05. Children of Flux and Anchor (42 page)

"As for you two," she said, turning to Suzl and Morgaine, "We're going to give you each a little drug. It takes a while to work, but we'll be leaving and
you'll
be staying here—with lovely Ayesha. After that, she'll report us on the radio as
baaad
girls, and one of the other wizards will eventually turn you both back on, but that'll be fine. In fact, Suzl, you'll find that all those
nasty
bugs in my program are gone. You'll be
gorgeous
again, and you'll even be able to see. Not talk, though.
That
will remain. And you, Morgaine, will get one just like it."

"This drug—what does it do?" Morgaine asked nervously. She wasn't even thinking of herself, but she was carrying a baby.

"It's a chemical, just like those in your brain, and it goes to this little place and settles in, and,
what
do you
know!
You fall madly, completely, passionately, and
permanently
in love with the first person you see. We'll take one of you in the back, to make it easier. Of course, that will be our
dear, sweet
Ayesha here. I
told
you we were all just animals, dear. Just chemistry, alas. But you'll still both be you, with all your powers. You just won't be able to think of anyone or anything except dear Ayesha. Your world will be exclusively her. You'll cast any spells she wants cast, create a Fluxland to her dreams, just to please her. Convert whole populations to her whims, and. in fact, with this drug, you'll gladly create new lovers for her out of the wizards who
trust
you so. Don't worry, though, Morgaine, dear. Your baby will
be just
fine! Ah! We really
must
be going now. Ming, you see to the others while I take our old friend Matson, here. The Matson who always made fun of wizards but wishes he were Sondra now!"

"
I
am
Sondra, bitch!"
she screamed, and suddenly Chua Gabaye was rocked with pure, raw, and immensely powerful Flux attacking her.

Sondra had both surprise and emotion on her side, but Chua Gabaye was among the most powerful, and she was not the only wizard there. As soon as Sondra attacked, Ming turned, needle in hand, for support. Morgaine was completely without power, but neither could she receive any. She could, however, grab Tokiabi's legs and pull hard, toppling the wizard and breaking her concentration. Morgaine wasted no time and, pregnant and unwieldly or not, rolled right over onto the slender, fragile-looking wizard.

Sondra didn't wait for Ming to regain things and wriggle out with a transmutation spell. She pulled her pistol and fired it right into Chua Gabaye's heavily-made-up face. It didn't make a real big hole going in, but her skull seemed to explode from the back and pieces of brain and bone splattered over Suzl, Morgaine, and the tent.

Ayesha screamed.

Sondra went quickly over to where Morgaine was just rolling off Tokiabi. The other wizard looked out cold, apparently having hit her head on a small serving table when she fell. She
was
out cold.

"Wow!"
Morgaine managed. "I know I feel like I weigh a ton, but I didn't think I was
that
heavy!"

Sondra reached down and pried the needle out of Tokiabi's stiff grasp. She looked at it, then smiled, and leaned down and injected it into Tokiabi's arm, then stood up. "Pretty neat if I say so myself. Dad needed Cass to blow Coydt's brains out."

Suzl gave a questioning bark, and Morgaine said, "It's O.K.! She blew Gabaye's brains out and gave Tokiabi her own medicine. Boy! We better decide fast who she's gonna fall madly in love with!"

Sondra snapped her fingers. "Yeah. Hang on! We're not out of the woods yet! Brief Suzl and keep an eye on Ayesha!" With that, she rushed from the tent and looked cautiously around. There were a number of people around, including a crew hauling the original projector onto a wagon, but nobody was really close. She made it to her tethered horse, reached in the saddlebag, and took out a very different looking communications device. She stuck a wire into the ground on a grid line and pushed the side button.

"Send in the cavalry, and fast!" she said, and the message was transmitted along all lines of the grid including one that was being monitored. "Gabaye dead, Ming out, but we're still surrounded by hostiles. Send me the king and queen and quick! Whoops! They've spotted me!"

