05. Children of Flux and Anchor (10 page)

The whole city seemed plunged into total darkness, but out in the southwest, in the direction of the Sea, the whole horizon was ablaze with light. No matter what her own situation, she stood transfixed for a moment by the sight. The entire carnival area where she'd spent the whole afternoon and most of the evening was in flames! From the glow, although highlighted by the lack of city power, it was an
enormous
blaze. Had it happened just two hours earlier, she knew, it would have killed thousands.

She wasn't sure just what to do next. Verdugo was right about the children being hostages. If she escaped,
they
would go through his Flux chambers in her place, if only for revenge. That was the way these mean and petty men thought. It was simply not possible to consider abandoning them, even though it would be for the greater good of World. It was just not in her makeup. Still, it was a golden opportunity for her, a stroke of pure luck. Matson and Dell might already be at Vishnar's. Even if they weren't, or were off watching the fire as men would, the kids would be there. It was fifty-one kilometers or so to the Flux border. Not an easy ride, particularly for five dead-tired and confused kids. Still, there were forests to the southeast, places to hide in that weren't on the track they would expect her to take.

She took a look around and gasped again. There was fire in the southwest, too! And in several other places! It looked like somebody was trying to set the whole city ablaze!

Guardian, I'd love to have vou now,
she thought desperately. But, right now, she'd settle for a horse and at the moment the center city was the quiet and still eye of the hurricane. At least she knew her way. She kicked off her shoes and began to run as fast as she could. Fluxgirls had weak arms but real strong legs.

It was close to three in the morning when Matson and Rondell entered the city and made for Vishnar's estate. They were all in, and their mounts were no better, but having been close enough to actually see the telltale glow of massive fires, they could not bring themselves to halt even for a rest.

Still, it took the better part of another hour to make it up to Vishnar's place. Cities were not designed to be pitch-dark, and modern cities were mazes when they weren't designed for primitive ways.

The massive estate, too, was in total darkness, although it was not in flames, which was a great relief to them both. They went up the long approach drive, jumped down, then Matson put up a hand. "Get your gun," he said quietly.

Rondell did as instructed, but asked, "What's the problem?"

"That front door's wide open."

"Maybe they all just rushed out to help with the fires."

"Yeah, well, I think there's an arm on the floor just inside it. Bring the torches, but don't light 'em."

Cautiously, they approached the house, one on each side of the door. At a nod, Matson entered and dropped, and almost fell over the body of a Fluxgirl. He picked himself up, and stood there in the darkness, just listening. Then he reached back out and took one of the electric torches from Rondell, who continued his outside guard. Matson deftly switched it on and rolled it along the entryway at the same time. It didn't roll very far, but there also was no reaction to it from inside the dark house.

"Come on in," he whispered, "but be careful."

Matson picked up the torch and stepped into the entry hall. He wanted some light now, but he approached each doorway as if something lethal lurked on the other side of it. There wasn't, but there were bodies everywhere. A few men, a lot of women, none holding a weapon. Several seemed in death to have surprise frozen on their faces. Others were shot in the back and hadn't even known who or what hit them. Most were nude. The men, they noted, also had their balls cut off.

They examined the bodies. "Not warm," Rondell noted. "Some early stages of
rigor mortis,
but not much. I'd say an hour, maybe two."

Matson nodded. "The staff here was so big and changed so much they probably didn't even know everybody on it. Only reason there are so many dressed is that they probably got back late from the carnival. I'd say they hit just about exactly at midnight. Torched the carnival, probably with incendiary bombs, and blew the main power transformers. Set a bunch of other random incendiaries, too. Put the whole damned city in the dark in the middle of the night and drew everybody off in every single direction but this one."

"Then this was the target?"

"Almost certainly. There were only fifty or sixty of 'em. Figure half of 'em were needed to make sure all the diversions got done, and most of the rest went after whatever it is they were after. The few remaining got in the house and methodically finished everybody off. Who'd ever suspect some shy, demure little Fluxgirl?"

