Chalker, Jack L - Soul Rider 03 - Masters of Flux and Anchor

240 Pages·2016·1.05 MB·English

by  Chalker Jack L

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SOUL RIDER III: MASTERS OF FLUX AND ANCHOR
Jack L. Chalker
Copyright © 1985 by Jack L. Chalker
ISBN: 0-812-53281-3
e-book ver. 1.0
For Tim Sullivan, in the hope and expectation that
he will hit the big time, a giant spectacle with a dash ofbyap!
1
POWER AND INFLUENCE
If evil looks ordinary, even mundane, until it is too late, then Zelligman Ivan
looked more ordinary than most. He was a small, thin man of apparent middle
age. with a long, drawn face that had a chin far too large, a beak-like nose, two
beady little brown eyes, and short gray hair. His beard was a close-cropped
goatee only slightly less gray than his hair, and his thin, short moustache was
both small and gray enough to be invisible from any distance. He wore the
clothing of a respectable Anchor, a brown corduroy suit and string tie, with faded
brown dress boots and a peculiar formal round hat, and he sat on a horse upright
and unmoving. Overall, Zelligman Ivan riding through Flux was a comical sight,
but there was nothing at all comical about the man himself.
They watched him come, as only those who live in Flux and are driven mad by it
can watch, and they licked their lips. They were mad and they were deadly, but
they were not stupid. Stupid people do not last long in Flux. Any man riding
alone in Flux could read the strings, the multicolored bands of energy that were
the roads through the reddish, crackling nothingness of the void. And anyone
riding alone had to be a wizard, for without power you were quickly dead. This,
too, they took into account, but again it didn't bother them severely. There were
wizards and there were wizards.
Ivan had no idea they were there until they struck. Sounds traveled only a short
distance in Flux before being smothered, and visibility was always quite limited,
as in a thick fog. Suddenly from all around him rose horrible shapes, gigantic
shapes that reached upwards of ten meters or more. Growling, drooling, snarling
monsters that looked frighteningly real. His horse stopped and reared back in
panic, and it took all his effort for a moment to keep from being thrown, but he
managed to calm the frightened animal and look around at the threatening horde
of hissing and slobbering horrors.
He smiled.
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Ivan knew that these were mere projections, a false wizard's convincing and
threatening show of his or her own imagination without real threat. He had a rifle
in his saddle but did not draw it, instead waiting for the attackers to tire of this
and show themselves.
They moved in on him slowly, warily, but with determination. A dugger cult, he
saw, fifteen or twenty of them; all misshapen by their own inner fears. All were
naked, howling savages, so deformed that it was impossible to tell their sex or
their original looks, save one, who was dressed in tattered hides. That would be
the leader. They all left no doubt that their intent was more than to rob; they were
quite ready to pounce on him and eat both him and his horse.
He traced a small circle with his hand, and the advancing creatures stopped. He
watched them strain against nothing, an invisible barrier he had simply decreed
into existence. Some gave up and turned to retreat, but found an identical barrier
to their rear.
Ivan surveyed them imperiously, then pointed at the leader. "You!" he called
out, in a thin, nasal voice that nonetheless had the confident ring of command in
it. "Come forward!"
The leader looked nervous, but realized that he was trapped and had to deal
with a new situation. He approached the invisible barrier and seemed almost
surprised to see that it gave way for him—but when the others tried to follow,
they were stopped cold.
Close in, the leader showed himself to be a creature with a round, ugly face that
had all the right features in distorted positions. The eyes were huge and bulging,
and the mouth sagged on one side, revealing sharp, pointed teeth. The leader
stopped before Ivan.
"Can you speak?" the man on the horse asked calmly.
"Oh, yes, sir," the cult leader responded. "Gody speak real good."
"I'm sure," Ivan commented aloud, mostly to himself. He noticed that the
dugger held a small object in his hands, almost fondling it. "You're not frightened
of me?"
"Gody fears none!" the creature responded. "Gody true wizard with this!"He
held up the object and looked at it, and from it sprang a powerful beam of pure
energy, racing straight at the rider.
Ivan had been prepared for it. He held up his hand and casually deflected the
ray; and suddenly, it was gone. Gody looked concerned, then puzzled.
"I know those toys," the rider said scornfully, "although goodness knows where
youpicked one up." They were, in fact, small Flux power amplifiers created from
the models of the huge ones built years ago by his old associate, but they were
strictly rationed and carefully controlled. "They are adequate for some things, but
they have a weakness."