Shots rang out in her direction, and a shield went up around the projector area. The crew that almost had it on the wagon now quickly began reversing itself and lowering it back to the ground.

Sondra transmuted and took off into the air, then circled. They'd almost gotten the damned thing back down, and one of the allied wizards whose name she'd never even bothered to remember was looking around and waiting to get it turned on. She knew if she stayed too close the wizard would have her; they might not have been permitted to run the damned things before but they sure knew how they worked.

There was no access into Suzl's tent until that projector was taken out, that was for sure.

The shield didn't look very secure. She transmuted a machine gun and began swooping down and firing at them, and some of the bullets got through. They went all around the wizard and the projector, but most of the commoners helping lay dead or dying.

The wizard on the ground was confident. She reached up and fixed the four antennae herself, shielding herself and the machine from any blows, then sat back as the projector came to life. Sondra banked and turned and got the hell out of there. Morgaine could have done something against the wizard, but she'd have to crawl to get there and even a slingshot could take her out. Blind, powerless Suzl was even less help.

Another winged figure came in, then two—three! She joined them, seeing familiar forms on the backs of two of them. The others were diversions so the passengers could be landed near enough to do any good. She joined in, and narrowly missed getting caught by a sweep. She was getting the best use out of all that monitoring of New Harmony up north now. Two others weren't so lucky; they were caught and deactivated and fell to the ground.

The two passengers, however, got unloaded. One large one headed for the tent, while the other, much-smaller figure walked right towards the projector.

The enemy wizard knew that there had been two drops, but ignored the one going into the tent for now. A commoner, no real power or threat. The other, though. . . . She did sweep after sweep, catching many familiar people and things, but no stranger. She had operated eyes closed, as they all had, to increase concentration and not get distracted, but now she opened them and looked around. There! Wasn't that someone over there? She swept the area but found nothing. Even a deactivated wizard would show, because the grid squares under them would be dark. She spotted the two she'd nabbed, and the two others in the tent, but nothing else.

There was a sudden noise right near her, and again she opened her eyes and turned—and found a pistol barrel stuck right in her mouth. The weapon was held by a small, slightly built woman or perhaps a young boy, dressed in tight-fitting jeans, work shirt, and well-worn boots. She knew that face. Every wizard who was as old as she was knew that face.

Then Cass calmly blew her brains out and kicked the body rudely to the ground.

There were few others around. The traitorous group of wizards had either corrupted or turned the guard detail and the small company that was always around, and those were the ones that had been doing the heavy work on the projectors.

Sondra landed, turned back into herself, and grinned. "Hi, Cass! Am
I
glad to see
you
!"

"You look like you were doing pretty well all by yourself," the small woman came back. "You had all the tough stuff done before I could even
get
here! Boy, that little bit felt good, though. Just like old times!"

"We couldn't have taken her out without you, and you don't know what damage that thing can do!"

Cass looked surprised. "To who? Not to
me
!"
She paused and pointed to the tent. "Everybody O.K. there?"

"Should be, once I get the power turned back on and get rid of Morgaine's new unwanted addition! I sure as hell hope I can figure out how to work this thing! I been watching it go and wishing I could, but I just couldn't give myself away until I had to."

"Yeah, but why did you call in His Nibs? He could've gotten killed!"

"Not him. He's immortal, didn't you know that? Just ask him. No, it was just a little last-minute creativity taking advantage of a heaven-sent opportunity. That kind of thing runs in the family."

Cass grinned. "You did one hell of a job, kid."

A familiar figure emerged from the tent, a figure not seen anywhere in the environs of New Harmony for very long before. He was tall and lean and he had a big drooping moustache, and he was dressed all in black. He was not, however, alone.

Clinging to Matson like she was afraid he was going to run away and nuzzling his shirt was a very changed Ming Tokiabi. She was trying to get a hand in his pants and looked very petulant and hurt when he gently slapped her wrist. "Guess what?" he called to them. "I think that stuff works
too
well!"

