hend, and being treated as an equal, at least for social pur-
poses, by that man was something she hadn't really thought
she'd ever experience again. It little mattered that he came
from a world which had known far more wars and experi-
enced even more tyranny than hers—whose last major war,
except a few banana republic ones, was the one against the
Germans and Japanese. Or that had apparently successfully
somehow torn its way from England in revolution back in the
Seventeen Hundreds sometime and as a result had had to fight
a bloody civil war over slavery in the middle Eighteen Hun-
dreds instead of being forced to obey the British abolition
back in the Thirties, and had something called a Congress
instead of a parliament.
But by their common times there were more similarities
than differences. She knew Einstein and MIT and Cal Tech,
and there were a lot more similarities than differences be-
tween them now from her point of view. He was no more out
of touch with rock and roll, or TV stars, or fashion than
anybody else who'd been stuck here and out of touch for
thirty years.
But that did bring up the question of just how he had come
to be here.
When Lompong had vanished along with all his project and
a lot of technicians and army people and the like, there had
been consternation. The only man who might decipher
Lompong's work and figure it out was Lang.
Lang himself was fascinated with the result when he was
told of it by high security people and couldn't resist. How-
238
Jack L. Chalker
ever, white there were gigabytes of material in Lompong's
computer areas, how it all tied together was a mystery.
Worse, thanks to his experience with Lang. some key mate-
rial, perhaps the key material, was'encoded in a way even
Lompong's bosses didn't know about. Not until they tried to
break it and wound up activating an insidious set of computer
"viruses" (hat began to systematically destroy not only all
the data but the entire data base series of the Livennore
computer system, right down to the payroll information and
budget trackers. There were backups, of course, but they had
now destroyed two and had only one left. Lang looked but
could not touch, even though he pointed out that data that was
so highly protected was useless anyway unless the scheme
was cracked. No deal. One had to remain—and that was the
way it was.
Still, while nobody really knew how Lompong's mind
worked, Lang had the closest idea, and he was able to do a
lot of work, laboriously, interpolating from papers, conversa-
tions from associates not swallowed up in the "incident,"
and the disparate data bases you could use without the data
being eaten. It was fascinating; so much so that he was on
long leave from MIT and working full time on it. After three
years, he thought he'd gotten at least the general idea behind
what his old pupil was trying to do, and he was taking a
break, driving to Las Vegas for a conference there—Boolean,
it appeared, had no trouble with flying saddles but never liked
airplanes—and it happened.
"It was late but I was feeling good, and driving always
cleared my mind and got out my frustrations,''he reniinisced. "It
happened very suddenly and at about seventy-five miles an
hour. One moment 1 was on the Interstate, the next thing I
knew I was surrounded by pitch dark and I had the damndest
feeling 1 was falling, only slowly. I slowed to a stop, which
did nothing, opened the window, and got the dry air of the
maelstrom, although I didn't know it then. I opened the door,
looked down. and closed it again and just stayed there, scared
to death. I don't know what I thought—that maybe I'd crashed
and was going to hell in an automobile or something. It went
on and on and on, and then I landed, not hard but with a
bump that bounced the shocks all to creation and me with it,
and suddenly I'm sitting on solid ground surrounded by the
WAR OF THE MAELSTROM 239
damndest fog you ever saw right up to the door handles.
Fog—in Nevada! Well, I knew 1 wasn't in Nevada and the
only way to find out where was to drive there."
"You came down in a null? But I thought Changewinds
didn't cross nulls."
