03. Masters of Flux and Anchor (2 page)

"No. I know just where they are, and who has them, but it does neither me nor anybody else much good. They are in the hands of the New Eden Brotherhood, and they are hidden and guarded well. Occasionally scraps are fed out to keep their alliance firm with wizards they need, but that's about all."

She made an expression as if smelling a foul odor.

"Those maniacs. Why do we stand for it? Half of World would unite to crush them."

"Indeed. You find the Brotherhood distasteful, then?" She looked over at him strangely. "Not merely distaste¬ful—repugnant. Do you mean you approve of it? Women treated as subhumans, as animals?"

"I neither approve nor disapprove, but I wonder how strong your dislike would be if the sexual situation were reversed? No, don't get so angry—hear me out first. World is dominated by those with the power, both political and Flux power. You said it yourself—wizards who act like gods get to believe they really are. Three out of five of the most powerful wizards are female. I can name you a half a dozen that simply reverse the Brotherhood's philosophy, but ninety percent specialize in dominating, limiting, and oppressing their populations, although not in sexual ways. Some are more benevolent than others, but all are no more than variations on what the Brotherhood has done, perhaps substituting some other group for women as the oppressed, or being democratic about it and oppressing everyone. Are they as repugnant to you? Or do you even think about them that way?"

"But the Brotherhood is not in Flux; it's in Anchor!"

"And what difference does that make? Not too many generations ago a small cadre of women in the Church decided who among the young population would be sold as slaves in Flux, and carefully and completely controlled everyone left. Their control was more subtle, but no less authoritarian or complete. When it was finally rotting and begged replacement, it was a woman who did it, and the control was no less complete for having nobler motives. The Reformed Church was out to do what it said—reform the existing church to eliminate corruption. It did not question the order of things."

"But you have put your finger on an important differ¬ence," she noted. "I agree that Flux is one thing, because either you have the power or you must depend on one that does, but Anchor held at least the possibility of change, of revolution. When that is taken away, when Flux comes to Anchor, there is no hope."

He smiled. "And for two thousand years Anchor was more stable and less revolutionary than Flux. The people of Anchor were very unhappy at the system, yet they endured it and did not question it to any threatening degree. See how easily the newly recombined Church has reestab¬lished authority? The people are not happy, but their reli¬gion teaches that unhappiness, pain, and suffering is their lot until they attain Heaven. The women of the Brother¬hood are happy and contented with no thoughts of Heaven."

"Because they have been brainwashed and Flux-changed into it!"

"Ah, yes. Yet some people take drugs to chemically induce a happiness they cannot otherwise achieve; others drink to excess for the same reason. Still others throw themselves into religious frenzies in a bout of self-intoxication. All are seeking happiness. But happiness, even Heaven, is the absence of further progress. When one is happy, one wants no more than that, and will spend his life in a search to keep the brain's pleasure center perma¬nently on. It is the essence of humanity. We learn, we progress, by our unending quest for eternal happiness—yet should we achieve it, it all stops."

Sondra shook her head as if to clear it. "You make the world seem ugly and upside down."

"The world is ugly, but only viewpoints on it are upside down, not the world itself. All I am saying is that people pursue happiness in order to obtain it, then try to force it on everyone else. That's the way of things. I do not like the Brotherhood, but I also do not like most of World. That's why I tend to keep apart from it as much as possible. When I was forced into active long-term partici¬pation in it, during the reign of the Empire, I found myself acting just as ugly and ruthless as the other wizards. I didn't like it."

"You'll not eliminate my hatred of the Brotherhood with cold logic, even of the irrefutable sort." she told him.

"I know," he sighed. "That's why people still fight wars."

World had changed much in only twenty years, but it was arguable whether it was for the better or worse. The way. Mervyn thought, the position on that question de¬pended on just what you wanted.