"My god! Suzl and the kids!

Matson straightened up. "Yeah," he breathed, and they continued looking.

Vishnar was in the study, fully clothed. He'd apparently been going over something, although whatever it was was now gone. They had surprised him, of course, like the rest, although they hadn't killed him at first.

"Looks like they shot his limbs and then castrated him while he was still alive and kicking," Rondell noted, getting sick.

"Notice they're all laser pistol shots," Matson pointed out. "Real quiet. They might have finished off most of the help before they ever disturbed the old boy, since he looks like he didn't go quiet. Did it with one of his ornamental swords. Well, he's better off dead. He would never have been able to recover from the sight of pretty little Fluxgirls with laser pistols and swords doing in men and women alike. Probably refused to accept it even as they were killing him."

They made their way through the rest of the enormous house. Most had died in bed. Clearly the house had been terrorized before the diversions had started. "Probably needed the lights to make sure they got everybody," Matson guessed.

Many of the upstairs rooms were unoccupied. They found one and recognized Suzl's bag, but there was no sign of a body. Back down, they finally discovered where the children had stayed. They entered the room, but found no bodies. Although relieved, they were puzzled.

"What the
hell
was this all about?" Rondell wanted to know.

"I can tell you," said a voice behind them.

They whirled, guns up, electronic torches pointed.

"Suzl! My God, girl! I almost
killed
you!" Matson said, relief breaking in his voice.

She ran to them, sobbing uncontrollably for several minutes. They finally got her outside into the air and she did her best to get control of herself. Ultimately, her story came out.

"Everybody was already dead when I got here," she told them, quickly explaining why she hadn't been home in the first place. "My only thought was the children, and I entered through the back entrance there and didn't find anybody. I went up into the main house, couldn't see a thing, tripped over the first two bodies, and got back here. I was going to leave to see what I could do when I heard them out back. They were still here."

"Why did security take you in?" Matson asked her.

"It's what
they
came for. They were so afraid I was a security leak and all the time lots of others knew it." Quickly, she told them about the alien craft and Vishnar's scientists' discovery.

Matson gave a low whistle. "Yeah, that explains a lot. Maybe all of it. But how the hell could they move that flying top? Damn thing must have weighed forty or fifty tons."

"They didn't. Vishnar's men had gutted it long ago. I could see that much. It wasn't anything from the ship that they had. They just built it from what they learned. I never saw it. I don't know what it looks like, how big it is, or anything about it except that it was built in the labs out back and Vishnar said it worked. He was going to show it off to the New Eden brass next week. Big test."

"Makes sense," Rondell said. "They used the carnival to infiltrate, and they cut the timing so close they minimized the chance of any run-in with the law and registrations. They had to act now, because it would be moved under army security to an area near Flux any time now and they'd have had to fight an army to get it. Longer and it'd be out of here and being mass-produced by the New Eden brass."

"Suzl—you said they were still here. Did you see them?" Matson asked.

She nodded. "Some. They all looked like Fluxgirls in the dark. Is that
possible
?"

"It's how they did it. Now—this is important. Did you see them get away?"

"No. I only heard them. There's a separate road over there and the view's blocked by trees. Whatever it was it was big and made a powerful amount of machine noise."

Matson stroked his beard. "A lorry."

"A what?"

"Lorry. We have to keep up with things in New Eden or the Guild will be at a bad disadvantage. There aren't too many built yet, but it's like a big wagon only it has an engine instead of horses. They run them off some kind of alcohol they distill from corn, if you can believe it. They're big and noisy and not very practical, but they can carry tons of stuff. I guess it was here to help move the gadget or whatever it was, and they used it for just that—before the guard was on. Damned if I know how they managed to drive it, though, or even turn it on. It's a complicated contraption. It's something they got from the old engineering books. It's not anything in any program you can call up in Flux."

"Maybe they had practice—or help," Rondell replied.

