Empires of Flux & Anchor

up into trees and eat fruit. I think maybe you’re holding onto her. You never had her, and now that you do, you just don’t want to let her go.”

Kasdi sighed. “Maybe you’re right—but my concerns are real.”

Suzl thought a moment. “It’s been a long time. Has she seen her family? I mean, the folks that raised her?”

“No. Most can’t come; the rest won’t go into Flux.”

“O.K., then. That’s our next destination anyway. We’re sidebar stringing for Laconner through this cluster.” A sidebar stringer was a junior in the trade who had not yet earned enough to have his or her own route or had not found a wizard as a client and sponsor. They ran mini-trains off the main one, allowing the stringer with business to bypass less profitable stops while still serving them. “Let us take her with us to Anchor Logh to see her folks. If it works out, fine. If it doesn’t, well, at least we’ll know who’s right.”

Kasdi considered it, and felt curiously reluctant to go along with it, although Suzl’s logic was impeccable. She kept trying to come up with reasons not to permit it, but stopped after a moment. Perhaps they’re right, she thought guiltily. Maybe I am just trying to hold on to her. “All right. But. you bring her back here with a progress report before going elsewhere.”

“Fair enough.”

“Uh—Suzl?”

“Yeah, Cass?”

“How much is Mervyn paying Ravi to do all this?”

She chuckled. “Not much. Just a good lead on a possible sponsor for an independent train.”

“I thought so. All right, then. If she’s willing, go with my blessings.”

Suzl turned to Spirit, who had lost interest and was studying the wrinkled skin of the fruit with absolute fascination. Suzl hesitated to interrupt her for a moment, wondering just what the girl was seeing that was so interesting, but she tapped Spirit’s shoulder and the girl looked up. Suzl backed away and made out in mime, Would you like to go with us?

The girl’s reaction was pure joy and excitement, and she even did a little dance to indicate her desire. She definitely wanted out, and the sooner the better.

Kasdi gave up. The reaction was too deep to ignore.

Ravi had to return to the train to work out his routings so that they could still make their stops and relink with the main train on schedule, but Suzl remained for a while with Kasdi.

“I can tell you’re less than thrilled with Ravi,” she commented. “I’m trying not to judge. You have to live your own life.”

“You’ve been isolated from the real world a long time, Cass. You live here with the Church, and with your powers you don’t think twice about skipping along in the void. I don’t have any Flux powers, remember. I’m just a dugger, and so if I want to travel and live my life, I need protection, and that means compromising.”

“He’s not a major wizard, but he has some real power,” Kasdi noted. “You know he has some personal spells on you.”

Suzl shrugged. “I figured as much. He was born into the trade, and they don’t believe in using Flux power to change themselves. It’s against their code. Fix up, heal, yeah, but nothing more. So he was real short for a guy, and kind of frail, and he grew up worshipping those big hunks. If he didn’t have the power, he couldn’t be in this business. The stringers don’t have much respect for guys who like guys or girls who like girls, so when we crossed paths, I was what he needed. I’m a woman who was what he wants. He’s a stringer with the power and I need that. We’re kind of loose. I can do most anything I want.”

“It wasn’t just fat that grew those unnatural breasts.”

“Sure. But that power also gave me the back and muscle support, so it doesn’t bother me. Same with my other self, which is also not proportional. But, you see, I like it this way—all of it. I’m a dugger, Cass, and there’s a lot worse ways than mine for duggers to be that are no fun at all. So I work as his foreman and play at being his wife, and I got no worries in Flux. I’m not in love with the little wimp, but if you have to be owned by somebody, there are worse people to be owned by and not many better.”

Kasdi sighed. “I suppose you’re right. Perhaps I am too insulated from the real world. From here, surrounded by devout women and looking over maps showing the spread of the Church, it’s easy to forget that so little has really changed. You really don’t like to think of things that way.”

“People stay people, with all the good and all the bad. Things have changed for the better. The Flux is safer, the Anchors better run, and there’s a whole new sense of learning in both places—it’s good what you did. You don’t see that dull look in people’s eyes so much anymore, the idea that this is what is and what will be. You gave ’em a future, a sense of change that excites ’em. But Flux is still Flux and power is still power. Short of making everybody into slaves, you’re not going to change the way people are, and if you did that, then why bother?”

Sister Kasdi sighed. “Maybe you’re right. It’s funny—you’re maybe the only one I can tell this to, but I have doubts. Lots of doubts all the time. I wonder if I’m doing the right thing. I wonder if all this is real or just some false wizardry, self-delusion. Is this really the Holy Mother’s will, or am I just another Fluxlord with too big ambitions kidding myself along? I don’t know. When you have this kind of power, both political and Flux, it’s impossible to tell your own delusions from what’s real. You know, sometimes I envy Spirit. No worries, no cares, no responsibilities. And I get the idea she knows what’s true and real far better than I.”

“You’re better than you think you are,” Suzl told her. “The old boy is right about one thing, though. You left yourself nothing but work and worry and responsibility. No fun, no vacations, no way to just let loose and relax. I couldn’t have stood it this long, but if you don’t figure out a way to take a breather, it’ll eventually crack even you. All that’s bottled up inside of you with no way to get out. If it becomes too much, it’ll explode.”

“I know, I know. If you think of an answer to it all, let me know. In the meantime—take good care of her, Suzl.”

“That’s one worry you shouldn’t have.”

The big, hairy, muscular man was playing cards in the Gotron Saloon in Anchor Fhaxtrod when a younger man came in and caught his eye. The big man played out his hand, and won, then excused himself from the game and went into a back room with the newcomer.

“Well?”

“Not much. As near as we can figure out, there was no way that wound didn’t mean nearly instant death. Nobody on the scene had any doubts at all. Still, when the stringers sorted out their dead, his body wasn’t there. It was never found, although that’s not unusual. There was that tremendous spell from the girl and a lot of confusion and there are always a lot of missing.”

“And Jomo?”

“He showed up in Globbus a couple of weeks later and got all the survivors together, paid ’em off and disbanded it. Most of the other duggers signed on with other trains, but he didn’t. Stayed in Globbus for several months, then went up north in the wild, settled down, and got a job as a bouncer in a saloon in Tregia, one of those dugger’s haven Fluxlands. He’s real smart about some things, almost retarded in others, kind of like a good trained animal. Real faithful to his boss, but not any boss will do. I’m convinced, though, that he couldn’t possibly have thought up anything like this. Everybody thinks that he thinks it’s really Matson, so he’s back on the job.”

Coydt van Haaz scratched his chin a moment. “So somebody changed themselves into Matson, somebody who knew him well enough to impersonate him eighteen years later so exactly that he can fool even somebody close to Matson like Jomo, then hunts up the big dugger and goes gunning for me. I don’t buy it, Yorek. It doesn’t ring true. Still, if Matson had somehow lived, where’s he been all these years? He’s a false wizard—he has no real powers. Can somebody like that just up and give up the stringer trade that was his life, leave all that credit wealth behind, and, even transformed by somebody with power, just take up another life and not betray himself all that time? Even if he could, he’s too in touch with today. He knows the present stringer codes and exactly which people to talk to and where they are. That’s not somebody even the stringers consider long dead. Either way, none of it fits.”