01. Spirits of Flux and Anchor (12 page)

Some of them still slobbered and drooled and made bizarre, often animal-like sounds, but they never seemed to look the same way twice. For a while Cassie thought they might be different people. She soon made a sort of game of it, something to occupy her mind in the midst of the terrible nothingness, watching the one nearest her on her side as best she could. The dugger seemed almost hunchbacked one time, then ramrod straight the next. The creature went from fat to thin, almost but not quite while you were looking at it. One time she was sure she saw a beard on the dugger, yet the next time it went by it seemed clean-shaven and even had rather formidable breasts. The clothes, too, so tattered and filthy on the apron, seemed to undergo changes in color, design, and newness. It was both frightening and confusing. The horse, though, seemed solidly real.

Matson was unchanged through it all, but in constant motion, riding up and down, back and

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forth, making certain that all was going well. He was all business and he had no patience with any- one or anything that was out of step. Once in a while, of course, somebody in the group would become disoriented and slip, and there would be a yell from those around, a blast from the nearest dugger's bugle, and this would bring everything to a stop as the blast was echoed by all -- and bring Matson at full and angry gallop. Maybe nobody else knew where they were. but he did, and he had a schedule he wanted to keep.

It was strange, though, that gallop, and those of the dugger horses. The horse was making no sound as its hooves struck invisible ground, although you could hear the great beast breathing hard and the sounds of saddle and rider.

Suddenly, in the row in front of her, one girl stepped in some mule droppings, slipped, and fell. There was the yell, the bugles, the very efficient stop, and here came Matson. He stopped and looked down at the fallen girl in disgust.

"We can't keep having this," he said, mostly to himself. "You! Get up -- now\"

The girl gaped at him, then broke down and started sobbing, but she simply couldn't bring her- self to her feet. Matson spat, gave a disgusted sigh, and made a casual gesture in her direction with his hand.

Energy flew from that hand in a pencil-thin line, striking the girl in the head, and she screamed in terrible agony. Just as quickly as it had appeared, the beam was gone, and the victim almost col- lapsed in relief. Matson waited a moment, then asked, casually, "Want me to do it again?"

"No! Please! I -- "

Another, very brief jolt was sent. "Please what7"

"P -- Please, sir!"

He nodded. "Now get up and resume your place

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in line. You just had your warning. Next time it gets tough."

"That son of a bitch," some boy in the back muttered loudly. "One day I'll kill the bastard for that."

The stringer's head shot up, and his eyes seemed to glisten. "Well, well, well.... The gallant tough guy standing up for the little lady. How chivalrous. Trouble with chivalry, boy, is that then you got to make good on it." He rode back several rows and looked directly at the offending boy, although it was impossible to see how he could have identi- fied the speaker. "I don't want to break you, son, because my customers are buying that spirit of yours, but I think I'll put a mark on you so I can remember you."

Cassie found it hard to turn around and see properly without twisting the line, but she man- aged, as did most of them forward of the incident. She remembered the face of the boy Matson was confronting -- he'd been the strong one with the "brain of a cabbage" they were talking about as some sort of soldier.

Matson seemed to concentrate a moment, then he fixed his eyes intently on the outspoken boy. Energy flashed and coalesced around him, but only for a few seconds, and then vanished. The watch- ing duggers chuckled, and those among the exiles who didn't scream either gasped or gaped.

The boy was in every way the same as he'd been from the shoulders down, but above that point he now had the perfectly proportioned head of a mule. The mule-mouth opened to say something, but only a mule's bray came out. His hands went up and felt along his neck and head, and you could feel the horror in his body movements.

"What I can do I can also undo, punk," Matson told him. "You give me no more trouble and I might be able to remember what your head used

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to look like and give it back to you. Any time you make threats in the Flux to anybody you be sure you can back 'em up all the way. There's worse things than being dead." He moved forward on his horse and looked again at the girl whose fall had precipitated it all. "Now, little lady, if you can't hack the pace, I can always use another pack mule. That's how I got most of the ones I'm using now anyway. Time is money, and I don't have much use for somebody who can't make the grade." With that he raised his bugle, gave his command notes, and the train started forward once more through the void.

"It's impossible^' somebody muttered, and it was what the others were thinking. "It can't be real! It just can't be!"

"It's magic, that's what it is," a girl said wor- riedly. "He's an evil wizard back in his own foul home."

Matson was all the way forward again before he allowed himself a self-satisfied grin. The challenge had come very early this time, and he was glad of it. The earlier you acted, and the earlier you used your little bag of parlor tricks, the less trouble you had later on. That mule-head alone would hold them for a while. Like most stringers he was a false wizard, a weaver of totally convincing il- lusions, but they were good enough for kids like this. He liked to imagine what it would be like to be a real wizard, but he always had doubts. He liked to think that he'd still be a stringer, but you never could tell what that kind of power would do to any human-

8

CULT

After a while, the monotony of the void replaced any sense of fear or awe in their minds over the Flux. Their fear was still real, of course, and fo- cused partly on their unknown fates and partly on their fear of Matson's frightening powers.

Every few hours they would break from their slow but steady pace and get something to eat. One of the wagons in the rear had a sort of mini- kitchen in it, and while the meals were not very tasty nor varied they were nutritious and filling, and everyone, Matson included, ate the same thing. The other wagon contained an enormous quantity of hay in small bales which were apportioned out to the mules by the ever-doting Jomo. It was clear that part of Matson's mania for a schedule once they started out was due to a tight supply allow- ance.

