that are the rest of the Seven. Perhaps I will, after all, have to teach them the machine language so we can open the Gates. If they don’t kill us, they will be able to do anything.”
She stared at him. “You
“I know… some… of it. There are many gaps. I’m still not sure what the Soul Riders are, for example, or exactly how we came to be in this situation. But I know much. More than anyone else, certainly. I found it, in little bits and pieces over the centuries, from sorcerers I knew and some that I killed. Bit by bit I put the pieces together. I suspect that what I do not know, I lack the frame of reference to know.” He sighed. “But I’ve talked and dallied enough. Back to business.”
“What do you plan for me now?” she asked, terrified of the answer.
“Choices. I give you choices, that’s all. Despite all our efforts, your sainted friend is still at large in Anchor.”
She gasped. Where had they hid all this time?
“I’ve been sneaking around and eavesdropping on the empire outside,” he told her. “There were so many wizards that nobody noticed one more. The fools were bemoaning the fact that there was no way to selectively alter memory and personality in Flux. That
She saw where he was leading. “What would be in this binding spell?”
“Very little. You would simply remember things, but differently. I stole the idea from a Soul Rider spell, in fact. You would remember Flux, and emphasize its bad points on your life. You would not remember Spirit, or the child, or how you came to be here, but you would simply never even ask that of yourself. The conditioning you underwent would be reinforced. The events leading up to it would seem irrelevant. You would be madly in love with Captain Weiz, bear and raise his children, and support him utterly. You would be a model wife.”
She thought about it. He was certainly leaving a few things out, of course. Illiteracy, perhaps, and a mathematical ability to count using fingers. Unquestioned obedience to Weiz and servility towards all other males went without saying. She tried to imagine herself compulsively worrying over lint on the carpet and the shine on her dishes and trading recipes. On the other hand, she’d have rank, thanks to Weiz’s status, she’d have a nice place to live with all the luxuries and amenities and, alluringly, a feeling of total security for the first time in her life. She began to realize that a search for security had been the most important, perhaps the only, objective in her life the past ten years or so. She’d had adventure, travel, thrills, danger—and what did she have to show for it? Still, there was that insolent playful spirit in her, too… Or was that just a mask for what she desperately wanted and never had?
“And the alternative?”
She saw the enormous, complex spell coming, but could not dodge it or deflect it. She simply didn’t know how. In an instant, it had her.
“You remember that little picture of your old self that you forgot when we accidentally met before? Well, I found it, saved it, and dreamed up several improvements on it.”
She was still her one hundred fifty centimeters in height, but her ample breasts were now blown to huge proportions, each as thick as her thigh and going out for a full meter. Additionally, she knew she again had a male organ, but this one was impossibly fat, like a banana, and went out from her an impossible thirty centimeters. She should have fallen over, but while the breasts and penis acted as if gravity was pulling them down, it was a sidewards pull. She felt an enormous, insatiable sexual urge.
“I do so love playing with what Anchor thinks of as natural laws like gravity,” Coydt told her. “Also, I’ve redesigned the bottom so that there’s not a scrotum in the way. It’s elsewhere. You have a vagina to match the rest, and that organ is virtually prehensile, moving up and out of the way if need be. You can be like that, and I’ll just leave you to wander this little area of Flux or return to Anchor with your memories. Any man who wants you, you will submit to. Any woman alone will be powerless against you. You’ll eat garbage and love it, and you’ll be so conspicuous that you’ll never get near Spirit or the temple. Once you’re in Anchor, we’ll find some drugs and burn out your mind. A pet freak, an example for Anchor.
“Which do you choose? A happy life—or
She saw the binding spell clearly in her mind, in Spirit language, but it was far too mathematically compex for her to follow. Why not take it? she asked herself. What choice do I have?
Matson and Kasdi jumped off the horses not too far from where they had gotten them and, slapping them on the rump, rolled into the brush. The pursuers, following the hoofbeats, rode right on by as fast as they could.
Matson had been forced to discard his pack, but Kasdi still had her rifle and gun belts, and Matson still had shotgun, whip, and knife. Water would be no problem, but food would.
They made their way cautiously overland to the southwest, on the lookout for more searchers. But the searchers, it seemed, had lost the trail.
“What now?” she asked him.
For a while he didn’t answer, because he didn’t know, but soon they reached a respectable stream flowing in the direction of their travel. He stopped and thought a minute. “If this thing goes all the way to the wall, it’ll either have to empty into Flux or flood. Any big lakes in Anchor Logh?”
She thought a moment. “Not that I know of.”
“Then we’ll follow along here as best we can, all the way to the wall. If
“Well, say we can get out. What then? We can’t escape.”
“We can get into Flux, no matter how little. And in Flux you can conjure up what we need to survive. You can change into a bird—a little one, this time, like Haldayne does—and scout our positions. Even a few square meters of Flux will give us some kind of breather and help.”
More than ever, she realized how a man with almost no Flux power had survived and prospered in a world of mad wizards for so long.
There were occasional patrols, but because the search was now over a far wider and less well-defined area, it was easy to avoid them and keep to the river. They reached the wall before daylight and saw that the water flowed through a series of huge drain pipes. There seemed to be no obstacle to passage, but they knew that could be deceptive. The great concrete pipes were all filled with a constant flow of water to almost eighty percent of their area. They studied the problem, noting the lack of guards on the wall at this point, and worried.
“I’m willing to chance it,” Kasdi told him. “I can’t see how they could have screens or mesh down there without all three pipes clogging up with silt and debris. But that water is fast and deep and that’s a long tunnel. Can you swim?”
“I can, as a matter of fact. You?”
She shook her head slowly from side to side. “There was never any place or reason to learn.”
“It won’t matter,” he assured her. “That current’s so fast that it’ll have you through before you can drown. Most of the drains I’ve seen from the other side are pretty level, often at ground level and rarely more than a meter’s drop. The trouble is, the water will spread on the apron, so it might be shallow and tricky, and there might just be a canyon worn into it with a river this fast. That could make the drop really nasty.”
“What choice have we got?” she asked him. “I mean, do we climb the wall? Surely that’ll bring people running. We aren’t all
“I’d say we jump in, take our chances, and let you dry us and our powder out in Flux, not to mention fixing us up.”
She swallowed hard. “If I’m in any condition to do it. O.K. What do I do?”
“Take a breath, hold it, and jump in as close to the pipes as you can. Then hang on for dear life, and if you hit the sides, kick away.” With that he looked for signs of life, found none, and ran into the open towards the drain and jumped in. Kasdi waited a moment, summoned up her courage, and followed.
It was a nightmare that lasted only twenty seconds or so, but it seemed an eternity. Carried along, she was surrounded by endless water and total darkness and flung at high speed against a wall of the drain. She was totally
