“I understand you’re not going home,” he noted.
She gave a weary smile. “No, I’m sort of repeating history. Mr. Ryan’s an old friend and his family are also old friends. Odd, though. It’s almost like history coming around once more. I’m going to a carnival, then I’m going off and out of Anchor with a stringer—retired, at least.” It was more than even that. She was going off with the same stringer who’d hauled her into Flux that first time, and she was going without regret because she was just as much an outsider and an oddball as she had been back then. “I hope it’s a more uneventful and relaxing trip this time, though,” she added.
“I dare say. Is this your first time back here since the Invasion?”
“No. I came back fifteen or twenty years ago—time doesn’t mean much to me anymore, I’m afraid—over in the Bakha District with Jeff and some of his people to do some horse trading. Not in the city, though, and not for very long.”
Vishnar looked at his watch. “Still three hours until the opening, two until I have to get over there. What say we walk over, through the city, and I’ll show you a little of the town?”
“I’d be delighted.”
“Would you like to freshen up or change before we go?”
“Do you think I should?”
“Oh, no, my dear. You look absolutely wonderful. Well, then—we’ll have to go off the back way, here. I have to stop by the lab and check on something. Do you mind?”
“No, not at all. Do you want me to wait here?”
“Oh, no! Come along! Considering your background, you may be the only girl in New Eden who would be really interested in this.”
She got up and followed him, curious and also flattered that he would permit her near his private preserve. She began to suspect that he was going to put the make on her sooner or later. She might be just different enough from these vapid girls to seem somewhat exotic to him. At any rate, he certainly seemed to be going out of his way to impress her.
The building proved more formidable looking up close than it had from afar, although if anything even uglier in the midst of all this beauty. The entry door was, like the building, thick and solid as a vault, and had an electrically encoded panel to gain entrance. She didn’t know what would happen if you pressed the wrong code on the pad, but she suspected it wouldn’t be nothing at all.
The place was huge, and almost entirely open, with just a few plasterboard offices around the base. That open area, however, was filled with an object she had never seen in person but which she recognized instantly.
“It’s the ship!” she gasped. “The Samish ship!”
“One of the three,” he responded. “Not the mother ship. That’s being worked on down in the capital. This is the flying top, the part that caused all the damage beyond the gate. Useless to us as it was, of course. It was designed for those hellish creatures, not us, and also designed to be used in conjunction with their own master computers which are burnt out and not of any logical design we can find, anyway. Some of the best minds from all over World have been working on it and its two twins up north. Two different projects, really. We have always tried to find out how the damned thing could fly. No rockets, no apparent major power source like big engines, and it’s as aerodynamic as an oak tree. But fly it did—and in ways even a creation of Flux could not.”
She nodded absently. “I know. I remember.”
He seemed slightly embarrassed for a moment. “Yes, of course you would,” he coughed, then took a deep breath. “Well, the second thing was the weaponry. It carried an impenetrable and widening shield with it and it shot beams of something that was lethal to everything it touched. It’s vital we understand them, in case we ever have to face them again. Even you will admit that we were lucky the first time.”
Her expression was grim, remembering. “Yes. Very.” But she wasn’t thinking of a new encounter with the Samish. No one might ever know what had become of them, but if they hadn’t shown up in forty-seven years they were no more likely to show up in the next century, if at all. She couldn’t help thinking, though, of a fleet of these things, outfitted for humans, flying, spreading their impenetrable shields through Flux and Anchor, dealing out massive death and destruction. Outfitted for humans who would be in New Eden uniforms.
“Have you . . . had any success?” she asked him hesitantly, wondering how far again she could push it.
“For a long time, no. For almost twenty years actual work was abandoned, as it has been with the mother ships, because of a total lack of progress. Recently, though, two young lads at our own science university over in Babylon took a look at all the research out of curiosity and somehow cracked the core of the problem. It just had to wait until the genius was born and educated who could look beyond conventional knowledge. You know, this was something even our ancestors couldn’t do, which was most likely why the other worlds were taken over. Broadcast Flux power. Like the radio. We’ve had some tests and it seems to work out. We’re going for a full-scale demonstration in a week.” He suddenly hesitated. “Uh—I’m sorry, my dear—that’s all I can say and in fact that was too much. I’m certain you will understand that this is still confidential.”