"They don't, but the weak spots gravitate there before they
dissipate, sometimes hours, or even days, later, so you always
land down in a null, just as you did. it has a lot to do with
magnetic fields but I think you'd need a lot more classroom
before 1 could explain it to you. At any rate, I drove a while,
and finally I saw the lights of a border crossing and drove
right to it, and became the first, and to my knowledge, only
individual ever to drive up to the Masalurian or any other
entry station. I think the two guys on duty there were more
terrified than I was. Naturally, I didn't know Akhbreed and
they didn't know English, but they decided that the car had to
be the product of a powerful sorcerer, so they treated me
nice, gave me some wine and chocolates out of their own
lunches, and sent word to the Chief Sorcerer in a hurry. The
adepts at least knew there'd been a Changewind in the colo-
nies the night before and figured some outplaner had been
caught and they were right. Karl was an old Prussian from
some world that I was never quite sure about, and my Ger-
man wasn't great but it was passable, and that's how I
started on the road to becoming the great and powerful Wiz-
ard of Oz."
"Hold it," Dorion put in. "Even / know enough to know
that the odds of you just happening on a Changewind that far
up the outplane is about like the odds of all of us being
carried off by giant moths."
"Slimmer. I didn't just 'happen' into it, though. Appar-
ently Roy had an even easier time of it here than I did at the
start and be figured out the system in record time. Most
important, he knew more about the Changewinds than they
did here—here they were scared silly of them, since it was
the one random event over which the spells had no control or
effect. I know that some of his party and most of his equip-
ment was smashed when he got here—and the rest was
useless because of a lack of power—but he'd saved his
portable computer, and he knew the mathematics of magic
better than anybody, having independently reinvented it in
240 Jack L. Chalker
what seemed to have been a streamlined and vastly improved
version. He went after me, Dorion. Who knows how many
nets he cast before he got me? How many disasters and
disappearances and freak weather he caused before he finally
figured out how to nail me exactly? He wanted me here, with
him the master now, and me the cowering subject. It didn't
turn out that way, though, first because it's tough to guide the
maelstrom in the outplane and have any control over where
the weak point drifts, shifts, and gyrates here. You can even
shift weak points and come out in the wrong spot. 1 did that
deliberately with Sam and you, Charley; Klittichom did it by
accident with me. And Karl was much too strong for him to
take on right men, particularly since Roy hadn't made any
friends here, either. Again, too strong too fast."
"He learned, though," Dorion noted.
"Oh, yes. He plays the social and political game better
than I ever could now. In fact, he has a much higher tolerance
for what passes for intellect here than I do, and no real
aversion to the system he sees. He doesn't care, so long as
he's on top. Twice he'd been thwarted by mastering the
technical and ignoring me social and cultural requirements;
he's not about to get stung a third time. Underneath, though,
be hates them—he hates all of them who don't acclaim him as
a virtual god, as two-bit hacks like Rutanibir do. The Akhbreed
system must revolt him; every time he saw it in action he must
have flashed back to his own childhood under the terror
regime. It finally occurred to him that he survived then by
playing the tyrant's games until opportunity presented itself.
Now he's played the Akhbreed and sorcerer's Guild like a
well-tuned orchestra. There's only one person he really fears
in all creation, and that's the man who cheated him twice. To
him, I'm the only man who could possibly cheat him a third
time—and he's right. But the deck's so stacked I'm not
certain, even if everything now goes right, that I can do it. 1
only know I've got to try."
"Not much chance of an all-out attack on everybody now,
is there?" Dorion asked hopefully. "I mean, consider the
losses here. A lot of the colonials aren't going to be too
thrilled about signing up with him after word of this gets
around."
"You mistake him, then," Boolean responded. "He doesn't
WAR OF THE MAELSTROM
241
care about this rebellion, and he's no liberator. He's had to
play that game as well to keep them loyal, and get the men
and materiel he needed, and to keep the loyalty of the Storm
Princess. But that child, when born, will screw him up roy-
ally. If he doesn't get Sam, he won't wait, army or no army,
position or no position. He'll simply convince his people that
all is ready whether it is or not, and if he wants something
passionately he can do it. Take out the hubs and the majority
of Second Rank sorcerers and let the rebellion come later,
that's all. The Akhbreed can never hold die colonies if they
don't hold the hubs anyway. He really doesn't care."
"Then—what is his real motive?" Charley wanted to know.
