04. Birth of Flux and Anchor (53 page)

Over the next few months she was examined by experts, who she fooled very well. They determined her high Flux potential, but as she was three months pregnant, they decided behind her back that they needed children with power here in Flux more than they needed another Sensitive.

In three years she had three kids and was four months pregnant with another. Many thought she
was
Kitten, expelled, somehow, from Anchor when the master reprogramming ran. In ten years she'd slept with thousands of men and hundreds of women and she had eleven kids and she was pregnant. And nobody
ever, ever
suspected that Brenda Coydt was at last doing something positive for her troops.

"Then our two vacancies being filled, we must proceed to more long-term plans," said Rembrandt van Haas. He neither looked nor sounded like the director, but he certainly still acted like him.

"We—the five originals anyway—are all wanted by everyone. For a while we must build our own individual niches and bide our time until the storm passes and things settle down. Each of us will take a region, the one we always supervised, and create our own strongholds there in Flux. We all have our new identities, and if we stick to them and don't slip up, we'll just blend in with the rest. The current confusion is our ally and our protection. I suggest we leave this pocket and meet here annually for the nonce on or about this date. We have already created this little land as a repository of our very important papers, and our small staff, a few from each of our people, will reside here, cataloging it and also passing information along between us. For now, we act independently and through middlemen.

"Let us never forget, though, that we seven are the Board of Directors of the New Eden Project. This is
our
place, cruelly wrested from us and put beyond mortal help from this side. We are agreed that the only hope for those poor devils in Anchor and those under the thrall of the military in the void can only be helped by reestablishing contact with the outside. We have now only a few scraps of the enigmatic codes we need, but the rest is there, somewhere. I knew Tom well enough to be certain of that. I—"

We are the spirits of Flux and Anchor. . . .
....

"What was
that?"
interrupted Carlotta Schwartzman, one of the most powerful of them.

They all frowned, having heard something whisper, but they dismissed it.

"As I was saying," van Haas continued, "we must establish ourselves as respectable Sensitives with responsible lands in the void. We must ingratiate ourselves with Signals and anyone else we might need or who might cause problems. We must gain power, wealth, and influence in vast amounts so that we can track down, retrieve, and perhaps one day solve the riddle of the Gates. We must find the modules containing the program listings for important machinery that might be needed to accomplish our aim. There are those among us who are certain that alternate means of powering even big amps and god guns can be found if we have all the details and schematics. Our technological knowledge and our heritage and mission must never die, even if we do. It may be a century or two, or even more before we accomplish anything. Perhaps our children will have to do it. But we must never lose sight that ours is the ultimate moral mission. We must not fail

We are the spirits of Flux and Anchor. . . .

They all stopped and looked around, but again there was nothing.

"No immediate moral qualms or petty personal goals should ever come before the mission. Many may have to die in order to save millions. Do whatever you will, but I will lie, cheat, steal, even murder to get what must be gotten, and I will always be there to help any of you."

"That's pretty strong," Sir Kenneth noted uncomfortably.

"It
must
be, Ken! It
must
! Never has such a vital mission fallen to so few and faced such incredible odds. One hesitation might lose a vital piece of the puzzle. So you don't kill someone, or you don't transform and co-opt them, or you don't get the guard drunk or bribe him somehow and so the one vital piece is lost and the suppression and enslavement of millions continues because you let that one man go. No, commitment is all that's required. If I will give my life to see this through, I can see no reason to spare another's."

"Point taken," Korda admitted uncomfortably. "Remember, I knew this would come to a bad end before we left Titan."                                                 

"But you came anyway, and that implies an acceptance of responsibility."

"All right, all right . . ."

"If we're agreed on this, we'll adjourn to our areas and meet again next year unless help is needed in between. Then use this station. Good-bye, my friends. You are the hope of the people who were betrayed while in our care. Their
only
hope."

As they walked out and went their separate ways, though, each seemed to hear some voice in their heads, distant, whispering, coming from everywhere and nowhere, or, perhaps, the grid.

We are the spirits of Flux and Anchor.

We are the guardians of humankind.

We are the mirrors of your souls. . . .