03. Masters of Flux and Anchor (36 page)

Still, he was surprised when he was asked to dinner one evening and found himself the only guest; not even the children were at the table, although both Cassie and Suzl were with Tilghman. After dinner, when everything had been cleared, and the Tilghmans all remained, and Adam startled Matson by saying. "If you'd like to smoke, use the saucer there as an ash tray. You have my permission to do so here."

He took advantage of the offer, but wondered what bomb was about to be dropped on him. He looked at the three of them and had to marvel at them all. None had changed one bit since he'd first met them, and he no longer had any real feeling that the two women were in any way the same people he had once known. They were now friends, but they had been strangers.

"Matson." Tilghman began, "you've pretty well settled down here now. I know you don't go along with every¬thing we do, but you're still an accepted part of the community."

Yeah, he thought, amused. I'm the one group eccentric.

"I know that none of us can know the future, but you seem pretty well settled and content." the Judge continued. "Our daughters think highly of you, you know. In fact. I suspect they have a very strong crush on you."

It must be in the genes, he thought, but aloud he said. "Yes. I'm very fond of them myself."

Tilghman smiled. "As you know, they pose a problem of sorts. They are more like one person in two bodies than two individuals, unusual even for twins. They're also a bit too bright and curious to fit into the usual social scene around here, and because of who their parents are there is a lot of contention over who will marry them, something that can't really be avoided. The other kids pose less of a problem, but I'd rather they didn't become the wives of one of my colleagues on the Central Committee or of one of the top army officers, if you understand what I mean."

He did. Once married, they could by their very intelli¬gence be a gun at Tilghman's head, since their husbands could literally do anything with them, including arrange for mind-dulling injections, and they were clearly his favorites. Rather quickly. Matson guessed where this was leading.

"Adam. I'm as old or older than you are, and I have kids three times their ages."

Tilghman looked at Cassie and Suzl. "It didn't stop me. and it did me a world of good. You're the only one I'd trust them with, truthfully. We've all three discussed this, and we all agree it's the best solution."

He sighed. "Look, all of you. I've never been the family type. The only time I was a husband I was a poor one. I think of them like I think of my own kids, not any other way. I've got a one-room shack and I'm on the move a lot."

Cassie looked him straight in the eyes. "Please." she said softly. "For my sake."

He cursed her silently, even though she didn't under¬stand the meaning or the import of what she'd just said. Finally, he sighed. "Let me sleep on it. Let me think about it a bit, will you?" He hesitated. "Uh—have they been told about this?"

"No." Cassie replied. "Anyone who tells 'em will be punished bad. Only if you say yes will they know."

He got up from the table. "As I say, let me think on it a little bit. How old are they now?"

"They've just turned fifteen." Tilghman told him.

"Let me wrestle with it a bit, and I'll let you know."

He left the house, but he didn't immediately go home. He had gotten a signal earlier in the day and now rode just a few blocks to another house as spartan as Tilghman's currently was, and just as drab.

Sondra was glad to see him. They had married her off to General Levett, now Chief of Security forces for New Caanan, which had pleased Matson from an information point of view and apparently had pleased Sondra as well. The general was hardly known as a wonderful fellow—he was, perhaps, the most feared of all men in New Eden because of his job—but he was ruggedly handsome, very much a lover of beautiful women, and he'd wanted children. He must have—he was away quite a lot, yet Sondra al¬ready had two sons and a daughter by him and was notice¬ably pregnant now. The number of youngsters afoot kept her constantly very busy and she assured him she was never bored for lack of work.