Gody looked down at the little cube, not quite understanding why it didn't work.
Suddenly the top flew off, and a huge number of paper streamers flew out in all
directions. The dugger chief yowled in fury.
"They are just machines," Ivan explained patiently. "A good wizard has no more
trouble with them than with guns and knives."
Gody knew when he was licked. "Sorry, sorry. Master. Will not trouble you
further. . . ."
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Ivan thought for a moment. "You're not really hungry, if you had that box, so
this was just for the principle of it. Tell me—do you know this area of Flux well?"
The dugger looked confused, but at the moment was willing to go along with
whatever the wizard said. "Yes, Master. Know from Anchor to Hellgate to Anchor
again. Can read strings, can Gody, with. . . ." He looked down sadly at the box.
"I will restore your little toy," Ivan told him.
"Oh, thank you, Master! Kind Master!"
"I will give you even greater power than you have dreamed of. But for this, you
must perform a task for me."
Gody was very interested now. "Anything, Master! Name it, Gody do!"
"Very well. Attend me, I will give you powerful spells, and yet another toy. The
task I set for you is very dangerous, so you must do it exactly as I say. I will tell
you how to capture a powerful wizard. You are to do so, and then take the wizard
where I say. I will know when you have done this, and I will give you power."
"Tell! Gody and his people will do as you command!"
"I know you will," Ivan responded. "My spells will guarantee it. If you serve me
well, there are great rewards for you. I may have other tasks for even greater
rewards. But if you do this wrong, you and your people will die horribly. You
understand?"
"Gody understand. Master, oh, yes. But—what you doing out here, such
powerful wizard?"
"Fishing," replied Zelligman Ivan. "And I caught what I was after."
2
DYNAMICS OF DISTURBANCE
"In the old days, folks knew they were at war as soon as the first attack was
launched," remarked Mervyn, high wizard of World, chairman of the Nine Who
Guard. "Now, it seems like we damn near lost the war before we even know we've
been shot in the back." He nudged his brown horse a bit to increase the pace.
His companion was a strikingly beautiful woman, dressed all in the black of
stringers, and wearing a gunbelt with two large and menacing black revolvers
perched one per hip. She was very tall and slim, but a flex of her muscles showed
strength in both arms and legs that few men could match. Her skin was a smooth
chocolate brown, her eyes large and jet black, her hair and brows a striking
silvery white that provided both a startling beauty and a stunning contrast.
Unlike most female stringers, she wore her hair long, letting its silver gleam down
her back halfway to her very trim waist. Her horse, too, was of the blackest black,
but the mane of the large beast was the same silver as her hair. Clearly she was a
stringer wizard of some power, and, therefore, one to be avoided by all sane
people.
"Surely it is not as bad as all that," she responded to the old man's comments.
"Any plot unmasked before it is completed is a failure."
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"Perhaps. I hope you're right. But a plot is only a failure when it fails. You're
good, and you've got much talent and experience, but I fear you are very young,
my dear. I am over seven hundred now. Seven hundred years of fight."
She looked at the small, frail-looking man in the green robe and sandals, the
wizened bearded face and long, scraggly strands of white hair flanking a bald pate
making him look every bit as old as he claimed to be. and shrugged. "A winning
fight," she noted.
He shrugged. "I can win a thousand times. Ten thousand. Theyonly need to win
it all once. I'm getting very old for this, maybe too old."
"You only look that way because you like the image," she taunted. "You could
look and feel like anything or anybody you wanted, as can I—and I don't have half
your power over Flux."
"Yes you do. In fact, I'd say your potential is as great as anyone's I have ever
known, but that's true of most genuine wizards. If you can handle the Flux, you
can handle it easily and in any way you want. It's themindthat makes the
difference—intelligence, experience, and knowledge, which are the keys to
anything. Your mind, for example, keeps you from such totality of control. Not
your intelligence, certainly, but the way you see yourself and your place on World.
You are content in the Guild and with what it offers; you are not one to sit for
ages in study and practice as I have, perfecting your talents. You inherited your
looks and your power from your mother, but there is too much of the father in
your soul."
She chuckled. "He was never more than a false wizard, a conjuror of illusions
with no substance. But he feared no wizard and killed the strongest. That tells me
more about where real humanity lies than creating my own little world and
playing goddess so long that I get to believe my own publicity."
