Jack Chalker - Empires of Flux & Anchor

She was surprised to see Captain Weiz waiting.

She approached him and stood silently, waiting for him to speak.

“You’ve made excellent progress, Suzlette,” he told her. They insisted on full names, and she’d decided it made sense to use it for this new personality to keep confusion down, although she’d never used it before.

“Thank you, sir,” she responded.

“A question I forgot before. Just which point in the shield were you to attack?”

“The one nearest Lamoine, sir, if separated,” she heard herself replying without thinking. It took that to realize how far they’d taken her.

He reached into his pocket and took out two small charms and reached up and clipped them so they hung from their circular earrings. “Let us go back to your room,” he said, and they walked back, she keeping deferentially slightly behind him.

When they got there, he closed the door and smiled. “I have just claimed you, Suzlette. What do you think of that?”

She was shocked. “I’m honored, sir.”

He put her through all her paces, including the sexual. She was very, very horny and so was very, very good. It helped that he was attractive, but it was remarkably easy. You just turned off your mind…

Nor, in fact, was he that bad either.

They relaxed after, and she felt very good, even though a back corner of her mind said that she should not. Clearly, linking spells did not work in Anchor.

“I was attracted to you from the start,” he told her. “I was in Flux, too, most of my life. Most of the women here are terribly inexperienced. We can go far together, you know. You can supplement and help me with my job.”

She began to grow suspicious. This was for a purpose.

“Get dressed and come with me now. We’re going to take a long ride up to Lamoine.”

He had an open surrey on order and drove it himself. It was a bright, pleasant day, and quite warm, and it felt good to be outdoors once more. He didn’t take a direct route but a number of back roads, stopping often in small towns and at farms. He seemed genuinely affectionate, and she played the servile game, all the time wondering what this was about. Clearly, he was showing her off conspicuously, but that might be to show her conversion. Everybody would know who she was.

They reached the small farming village of Lamoine in about four leisurely hours. The wall, and Flux, was only a kilometer away, but trees had been cleverly planted to block the view of it from the town. He made all the courtesy calls in town, and she was beginning to get used to being called Suzlette Weiz and even identified herself once as Madame Hamir Weiz. She was taken to a small kitchen and told to prepare a good picnic dinner for two. This surprised her even more, but she did as instructed.

She had found the whole experience and the day rather educational. She found herself critiquing other women’s hair and makeup, and found herself feeling quite comfortable looking and acting as she was—which was how all the other women in town were acting. It was a vaguely disquieting feeling. As the woman had said, it was so easy to conform.

They rode out past the trees and the wall came into view, a huge stone structure that looked impenetrable, although it was never more than a psychological joke to ones wanting to sneak in and out. A wooden superstructure had been built and the road had been extended to it. A bevy of armed guards and a machine gun outpost were set up there. The shield, not the wall, sealed them in, and they were there not to protect the wall but that machine that sustained the shield.

They ate in the shadow of the wall—a very nice picnic lunch, which she served. During the whole time Weiz had talked about inconsequentials, even some of his past, but never about what this was all about. Now, all packed up, he said, “Walk with me to the wall. I want to show you something.”

She followed him, and they mounted the stairs to the top. The defensive positions, which looked both in and out, were formidable in appearance. She reflected, though, that if anybody could get close enough to the wall and had the arm for it, it wouldn’t take more than two big grenades to wipe the post out. As a good wife, she kept her opinion to herself.

She looked out at the apron, fairly short in this area, and to the void beyond. Usually the scene was a total sameness, but not now. Out there, so close to Anchor it could be dimly made out, was… something. She stared at it and frowned.

“The machine you and your friends sought to destroy,” Weiz told her, seeing her fascination. “Come. Walk down the other side and we will take a look at it. As you can see, it is still very much intact.”

They walked out onto the apron and across the area bounding Flux and Anchor, It was odd to be going into Flux, and her wizard’s senses switched on in an instant.

The machine was basically a cube, with an operator’s cab on one side. It had never been moved here; it had obviously been built, or more likely created, in Flux.

“It is an amplifier,” Weiz told her. “It magnifies the power of the wizard in the chair a thousandfold.” She saw the enormous Flux energy flowing into it on all sides and saw, too, the massive concentration that radiated outward from it.

Another figure, a man, walked up to them. She turned and looked at him and knew him in an instant. That handsome face, those bulging muscles, that light, gray-tinged hair and beard she had seen only once, other than in pictures and accounts, but she knew who it was.

“Suzlette, Meet Prince Coydt,” Weiz said amiably.

Prince of Darkness, Prince of Evil. Demon Prince. What did you say to such a man as this?

“Hello, sir,” she managed.

Coydt van Haaz stood there dressed in a loose flannel shirt, blue denim work pants, and boots; a slight smile played on his face. “You may go now, Captain. Remain on the wall. I may need you later.”

Weiz looked nervous, but he responded crisply, “Yes, sir,” and departed, leaving Coydt and Suzl alone in Flux. She stared at him, feeling the tremendous energy inside him and also real fear inside her.

“The captain really is fond of you,” Coydt told her. “He’s quite smitten, in fact. What about you? Is he the idea you had of the kind of men who took this Anchor?”

“No,” she responded, adding “sir” almost as an afterthought. “I do like him.”

“That’s nice. One wizard to another, open, honest. I like that.”

“I’m no wizard,” she responded.

“How very astute of you to realize that. One without power in Flux is a victim who finds a way to survive, to accommodate to power. But one with Flux power who has no knowledge or training in its use is in far greater danger from a real wizard, for only those with the power can take the binding spell.”

She nodded slightly but did not respond. All she could think of was that he was going to do something awful to her and she needed to buy time, any kind of time, if only to think of something to do.

“Take me, for example. Did you ever wonder how I wound up this way? What colored my attitudes, drove me on?”

“I’ve often wondered how anyone could wind up like you.”

“It was over four hundred years ago, in a place very much like that one back there,” Coydt began. “I was pretty wild as a kid, the youngest of eleven and always out to prove myself. Even then I liked the thrill of things, the danger, the risks. I’d take any bet, and, of course, boys being boys, they were always egging me on. One day, after getting a scolding from the local priestess for some minor mischief, the gang dared me to get back at the Church. I was fifteen, and I was clever. The appeal of sneaking into an all-women’s domain and stealing something was irresistible. I resolved to sneak into the temple itself and steal a personal artifact from some high-up temple priestess.”