ing at an angle to the winds, on the same level!
"Quiet, whore' slut! Usurper.' Do you think I am stupid? I
am a Princess, daughter of a god and the Storm Queen, my
mother. You are but a reflection, a distorted, ugly shadow of
my own godhood! I alone am anointed by the gods and by my
mother, who is now a Goddess above us all, to rule an
Akahlar I remake because it pleases me! What is even
Klittichorn to me now? I need only close the Maelstrom
completely, and then there will be only one, no other!"
Jesus! What a stupid, demented asshole! Sam thought,
incredulous. And yet, and yet—something in what she said.
If Klittichorn was the big brain, the guy who figured all the
angles, he must also have figured that she'd nail him at the
end of this as well. How could he stop her? Unless. . . .
The hel! with this. Where was this mad princess? There—
still on the floor, maybe ten feet from Klittichorn. And—
somebody else? Who? The battle over there seemed to be
over. Who the hell was that?
Ktittichom turned away from the portable computer, got
up, and looked straight at Boolean. The green sorcerer looked
terribly old and near exhaustion, his formerly dark hair and
beard now white, but, the fact was, while Klittichorn had fought
no battles, he didn't exactly look in peak condition himself.
"Hello, Roy," Boolean said softly. "You came very close
to pulling it off.''
"Well, Doctor Lang, I would not have had this turn out
any other way, assuming that we had to meet at all." the little
man in crimson responded. "It is fitting that you should be
here for the end."
Boolean looked up at the spinning globe. "Impressive
gadget, Roy, but I make only a quarter of the hubs gone.
Your three sorcerers are gone, and even I can't tell which
Storm Princess is which at the moment."
Klittichom chuckled. "You are weak. Doctor Lang. Too
WAR OF THE MAELSTROM
333
much has gone out of you. All you have done by this is
murder about a hundred million people instead of letting them
be transformed into something different. And that will be
sufficient for me. I did not want to murder them, but you
forced me to do so. Then I will dispose of the pitiful wreck
that is all that remains of you, then I will achieve First Rank,
and bring logic and order to this chaos as my destiny
commands."
"What do you mean, murder?"
"You see those red dots up there? Each one represents a
bomb, each scientifically worked out as to its placement,
geography, and kilotonnage to completely eradicate all life
within each of the hubs. The timers began the moment we
activated the full system. Naturally, any that we were able to
cover in the more merciful Changewind manner were trans-
formed along with the lands and people and are no more. The
rest—they will begin going off any time now. The signal has
been given, was given, the moment I had to shut down the
progression. You can not believe how long I have planned
mis, covering every eventuality, even this. Nor do I care
which little bitch is which. Either one will do."
Boolean blanched. "Roy—have you gone mad? / dishon-
ored yo«. I admit that. Perhaps in a few minutes I will pay the
price for it. I don't think 1 deserve it, but at least I can
understand how it would be justice to you. But—you're
talking about genocide, Roy! My God, would you dishonor
your own parents? Have you looked at yourself, Roy? 1 no
longer see the face of the victim, I see the face of the Khmer
Rouge there, murdering, slaughtering millions of their own.
How can you become like them, Roy? How can you give
those who murdered your family and enslaved you for so long
the final victory?"
"I reject your pitiful moralizing!" Klittichorn snapped back.
"The man you knew is no more! / have replaced him! /, in
human form, have become the incarnation of Siva, the De-
stroyer of Universes! What is done here is nothing compared
to what I do merely for sport! The girl, can you not recognize
her by her mastery of such energy as Durga, the Goddess of
Death? And your girl her other aspect. Kali? Soon we shall
combine, we two, in the Dance that Heralds the End of the
World, and lose our Earthly aspects, having done our duty,
334 Sack L. Chalker
and resume our rightful place at the left hand of Isvara
Brahman, there to witness the timeless recreation of a better
world' You see everything only with the blind eyes and
arrogant ignorance of the westerner! You who so polluted and
defiled poor Cambodia that I had to send the dark children to
wipe them out, to purge them of the west and its evil! Come!
Let us do our little dance, corrupter of souls, so that I may get
on and do mine!"