He shrugged and changed the subject. "Have you encountered any Soul Riders
in your travels?"
She nodded. "Yes, three in fact. They seem to stick close, one to a cluster, or,
perhaps, one to a Hellgate."
"No, one to an Anchor. Twenty-eight in all, in fact. Tell me—what did you think
of them?"
"Very little, really. They rode inside wizards of varying types, with no clear
preference so far as I could see. The hosts gave off curious double auras, and were
difficult to truly focus on with magic, but the wizards did not seem extraordinary
or even very ambitious."
"Ambition comes when the masters of the Soul Rider command it, and not
before. I've studied one closely in my cluster the past century, and there is no
question that the Soul Rider is as much a tool of something or someone else as
the host is of the Soul Rider itself.''
"I shouldn't want one, then. Bad enough to have something influencing your
life. Worse to know that they, too, are but puppets of yet another. Who? The
goddess of the Church, or something greater?"
"Greater, I think, and lesser as well. The Riders are creatures of pure energy,
minds without bodies, that's for certain. Their number and their deeds are too
well ordered and well reasoned to be random, yet they are individualistic enough
that I cannot see them as conjured beings. More than once I've touched their
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thoughts, and touched briefly as well the orders from their masters, but it only
compounds the mystery. The mathematics of it is both very simple and very
complex, as all of the messages consist of only two distinct parts. There is only on
and off, open and close, yet the messages are impossibly complex and impossible,
too, to translate or decipher."
"On and off," she mused. "Sounds like a machine."
"That was my very thought. If machines could think, this is what it would be
like. That has driven me to despair, that thought. If the gods are machines, then
where are they? Who built them? And to what purpose?"
"Perhaps to no other purpose than keeping the Hellgates closed," she suggested.
"I have thought of that, but it brings up unpleasant implications. If that is their
sole purpose, then their mission is to keep us down at all cost, to make certain we
do not interfere. We are learning now at a great rate, Sondra. The Codex has
given us much, and sooner or later we will find the missing books, those which
give the answers to the really big questions. What then? Will they turn on us as
the enemy and slap us down to barbarism as they might well have done before?"
"Don't worry so much. Those books probably don't even exist anymore."
"They exist," he said gravely. "Years ago one of the Seven, Coydt van Haas by
name, had collected enough of them to do wonders. With them he built the great
amplifiers that increased an ordinary wizard's power a thousandfold. With them
he created a demented revenge, and resurrected long-dead beliefs and attitudes.
With them he revealed enough to destroy the foundation of a revolution. And that
was only a smattering of what those books must contain."
"My father killed Coydt almost twenty years ago," she pointed out. "If they exist,
they're in the hands of the Seven."
"No. I know just where they are, and who has them, but it does neither me nor
anybody else much good. They are in the hands of the New Eden Brotherhood,
and they are hidden and guarded well. Occasionally scraps are fed out to keep
their alliance firm with wizards they need, but that's about all."
She made an expression as if smelling a foul odor.
"Those maniacs. Why do we stand for it? Half of World would unite to crush
them."
"Indeed. You find the Brotherhood distasteful, then?" She looked over at him
strangely. "Not merely distasteful—repugnant. Do you mean you approveof it?
Women treated as subhumans, as animals?"
"I neither approve nor disapprove, but I wonder how strong your dislike would
be if the sexual situation were reversed? No, don't get so angry—hear me out first.
World is dominated by those with the power, both political and Flux power. You
said it yourself—wizards who act like gods get to believe they really are. Three out
of five of the most powerful wizards are female. I can name you a half a dozen
that simply reverse the Brotherhood's philosophy, but ninety percent specialize in
dominating, limiting, and oppressing their populations, although not in sexual
ways. Some are more benevolent than others, but all are no more than variations
on what the Brotherhood has done, perhaps substituting some other group for
women as the oppressed, or being democratic about it and oppressing everyone.
Aretheyas repugnant to you? Or do you even think about them that way?"
"But the Brotherhood is not in Flux; it's in Anchor!"
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"And what difference does that make? Not too many generations ago a small
cadre of women in the Church decided who among the young population would
be sold as slaves in Flux, and carefully and completely controlled everyone left.
Their control was more subtle, but no less authoritarian or complete. When it was
finally rotting and begged replacement, it was a woman who did it, and the
control was no less complete for having nobler motives. The Reformed Church
was out to do what it said—reform the existing church to eliminate corruption. It
did not question the order of things."
