05. Children of Flux and Anchor (7 page)

"You make it sound like I'm a natural-born slave or something," she'd protested, "it's
wrong
the way they treat women there. Women are every bit as smart and capable as men in almost everything, maybe better in some. I'd like to see how a man would take the pain of labor and childbirth, or even twelve hours a day of wild kids with no break and eleven hundred poopy diapers."

"Yes, but, you see, that's at the heart of your problem. There's nothing evil or wrong about being a wife, a mother, or a homemaker. The only evil is that New Eden
compels
women to accept those roles and no others. Even now, that means little in and of itself on World. Anyone without a great deal of Flux power is compelled to take some sort of role. You have the power to avoid compulsion, and you feel guilty that you aren't using it to accomplish great things. Well, many with the power squander it or do very evil or foolish things. I rather doubt that the wife/mother/ homemaker role would have been best for you when you were young. Then you would have probably been best as a major authority figure—a commune chief, or perhaps even a priestess in the old Church if you could have taken the indoctrinations. But fate forced you into that role, and it met your needs and requirements. We are also creatures of our environment, our experiences. You were a wife, mother, and homemaker for the majority of your life. That's what you are."

The statement had startled and disturbed her. "You, a learned and powerful professional woman, are telling me I'm only cut out to be a wife?"

"Everybody has to be something, and it's the only something you've ever been where everything fit. Everyone can change, of course, but it is one of the curses of Flux power that we change the least once we find a niche. We live too long. Age never faces us in the mirror, and death is always remote. Still, as novice wizards, we are frightened and insecure. All of us. We must find a niche or the power will consume us, destroy us, or make us mad. Once we find it, if we do, it becomes a cocoon in our subconscious mind. We unknowingly weave our own complex spells to reinforce it. Just as Fluxlords get increasingly rigid, so do we. This is why your friends could not remain what they were, power or not, but reverted to the sorts of people they had been. They had previous niches, and they fell back into them as soon as they could."

"You're telling me that if I live five hundred years I'm always going to be a Fluxwife because deep down I
want
to be?"

"In a way. Basically, you've been one so long you are beyond really changing the basics. When the Guardian lifted your binding spells, you had the most power anyone has ever had in this region. You changed yourself as little as your conscience and your duty would permit you. And, at shutdown, you walked away from New Eden into Flux, power intact, and you didn't change any more than that. You told yourself you were free and that you detested the system and the men who made it, yet you did nothing to change your direction. You felt like you should change, take off in new directions, but you had no direction to go and every alternative looked threatening to you. You made excuses to yourself. The children needed you. You were an object lesson. Sondra and Jeff needed you. And all of it might have been true, but it also reinforced that tight niche, that cocoon. You were afraid of becoming the drifting, aimless outsider again. The more you considered alternatives, the tighter the safe and warm cocoon gripped you. The same thing happened to me, only I was a professional woman, a healer. You have so many self-induced spells on you that they can't be counted, all reinforcing your safety image. So do I. So do Sondra, and Jeff, and the others. You must stop dwelling on what you could have been and accept what you are. You can accept it and find some happiness and comfort, or you can continue to reject it and remain miserable, guilt-ridden, and uncomfortable. But you will still be the same in either case."

The terrible thing was, it explained so much, particularly about wizards. Why, even after centuries, wizards remained basically the same people, and why most of them feared changes. Why Fluxlands remained constant, and why, after half a century or so, they grew so negligibly.

The worst part had been after, when, in defiance, she'd really tried some radical changes on herself. She tried, she really tried, just to prove it false, to prove herself the exception to the rule. She tried changing herself physically, and succeeded, but all she got was a different looking Fluxgirl. Worse, she felt uncomfortable until she changed back into the old form again. Now, at least, she understood why Mervyn was always an old-man figure. It was his niche, his self-image. Oh, he changed himself into others at times, to carry out his purposes, but as soon as he could he always changed back again. She wasn't as strong a wizard as Mervyn had been, and she didn't have his motivations even for his temporary changes.

Worse were the changes
inside.
She had given up cigars years ago. They just didn't give her a charge anymore, and the idea of doing it now seemed, well,
wrong.
She used to cuss like a soldier, but somehow that had gradually faded away. It had just become, well,
embarrassing,
a word the old Suzl wouldn't even have known the meaning for. She liked personal privacy, but she didn't like being
really
alone. She'd gone off for a bit into Flux after the sessions, but she'd returned very quickly to Freehold. With others, fine, but out there, even with the power, she just couldn't stand being alone.

Even here, with servants to wait on servants, she had automatically and without even thinking about it made the bed, cleaned up any mess, and even wiped out the washbasin and tub with a towel. A smudge on the window that didn't even look out on much of anything had so preyed on her that she'd wetted a cloth and cleaned it off, then did the rest of the window so it would all look uniform.

Not that she was a true Fluxgirl, of course. She thought and acted independently, and could control her emotions at least as well as the old Suzl could, which wasn't all that much. She didn't believe for a minute the divine nature of all this. She was literate and did good math, although neither skill got much real use out of disinterest. It was still nice to send and receive letters and notes from faraway close ones like Spirit and Cass, but her own notes were stilted, phrased in simple sentences and written in block letters, and she read the notes aloud, one word at a time. When you haven't done something for fifty years it comes hard, and there was no incentive to improve. And, she was still pretty aggressive when she wanted to be. Any man who attacked her would find he'd attacked a tigress.

