Jack Chalker - Empires of Flux & Anchor

Matson cooly walked up to him, leveled his shotgun, and blew the wizard’s head off.

He unclipped two timed explosive charges, walked into Flux and attached one to the cab area of the machine and another to a random spot on the smooth cube of the basic machine itself. Then he ran back for Anchor, unsure of just what the hell was going to happen when they and that thing blew.

Kasdi entered Flux and immediately saw Suzl, grotesquely deformed, frozen there about five meters from Coydt. The evil wizard was talking to Suzl.

“Which do you choose? A happy life—or this? I have little patience left. Here is the binding spell I spoke of. Take it, embrace it, and join your husband. Or refuse it, and stay that way until hunger forces you in.”

That spell! Suzl was going to accept it! “ Suzl! Wait! Don’t do it!” Kasdi screamed.

Coydt looked over at her, turned, and smiled. “How melodramatic,” he commented softly. “Friend saved in the nick of time from a fate worse than death by the timely arrival of—Sister Kasdi, is it not?”

“I am Sister Kasdi. And you are Coydt. I have been looking forward to this for a very long time now.”

He grinned. “That is certainly mutual. Would you care to step over here a bit? I wouldn’t like to get out of range of our audience here, but I wouldn’t like to injure her either.”

“Cass! Watch out for his hate!” Suzl called to her. “He was castrated by the old Church and stuck with it in a binding spell! Power’s the only thing he’s got and hate’s his only fuel!”

“She’s right, you know,” Coydt told her. “In a way, we have things in common, you and I. Both of us were abused by the system, and both of us are trapped in binding spells that leave power as the only outlet. Power for its own sake.”

“Yes, we’re probably a pair made for each other, but you’ve become so foul that it’s impossible. What you have done to me and mine cannot be excused.”

“Excused?” He laughed. “I don’t ask to be excused! It amused me to do it. It proved out many of the theories I’ve read in the old books and fragments, the old records. Power needs no excuse! Power exists, and those who have it make the rules! Look what I’ve made them swallow in Anchor Logh! Your birthplace, the start of everything you’ve done—and the ending of it. The end of your empire, and the beginning of a new one, one based on reality. They were sheep under the old Church, willingly sending off their children to slavery and death! Actually thanking the Church for its tyranny! Then they followed you, built monuments to you, called you a liberator and denounced the old ways, not ever once thinking that by doing so they were denouncing themselves.

“And all they had done was changed mistresses, substituting one rule for another. You were the Fluxlord to whom they gladly sent their daughters, and you bound those daughters to absolute obedience, and then you sent them back to unquestionably enforce whatever rules you and your empire thought up.”

“I gave them their freedom,” Kasdi responded.

“ What freedom? To happily send the best of their young off to die in distant wars for a cause you decided? And how did you free them, make their life better? Was it really different in any way?”

“Science is once again open to them.”

“Ah! Science! And I thank you for that. As long and hard as our research teams worked to develop the amplifier machines, it wasn’t until your own bright ones came up with the new transformers capable of handling an Anchor’s power and the internal electronics needed to feed them that we had the answers. The scientists thought they were working on a means of inter-Anchor communication, which is what attracted us in the first place. Perhaps they will invent that, but mine is of more immediate practicality. Science is always a two-edged sword like that. That’s why it was suppressed and feared by the old Church.”

“You’ve killed thousands in Anchor Logh,” she accused. “You killed my father.”

“Oh? I hadn’t known. But, no matter, it will simply add spice to your attack. And how many have you killed, or caused to be killed, I wonder? Ever add it up? I’ll bet you’ve got me beaten by at least hundreds of thousands. And for what?”

“To keep scum like you from opening the Hellgates! To save World!”

“I would open the Hellgates only as a last resort. The rest are, in their own way, self-deluded fanatics like yourself. They, too, are idealists; only they will go to any length for those ideals. Me, now, I know that there’s nothing mystical about it and that the chances of your vision of Hell on World is about even with theirs. If you were caught and trapped for over twenty-five hundred years in a terrible place, cut off from your own and from any life at all, would you be grateful to those who released you? Or would that hate be so refined as to destroy all human life? Perhaps, one day, I’ll be bored enough or disgusted enough to find out. Right now I would rather not take the bet, and they can’t do it without me. You see? I’m the best friend either Church has!”

She thought for a moment. “Suppose I took your binding spell? I have already, in a sense, castrated myself. Being superficially male wouldn’t bother me. What would you do then?”

He chuckled. “I’d hardly reform and start praising the Goddess, but it would be worth a great deal to me. It would be worth Anchor Logh and the researches I and my teams have compiled over the centuries. It would be worth the truth about World and Hell. It doesn’t really matter what I offer. Eternal slavery. Anything. You see, it can only be assumed by one of equal or greater power than myself. That’s the real curse, don’t you see? There is no one equal to me.”

“You seem pretty sure of that. Want me to try?”

He shrugged. “What have I to lose?”

She reached out and found the binding spell. It was absurdly simple and direct, in no strange language and with no traps for the unwary. How it must have frustrated him, galled him, all these years to have godlike power unlike almost any other and yet not be able to break this one simple little spell! She was quite sincere in her offer, and she reached out and voluntarily seized it, took hold of it, and reached to bring it to her.

The spell remained in Coydt.

He laughed, but it was a strange laugh, half triumphant and half sad. “Not even close,” he told her. “I’ve had it hurt. You have a great deal of power, but I have more. You have much training and experience, but I have more, for I know what it is and what it is for. I will not kill you, if it can be avoided. No, I will take you into Anchor as my bride, and you shall serve me gladly, worshipfully. Your binding spells are easily accommodated by ones I will place upon you. Sex, needless to say, I will not require. With you as my servile slave, I will own your empire.”

Tremendous energy emerged from his body and lashed out at her. She quickly brought up her own personal shields and drew upon Flux to push it away. Both of their bodies and the three meters separating them crackled with raw electrical energy so clear and blinding it could have been seen and felt even by one without the power.

She strained against his massive onslaught, and perspiration broke out all over her body. She held him in check, but barely, and she could not hold his thoughts.

“Do you know what you’ve been worshipping all these years? A giant bag of poisonous gasses! A world, just like this world, but so huge it keeps us in its gravity as a natural captive. A world so foul and poisonous nothing could live there. The stars are but other worlds, more distant than our own.”