05. Children of Flux and Anchor (19 page)

There was also the ghost of Mervyn. He'd died before she was born, and so she knew only the mythological wizard: all-powerful, all-wise, devoted entirely to books and learning. Mervyn, of course, had never really loved anyone; Morgaine was less a product of intimacy than an intellectual wish to preserve a bit of himself and his power just in case, and it had taken extraordinary magic to get him even to that point.

Morgaine was not her father, although she'd tried to be. She could not be cold and unemotional as he had been, and she was the product of a different time and different circumstances. Nor had she any more control of herself than Suzl now had. She thought her huge size and mannish appearance and mannerisms were genetic; she really believed it. But the traits had developed as a teen, as her powers grew, and were less an inheritance than a curse. Her assigned role demanded she be independent, free of human attachments. She had made herself both imposing and unattractive to insulate her from worldly temptations, as Mervyn had taken on the
persona
of an elderly man. They were shocked to discover that she'd had only one sexual episode, that in her early twenties, and out of sheer curiosity. It had not been pleasurable but surprisingly ho-hum, and since then she had suppressed all sexual desires, sexual feelings, or what her father had called the "animal urges." She had become a neuter, although, deep down, where she couldn't consciously reach, it was all there, like a coiled spring, making her uncomfortable and somehow less than right.

Any human mind can be broken; any human being can be conditioned to do and say and act in any manner the conditioner wishes. The trick was that few can be permanently conditioned if any of their old selves are to be saved and used. Morgaine was useful to them if she retained her full powers and her vast knowledge of Flux. They fed her the visions, let her see what being a Fluxwife was like, let her experience the same nightmarish vision of a New Eden victory that they had fed Suzl after drugging her water, and she
was
horrified, and revolted, but they could not provide an alternative to her that she could accept. A vision of a world of femininity, of a world where men were obsolete and abolished, where the finest would be encouraged, presided over by benign queen bees, was not something she could accept, either. She could be forced to, of course, but she could never be trusted to retain that compulsion. Morgaine could be broken, but she could not be effectively and confidently turned.

For Suzl it was different, as they had known it would be. Her battling inner selves, her diminishing sense of self-worth, and above all her burdening guilt made her ripe.

Again they were brought before Ayesha, dizzy and sick and minds whirling. Suzl was no longer under any drugs, but she'd been put through quite a treatment. She seemed extremely meek and totally defeated as she stood before Ayesha, as Morgaine, still bound, was forced to watch but not comment or participate.

"Suzl," the strange, erotic woman whispered, "together we have the power to stop this evil and make a new and wonderful world. Accept the spell that we went to great trouble to procure from a willing wizard. You will be the first of the new. Liberate me and yourself, and we will own the world, my darling!"

Suzl nodded and seemed to smile slightly. She was as if in a daze, not thinking clearly, not caring anymore. She looked up at the strange woman of her own creation and shivered. She
loved
Ayesha. She needed Ayesha.

Morgaine, not in great shape herself but more independent in thought than Suzl, watched. They used a program pack in the projector, and the spell rose from the grid beneath Suzl's feet. Although cut off from sending anything, she discovered she still had the ability to
see
spells and strings if they were outside the block or blocks she intersected. She could follow the procedure in front of her. As muddled as she was, she tried to read it, and saw that it was a hybrid of spell and machine code. The machine code was unfathomable, but the wizard realized that parts of it had come from the coding that made Ayesha herself. It was a curious and not totally fathomable hybrid; whoever had made it had known her business.

Suzl stared at it and seemed to hesitate, but only for a moment. Then she took it, adding her own binding code that would make it irreversible. To those who could see the energy, it seemed as if Suzl was enveloped in a cocoon of radiant light; to those who could not, the tiny figure seemed to lose sharpness and definition, and almost fade in and out. And then it was over.

