05. Children of Flux and Anchor (3 page)

"Yeah, but doesn't your analogy hold? I mean, women are on the bottom here, so wouldn't they want a reverse?"

"You might be right—hell, there's Fluxlands founded for just that reason out there right now. You might be, but you'd ignore the other things. The Holy Mother Church lasted for over two thousand years and it was rigidly sex compartmentalized at the leadership level. The women set policy and interpreted it. The men carried the policies out, but the women had the veto. The one thing they all had was a fear of Flux. Anchor life was comfortable, and you always knew where you stood. Not everybody was happy with it, particularly some men, but the alternatives were all much worse. They gained safety and security from it, so they paid the price and griped. And the Church was smart enough to sort of borrow a little bit from the Hindu, and Adam was smart enough to keep it: the idea that we live more than one life, and that we live those lives as alternate sexes. It freezes the system. If everybody believes it, then there's no penalty for being on the bottom because in the next life you'll be on top, and you better be good while on top 'cause in the next life you'll be on the bottom. See?"

The younger man nodded. "Yes, I think so. It's a little hard to swallow, though. There's no outlet for the women here. There's still no schools for them except religious studies, where the rightness of their lot is pounded into them. They can't own property or inherit, can't get the training and skills to hold down a professional job, can't hold office, be a church official, or even get a divorce. An unmarried woman has less rights than a horse here."

"Yep, it's crazy, all right, but it's also a secure system. It may be a waste and it may be wrong, but it works, just like the old Church system worked and like many of the crazy Fluxlands work. And, you got to think of the pragmatic side. Old Adam's system is really insidious, just like the old Church's."

"Huh? What do you mean?"

"Well, think about it. Now, say you're a woman who feels this system's unfair, and there are probably lots of them. Lousy husband, or maybe you're bored or ambitious or whatever. So what can you do about it? Move out? Now what? If you take anything at all the husband can charge theft and they'll be out to hunt you down. Bitch to others? If anybody hears you who doesn't agree, you'll get charged with blasphemy and they'll send you to one of their conditioning clinics and you'll come back in six months or so a true believer ready to turn in your own daughters. You can't even hide it for very long, since those church meetings are required. I saw one once. They shoot questions at you so fast you don't have time to think, you have to answer automatically. Answer wrong, and the whole group turns on you so they aren't singled out. The husband's notified, and penalized, and is expected to discipline you. After a while, the only way to keep from getting caught in that trap is to start totally believing in everything and its rightness and purging all doubts and discontent from your mind. It's a technique taken from the old Holy Mother Church's method of indoctrinating novice priestesses, but I hear from folks studying the old records that it's a lot older than that. Works just as good on men, too, as some of the Anchors up north are proving."

"
Sheesh!
I'd pack up and sneak out and try and make the border."

"So? And what if you
did
make it? Outside of New Eden is Flux. You wind up a dugger, dead, or the slave of the first wizard you come across. You and me, we're children of Flux. We were born and raised there. We know it and its tricks and we can even use some of 'em. They can't. If you're going to make a run, you got to have a place to run to. Don't think the men got it any easier, even if they're on top."

"Huh? Seems to me that would be what you wanted to be here."

"Sure. But see over there—there's women in the field picking beans or something. Probably from a lot of farm families—they pick one, then the other. The system guarantees them the basics. Their husbands or fathers
must
provide for them. The Church makes sure you do, and those men go through their own indoctrination and reinforcement sessions. The system makes them a hundred percent responsible for all women and children in their families. All of it.
They are not allowed to fail.
If those women screw up the harvest, they're not responsible. He is. If he doesn't feed, house, and protect them even at the cost of his own life,
he
is held responsible. Hell, if his wife and daughters go off and rob a train,
he's
punished for the crime. And if his business fails, the Church will help out the women but he's left to starve in the gutter. The pressure's enormous. I've yet to meet a New Eden man who didn't have ulcers and whose hair wasn't gray while he was still relatively young. Very few of the women commit suicide—I don't think I know of one offhand. But a fair percentage of the men do."

