03. Masters of Flux and Anchor (32 page)

And then Earth, as they called their home, had sent a delegation with an ultimatum. Losses were running high. They could not protect the colonists until they knew much more, and could take the battle to the Enemy. In the interest of Earth's own security, the master terminal—the Borelli Point as Haller had called it—would be sealed. The project families had just one month to evacuate or they were on their own.

They didn't have a month, even though many, if not most, would have stayed anyway. There was nothing to return to. Military monitors on the Gates revealed a sudden, massive surge along the string, which when converted to matter using their formula would be a very large mass, and headed for them with only a few days remaining. The nature and size of the energy indicated it was nothing Earth had generated.

The army moved quickly. Its engineers worked fever¬ishly to seal all seven of the Gates, and, effectively, to seal off the humans of World from the rest of their kind. By this time there were over fifty thousand people on World, and all of them were stuck.

Because leakage had to be allowed to maintain World, the mysterious Enemy knew that they were here and now had it on their maps. But because most of the energy was blocked, they could not flow from the Gate into the large dish-like area where buried machines would reconvert them into matter once more. There were fears that the Enemy, knowing the location, would punch through elsewhere and invade, but something made that impossible. Scientists ran it through their machines and decided that the most likely explanation was that the Enemy invasion force itself was present to arrive on World and was now in Flux form against the Gate but unable to crash through. Powerful automated amplifiers held them back.

The Enemy was trapped in energy form in the other universe, unable to even know it had been stopped, let alone back up and return. And because it was there, nothing else could punch through without punching through that invasion force first. By attacking at all Gates simul¬taneously, the Enemy had trapped itself and blockaded the string for the defenders.

With time to breathe, the defenders of World worked long and hard to create better, more powerful self-repairing mechanisms. Nothing would come through those Gates except the specific amount of Flux necessary to maintain World. But that limited the available power, and made it very unlikely that the "terraforming," as Haller called it, could be extended much beyond the Anchors, "or at least not much more than the clusters around the old Gates." And because they hadn't received the "shiploads of semen and eggs and all that", they considered population expan¬sion too long-term a project to really consider. With their relatively small population in Anchor, any population prob¬lem seemed centuries down the road anyway. None of them. Haller included, seemed to think that this would last forever, or, in their situation, none could think much beyond the immediate moment and crisis.

There was always the fear, though, that some madman might loose a seal, and there was a reluctance to make it forever impossible to gain access. What if Earth sent a force to them, and it was behind the Enemy? What if the Enemy dissipated over time? Might they not be able to reopen contact with their universe, then? So the Gates could be opened, but only by a complex mechanism. The seven cluster commanders each had a combination, one they alone knew. Using the psycho-conditioners, the com¬bination would be impossible to pry out of them. Their juniors were each given a small part of the combination and also conditioned.

The center tower of each Anchor headquarters linked with and coordinated with the other Anchors of the cluster. A combined signal, an automatic check, could be bounced off the upper atmosphere to the other clusters. Those thinking machines, which Haller called "computers" but were apparently much, much more than mere adding machines, would require the seven locks to be keyed to open within one minute or they would run a charge through all seven tunnels electrocuting everything inside. To insure extra security, just in case one day one of the invaders would punch through anyway, the tunnels would fry any¬one entering from the dish side. The headquarters side remained relatively unguarded, since it would be necessary sometimes to check them and perhaps check the Flux transformers, but this was considered relatively safe. Any enemy that got through would now have to attack overland, over hundreds of kilometers of void, opening them up to attack without cover. They would have to take the head¬quarters to gain control, and the computers were repro¬grammed as tremendous defensive weapons of death, which could be activated only when the Gates were opened.

Mervyn sighed and rubbed his eyes. So much. Too much. Yet, these people had a world, and a strong mea¬sure of security, and all that knowledge and power. How had they fallen to their present state? The seeds of World's culture were certainly there, and told much. An intermar¬riage of cultures would eventually produce one. Religions might get all mixed up, and new ones grow out of the old in subsequent generations. They had agreed on a common language, implying that there were several, but that lan¬guage would change over the years. But how had we lost, or forgotten, so much? And why did Seven otherwise sane individuals work like mad to let the Enemy in?

There weren't many more pages in Toby Mailer's journal, but, as tired as he was, he knew he had to find out. The script was changed quite a bit from the last entries, indicat¬ing that Haller had changed a great deal, and there was no pretense at a diary any more, just a narrative even harder to read as it got squeezed down to fit into the remains of the book.

Hunting through some very old stuff when I found this book. Actually, Christine, my oldest, found it while rummaging around. No sense in rummaging around for the dates; the old ones were probably off anyway. Well, no matter. There are official histories and such in the Anchor libraries that will be of import; this was mostly a lark although, looking back through it, I recaptured, at least for a little, the joys of my youth.

There are only a few pages left in the old thing to tell a lot, if it's worth anything at all. Perhaps, at least, my children will read this one day and know from whence they came and maybe hoist a beer to the old man. I could start another, of course, but after all this time it hardly seems worth the effort.

Well, where to begin? The Anchors were never intended as fully self-supporting enterprises, just as test zones and bases for experimenting with Flux transmutation. The latter, I fear, works all too well.

We needed the transmutation, of course, for that which we had to have but couldn't possibly make for ourselves. The population is booming and we had to provide for the future. For all we know, we're the last humans left. Probably not, but we have to act as if we are at all times.