Another Ayesha now stood there, only different in the details. She was dark while Ayesha was fair; her billowing hair was a golden reddish brown with streaks of lighter colors. Her eyes were a reddish brown with that same shining quality, and her broad lips and nails were a brilliant red. Still, all the elements were there, giving the exact same effect. Instead of gold her jewelry and scant clothing and shoes were sparkling silver, but they otherwise matched. Suzl ran her hands over her body and shivered slightly. It was so factually sensitive that every touch was pleasurable, every little breeze a caress. And yet, unlike Ayesha, she still had the power, still remembered the numbers and the system.

Ayesha smiled and stood and made her way to Suzl, facing her. The two were not quite the same size; Suzl was shorter, but by only a bit. It was Morgaine who recognized that the spell was not yet complete. She watched as Ayesha embraced Suzl and kissed her, and she watched Suzl respond in kind.

Something happened, something which the observers were not at first aware of but which Suzl found both startling and yet strangely pleasureable as well. Her tongue felt odd; she had noticed it almost from the start. Now it seemed suddenly to swell up in her mouth and become a large, rigid object that her mouth itself could not contain. Her clitoris, too, felt overly large and strange, and it seemed to push out from somewhere inside her. Both fit perfectly: one in Ayesha's mouth, the other in her vagina, even standing up. In fact, the clitoral extension was absolutely the complement to Ayesha's opening.

To Morgaine, it was total depravity, although she now understood the full extent of the spell. Suzl no longer had a tongue; instead she had, almost literally, a penis in her mouth, attached to some internal scrotum-like organ inside her. Her clitoris, too, was another, extending from almost flush out to a considerable distance and swelling as it did so. In addition, the woman still had all her original female openings and equipment. To Ayesha she would be the dominant male; to anyone else she would be the Ayesha-like Fluxgirl. As Ayesha was Suzl's fantasy, Suzl had become Ayesha's—and, in the process, made Borg Habib's days most probably numbered. Morgaine guessed that the clitoral mechanism was the Whore's vision of a future unisexual race; the rest was for herself alone.

More, the spell was clearly interdependent. Suzl needed not just any woman but specifically Ayesha; Ayesha needed Suzl. The Weiz mind had triumphed again, fusing Suzl's halves and if not giving her love at least giving her total physical gratification and an absolute commonality of interests.

When it appeared it would go on for hours, Morgaine was rudely ushered out and then fed and manacled hands and feet to a bed on a grid square made as dead as always. It was a considerable period before they came for her again, although she'd had only a fitful nap. She felt sick.

When she entered, she found two chairs now, one golden with Ayesha, one silver with the new Suzl. Both turned as the wizard was forced inside, but it was Ayesha who rose and approached her while Suzl looked slightly puzzled.

"She can not see you and doesn't know you are here," Ayesha whispered very softly to Morgaine. "It is a byproduct of the spell which we had to accept and which I find somewhat convenient. She is not, as you might imagine, very good at conversation although with practice a certain level will come. What we could not undo is that she is totally blind."

Morgaine gasped. "You bitch!"

Ayesha gave a sweet smile. "It was
not
in the instructions. It is what they call a 'bug' in the system that we could not wait to get out. It does not matter. She is my mate; she has all that I lack, including the power and the will and skill to use it. I am her eyes and her voice and she accepts that. She will give me all that a man can and more, yet she will follow my vision. You understand how it works."

Morgaine nodded. "Yes, I do. And is this my fate as well?"

"We could just kill you, but that would reenact that childish sense of vendetta on the part of the stringers. We could put you back in that box and make you one of us, but to do so we would have to crush your ego, your memories, your confidence. You would be just another piece of meat. Or, we could send you back, as something of an object lesson, but to do so you would have to cooperate. It is either that—or be crushed."

"I don't think I could take what you would do to me. I see nothing there that would be better than death, which is what your crushing would mean anyway."

"Admirable. But you know we keep our bargains even more than others." It was a pointed reference to the fact that it was Morgaine, not they, who had violated the exchange terms. "What if I gave you my word on some things? What if I promised that not a single memory or attitude you now hold would be touched? That, except for your own body, which would be fixed by the spell, not even your powers would be damped?"