"Some system," the younger man noted dryly.

"Yeah. Yet there are folks, men and women both, who know the score and yet beg, borrow, or steal some stringer or friendly wizard to get 'em here. If you're willing to accept the system as a price, there's still land to homestead here, protected from all wizardly magic and capricious Fluxlords and Anchor civil wars—stability and security. New Eden has contracts with the Guild to bring anyone here who wants to come, you know, and their missionaries have converted an Anchor or two far from here."

The younger man nodded glumly and sighed. "Seems like we never learn. We get rid of one bad system, then trade it for another one that's even worse."

"People will swap liberty for security every time, son. Right now old World's just living through a period like our ancestors did back on Earth long ago. Maybe still do, for all we know. We had it easy all those centuries, 'cause everybody traded for the same system and it worked. Now folks are trading for other systems that also work but are both equally unpleasant and mutually antagonistic. That's how bloody revolutions and wars come, and that always feeds the largest and strongest no matter how ugly it is. Somehow, I think Coydt knew that and planned it this way. He's laughing at us from someplace in Hell. By God, sometimes I wish I believed in this reincarnation business. It'd be real justice if he was reborn as one of those New Eden girls, now wouldn't it?"

"Yeah, but I never put much stock in that stuff myself. Who cares if we
are
reincarnated if we don't know it and can't remember our old selves? Might as well be dead, since without memory you're dead anyway. As you're fond of saying, there ain't no more justice in the world than in a crap game."

"Yep. Life's a crap shoot, but it's more of a poker game. You play the cards you have, and if you're good enough you'll win even if you were dealt shit. Win, that is, until you meet a better player than you. Most folks are bad players or never try the game. I learned long ago that the bulk of humanity are born victims, and no matter what you do they keep running back to being victims again."

The younger man looked at the old one seriously for a moment. "Seems to me with that attitude you might as well just stop and blow your brains out."

"Uh uh. Son, I been killed twice, once for real, and the cards kept coming back good. The purpose of life is to play the hands. You don't fold when you're holding aces, and you sure as hell don't quit the game when it hasn't beat you. One of these days I'll meet the one who's better than me, but not yet. If I check out now, I'll never find out what they're like."

"Grandpa, you sure got a sick outlook on life."

"Maybe. But I'm still here."

The young man's tone changed and he pointed forward. "Riders up ahead."

"I saw 'em. Most likely a patrol. Yeah. Look real smart in their shiny leather uniforms, don't they?"

They did not speed up to meet the oncoming riders, but let them come to them. The patrol consisted of a dozen men, all clean-shaven, muscular, and handsome, almost like a recruiting poster. They certainly didn't look very routine, though; while the officer wore a traditional revolver, the rest had submachine guns in their saddle holsters and a few appeared to have some of the new laser pistols as sidearms as well.

The old man nodded casually. "Morning, Lieutenant," he said pleasantly.

"Morning, gentlemen. I don't remember seeing either of you in these parts before. May I have your serial numbers and travel permits, please?"

"We're registered guests, Lieutenant, not citizens, but here are our papers." Both he and the younger man produced small packets in neat squared envelopes and handed them over. Neither could miss the fact that the two men in the rear with the clearest shots had their hands on their sidearms.

The lieutenant looked over the booklet and papers inside the first envelope. "You are James Patrick Ryan, Stringer's Guild, Retired?"

The old man nodded. "I am."

"This is not your first time here?"

"First time in a long time. I was here many years ago—during the Invasion—in the Signals service and helped on the railroad telephone project."

"Before my time," the lieutenant responded, but there was a note of respect in his voice. Very few stringers of the old man's day, and not too many even now, lived long enough to retire from the Guild. The officer opened and looked at the younger man's papers. "Rondel! Hattori Akbar of Freehold. You are of the Freehold families?"