My god! He is totally mad! was the only thought Boolean
could make before the onslaught of sheer, brutal power struck
him, and the battle was joined. It was, right off, a battle he
knew he must lose, for he faced fanaticism and madness
along with brilliance and power, while he defended weakly
and from a position of guilt. No! Purge the guilt! Don't think
of Roy Lompong! Think of those bombs, those millions of
people . . . .'
The Storm Princess tightened the ring some more, although
she could sense no life forms within the Maelstrom not inside
the stage circle. Klittichom was locked in battle; the others
seemed weak, irrelevant, and not near enough to her. Her
battle was not with the likes of them, but with the Usurper
battling quite strongly from afar. No—suddenly there was one,
quite close, just opposite her. For a moment she look her
mind off the Maelstrom and looked with her eyes.
It was like looking into a mirror, and she was startled at
the sight in spite of herself. Sam was not at all startled; she
saw just what she expected to see, and she didn't like it one
bit.
"So, little decoy, they send you at last as if to frighten
me," the Storm Princess muttered between clenched teeth.
"In a way I almost feel sorry for you, as insignificant as you
are."
Sam smiled grimly at her and began walking slowly towards
her. Their eyes met, and there was something in Sam's eyes
that suddenly caused doubt, even fear, inside the thoughts of
the Storm Princess. She took a step back as Sam continued to
advance, oblivious of the Maelstrom around them.
"Mother protect me!" the Storm Princess muttered. "You're
not the decoy.' You're. . . ."
Back around the side of the great spinning globe, Sam
pressed on and the Storm Princess retreated. They made a
335
WAR OF THE MAELSTROM
' quarter of the circuit, and then the Princess found her back to
die wizard's battle and stopped, with no way out except
.."through the storm, and that would be no out. The storm and
,jts most terrifying effects were as nothing to either of them.
But what lay beyond now? Not the building, certainly, and
possibly not the mountains, either. Cold. no matter what, for
that would require changing the whole planet's position and
tilt to alter, but what? A chasm hundreds of feet deep? A
glacier? Some alien horror?
Sam knew now what she had to do. "We must touch,
sister. You know what that does? It cancels us both out. We
' cease to exist, to the betterment of this and many other
worlds, maybe. I ain't afraid no more, 'cause it'll mean
something. Nothin' 1 ever done or hoped to do ever really
meant somethin' before." She stepped forward, and the Storm
Princess looked panicky for a way out.
Suddenly something snakelike seemed to come out of no-
where and wrap itself around the Storm Princess's throat. It
wasn't hard enough to strangle her, having partly caught the
collar, but it surprised and held her, and she was pulled with
some force to a strangely familiar dark shape just beyond.
So sudden was the whole action that it startled Sam and
stopped her dead in her tracks, only a few feet from the
Princess. She stared, confused, and then saw who it was.
"Boday! What the hell . . . ?"
Boday had slipped the whip off the confused woman's neck
but held her now in a sort of wrestling grip, forcing the Storm
Princess's mouth open and her head back, and then stuffing a
small vial into her mouth. The Princess swallowed it involun-
tarily, then cried out and sank, unconscious, to the cement
floor of the stage area. Boday bent down, picked her up, and
grinned at Sam.
"Don't you worry about her," Boday said with a smile.
"She'll never do anybody any harm again. Let me past and
you go help out Boolean. 1 think he's losing bad. Just remem-
ber when it's done to leave me a way out of here!"
She stepped back and let Boday go by to the far side of the
globe, confused as hell but not questioning it.
She was at Klittichom's back, but she could easily tell that
he knew she was there and also that he was winning. In fact,
the magical sight was a sea of crimson, with only a small
336 Jack L. Chalker
glow of green left that was even now contracting more and
more.
"Soon he'll be smaller than me," she heard Cromil's
amused voice near her. She turned, furious, and a wisp of
Changewind lashed out from the Maelstrom like Boday's
whip and caught the little creature dead on. He screamed and
then vanished into the storm, whether dead or simply ban-
ished back to his own strange universe she couldn't know.