Cass had broken the grip of the old Church by splitting it in two, and uniting opportunistic Fluxlords and Anchors chafing at the old system to create an empire that had at its height spanned more than half of World. In the end, though, the Empire spread itself too thin. Internal jealou¬sies and love of power cracked the empire in various places. While Mervyn and others of the most powerful wizards attempted a unified governmental authority, in the end the glue that held the Empire together and drove it onward had been the will of one woman: Cass, Sister Kasdi the warrior-saint. And so the enemies of Empire, led by Coydt van Haas, had set a trap for her, a trap she escaped—but at a great price.

Coydt had been stronger; he had, in fact, defeated her in a test of wills, and only a shotgun blast from a cynical stringer seeking revenge had allowed her to triumph, her self-confidence shaken. But in his death throes, Coydt had achieved his aim, for he removed from her all of the spells that bound her, that made her the saintly leader, leaving her open to more human feelings, desires, and needs. Already wilting under the enormous weight of her responsi¬bilities, she had taken her drive from the fact that she could enjoy no alternatives. With those spells removed, the choice of going back to that miserable life was impossible. She had retreated to a Fluxland with her daughter, Spirit, who had been cursed to neither speak nor understand, and to be forever forbidden all tools and artifacts.

With them had gone her grandson, Jeffron, whom Cass and the agents of Mervyn would raise.

And with the "death" of Sister Kasdi and the with¬drawal of Cass, the Empire had quickly crumbled. The conciliatory leader of the old, original Church met with the highest priestesses of the Reformed Church, and after much argument and tribulation they hammered out a con¬cordat which reestablished a single Church once more under a single set of doctrines that incorporated the funda¬mental changes of the Reformers with the basics for which the old Church had fought. None could lead the Church, or become a High Priestess of a temple, or minister directly to the people, without the Vows of Sanctity undertaken by binding spell. Those involved in other aspects of the Church, such as administration and research, were not so encum¬bered unless they wished to be. The Church had become far less corrupt, but had strengthened its grip, for it ex¬tended to parts of Flux as well as to Anchor.

Hope, the Fluxland created by Kasdi as the source of the Reformed Church, had slowly dissolved without her force of will. Work on compiling all of the ancient writings and attempting to interpret them, a project called the Codex, had been moved to Holy Anchor, where a Queen of Heaven elected by the temple High Priestesses ruled as chief administrator.

Much had been learned from the Codex, but researchers were bound by spells to reveal nothing except through the Church, which kept tight controls. Much of the work was suppressed, either as heretical or as too dangerous and disruptive. Science, however, began to be encouraged in Anchor, where understanding of the devices that main¬tained them was now deemed crucial. Many of the key scientific works, though, were missing from the Codex, and scientists who went off on tangents not approved by the Church found themselves stepped on rather hard. The Church was interested in the practical. Still, the last twenty years had brought revolutionary changes.

With the understanding of Flux energy as just one form of all other energy, a form that could be modified, redirected, and controlled, many of the Anchors were in the process of being wired for full electrical power, not just the capital cities as in the old days. Wireless telecommunication based on the temple intercoms was also under development, linking all parts of an Anchor instantaneously. But no one had yet discovered a way to communicate Anchor to Anchor, for the Flux squashed and suppressed all forms of elec¬tronic broadcast signal. The standard of living for the average man and woman of Anchor had improved substan¬tially, but these new developments put them ever more securely under the absolute control of the Church.

The breakup of the Empire had worried the Nine Who Guard most of all, for it left the mysterious Hellgates insufficiently guarded. They coped as best they could, using the Flux power amplifiers built by Coydt van Haas to create virtual walls around the Flux entrances to the gates, walls maintained by priestess-wizards under saintly vows, and by the defenses of the Hellgates themselves. The weak point was the other entrance, the one that al¬lowed someone in each Anchor temple to travel directly to the gate itself, bypassing the defenses. There was no real answer, for new energy weapons could dissolve concrete as easily as anything else, so the Nine had decided to be content with an incorruptible Church devoted to eternal vigilance. It was true that forces had previously defended the Gates from entry via Flux, but not only Cass and Spirit but even Coydt had managed to bypass them.