"But you have put your finger on an important difference," she noted. "I agree
that Flux is one thing, because either you have the power or you must depend on
one that does, but Anchor held at least the possibility of change, of revolution.
When that is taken away, when Flux comes to Anchor, there is no hope."
He smiled. "And for two thousand years Anchor was more stable and less
revolutionary than Flux. The people of Anchor were very unhappy at the system,
yet they endured it and did not question it to any threatening degree. See how
easily the newly recombined Church has reestablished authority? The people are
not happy, but their religion teaches that unhappiness, pain, and suffering is their
lot until they attain Heaven. The women of the Brotherhood are happy and
contented with no thoughts of Heaven."
"Because they have been brainwashed and Flux-changed into it!"
"Ah, yes. Yet some people take drugs to chemically induce a happiness they
cannot otherwise achieve; others drink to excess for the same reason. Still others
throw themselves into religious frenzies in a bout of self-intoxication. All are
seeking happiness. But happiness, even Heaven, is the absence of further
progress. When one is happy, one wants no more than that, and will spend his life
in a search to keep the brain's pleasure center permanently on. It is the essence of
humanity. We learn, we progress, by our unending quest for eternal happiness—
yet should we achieve it, it all stops."
Sondra shook her head as if to clear it. "You make the world seem ugly and
upside down."
"The worldisugly, but only viewpoints on it are upside down, not the world
itself. All I am saying is that people pursue happiness in order to obtain it, then
try to force it on everyone else. That's the way of things. I do not like the
Brotherhood, but I also do not like most of World. That's why I tend to keep apart
from it as much as possible. When I was forced into active long-term partici-
pation in it, during the reign of the Empire, I found myself acting just as ugly and
ruthless as the other wizards. I didn't like it."
"You'll not eliminate my hatred of the Brotherhood with cold logic, even of the
irrefutable sort." she told him.
"I know," he sighed. "That's why people still fight wars."
World had changed much in only twenty years, but it was arguable whether it
was for the better or worse. The way. Mervyn thought, the position on that
question depended on just what you wanted.
Cass had broken the grip of the old Church by splitting it in two, and uniting
opportunistic Fluxlords and Anchors chafing at the old system to create an
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empire that had at its height spanned more than half of World. In the end,
though, the Empire spread itself too thin. Internal jealousies and love of power
cracked the empire in various places. While Mervyn and others of the most
powerful wizards attempted a unified governmental authority, in the end the glue
that held the Empire together and drove it onward had been the will of one
woman: Cass, Sister Kasdi the warrior-saint. And so the enemies of Empire, led
by Coydt van Haas, had set a trap for her, a trap she escaped—but at a great price.
Coydt had been stronger; he had, in fact, defeated her in a test of wills, and only
a shotgun blast from a cynical stringer seeking revenge had allowed her to
triumph, her self-confidence shaken. But in his death throes, Coydt had achieved
his aim, for he removed from her all of the spells that bound her, that made her
the saintly leader, leaving her open to more human feelings, desires, and needs.
Already wilting under the enormous weight of her responsibilities, she had taken
her drive from the fact that she could enjoy no alternatives. With those spells
removed, the choice of going back to that miserable life was impossible. She had
retreated to a Fluxland with her daughter, Spirit, who had been cursed to neither
speak nor understand, and to be forever forbidden all tools and artifacts.
With them had gone her grandson, Jeffron, whom Cass and the agents of
Mervyn would raise.
And with the "death" of Sister Kasdi and the withdrawal of Cass, the Empire
had quickly crumbled. The conciliatory leader of the old, original Church met
with the highest priestesses of the Reformed Church, and after much argument
and tribulation they hammered out a concordat which reestablished a single
Church once more under a single set of doctrines that incorporated the funda-
mental changes of the Reformers with the basics for which the old Church had
fought. None could lead the Church, or become a High Priestess of a temple, or
minister directly to the people, without the Vows of Sanctity undertaken by
binding spell. Those involved in other aspects of the Church, such as
administration and research, were not so encumbered unless they wished to be.
The Church had become far less corrupt, but had strengthened its grip, for it ex-
tended to parts of Flux as well as to Anchor.