When he'd first met her after her reconditioning he feared that all of the old Sondra had been vanquished forever, but much of it was still there, under the surface. She had thrown herself into her new role of mother and housewife as intensively as she had ridden strings in Flux. To her surprise and satisfaction she found that the iron man of security wanted a wife who really ran the home, and, in fact, was bright and somewhat forward with him. She found it easy: she said she just let the conditioning take automatic control and stopped fighting the body and let it run. In six years the feared and efficient security chief, secure in the knowledge that his wife was perma¬nently deep-programmed and could not read or write, never dreamed that she was still interested in far more than her family and concerned with issues far beyond his own welfare and hers. When she cleaned in his study, she observed. While it was frustrating not to be able to read the documents, it was less so to look at drawings and photographs, and with her father supplying an incredibly small and simple camera, even the documents could be passed along.  And nobody was going to be mean, nasty, or in any way question the Chief of Security's wife, particularly when that Chief was almost always the guard's boss. And could anyone question the occasional visits of a father to see his daughter and grandchildren?

"What's new with you?" she asked him, while rocking the youngest in a rocking chair. The boy was nodding off, more interested in his thumb than her breast at this point.

"Would you believe the old man wants me to marry both his twins?"

Sondra giggled. "Now that's something! You've needed a woman's touch for some time. Are you gonna do it?"

He sighed. "I'm being engineered into it. Damn it. when Cassie looks into my eyes and says. 'Do it for my sake.' I feel a cannon at my head. If I just didn't feel my age . . . ."

"The spell's not holding?"

"Oh, it's not the body, it's up here." he told her. tapping his head.

"If you act old, you feel old." she chided him. "Maybe this is what you need to get young again. Me, I feel like I been reborn. Oh, I still wouldn't like to be out there pickin' tomatoes or whatever it is, and I feel sorry for most of the girls, but for me it's O.K. I don't have the dreams so much any more, and I keep thinking of all the Fluxlands I knew. Maybe one in ten was better than this, and things keep getting better around here."

He nodded. "It's too big for them. They can't keep tight control and they don't have enough of a labor pool to manage it the old way. They made you girls so you can't handle a pick or a sledgehammer or do that kind of heavy work, so the men are doing their share and marrying the farm girls. This place has long-term possibilities, I'll now admit, if we live long enough to see them."

Her expression darkened. "That's what I wanted to see you about. There's some very secret project going on just east of the Hellgate. Lev had to send about a third of his force up there to seal it off from the public. I don't know exactly what it is—I'm not sure he does—but it has some¬thing to do with welding a lot of steel girders, and using a lot of very heavy cable. They've had to secure shipments of those from the west."

He sighed. "The broadcast tower. They've gotten to it at last." He got up, then bent down and kissed her on the forehead. "Good work, honey. You keep your eyes and ears open for anything else on that, but don't take any chances. Now that I know it's on, and where. I have other means of following up. You take care—you hear?"

She nodded. "You, too. Daddy. And you might as well marry them. If all hell's gonna break loose they deserve at least a little fun."

Spirit had remained in New Pericles with Mervyn. It seemed to make him happy, and he was otherwise in a state seesawing between depression and despair. She her¬self was quite depressed at times, thinking of all the people close to her who were now changed and gone. Although Matson visited her when he could, the move to the center of New Eden had made it a major expedition and thus cut down the frequency. He had, through signing, managed to convey to her that Sondra was doing as well as could be expected under the circumstances, and that her mother was well and seemed happy, but there had been, according to him, no real sign of Jeff.

And that was almost literally true. Sondra had, of course, accompanied him until they met up with a larger band of men and women, but by that point she'd no longer been able to distinguish individuals, particularly men. A records check had indicated that he had indeed checked in, and had been assigned to duty somewhere in the west, but records now went with the individual—they could no longer be centralized—and Matson had not pursued him after hearing Sondra's story. He was afraid he'd kill him, and he didn't want that on his conscience.

When the Soul Rider had wanted to get a sense of the country, she'd ridden with Sondra and the train. Now it seemed only to want to be as close as possible to New Eden, although it wasn't sure why. Orders. It did, however, in due course, admit to a few things that shocked Spirit, and showed why Soul Riders had never before been al¬lowed to communicate with people directly.