"I've caught up with him. I think, and collected most or
all of my wrong assumptions about his work. I got into his
maelstrom and got you out and I managed to trigger the burst
eariy on your world so you'd be sucked down in the center
instead of destroyed. I think 1 know more about how this
whole thing works than anybody alive except Roy himself,
and that's the trouble. Klittichom is an ancient Khmer deity
from the pre-Buddhist days. one of many but a powerful one.
He took me name, I'm convinced, not as a mark of humor.
since he has none himself, nor out of nostalgia, either. Count-
less sorcerers have died or been horribly mutilated and de-
stroyed going for the First Rank. The best have been sucked
down through the netheihells to the Seat of Probability itself,
where they have been crushed in a universe that could possi-
bly fit in a sand bucket. I think Roy has cracked it. 1 think he
may be the only mind capable of cracking it. I think the
destruction of the hubs and the release of massive Changewind
power, enough power, possibly, to destroy or transform beyond
any recognition not only Akahlar but possibly the outplanes
as well, as part of a plan. A careful, premeditated plan. There
was always a touch of the Oriental mystic in him. He seemed
upset that his own theories seemed to preclude any need for
any gods at all.
"I think he wants to rewrite the bottom line. I think he
wants to fill in the gap and redo me cosmos to his own
designs. I think he's convinced he's found me way to the
First Rank and the replacement of pure chaos with a true
regulating governor. Having been convinced that there are no
gods, he now intends to supply at least one. And if you want
242 Jack L Chalker
to know what kind that would be, well, all I know about
Klittichom the god is what he told us in conversations long
ago about his ancient culture, and, as I remember it, Klittichorn
was a god of absolutes not easily appeased, and human
sacrifice was clearly part of his requirements."
"Jesus!" Charley swore.
"Uh-huh, but if you need more motivation, consider this.
It appears that the detachment of Khmer Rouge soldiers, who
tortured and murdered his parents in front of him and kept
him for over a year in a slave labor battalion, were composed
mostly, or entirely, of young women, many if not most mere
teenagers. He always exhibited a great deal of hostility towards
women, and we weren't sure what was going on inside him.
Unless he's mellowed, which I doubt, it must eat his guts out
to have to play up to the Storm Princess. The conventional
explanation around Princeton was that his experiences had
made him a confirmed homosexual, but there were those who
saw such hostility in him that they, mused that he had the
potential to explode in a different direction. Possibly as a
rapist or serial killer of young women or something even
more creative. It's a curious pathology, a mixture of hatred
and fear. You can understand, I think, what it must mean to
him that a young woman is his greatest threat, and yet that
fear level is such that it might well explain why you two kept
slipping from his grasp- I don't think he's exploded yet. I
think he's tried to make himself an automaton, to even be-
lieve he's above sex and emotions of any sort. But—imagine
if he attains First Rank, Charley. Not a god, but Roy Lompong
with the powers of a god. What will keep him from exploding
then?"
10
Reunions
IT WAS RAINING out. It was usually raining out, at least half the
tune, between the jungle and the sea, and it didn't really
bomer her mat much. She really didn't feel much like doing
anything these days except lying around; keeping house for
the boys was more than enough work for her, and if she really
needed help she could shoot a simple Hare and have one of
the other wives run to her.
The place was as clean and straight as she could make it.
She prided herself on doing it all each day, if only to prove to
herself and to others that she was still capable of things. You
had to keep at it; with the mud and constant dampness, any
missed spots would be seized as high ground by mold and
fungi and general jungle rot. At least now she understood
why the people who were native to jungle areas hadn't ever
bothered with much in the way of clothes or the like and had
lived in simple huts of grass and bamboo. The forces of the
living jungle, fed by the constant beat and humidity, attacked
almost anything vulnerable.
And things were pretty loose here. The boys had one set of
stock clothes apiece which they kept in a sealed trunk and put
oa just for important visitors, and they'd worn them that first
day, but now things had gotten loose again and, frankly, the
village was basically a nudist colony, which suited her just