day, but it was going to be a long one and she still felt the effects of a two-day horseback ride. She was sadly out of practice and she was only now relearning just what muscles were used only in riding.
Conversation with the “girls” only confirmed what she already knew: even as she was she’d be bored silly by this vacuous level. She might not be any brighter than they, but she had a wider world-view and a weight of experience. Some of them were probably in their thirties or forties—it was impossible to really tell with Fluxgirls—but to Suzl it was like being trapped in a crowd of fifteen-year-old adolescents. Worse, they were in awe of her as a wife of the Prophet. It was enough to spoil any breakfast, even one so spartan and basic. She was very polite and exited as soon as she could.
As she would be staying there several days at least, she accepted the offer to tour the place. Sheva seemed to have a good sense of propriety and wasn’t as hard to take, and seemed genuinely pleased to show off the place.
And it was grand by anyone’s standards: The Great Room, used for formal dinners and meetings, was as large as Adam Tilghman’s old house where she’d spent several years. Sixteen bedrooms, not counting servant’s quarters, two enormous kitchens, one at each end of the place, a massive library, a “cozy” den that seemed big enough to race horses in, and rooms especially made for displaying fine art and sculpture.
The whole place sat on a rise north of the city, with the entire area filled with green trees and brightly colored flowers and shrubs. It was more like a private park than the “front lawn” Sheva called it, and off in the distance could be seen the city itself, the old temple-spires gleaming in the reflected rays of the great gas giant which gave World its light.
The rear area contained more formal gardens, a broad area used for some sports and entertaining, and even two grass tennis courts. There were even large stables for horses and a private exercise track. In fact, the only incongruity was a very large, round structure with a pointed roof far off to the rear. They’d done their best to conceal it with shrubbery and a dark green paint job, but there was no ignoring it. “What’s that?” Suzl asked her guide.
“That is the private laboratory,” Sheva replied. “None of the household staff is permitted to enter there, so I can tell you no more than that. There is a road and a separate entrance that you cannot see from here where those who work there come and go. It is none of our concern.”
None of yours, you mean, Suzl thought, her curiosity aroused. Men’s work. She remembered the time when she’d thought that way, too.
“Madame Suzl!” boomed a hearty male voice from the vicinity of the stables. She turned and saw a large figure walking quickly toward them. She waited for him where they were. When he got there, he first took her hand and kissed it, then gave her a big, less formal hug.
“My apologies for not greeting you until now.” Judge Vishnar apologized, “but all this work plus the carnival has left me so little time. You slept well?”
“Fine.”
“And the children? Where are they?”
“Already at the carnival. They’ve never seen one, you know.”
“Well, neither have most people. But we’ll show them what a good time one is, eh?”
The judge dismissed Sheva with a wave of the hand and took Suzl over to some lawn chairs in the garden. Both sat, and almost instantly a young and eager Fluxgirl was running out to ask if they required anything. Sensing from Vishnar’s nod that it was not out of line to order, she asked for more coffee, and the judge nodded agreement. Inside of five minutes the girl was back with a pot on a silver tray, two exquisite porcelain teacups and saucers, and silver cream and sugar servers. This servile business made Suzl uneasy, but it was only her required conscience and she knew it. Given a choice of being server or served, the second was better every time.
“So, what do you think of the place?” Vishnar asked her.
“It’s most impressive,” she responded, trying not to sound too much the country hick. “I don’t believe I ever saw or heard of anything quite like it.”
“It’s based on a set of programs from the old records,” he told her. “If our interpretation is correct, it’s a good reproduction of the estate of the first military commander on World. Of course, that was up in Cluster One, in the Headquarters Anchor. It was actually of a prefabricated design. Fascinating. The method itself has saved us much misery here in New Eden, but no one expected something like this among the records. Goes together like a jigsaw puzzle, in fact. The grounds, of course, took much longer and are still in the process of development.”
“It all looks fine to me,” she told him truthfully. “I can’t imagine what one might add to it.”
“Oh, the original had several other features. I’m still considering the big swimming pool. Don’t swim myself, but it’s getting to be a skill needed in New Eden, what with the Sea and all. The trouble is getting instructors. Until I can, I don’t want anything in which someone can fall and drown while we either stand about helplessly or drown trying to save them. Do you swim, by the way?”
She shook her head. “I’m from right around here, remember. It was never something we had to do. Oh, there were some nice ponds and small lakes—I guess they’re still there—but it wasn’t something you needed to learn.”
He nodded understandingly. “The odd thing is, we owe a lot to this program. One of the other things it included in its grounds plan was an ambitious two-kilometer steam locomotive at one-tenth scale. It was from that alone, by simply scaling it up, that we developed our railroad system, which is the only thing that really makes such a massive Anchor area as New Eden work as one. The odd thing is, at their level, steam was an ancient and totally outdated method of propulsion. It was sort of like importing bows and arrows when you already had these computer-guided laser rifles. Or—am I boring you with this? I like to talk and sometimes I go on and on. Don’t hesitate to say so if it’s the case.”
“No, I find it fascinating,” she told him truthfully, although she knew his culture was battling his intellect now. “It was his—toy, then.”
“Yes, yes! Exactly that! One marvels at what they must have been like—to be able not only to travel vast distances here and build and colonize a world but to even indulge themselves by bringing such frills.”
She decided it would be pushing it too far to note that such things had always been and still were for the privileged elite only. The average settler or poor working slob, she guessed, probably got to bring two changes of clothes, a watch, and maybe pictures of his or her parents. All but a very few in New Eden would never be able to have an estate like this built and maintained, let alone the whole of World. “I assume that was also true of the carnival things?”
He gave a chuckle. “Oddly enough, from what we can find out, no. They were apparently built as basic amusements after the Betrayal by some people who’d escaped to the stringers. Oh, they are probably similar to carnival things the ancients had back on the Mother World, but it’s not too clear. We’ve made them grander for this new carnival. Scaled them up, like we did the trains.”
“I’m looking forward to going. The last carnival I attended was here, too, when I was very young. In a way, it was the last innocent time I ever had. A few days later they picked me out of the crowd and sold me into Flux.”
He stared at her for a moment, then started to say something, stopped, took a drink of coffee, and decided to change the subject. He knew her history, at least up to the time she’d left New Eden. He decided he liked her. He wasn’t sure he’d like all the girls to be this worldly or forward, but she was certainly entitled to be the exception.