The bottom line was that she desperately needed someone to love and to love her, and that someone was not in sight, had never really been in sight except for all-too-brief moments in the distant past with people now far changed from that time. Not love as her friends loved her, or love as her children loved her, but real, personal love. She had never loved or been in love in New Eden, but it had been an easy, comfortable time, and the job and role was something she knew how to do and did well, unlike almost anything else. If anything, the one most important thing she'd ever done, being the Guardian, had humbled and frightened her. Such tremendous knowledge, such awesome power, such command of whatever skills were needed, seemed to her to magnify her unimportance in the scheme of things when not coupled with great machines. She would never really know, but would always suspect, that she was selected by the computers for the role not because she was superior at anything but because she was so unskilled and so insignificant that she posed no threat to the programs or to Flux and Anchor by having that role.

These dark depressions had been increasing in frequency in the past year, and so far New Eden hadn't helped. The wizard had warned her that if she continued to fight it or put off either taking command or finding a place for herself, she'd better get out of Flux, for the power within her would consume her, spinning spell after spell, turning her more and more into her own inner self-image, crushing and extinguishing her ego. The insane, deformed, animalistic duggers were formed by the same process.

She sighed. Well, enough of that for now. Tonight she and the others were going to a carnival, a carnival in Anchor, and for a little while it would be all right to be a kid again. In a couple of days she'd have the pleasure of introducing some of the kids to the legendary Matson. After that—well, she wasn't so sure. She only knew that for her own sake she wasn't going back, at least not now, and she almost certainly wasn't staying in New Eden. She would return with Matson to visit Cass and the twins and their kids and maybe, with their help and the help of the best minds in the stringer organization, she'd find an avenue.

If Suzl had had someone for comfort and support, she would have been the ideal candidate for a permanent ambassador to New Eden. Because she looked like a Fluxgirl and knew how to fit in, the men ruling the land neither feared her nor considered her a threat, unlike almost anyone else coming out of Flux. Because she was independent and World-wise, she made a good bridge between the two cultures, each of whom considered the other repugnant and dangerous. And, as a former wife of Adam Tilghman, the Prophet himself, she was at the top of society always and could get away with much that none of the New Eden women would dare and be treated more equally by the male rulers than any other female except, of course, Cass— who wouldn't be caught dead here.

A Fluxgirl was waiting for her at the top of the grand staircase. "I am Sheva, my lady," the woman said pleasantly, "current head of the household staff. I am instructed to show you around the estate and grounds or assist you in any way."

"What about the kids?" Suzl asked. She had left them with the child care coordinator after getting in late the previous night. They'd been all in, anyway.

"They were up and about long ago," Sheva told her. "It did not seem necessary to wake you. They ate well, and then went over to see the final touches being put on the carnival before the grand opening today. We will all join them there when you like, although they are in good hands and the opening isn't for hours yet."

Suzl nodded. She'd brought only five kids, ages eight to fourteen, all her own grandchildren, and all picked because they were very good in strange surroundings and cultures. The two boys would have no problems at all here, but the three girls might, so the boys were told to watch out for them and they were a responsible group. There would also be a lot of toleration shown for them because they were her own grandchildren and
might
also be grandchildren of the Prophet. Only one was, but she hadn't told them which one.

"I'd like a little something in my stomach," she told Sheva. "Then you can show me around the place."

She had a hard time getting the girls of the house not to fix her a full formal breakfast. She wanted toast and coffee for now and that was all—with emphasis on the coffee. It might be an interesting, even enjoyable, day, but it was going to be a long one and she still felt the effects of a two-day horseback ride. She was sadly out of practice and she was only now relearning just what muscles were used only in riding.

Conversation with the "girls" only confirmed what she already knew: even as she was she'd be bored silly by this vacuous level. She might not be any brighter than they, but she had a wider world-view and a weight of experience. Some of them were probably in their thirties or forties—it was impossible to really tell with Fluxgirls—but to Suzl it was like being trapped in a crowd of fifteen-year-old adolescents. Worse, they were in awe of her as a wife of the Prophet. It was enough to spoil any breakfast, even one so spartan and basic. She was very polite and exited as soon as she could.

As she would be staying there several days at least, she accepted the offer to tour the place. Sheva seemed to have a good sense of propriety and wasn't as hard to take, and seemed genuinely pleased to show off the place.

And it
was
grand by anyone's standards: The Great Room, used for formal dinners and meetings, was as large as Adam Tilghman's old house where she'd spent several years. Sixteen bedrooms, not counting servant's quarters, two enormous kitchens, one at each end of the place, a massive library, a "cozy" den that seemed big enough to race horses in, and rooms especially made for displaying fine art and sculpture.

The whole place sat on a rise north of the city, with the entire area filled with green trees and brightly colored flowers and shrubs. It was more like a private park than the "front lawn" Sheva called it, and off in the distance could be seen the city itself, the old temple-spires gleaming in the reflected rays of the great gas giant which gave World its light.

The rear area contained more formal gardens, a broad area used for some sports and entertaining, and even two grass tennis courts. There were even large stables for horses and a private exercise track. In fact, the only incongruity was a very large, round structure with a pointed roof far off to the rear. They'd done their best to conceal it with shrubbery and a dark green paint job, but there was no ignoring it. "What's that?" Suzl asked her guide.

"That is the private laboratory," Sheva replied. "None of the household staff is permitted to enter there, so I can tell you no more than that. There is a road and a separate entrance that you cannot see from here where those who work there come and go. It is none of our concern."

None of yours, you mean,
Suzl thought, her curiosity aroused.
Men's work.
She remembered the time when she'd thought that way, too.

"Madame Suzl!" boomed a hearty male voice from the vicinity of the stables. She turned and saw a large figure walking quickly toward them. She waited for him where they were. When he got there, he first took her hand and kissed it, then gave her a big, less formal hug.

"My apologies for not greeting you until now." Judge Vishnar apologized, "but all this work plus the carnival has left me so little time. You slept well?"