There was little trouble with the group after the initial episodes with Matson. If anybody had any rebellious thoughts they had only to look at the poor fellow trying to get the stew down his mule's throat to think the better of it.

Once she'd gotten over the initial shock of the magical transformation, however, Cassie could see some hope in it as well. "Look," she pointed out to Nadya and Suzl, "if he can just wave his hands

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and make somebody half-mule, then nothing is permanent here. Nothing. That means we might have hair again, for example, and those poor girls with the body tattoos might one day look as good as they ever did. Maybe better."

"Or worse," the gloomier Nadya responded. "All we've seen coming out of this Flux are monsters of one kind or another. These duggers, the mule head, that sort of thing. Maybe our new masters, who- ever and whatever they are, just want us as raw material for animals or something. Matson, re- member, said some of his mules were once human."

"Maybe," Cassie admitted, "but I think it can work both ways. All we can do is hope right now."

"I just wish we'd get somewhere," Suzl put in. "I'm sick and tired of this march, march, march. Good or bad, I want to just get it over with. A day or two more of this and I might turn into one of those drooling slobberers myself."

They all pretty much felt that way, but the train's progress was slow and steady, the sleep periods seemingly dictated by Matson's feeling of how tired the marchers were and Jomo's feel of when the horses and mules needed rest. Time seemed to have lost its meaning for them all, although Matson, who carried an elaborate pocket watch, seemed to know exactly when as well as where they were. For the rest of them, the "days" were measured only by sleep breaks and were broken down by feeding periods. It never seemed to get completely dark or completely light in the Flux, so there was no way at all to guess what it might be in "real" time.

They were five "days" into the Flux when' the first break in the monotony came. They were pro- ceeding normally after a meal break when sud- denly a horse and rider appeared ahead of them and closed on Matson. He ordered the train to a halt and waited as the rider neared and stopped. It was the animal-like Kolada.

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Kolada rode the "point," which meant she was often well ahead of the train, perhaps half a day ahead, following some sort of route mark that stringers had laid down but which few were given the power to see or read. Whatever the news it wasn't good, for there were sudden bugle signals of a type they had not heard before and the duggers whipped into action with a frenzy. All strings on mules and people were suddenly dropped, and the mules themselves were led into a circular pattern with the wagons at opposite ends closing each circle. Cinches were loosened, so that the packs formed a crude outer barrier around the mules. The duggers took out their weapons and checked them. then set up patrols both inside and outside the circle. The human cargo was loosed inside the circle and told just to sit.

Jomo took charge of the entire party, moving very fast for a huge man and giving orders in a combination of words and gestures to the other duggers. Matson took one of the duggers with him, leaving ten mounted and one afoot to guard the train, and the three of them went off at full gallop in the direction from which Kolada had just come.

None of the duggers would pay any attention to the fifty-four confused and frightened young peo- ple unless they got out of line, in which case the offender was rudely struck with fist or rifle butt. In more than one way this frightened them still more, if only because, no matter what Matson's disposition or powers were, he was human and a known quantity. Now they were completely at the mercy of these animalistic creatures.

They spent a nervous hour or more sitting there, talking low and speculating a lot, until there was a sudden shout from one of the duggers ahead and they heard bolts slide into place and the whole crew tense up- It was Matson, though, and they relaxed. He

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rode up to Jomo and talked for some time, and they could see from the look on his face that there was something up ahead that had considerably shaken the iron man. His face looked almost dead white, and, if anything, he looked twenty years older,

He talked in low, clipped sentences to Jomo, who nodded and then gave a series of signals. Rapidly, the train was reassembled in a loose manner, with the duggers spacing themselves out and keeping guns at the ready. Although they ran the strings back along the mules, they only ran one string on each side back from the mules to the wagons, leaving the young people free inside this makeshift boundary. With a few quick bugle blasts, the train began to move.

It was a good hour or more before they reached the spot, but this was a different sort of march, tinged with danger and excitement. Many of the young people actually welcomed the diversion, but Cassie, along with many others, did not. It was like approaching an accident on the main highway from a distance. You wanted to see what was going on but you knew that when you got there you would find nothing good.

The scene was one of almost inconceivable carnage, the most horrible sight any of them had ever seen. Clearly the mess, spread out almost as far as the eye could see, had once been a stringer train not unlike their own, but one that had been hit with a deadly ferocity by some overwhelming force. There was blood all over, human blood mix- ing with that of animals, and dead bodies strewn all over the landscape. If you looked hard enough, it was possible to see that this had once been a for- mation similar to the one they'd assumed back a ways, but it had proved totally inadequate for whatever had hit them.

Matson had recovered some of his composure

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and came back to the group. He took a deep breath, then said, "All right. Now you see it. I told you this was a rough place, and now you see how rough it can get. I'm telling you this because I'm going to need your cooperation to go through that mess and see what, if anything, can be salvaged and what we can leam about the bastards who did this. You're going to need a strong stomach for two reasons, so anybody who just can't handle it can remain here or come back here when it gets too much for you. One reason is that it's even uglier than you can tell from here. Some of the animals and people have been partly -- eaten." The group stiffened almost collectively at this. "The second reason is that this was -- oh, hell, it was the other train from Anchor Logh that should have been a day or more ahead of us. You will know or recognize some of those bodies."

Some gasps, chokes, and sobs began from vari- ous parts of the group at this news. Matson didn't wait for it to subside.