Soul Riders had the ability to influence others with Flux power without their knowledge, a fact that was well known, but the extent of such meddling was shocking, particularly when it was merely following orders and did not fully understand the reasons for its actions.

The Soul Rider had subtly convinced Matson to remain in New Eden.

The Soul Rider had reinforced Sondra and Jeff's resolve to remain in old Pericles despite New Eden's warnings, even though it knew at that point what would happen. And when Spirit had been comforting the "new" Sondra, it had blotted out much of the horror of her immediate past and had muddled her Flux power so that it was useless— although it was actually still there. It had also changed her mind from a determination on suicide to a willing accept¬ance of being a Fluxgirl. and had suggested to Matson the espionage role. It, or its master, had wanted Matson, Sondra. and Jeff in New Eden on a permanent basis. It was routine, it said lamely, and those weren't the first. There were many others.

"Others! What others? My mother, for instance?"

Your mother and I go back a long way, it responded uncomfortably. I was her before I was you. Do not be so shocked. You, yourself, are the result of one of my actions.

"Don't evade the question! Is my mother the way she is now because you caused her to be depressed and be so vulnerable?"

1 did not cause the depression. But your mother is no longer a prime component in the ongoing master plan. Because of her previous disgust at the war of the Empire, she is considered less certain to be objective when the time comes. She remains, however, a backup.

"What do you mean, 'prime component'? What master plan?"

I don't know. When the time comes to implement it, only then will I be told.

"Who are the other 'prime components,' then?"

Mervyn is important, of course, but I would have thought you would understand. It is why I am here. Inside you. You are my prime component. Your son, and then your mother, are backups.

That both startled and frightened her too much to press on for now. Instead, she changed the subject.

"I have been thinking of having another child." She had near total control of her body, and could choose it or not as she wished.

I know. I wish you would reconsider. The time for action is drawing near, I fear. You are letting your emo¬tions over Jeff's loss cloud your thinking. Pregnant, you might not be as free to move as you might need to be. With a baby, even less so. Wait. There is time.

"All I've got are my fee/ings and you." she retorted, "and I'm not so sure about you anymore. Will you stop me if I do it?"

In the absence of orders, no. I can only recommend against it. There is a good possibility that none of us will survive through the next year or two. Not even I.

That sobered her, but it didn't change her feelings. What would be would be. You could never assume you were going to die, you always had to act like you're going to live forever. You just might.

Sondra had been both right and wrong about the twins. He did feel great relief as the loneliness he'd borne all those years was lifted from him, and he greatly delighted in having two wide-eyed wonders under his wing, but having two fifteen-year-old virgins around whose genetic and hormonal makeup was designed to give and receive every sensual pleasure made him feel old and inadequate in many ways. It wasn't quite like marrying two women, though; more like marrying one with double everything. Their Flux origins, however unintended, showed in a num¬ber of ways. They tended most of the time to talk in unison when together. If he told something to one of them inside while the other was outside, the other one seemed to know it anyway. This wasn't the fooling around of many identical twins; he discovered that they actually thought of themselves as a single individual. When one hit her knee, the other's knee bruised, too, in an identical pattern. And even when one was well away from the other, which was rare, each seemed to know exactly what the other was doing.

He did not have to teach them about sex. They seemed to know instinctively just what to do and they did it like seasoned veterans. The fact that he seemed to satisfy both of them made him feel young and vigorous; the fact that he was able to made him generally very tired.

He got them their own horses and saddles, and while they knew how to ride in a general sense he taught them how to do it effortlessly—and skillfully. They took to it quite well, although it was a problem getting them riding gear that was useful and yet didn't violate even the relaxed dress codes. Pants were generally forbidden Fluxgirls, but the pairs they made out of some tough but flashy silver glitter material and the other pair out of orange fur passed muster, because while they served their purpose he had known few men in or out of New Eden who would be willing to be found dead in them. Together with their silver high-heeled boots and fur jackets—or nothing, if the weather permitted—they were certainly attention-getters on horseback.