Jack Chalker - Empires of Flux & Anchor

“And you’re an outsider,” Suzl remarked dryly.

“Yes,” he agreed. “I am. Men and women dress alike for utility in the guild. Position, power, prestige, money—they’re all based on your own intelligence, quick wit, and talents, and nobody cares whether you’re male or female on the job. In stringing, everybody’s equal until they prove themselves different.”

“And you have to be born into that guild and have the sight to see the strings,” Suzl retorted. “What works for a small, inbred family monopoly wouldn’t be practical on a big scale. It gets too complicated too quickly. You still need the power to really get anywhere, too.”

“I have very little power and I rode string for fifteen years,” he pointed out. “Power doesn’t mean that you’re smarter or quicker or cleverer than the one without it. It’s true, though, that anybody who struck at one stringer would bring all the stringers and stringer wizards down on them—if that strike were in the line of duty. We look after our own.”

“You’ve got something cooking in that brain of yours about this problem,” Kasdi said. “Let’s hear it completely.”

“We have to break this, or it’s good-bye to everything we know. World will be in continual revolution, and deaths will be massive, while the new systems the new rulers will cook up will make this one or a Fluxland look tame. We’re looking at the breakdown of society all over the planet here. Hell even with the gates closed. That’s why the stringers themselves participate in putting down these kind of things. So it has to be stopped, to prevent its spread. But you can’t invade and wipe it out, because you’ll also destroy an Anchor and its people and have all the other Anchors selfishly closing up and going into self-defense, and so you lose your empire anyway. So we deal. We punch our hole, establish our beachhead, and stop. We deal with the bosses here. They will be allowed to keep what they have and run it the way they want, but they will be technically within the empire. Everybody stays out, and they stay in, but their sovereignty is assured. They’ll go for it. They’ll fight to the death if we invade—remember, Cass, what you said you’d do to them? But they don’t want to die. They’ll buy it.”

“That’s easy for you to say. You’re a man,” Suzl noted. “Spirit can’t go back to Flux. Are you suggesting we apply for our tattoos and tights and find ourselves a good man to own us?”

“No, but you’re not that limited if I understood you right. There are four Anchors in the cluster, and it applies to all of them. Go back through the gate, but don’t enter Flux; go out to one of the other three.”

“I’m interested in this,” Kasdi put in. “What sort of terms do you think they’d accept?”

“Anything that guarantees their safety and positions. We’ll still dictate the other terms. We want those machines and we want control of them. The empire itself will keep them going. We will also control the temple as a garrison to protect the Hellgate access, but won’t otherwise interfere. Experts from all over, all of them approved by empire security, will study what happens here.”

“And Coydt will go for this?” Spirit asked, joining in herself.

He shook his head. “No. Co-opting this revolution here will be the one thing he won’t buy. Nor will the other wizards, but they’re only being held together by Coydt. To make it work, Coydt is going to have to be eliminated permanently.”

“Then we must face Coydt before we open the shield,” Kasdi said. “How do you propose to do that? Nobody even knows where he is.”

“Oh, he’s here, someplace. I can feel him. Smell him. His odor permeates Anchor Logh. How we’re going to draw him out, though, is the real problem, I—”

Suddenly all were frozen as the sounds of many horsemen approached. Soldiers on horseback, carrying torches, seemed suddenly everywhere around them, officers and noncoms shouting instructions.

“Free ride’s over,” Matson whispered. “Looks like they know we’re here. We’re going to have to fight our way through from this point.”

“Remember,” they heard an officer shout, “no firing unless fired upon! We want them alive if possible!” They were spreading out forward, and the foursome could hear the sounds of more coming on foot through the woods in back.

Matson thought furiously as the human net formed. “We’re going to have to split in two sections. One will bulldoze its way through with all it’s got, drawing the rest. Then the other can slip through the hole.”

Suzl looked over at him. “Who takes the heat?”

“Cass and I will. It’s more important to get that Soul Rider to the border than either of us, but we’ll have a chance, too. Don’t you fire at all unless you’re seen and in danger of being taken. Give us half a minute after the shooting starts, then break for the best route.”

The two women nodded grimly but said nothing. Matson looked at Cass, who unshouldered her weapon, and they slipped off to the left and were soon lost to the woods.

As soon as they were well away of the others, Matson looked to pick his spot. He saw it and almost didn’t believe it. There were two mounted officers and four troopers walking in, all nicely illuminated by small burning torches that sizzled as the light rain hit. He looked at Kasdi. “You take the ones on foot; I’ll take the two horsemen. As soon as everybody falls, you run like hell through that opening. If those horses don’t bolt, we’ll take them, too.”

She nodded and readied her weapon. She felt only the normal tension; she had faced down great wizards in their own lairs many times. The only difference this time was that she really wanted to shoot some of those men, wanted to see them die, for the first time in her life.

“Now!” Matson shouted, and both stood and opened fire on their respective targets. Matson shot high, the force of the slugs knocking the two mounted men off their horses. The horses neighed and bolted forward a bit, but seemed confused and didn’t run off. Kasdi opened up on the four infantrymen, and they seemed to simply fold and collapse like pricked balloons as more than sixty large caliber slugs fanned out in their direction in the space of less than a second.

And then they were running towards the horses. Both were experienced riders and mounted almost simultaneously; they were away as the others were just reacting to the sounds of the shooting. Scattered shots were fired after them, but they were wild and not in large numbers. The soldiers were unsure if their orders not to kill except in self-defense applied here, and most opted to chase rather than shoot.

After the firing began, the men nearest Suzl and Spirit turned and began to run towards the spot where everything was happening. They took the opportunity and ran out and across to the next grouping of trees, then continued to thread their way along the edge of the woods. Men were yelling and running about, some shooting wildly, and more horsemen roared into the gap and began shouting orders. Four horsemen took off after the already vanished pair, but at least one of the officers was taking no chances and started fanning out the infantry up and down the opposite side of the woods. Foot soldiers began to go into the woods where Spirit and Suzl were, forcing them deeper into the extremely dark and damp vegetation. The soldiers were coming in fast, and they began to run.

Suddenly Spirit tripped on a vine and went sprawling. Suzl, behind her, avoided the vine and ran to help her up. She started to get up, then grimaced in pain. “I’ve twisted the ankle, damn it!”

“Then get down in the brush!” Suzl hissed. “I’ll try and lead them away and circle back!”