Cass, who hadn't the faintest idea what he was talking about, frowned.

"Don't worry!" Sondra laughed. "I'll explain it all in a few minutes.  Let's just hope and pray that New Eden never gets hold of that stuff!"

"I just hope
he
doesn't," responded Cass.

The two additional routines Chua Gabaye had promised both ran when the two wizards were restored, but as Sondra predicted, Morgaine's was easily reversed even by her own efforts. What would have kept that in was Ayesha's wishes.

In Suzl's case, the spell, or program in wizard parlance, was simply automatically debugged. She now looked as she had at the start, very much like Ayesha and Morgaine, and she regained her eyesight, although she was still having trouble adjusting to it. Her "mouth organ," however, was not removable.

"I still want to get this straight," Morgaine began, as they all sat around drinking various things, all of which had been supplied from outside and checked by spell. "You mean, Sondra, that you were you all the time? Matson was never here?"

"That's right. I've been myself pretending to be Dad changed into myself all this time. There were a number of times when I almost slipped up, but I caught myself. Dad has so many mental protective spells it was fairly easy to add a few to heighten believability. The walk, for example. Men and women walk differently, even when identically dressed. They sit differently, too. There are little mannerisms. For the rest, I just relied on knowing Dad so well. I really got into the part. There were times there when I wasn't really sure which one I was."

"It must have been difficult to keep from using your powers," Suzl noted over the speaker. "You certainly fooled me."

"All of us," Morgaine agreed.

"It wasn't all that hard. It was my early training coming back after all these years. Stringer wizards are trained, drilled, to conceal their powers, to use them only when they absolutely
have
to. The fact that Dad was a false wizard helped, too, since I couldn't very well completely cut myself off from the grid. I kept the contact minimal, and I guess it looked right. There was only one time when I really slipped out and almost used it, and that was when we fought our way through that little bit of New Eden to get around Liberty's shield. It's virtually impossible not to respond to a direct attack, but just then old Chua and her buddies came in and kept me from having to do it."

"You did real good, Daughter," Matson told her. "I'm impressed as hell. I never really thought we could pull even that off, let alone all the rest."

"To tell you the truth, I didn't, either. But we did it, and it was the absolute
best
time I've had in years and years. You don't
know
how good it was for me, a former Fluxgirl, not only to fight New Eden but sit there and dictate terms to those pompous assholes!"

"But why did you do it?" Suzl asked him.

"Because I felt she could do as good a job as me," Matson replied honestly. "And she sure did! She came up with some things even
I
wouldn't have thought of. She had the same military training and background, the same kind of mind, but she had two things I didn't. She was a wizard, for one, and that fact sure saved it all in the end. Maybe it would've been the same up to tonight if I was around, but if it was me and not Sondra here I'd be wearin' pink tights and big tits and worshipping some dumb idiot in New Eden right now, you two'd be slaves to Ayesha, and four projectors would be on their way to the van Haas hideaway. The other thing was that she was a woman, always has been, and a one-time real victim of New Eden. She had the motivation, and the woman's perspective, that I lacked. Killed me to do it, though, even if it was my idea. I missed all the damned fun."

Suzl was still wondering. "I can't see how you could fool me, let alone the others."

"Morgaine was the only real threat, so I stayed away from her as much as possible to avoid real slips. The big thing, though, was the image, and the fact that you'd been with him only two days after years away. That's why he made such a point of looking and acting the old ways. Matson was a legend who could work miracles. Everyone wanted to believe in the legend so much they didn't look deep."

"I told her only I could win it," the stringer noted. "She thought I was being egomaniacal. But you wouldn't have trained like hell and fought like hell convinced you could win if you knew it was Sondra. In the meantime, I was able to monitor and set up all the details, including coming in here if needed and making sure this time Gabaye didn't vanish back into a secret place."

"What about that?" Sondra asked him. "Did they intercept the three that were already on their way? Did they find the hideout?"