Of course, not all Anchors were under Church control, and only a small part of Flux; but the Seven Who Wait, also known as the Seven Who Come Before, needed ac¬cess to all the Hellgates at once to open them as they were determined one day to do. Control by the Nine of just one was sufficient to keep them from their work. Mervyn knew this, but had called a meeting anyway, an unprecedented one, to discuss the problems.

All Nine were there, which was the fact without precedent. They met in a tiny Flux pocket so secure that none could even guess its presence, let alone penetrate it, and they listened intently to the old wizard's comments.

"We have become too complacent of late," he chided them. "While we have sat and done little, the enemy has been actively on the march with their characteristic sub¬tlety and with uncharacteristic precision and coordination. A new empire has been created under our very noses, one in the hands of our enemy."

He spread out a map of World showing the Anchors in their characteristic clusters. "This is a copy of an ancient map, but it will do for our purposes. The letters are in the ancient tongue, but mostly correlate with the names the Anchors have today."

Krupe, the fat, bald wizard in brown satin robes, looked down at the map and frowned. "Curious. If we use the ancient language, there's almost the full old alphabet repre¬sented there," he noted. "Funny I never really saw that before." He stared again at the map.

S          T

H   2   J            I   6   K

U         V

 P                      Q                      NG    R

------HQ   I    F           C   3   G           A   5   D           O   7   E---

W        X         Y         Z

                                                    L

N 4 B

   M

"The dotted line is the equator, the numbers are the Hellgates." Mervyn explained needlessly. "As to the al¬phabetical list, I saw that long ago, but it is in a haphazard order and seems to mean little except to denote the first letter of the old language versions of the names. 'HQ' is often an ancient abbreviation for 'headquarters,' and is appropriate, since that is Holy Anchor today. Why Tezgroph should be designated by 'NG' is something we may never know, as I have found no correlation of those two letters with any standard abbreviation. Still, there is World as we know it. All the rest is Flux."

"So? As you say. it is common knowledge," remarked the dark and enigmatic Serrio, one of the two of the Nine not assigned to guard a specific Gate and cluster but free-roaming, to add extra strength where needed. "I could draw it in my sleep. Why show us this?"

"Patience. The nonstandard symbols might have been strange to some of us. However. I draw your attention to the fact that the northern, eastern, and western clusters are firmly under our, and Church, control. The center and south are not, including my own."

The small, exotic wizard Kyubioshi shrugged. "It is not necessary for us to control all seven, as you know. As for the rest, they are a mixture, a hodge-podge of independent Anchors, some under Church control, some under the control of odd groups and factions, as are the Fluxlands inside and between. We agreed long ago, at the breakup of the Empire, that this was to be desired."

"Indeed," Mervyn agreed. "However, my agents re¬cently have completed a massive task that might have been impossible in earlier times. In compiling a structure of ruling Fluxlands and Anchor leaders on a cluster-by-cluster basis, we find civil control in the Anchors in the hands of just one or two individuals. As always, the government is totally subservient to the Church, but only outwardly. These governments have alliances with Fluxlords, alleg¬edly also supportive of the Church. In tracing the relation¬ships, an effort that has cost many lives, I might add, we came up with some startling information. Ultimate civil power in each cluster seems to reside in a centralized source—one for each cluster. In most cases this central source cannot be traced, but I have traced two. both in the north. Do the names Varishnikar Stomsk and Gifford Haldayne mean nothing to you?"

There was a collective gasp. Both were long-time mem¬bers of the Seven, and their arch-enemies.

Mervyn looked satisfied with their reaction. "Even over in the west, the former Queen of Heaven, Romua Togloss. retains enormous power and loyalty. We have long sus¬pected her of being one of the Seven, as there is some evidence in the old genealogies that she is in fact Rosa Haldayne, Gifford's sister." He looked at each one's eyes in turn. "Anyone seen Gabaye or Tokiabi lately? Anyone know who took Coydt's place in the Seven?"

There was no answer.