“Yes, of course.”
“Excuse me, then. Wait here while I speak to my engineering chief and then we’ll be off for fun and frolic, eh?”
She stood there, just staring at the thing. He had gotten carried away, and talked as if he were speaking to the Guardian. Not very long from now, though, if it wasn’t already percolating in his mind, he’d see it as having spilled the greatest secret of New Eden to a mere girl. And girls, of course, couldn’t be trusted to keep secrets. In fact, girls who were too smart for their own good and found out too much were downright dangerous. She knew, even now, that they could not let her leave. Particularly not with a stringer, retired or not. Before he left here, he’d make a call or two, and she’d be so tightly security-monitored she wouldn’t be able to take a bath or a crap in privacy.
She might be able to give them the slip, even get out to Flux, which here, where the Anchor was pinch-waisted, was only a little over fifty kilometers away—but she knew she couldn’t do it with five grandchildren. They would know that, too. For now, that was enough for them. They would still spend the afternoon and evening at the carnival, and the charade would be played out, but at some point they would figure out a plan and come for her.
She wanted to cry but wouldn’t give them the satisfaction. At least, she thought, she wasn’t wallowing in self-pity anymore. As usual, events had reared up and crapped on poor Suzl.
4
SECURITY PROBLEM
Matson grumbled in frustration. It had taken them half the night to reach a point in the line which hadn’t either been cut or in some way disrupted every time he’d tried a splice—somebody on the other side was very good with communications him- or herself. The old ex-stringer had also been proud of himself for being able to manage a reasonable connection with the tools at hand after being so out of practice. He had never been a linesman, not of true wired systems anyway, and the old techniques that he had seen no use for that were drilled into his head time after time as a young trainee were slow to come back.
The small emergency box was only on one pole every twelve kilometers, and he’d had to break the seal and then assemble what he needed out of the parts kit inside. It wasn’t easy, particularly with only a hand-held light. Not knowing where the raiders were camped, they dared not risk a fire.
The frustration was, after all that, and hanging on nervously from the top of a pole, Matson discovered that there were no central operators on duty between midnight and six in the morning at the interchanges along the route to the city. The phone service simply didn’t work for several hours each night.
“We could keep going,” Rondell suggested. “There’s obviously a town between here and Logh Center or we wouldn’t be having this problem.”
Matson climbed down and sighed. “Grandson, that town might be right over the next rise, or the next, or the next, or it might be a suburb of the city which is still a day’s ride away. We gave it our best shot, and I’m about shot, too. I’m going to turn in right here under this damned phone wire as soon as I can unpack my bedroll and bed down the horse. When I wake up, we’ll make the call, and they’ll have a lot less warning but they’ll still have some. There’s no way those raiders could make Logh Center tonight, and they’ll need the day not only to get there but to blend in with the carnival crowds in small groups to avoid attention. They won’t pull anything before tomorrow night. Probably around midnight, in fact, if they shut down the phones to the east as well.”
Rondell sighed, actually grateful that he wouldn’t have to push himself any more just to show off for his grandfather. “Well,” he sighed wearily, “if they look like that bunch we took out they’ll be pretty easy to spot.”
“Don’t underestimate ’em,” Matson cautioned. “They got some Flux power, remember, and ten to one they all look like and will act like good, meek little Fluxgirls until the time’s right. Smart idea, really. Hit New Eden right in its male-dominated blind spot. If none of ’em cause problems or have their numbers spot-checked—and in a carnival atmosphere with lots of out-of-town guests they’ll be pretty lax—those poor boys won’t even understand where the bullets are coming from as they fall. Nope, this is daring, all right, even chancy, so the prize must be something really big, but it’s smart. No, you gotta figure that anybody saddled with that original Fluxgirl spell and a whore’s spell on top of that who can build and run an organization like this is some kind of mind.”
“The whore spell? I know the raider called their leader Ayesha the Whore, but I didn’t think that meant anything specific.”
“Oh, yeah, it sure does. It’s a punishment spell, always doled out to men, for conviction of certain offenses. In civilian life, that means rape or incest with a daughter or something like that. She’s military. That means a conviction for desertion, cowardice in battle, or treason.”
“You mean—this Ayesha was once a man?”