A small percentage of the children born here seem to have an inordinate sensitivity to the Flux. We're studying this, but don't quite understand it. From the start some folks were able to see the strings—which is why they were in the Signal Corps to begin with—and see, or sense, energy flow and changes. We engineers could do it through the amplifiers, of course, but we found that the more we used the machines by direct input—brain to computer to Flux—the more we man¬aged to see it without needing the machines. It's a fascinating and somewhat terrifying sensation which I, of course, also have, since I've spent half my life on those damned machines.

The military has developed into a supra-government of its own, using its exclusive knowledge of string maps to regulate commerce and travel between the Anchors. There's a District Commander for each cluster, plus General Yoshida's Headquarters command and General Coydt's Engineering command, and they're a closely knit group. By controlling and regulating commerce in Flux they have us by the short hairs, but since they also are responsible for guarding the Gate locks they get away with it.

But all this leaves our destinies in others' hands. There was a message received by the military just before the big energy power surge, one that was suppressed for some time but which was recently revealed and admitted to. I'd hate to be the soldier chap who shot his mouth off, but the thing apparently said, "Do not worry, we are friends, and together our two races will become gods. We are coming, wait for us," or words to that effect.

This caused quite a split in the civil ranks. The Anchors have developed steadily enough, but our stan¬dard of living has become quite basic due to the limitations on the amount of power required. The company field directors, which constitute the Anchor's civil authority, are being pressed by many of the scientists and engineers to, would you believe, open the Gates. They argue that the best we can hope for is a stabilization of clusters which might unfavorably alter the ecological balance of existing Anchors, but that Anchors can't support their populations at their rate of growth. Better to gamble on the message's validity than to starve and sink into savagery. I per¬sonally see it as just another engineering problem, but the pressure on the directors is enormous. The military, of course, opposes taking any chances on the Enemy, and is fighting like hell to sway people to their side.

I, for one, have been experimenting with this odd Flux power. A number of us have achieved amazing results on a small scale, although stability is poor. Basically, you just stand there in the nothingness and concentrate on something real hard, and you watch and there it is. Somehow our minds have gotten boosted, or linked, by those amplifiers after years of use so that the amplifiers, on a small scale, aren't really necessary. Too bad we can't get the amps to work much away from Anchors or Gates—they re¬quire a very hard and direct access to Flux before it's been dissipated—or it would make life easy. All of my children seem to have the power to some degree, leading either to the conclusion that use of Flux has changed us, somehow, or that they have the power simply because I want them to have it. That last, I fear, may be closer to the truth.

Apparently it works like the amplifiers, to a degree. One thinks of what one wishes, this is somehow trans¬mitted along lines of force to the terraforming sectors of the nearest Anchor computer, and almost instantly back come the mathematical strings needed to do the job. This is an almost godlike power we don't quite understand, and since it's mainly limited to those with massive overexposure to the amplifiers and their offspring, it's created a sticky situation. The civil groups are scared to death of men and women with such powers, and I've actually heard the terms "witches" and "warlocks" and even "wizards" used, all with more fear than awe. The military also seems to fear it for more pragmatic reasons, since it threat¬ens their power and control. Thev would prefer the civil population to remain in Anchor, fearful of Flux, where it can be ignorant and controlled. Most reli¬gious groups denounce us, and there have been some incidents of violence, and there's a new and bizarre religious movement growing up that seems to advo¬cate the military's ideal. I saw the same movement, which seems all-women, when up in Engineering, and I'm suspicious. Coydt, after all, is a tough old woman, very creative but with a ruthless military mind.                                            

There was then a break, since the final entry was in a different pen and was obviously written rather hurriedly, spilling over into the margin of the last page.

What we've feared has come! With the failure of the Company to oust the military and open the Gates, the army's taken over with a vengeance. Coydt's made that idiot cult the only permitted religion and is ruthlessly stamping out opposition. Power was cut beyond the capitals in a well-coordinated move. There are executions galore, and (unintelligible) must flee into Flux and depend on our powers there to provide. They might as well open the Gates, for Hell is already here. Remember, my children! Remember. . . .

"Oh, my God!" said Mervyn Haller.

15

THREE BLIND CONFERENCES

The Seven who Come Before, also known as the Seven Who Wait, did not meet very often. All were extremely powerful wizards, masters of their craft, and each had large staffs to handle their worldwide enterprises. The current Chairman, by majority approval, was Zelligman Ivan, and he looked his colleagues over with a serious eye and grave expression.

"There is no need to tell you that this is the most impor¬tant meeting in the history of this association," Ivan began. "Until now, we were more or less playing the game, mouth¬ing our ideals and our goals and using our own and each other's power and wit to comfortably strengthen our position. And we are powerful—we truly control, through well-concealed webs, much of World, with such finesse they don't even know it. Discord among us is minimal; none of us has been fatter, richer, more powerful or more content than now. Our enemies delude themselves that things are as they were, but we know differently. And for what? Allegedly for our ultimate goal of opening the Gates and attaining more than human beings could imagine."

"That's all true," Rosa Haldayne put in, "but so what? I admit I'm kind of bored with it all, but considering the alternatives boredom is not too high a price to pay."

Ivan nodded. "Now, however, my dear Rosa and you others, we face a dilemma, a crisis, a decision point that all of us have paid lip service to throughout our long lives but never really felt we'd reach or have to deal with it. The time is close at hand. The technology exists and has been checked out. We are facing a bald fact: within this decade, and perhaps within the next couple of years, we can open the Hellgates. There is no doubt of that fact, and I have checked and rechecked my computations. Oh, events might delay it, or hasten it, but the decade figure is a worst-case one. I don't mean it will be easy to accomplish, but if we are to do it we must lay the groundwork for it now. If we do, success is inevitable within that decade. And that, of course, brings up the ultimate question—do we really want to?"