"What sort of monster would you make of me, then?"

"Does it matter?"

She thought about it.
Did
it really matter? Some Fluxlords were pretty monstrous as it was, too, but with the power it didn't matter as much. She would be mentally whole, and able to exact revenge and continue her studies as she had been. More, it would make revenge possible, and get the intelligence on this group to those who could use it best. Her mother and Sondra, in particular, had to be warned of what this machine could do.

"Under those terms, I
might
accept." After all, Suzl had endured worse, and Suzl was not the kind who could have accepted remaining a monster even at the price of becoming a Fluxgirl. She, Morgaine, could, although it would pain her mother. Still even her mother had lived a great deal of time under a severe curse, and had loved Suzl as a monster.

"Good. We are about to move. Time is wasted here by prolonging, this. They will take you to the chamber and feed in the spell. The end will knock you out for a while, and we will then transport you to your own, who have continued to maintain a camp out in the void."

Morgaine stared at her. "One last thing. How does Borg take all this?"

"Borg's services are no longer required, dear, except as someone to take the blame in New Eden. You'll not be seeing him, or us, again."

They started to take the wizard away, but she said, "Wait! Will you make me blind, deaf, and dumb or something?"

"None of those, my dear. This is more—straightforward."

And, with that, her audience was over, and she was taken to the chambers. She sat inside with more than a little trepidation, but she knew that she was now in the same position Suzl had been in—without a real choice in the matter. It was better to live than to die, better to be a monster with some freedom than to be crushed into a mindless slave.

She felt the Flux fill the chamber, and then she felt the spell, but it was almost entirely in machine language. She could not get hold of it, particularly under these conditions. She did not trust Ayesha, and would cheerfully strangle the woman if she got the chance, but it
was
true that the raider leader did in fact have a perverted code of honor. Considering Suzl, she also had a perverted sense of Flux power, and that was what worried Morgaine. It was too easy, too free and clear, the price too low to satisfy Ayesha's warped sense of justice. Still, she had gotten herself into this against the advice of everyone else. She now had to pay the price, for it was her duty to report what she knew.

She took the spell, and reality slowly faded out.

*   *   *

Morgaine groaned. Her head was throbbing, and she otherwise also felt—strange. Slowly she remembered what had happened, and what she'd had to do.

"She's coming to!" said a woman's voice—Sondra's, it seemed like—and she felt some relief that she could at least understand the words. She opened her eyes and found herself lying on a blanket in the void, head on a pillowed bedroll.

"What . . . ?" she managed, and tried to get up, but the action was difficult and she fell over again, and there was a painful tug on her hair. She was suddenly quite awake, although still with a headache, and she got very, very mad. "That
bitch!"
she swore, and rolled back over. She knew exactly what she'd been given.

Her mother came running and looked down at her, a mixture of relief and disgust on her face. "Is that really
you,
Morgaine?"

"Yes, it's me.
Damn
that bitch to hell!"

"Here—lift yourself up a little if you can and I'll try and get the hair slack so you can be comfortable," Sondra suggested, and Morgaine did so. It made things a little easier, but not much.

"How the
hell
did you let them do this to you?" Spirit asked her.

"They're strong and she's smart. Smarter than even we thought, and much better organized. If they spot you—just
spot
you—they can deactivate your access to the grid from right under you. It's—
evil."

"You've got a sexier voice, but the old you still seems to be there underneath," Spirit noted almost clinically. "The spell is impossible to decipher, but it seems to be entirely physiological. That's
some
body, though!"

The headache was fading. "I know," she sighed. "She made me into another version of herself. Just varied her spell. I should've expected it. Can you help me up?"

Sondra's strong arm got her to her feet, but she required both women to steady her. "I want to see the damage," she told them, and Spirit made a mirror surface just in front of them.