Hope, the Fluxland created by Kasdi as the source of the Reformed Church, had
slowly dissolved without her force of will. Work on compiling all of the ancient
writings and attempting to interpret them, a project called the Codex, had been
moved to Holy Anchor, where a Queen of Heaven elected by the temple High
Priestesses ruled as chief administrator.
Much had been learned from the Codex, but researchers were bound by spells
to reveal nothing except through the Church, which kept tight controls. Much of
the work was suppressed, either as heretical or as too dangerous and disruptive.
Science, however, began to be encouraged in Anchor, where understanding of the
devices that maintained them was now deemed crucial. Many of the key scientific
works, though, were missing from the Codex, and scientists who went off on
tangents not approved by the Church found themselves stepped on rather hard.
The Church was interested in the practical. Still, the last twenty years had
brought revolutionary changes.
With the understanding of Flux energy as just one form of all other energy, a
form that could be modified, redirected, and controlled, many of the Anchors
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were in the process of being wired for full electrical power, not just the capital
cities as in the old days. Wireless telecommunication based on the temple
intercoms was also under development, linking all parts of an Anchor
instantaneously. But no one had yet discovered a way to communicate Anchor to
Anchor, for the Flux squashed and suppressed all forms of electronic broadcast
signal. The standard of living for the average man and woman of Anchor had
improved substantially, but these new developments put them ever more securely
under the absolute control of the Church.
The breakup of the Empire had worried the Nine Who Guard most of all, for it
left the mysterious Hellgates insufficiently guarded. They coped as best they
could, using the Flux power amplifiers built by Coydt van Haas to create virtual
walls around the Flux entrances to the gates, walls maintained by priestess-
wizards under saintly vows, and by the defenses of the Hellgates themselves. The
weak point was the other entrance, the one that allowed someone in each Anchor
temple to travel directly to the gate itself, bypassing the defenses. There was no
real answer, for new energy weapons could dissolve concrete as easily as anything
else, so the Nine had decided to be content with an incorruptible Church devoted
to eternal vigilance. It was true that forces had previously defended the Gates
from entry via Flux, but not only Cass and Spirit but even Coydt had managed to
bypass them.
Of course, not all Anchors were under Church control, and only a small part of
Flux; but the Seven Who Wait, also known as the Seven Who Come Before,
needed access to all the Hellgates at once to open them as they were determined
one day to do. Control by the Nine of just one was sufficient to keep them from
their work. Mervyn knew this, but had called a meeting anyway, an
unprecedented one, to discuss the problems.
All Nine were there, which was the fact without precedent. They met in a tiny
Flux pocket so secure that none could even guess its presence, let alone penetrate
it, and they listened intently to the old wizard's comments.
"We have become too complacent of late," he chided them. "While we have sat
and done little, the enemy has been actively on the march with their
characteristic subtlety and with uncharacteristic precision and coordination. A
new empire has been created under our very noses, one in the hands of our
enemy."
He spread out a map of World showing the Anchors in their characteristic
clusters. "This is a copy of an ancient map, but it will do for our purposes. The
letters are in the ancient tongue, but mostly correlate with the names the Anchors
have today."
Krupe, the fat, bald wizard in brown satin robes, looked down at the map and
frowned. "Curious. If we use the ancient language, there's almost the full old
alphabet represented there," he noted. "Funny I never really saw that before." He
stared again at the map.
S T
H 2 J I 6 K
U V
P Q N G R
------HQ I FC 3 G----A 5 D ---O 7 E---
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W X Y Z
L
N 4 B
M
"The dotted line is the equator, the numbers are the Hellgates." Mervyn
explained needlessly. "As to the alphabetical list, I saw that long ago, but it is in a
haphazard order and seems to mean little except to denote the first letter of the
old language versions of the names. 'HQ' is often an ancient abbreviation for
'headquarters,' and is appropriate, since that is Holy Anchor today. Why
Tezgroph should be designated by 'NG' is something we may never know, as I
have found no correlation of those two letters with any standard abbreviation.
Still, there is World as we know it. All the rest is Flux."
"So? As you say. it is common knowledge," remarked the dark and enigmatic
Serrio, one of the two of the Nine not assigned to guard a specific Gate and
cluster but free-roaming, to add extra strength where needed. "I could draw it in
my sleep. Why show us this?"
"Patience. The nonstandard symbols might have been strange to some of us.
However. I draw your attention to the fact that the northern, eastern, and
western clusters are firmly under our, and Church, control. The center and south
are not, including my own."