"I am," the younger man responded.

"Freehold is to the northeast. Why are you approaching from the west?"

"Colonel Ryan is an old friend of my family who we have not seen in quite some time. There is a war breaking out now between Atram and Tambaloo which he couldn't have known about. I went to make certain he came through New Eden rather than Flux."

The officer nodded and handed back the packets.

"May I ask why all the heavy guns?" the bearded man said. "These days this is the most peaceful spot on the whole world."

"Well, sir, most of it is, but we've had real problems with these border areas of late. A lot of the settlers here have pulled out and moved south, abandoning farms and fields and even a couple of towns. There's a nasty dugger gang that's been raiding of late out of Flux. We've got a whole army division up here trying to catch them but so far it's been like chasing smoke."

"From Atram?" Ryan was surprised.

"Well, geographically. We don't have much to do with them, but they keep to their side and we keep to ours mostly.  Last few months,  though, they began to have troubles with other Fluxlands and they pulled almost all their forces north and west for that. With the attention of those wizards on that war the gentleman here spoke about, the region bordering us has become something of a no-man's land. So long as this gang doesn't rock any boats up there, nobody in Atram cares much about 'em. That gives 'em pretty free reign."

Ryan stroked his beard and thought about it. "I see. And you can't pursue into Atram because, with the war up north, they'll consider it an attack on their back and you'd face some world-class wizard power. Well, I sympathize, Lieutenant, and if we spot anything we'll get a message off."

"Well, sir, if you take my advice, if you see 'em, you hide. If they see you, fight to the death and take some of 'em with you. They're a small army, well-armed and as vicious as any wild animals. They don't just raid, they torture and mutilate. They're wild savages."

"Well, thanks, Lieutenant, we'll take precautions. I've had a lot of experience with duggers in my time, even this kind. Good luck." And, with that, the two groups parted and the pair of strangers continued on down the road.

"You heard much about this?" the older man asked the other.

"A little. Not much. You know how long it's been since I've been here. Almost as long as you. The stuff I heard, though, is pretty much the way the lieutenant there told it. Their leader's supposed to be a fellow named Borg Habib, who was a New Eden officer around the time of the Invasion who backed the wrong side in the revolt against Tilghman. Grabbed a couple of his girls and got into Flux one step ahead of the firing squad, or so it's said. Went wild out there, I guess. Word is he's not the world's brightest man, though, so he's never climbed above being a raider and a hired gun."

Ryan nodded. "I heard of him now that you mention it. He's got some brains somewhere in his band or they'd have gotten him by now. This army's a pretty good one. Somebody with fair Flux power, too. Nasty business. I wouldn't like to run into him out here."

"Let's try not to," the younger man said, and checked his gun.

For almost twenty-six hundred years a unified culture existed among the twenty-eight Anchors on World, held together by a single religion and code of laws and social conduct and isolated by fear from Flux. At the same time, those in Flux even with great personal power were somewhat limited: the massive power tended to corrupt massively as well, and none of the truly great wizards who established their own Fluxlands could be considered sane. They were tyrants, some better, some worse than others, but all limited to what one mind, no matter how powerful, could create. None of the Fluxlands tended to be larger than five hundred kilometers square and most were substantially smaller. The power of even the best of them had created an understandable egocentrism and also a sense of paranoia, for they did not wish to lose what they had. They seldom if ever cooperated or even met with each other unless to meet a common threat, and then only for the duration of the emergency.

New Eden had shaken both Flux and Anchor to its core. Civil war within the Church for decades followed by its collapse in the face of the Invasion from the stars caused a total breakdown in the Anchors. The Church collapsed when met with incontrovertible evidence that it was false, leaving no social or cultural foundation. Everyone who ever had a grievance against the Church or the system and could find adherents tried to grab power; theory contested theory, and resulted in civil wars within the various Anchors themselves. These in turn broke down the always-fragile economics and caused massive death, destruction, and starvation.