Still, her fury had caused that, and without even thinking
about it. She turned again and brought just the nearest side of
the Maelstrom wall inwards, touching but not harming her,
and engulfing the brightly shining orange mass.
Klittichom, an inch from victory, seemed to sense it and
suddenly whirled. "No! Not yet!" he screamed, and it was
on him. She held it there, just where it was, then rolled it
back to see if she had caught anything but the sorcerer in the
mess. Where Klittichom had stood was now a mass of solid
ice. Pink ice. If it was random, it was certainly appropriate.
Just beyond was the little left of the stage area, and on it lay a
green robe, collapsed like an old rag doll.
She rushed over to him, heedless of the cold, almost
slipping on the ice, and bent down. He looked horrible, more
like that walking skeleton he'd faced down outside than any-
thing like the man he'd been. Still, as she could see by the
very tiny glow still within him, he was not dead yet, but he
was dying and he knew it. Still, somehow, he saw her or
senses her, and he tried to speak.
"A-bombs," he gasped, sounding like a voice from beyond
the grave. "He put A-bombs in all the hubs he didn't change!"
She looked up at the globe, still incredibly spinning around
on its theoretical axis. "Is there any way 1 can get rid of
them? There's still a lot of Changewind energy here."
"Not focused," he managed. "Need the others. No way
out. Yobi . . . gone. Etanalon . . . gone. I go now myself.
Millions will die. . . . Horrible nuclear waste. . . .He thought
... he was . . . already ... a god."
"Oh, my god!" she breathed, and then something snapped
inside her. "No, damn it! Don't you die on me now, you
bastard! Join me! Join me in the Wind!"
She let it wash over them as she clung tightly to him, but
this time she didn't ward off its force. "Join with it," she
WAR OF THE MAELSTROM 337
told him softly. "Join me and join with it. Mate with me and
die Wind!" And she kissed his skull of a face and picked his
brittle body up and clung tightly to it.
She held his pitiful shell in passionate embrace, a passion
she did not feel but knew somehow was not really necessary,
and let the wind take them both, melding them together
within the Maelstrom. She felt the clothing dissolve, their
very bodies seem to melt and meld into new forms, and she
felt him understand and accept her and she accept him, and
together they merged with each other and with the wind.
Her mind and his mind exploded and joined, creating
something new, something unique, something great, but some-
thing only her half could shape. It was all so clear to Her
now! Everything!
And the irony was that Klittichorn's pitiful, mad dream of
godhood would not have been his to claim, but that of the
Storm Princess, who alone was the Shaper of What Was. It
was the feminine who gave birth, even to gods.
In Sam's own, simplistic way, she had guessed the key.
Chaos created gods and goddesses like snowflakes, each dif-
ferent, each unique, each the protector as well as the ultimate
tuler of their worlds. But even that was a random process,
the fifty million monkeys creating into infinity produced not
me works of Shakespeare but a system by which the man and the
works might be created. But not every snowflake was perfect,
and not every copy of Shakespeare was, either. In some
worlds, perhaps for physical reasons—perhaps for no particu-
lar reason but chance—the process had stopped short of the
final creation. Stability had been achieved, regulation estab-
lished, short of local godhood.
There the elements had not merged, the opposites that
created. The being with the power to call the Winds had to
mate with the being who could command them, and the two
had to merge with the wind and become something newer and
greater than any of the three. How early had it been, in the
other planes? In the trees or in the oceans, perhaps? Simpler
gods for simpler times and more rational development.
But not just any god would do. It had to be a fusion of
opposites, the cerebral and emotional, the male and the fe-
male, the old and the young, and countless other variables
and elements had to merge. This did not necessarily make a
338 Jack L. Chalker
perfect local god, nor even a great or wise one, but the
patterns created by the order formed from the creation out of
Chaos did not mandate that.
Akahlar had been created out of that first great explosion,
but not as it was now, nor even the way the others had been
formed at the time. It had been a vast, empty place upon
which the other realities, the other universes close at hand,
had fallen, compressed by the pull of the Seat of Probability
after the great explosion's force had passed. Its compressed
and compacted state had ground out the nulls and created the
overlaps with countless worlds around the few untouched
areas, the hubs, and it had been populated from the outplanes