The small, exotic wizard Kyubioshi shrugged. "It is not necessary for us to
control all seven, as you know. As for the rest, they are a mixture, a hodge-podge
of independent Anchors, some under Church control, some under the control of
odd groups and factions, as are the Fluxlands inside and between. We agreed
long ago, at the breakup of the Empire, that this was to be desired."
"Indeed," Mervyn agreed. "However, my agents recently have completed a
massive task that might have been impossible in earlier times. In compiling a
structure of ruling Fluxlands and Anchor leaders on a cluster-by-cluster basis, we
findcivil control in the Anchors in the hands of just one or two individuals. As
always, the government is totally subservient to the Church, but only outwardly.
These governments have alliances with Fluxlords, allegedly also supportive of the
Church. In tracing the relationships, an effort that has cost many lives, I might
add, we came up with some startling information. Ultimate civil power in each
cluster seems to reside in a centralized source—one for each cluster. In most
cases this central source cannot be traced, but I have traced two. both in the
north. Do the names Varishnikar Stomsk and Gifford Haldayne mean nothing to
you?"
There was a collective gasp. Both were long-time members of the Seven, and
their arch-enemies.
Mervyn looked satisfied with their reaction. "Even over in the west, the former
Queen of Heaven, Romua Togloss. retains enormous power and loyalty. We have
long suspected her of being one of the Seven, as there is some evidence in the old
genealogies that she is in fact Rosa Haldayne, Gifford's sister." He looked at each
one's eyes in turn. "Anyone seen Gabaye or Tokiabi lately? Anyone know who
took Coydt's place in the Seven?"
There was no answer.
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"I believe," the old wizard said carefully, "that certainly four, if not more, of the
clusters are in such a position that the existing order could be overthrown in a
moment, on orders from the shadowy authority who controls them."
"But they couldn't hold them. We proved that years ago," the tall, stately
Hjistoliran noted.
"They don't have to. Once all seven are under their influence, they need only
wait until it is time and strike at once, quickly. They can hold long enough for all
seven to take the temples and reach the Gates. You can see their enormous
influence now. What scientific project takes precedence over all others in the eyes
of Church and state?"
They thought a moment. "Inter-Anchor communications," the tiny, green
Talanane said. "Oh, my!"
Mervyn nodded. "And they'll get it, too, if it is possible—and it almost certainly
is, or no other safeguards against the Seven are really needed."
"Do you believe that they already control all seven, then?" Krupe asked him.
"No. The south is the key, in many ways. The New Eden Brotherhood is not
merely a revolt by the have-nots against the Church and World, it is in every
sense of the word a religious movement and an expansionist one. Within two
years after the collapse of the Empire it had abrogated its treaties and made
alliances with very powerful Fluxlords. Within five, it had overrun Anchor Bakha
and secured the Fluxlands between. They have developed new and devastating
weaponry that can be used in Anchor, and I believe Anchor Nantzee is in
imminent danger of falling, giving them the factories and heavy industry to really
expand their program."
"But where are they getting all of this knowledge, all of this new and
revolutionary weaponry?" the rock-like Makapuua asked him. "From the Seven?"
"No. If the Seven had such weaponry and knowledge it would have used it long
ago. Coydt had amassed a massive amount of ancient writings over the years, and
had whole teams of his people working on them. From those writings he created
the Flux amplifiers, and it is from those writings that weapons such as this are
springing. Small items of use to Fluxlords are being parcelled out to secure their
complete cooperation, but most of it they are keeping for themselves. I daresay
the Seven would like to get their hands on those books as much as we would. But.
like Matson's shotgun, science is proving more powerful than sorcery."
"Then they must be attacked and stopped at once," Krupe put in. "They must be
contained or eliminated."
Mervyn stared at him. "How? The leaders keep to Anchor, where we are
powerless, and they are so paranoid and secretive that they are nearly impossible
to infiltrate on a high level. What forces can stop them, when they have weapons
that in an instant can return an entire army to its Flux components? They are
driven and they are ruthless. Bakha was determined to resist them, and it did so
to its last ounce of strength. It cost them fully ninety percent of their population.
Anchor Logh, or New Eden as they call it, no longer has a population problem.
Half of it now lives in Bakha. Far worse, from our point of view, is that they have
the same goal as the others—inter-Anchor communications. And they are
unencumbered by the Church's restrictions on research. And they barter just