"Some folks had to be in on this in advance—planning and finding out the schedules and everything."

Matson nodded. "Might have been as simple as four or five Fluxgirls down south where they have several of these lorries overwhelming a mechanic with sexy charm.
Ooooh! Neat! Will you take us for a ride? Please? Huh? Oh, you steer it like that. Can I squeeze over and try?
Then she's sitting in his lap and he's got ass and boobs and he's all turned on and all he wants to do is show off some more since he's the expert on this. Works elsewhere. Works here, too. Better here, since they just wouldn't think of a squealing little Fluxgirl as having a devious mind and ulterior motives."

"This—lorry. It's gonna stand out like a sore thumb," Suzl nodded. "How do they expect to get away?"

"Honey, those things with a full load can do thirty kilometers an
hour,
and the powers that be still don't know it's gone. Give 'em an hour-and-a-half start, and a predetermined route, and they'll be driving right into Flux in a matter of twenty or thirty minutes."

"You gonna tell 'em?" Suzl asked.

"Well, I think we'll try and find those children first, dead or alive. Then we'll decide on a course of action for the future." He frowned. "There should have been a
lot
of kids from the looks of that place, not just ours."

"Thirty or forty at least," Suzl agreed. "They
couldn't
have taken them all with them!" She had a thought. "I couldn't see very well, but there's no adult bodies, either. There were nannies and caretakers with the kids." She had a note of hope. "You don't think maybe they got wind of what was going on and got the kids out?"

"Damn it, I want to look for the kids, too—but don't you think one of us should tell
somebody?
I mean, that gang of cut-throats is getting away with the most powerful machine now around this world!"

Matson looked at him. "We got a bunch of very dangerous people with a real bad machine in Flux. In wizard and stringer territory. On the run, at that. One thing they can't yet know is just how to use it. It weighs a lot, and that truck can't run on Flux and can't be fixed on Flux, either. Yeah, I think both World and we are a hell of a lot safer if they make it."

"Don't look at me," Suzl responded, regaining some of her spunk. "I'm a fugitive from internal security."

"That point, I think, is moot," Matson replied. "Now let's find those kids."

Incredibly, they found the children before security found them, and they found them alive. One of the nannies, a woman named Vena, had gone into the main house for something and had come upon the horror in progress. Not stopping to believe her eyes, her only thoughts were to protect the children. She managed to get back, rouse the others and the watch, and use a little-known service corridor to get them to a side exit near the big hedge-maze. Several of the women in there gave their lives to keep the door shut; it was their bodies that were found just outside.

The two Freehold boys, Micah and Robby, had been detained by security. The nannies didn't know where they were except that they hadn't even made it to the house.

The most amazing thing, though, was that the children did not escape. It was impossible to keep the littler ones from crying and some of the older ones had panicked. They found themselves boxed in the hedges.

"And then, it was crazy," one of the nannies, Clira, told them. "All of a sudden these girls shouted to us. "We'll let you all live,' they said, 'if you stay right where you are and don't come out until you're found. Let you all live, that is, if you give us the Freehold children.' "

And they had done so. They had had no choice, considering that the raiders could have just sprayed the hedges with automatic fire and killed them all. They had given them the three girls, and were still amazed that they had not then all been massacred.

"They were very brave," Clira told them. "Even the little one."

After that, they waited until they heard them go and the lorry and a lot of horses ride off, and then they'd chanced leaving. They had gotten the last ones out while Suzl was meeting Matson and Rondell.

Matson sighed. "Well, I guess this makes it our fight. Can't figure out why they did it, though. They haven't raided in Flux, so they're pretty safe there. Now they deliberately went and alienated the biggest, most powerful family of wizards there. Don't make sense. Unless ..."

"Those poor girls. With those murdering savages," Suzl sighed.

"I don't think they'll be harmed. Not just yet," Matson told her. "I think we might just be hearing from them. We—the family, anyway—has the power. They got the gadget, but only average power. Not a world-class wizard among "em."