“Yep. From the old days, since we know Borg took his unit’s whore with him when he fled into Flux and it’s almost certainly the same one. Must have been in Flux for some reason when the master program was reconfigured. There’s some like that. She’s under a lot of extra handicaps, and the whole program means she’s always turned on and sex is like a drug to her. That’s why she keeps old Borg around and won’t permit any other men to get close. This is somebody who’s real, real dangerous. She could be as dangerous as Coydt, and a hell of a lot harder to get close to. . . .”
The next morning he was able to call through, but he wasn’t sure just how much was believed or passed on. The security clerk was very officious and bureaucratic, didn’t like Fluxlanders much and trusted them even less, and could hardly take seriously an attack by a bunch of mere women. Matson became exasperated at trying to pound the danger into his thick skull over a less-than-excellent connection.
“Listen, we’ll take your warning under advisement, I assure you,” the clerk told him, obviously anxious to terminate the conversation. “Even if it’s true, they’ll not get out once they start something. There are two thousand policemen here, hundreds of security personnel, and along the border there are three divisions of troops.”
Matson switched off and swore for several minutes. Finally he said, “That litany of power was the last straw. As if anybody capable of infiltrating a large armed force right into a district capital city wouldn’t know that as well!
Hell—six divisions and an enormous, thick wall that surrounded the place couldn’t keep people from coming in or going out when it was just the size of an Anchor!”
“We’ve done more than anyone could ask us to do for them,” Rondell pointed out. “Let’s just eat something and get on the road. About all we can do now is make our own way there and find out when we get there what they were up to. I gotta admit, I am a little curious.” He stopped for a moment, struck by a sudden horrible thought. “You don’t think it’s just revenge, do you? Blowing up the carnival or something like that?”
“Uh uh. Oh, I wouldn’t put it past ’em to come up with a hell of a diversion, but that’s not what they’re after. As you say, nothing more we can do about it. I admit to being kinda curious myself, though.”
The carnival was gigantic, grandiose, wondrous—and the most miserable experience in Suzl’s recent life.
Vishnar was the same, cheerful fellow as before, but she did notice a change almost from the start in his manner. Before, she’d been almost his equal; now he was treating her more like a high-rank Fluxgirl, talking down to her and also being pretty forward with his hands and other sexual gestures. In fact, when they got to the carnival and got to the dignitaries and official opening, he seemed to go out of his way to show her off while making sure she knew her place.
The kids were there, of course, all starry-eyed and full of fun and energy, but she found that there was a Vishnar household Fluxgirl for each one. A chance comment from Micah, the oldest boy, told her that there had originally been just two, and they had been different Fluxgirls. They’d been called unexpectedly back to the house for something. Micah didn’t mind having his own Fluxgirl at his beck and call as well as for his guide. He was getting to be the age where hormones outweighed upbringing. He was not, unfortunately, in a mood or at a level of maturity where subtle signals that she had to talk to him registered. She tried with bravado to dismiss the attending Fluxgirls but they wouldn’t hear of it, and their servile and deferential manner did not conceal their eyes. They knew why they were there, and they knew she knew as well.
As she began to tour the carnival with them and ride the various rides, some of which really were enormous and scary to boot, and play the midway games, she began to see openings where she could get messages across but she did not take advantage of them. For a secret like this, still at the stage where powerful outside forces might be able to nip it in the bud, they would not hesitate to do some harm to the children as well. Accidents, after all, did happen. She thought about trying to slip a message to some of the carnival people, all of whom were Fluxlanders connected to the stringers, but even if she managed, and nothing went wrong, she meant nothing to them, and they had orders to not interfere in New Eden in any way. It would surely go to the local stringer officer, who might or might not act on it, and if it were discovered by New Eden’s internal security it could just as easily wind up getting a lot more people dragged down. The stringers wanted the carnival reestablished for their own reasons. They would hardly jeopardize a big project for one stranger who wasn’t even a member of the Guild.
If it were just herself at stake, it wouldn’t be worth any risks, but she could not shake her dark vision: The whole of World, Flux and Anchor, a gigantic New Eden. All the women, including her daughters, granddaughters, and the rest, reduced to servility and chattel slavery and held there, perhaps forever, by the old methods—Flux power, broadcast Flux power, maintaining the rigid New Eden dream against all possibility of breaking it.