03. Masters of Flux and Anchor (48 page)

"There is a possible way." Matson told her. "although it's a gamble. It might work, it might not. If it does, though, you and I will feel a little bit filthy for the rest of our unnatural lives."

"Side hatches are opening!" Suzl shouted. "They're coming out!"

"Tell eveyone to hold their fire!" Sligh ordered. "At least we're going to see just who we are dealing with."

The hatch opened inward on the upper portion of the ship, then a long ramp of the same metallic substance as the ship extended, correcting for the ship's list, and reached all the way to the Gate apron. Within moments, the first of the Samish troopers began coming out. Onregon Sligh felt the hair on the back of his neck straighten and rise. Many in the crowd screamed, and a number began to run.

The control room personnel all watched the viewer. Only the New Eden ship was opening; the two in the north had been badly stung and weren't about to risk anything yet.

The creatures were like nothing ever seen, even in the most terrible of nightmares. They were shaped somewhat like rounded hourglasses on their side, with the rear sec¬tion a bit thicker and more elongated. The front half contained two stalked eyes that were huge, unblinking, with blood-red irises and heart-shaped pupils of deep pur¬ple which seemed oddly dull and segmented, like those of insects. There was really no up or down to the creatures; their bodies were covered with thin, snakelike tentacles each resembling hard steel wire, and these seemed to spring out of the body, or retract, at will and as needed, and with blinding speed. Just how many tentacles they had was unclear, for their bodies were completely covered in thick, matted black fur. The tentacles moved in some cases so fast the human eye couldn't follow them, yet they never tangled. They walked on them, and used them as a nearly infinite set of fingers. The tips apparently could secrete some sort of substance that allowed perfect traction in any eventuality, but left an ugly slime where they touched.

The first Samish to emerge were armed with unfamiliar devices that had to be weapons, and they went up onto the polished metal surface of the ship, taking the high ground. Observers could see on some of these a sac-like opening on the rear body section that seemed to open and close in regular, undulating motions. Whether it was a mouth, an anus, some sort of reproductive sac, or some¬thing no human could understand was unknown.

The defensive computers observed, analyzed, and made their informed speculations. The eyes were independent and the motion of the creatures was equally exact forwards, backwards, or sideways. There were tentacles waving about over various parts of the body, serving no apparent function. Since there was no physical difference in the spindly things, it seemed obvious that these were multi-purpose organs, not merely arms and legs but possibly delivering all the senses except sight.

Their extreme precision in large numbers spoke of excep¬tional organization and training, or what the computers suspected from the conversation at the start. Their English, although ancient, had been quite good, yet they had never referred to themselves as a group or race—not "the Samish" or "we Samish," but always simply as "Samish."

"Based on available data," Spirit told them, "the com¬puters believe that we are seeing a collective organism totally bonded to its computers. Each ship is an entity, not each Samish."

"That fits," Matson replied. "The army obviously had a great fear of that, right here when it discovered wizards and spells and figured out what was happening. That's why it created the independent units and the limited access. It must have happened to the first Samish to successfully handle Flux."

She nodded. "They programmed their computers, which included their beliefs and their oddities. To them it must have been a religious experience. By now they must sim¬ply breed each colony matched to the colony's central computer."

"Explains why they're unbeatable in a head-on battle. No human army could match that degree of precision, coordination, and suicidal dedication. We must take out their computers or we lose. Given enough time, all they need is a standoff. Who knows how many eggs or what¬ever they're carrying, or can produce?"

Spirit approached Cassie, who was sitting there, spell¬bound and horrified, watching the spectacle on the screen. With Spirit's link to her mother's mind through the computer, she was appalled at what she found there. Shock, horror, revulsion, fear and hatred all churned irrationally in Cassie's mind. Her old and new religious training had overridden her pragmatism, aided and abetted by the unre¬strained emotion her Fluxgirl body allowed. To Cassie those were not alien invaders but the demons of Hell up there, the very horror she had always pictured in her nightmares since she'd been a child. In a very basic way she had regressed through all the shocks and horrors she had experienced in the past day to that little girl, seeing mon¬sters in the darkness after the horrors of Hell were ex¬plained to her. And in her current body, with over sixteen years of letting it be in control, she had no way to damp it down from within.

But Spirit could be damped, and hardened, by the cold pragmatism of the machine to which she was wed. She could easily damp down her mother's state, but she did not. Instead she took hold of it, fed it, enhanced it. and edited it.

"Mother, only you can defeat them." Spirit told her firmly. "Only you can save our souls. Will you do it, for whatever Gods there are and for your children?"

She looked up at Spirit and her expression was painful for the human part of her daughter to look upon.

Suzl came over and gently eased Spirit away, then took Cassie's hand. "Come on, Cass! We have to serve the purpose we were born to."

Matson started to object as it became clear that Suzl was going to accompany Cassie all the way to the Gate itself, but Spirit cut him off.

"Suzl's purged the tunnel and freshened the air from Anchor. She can handle her basic job from there. The Samish aren't anywhere near Anchor yet." She swallowed hard. "In a way, Suzl is doing a tougher thing to herself than to Cassie. And I've got to do it to both of them."

Matson took his daughter's hand and squeezed it gently. Until this time he had barely known her, but at this moment, she felt every bit his daughter. By her acceptance of his plan, they shared a terrible bond that would always be present.

Cassie remained pretty much in a state of shock as she and Suzl entered the Gate. There was no immediate danger to them there; Suzl controlled the mechanism jointly with three other Guardians who were watching from their own control centers. She issued the commands that opened computer access to them, fed as well by the other three controllers, and other commands that would place the basic maintenance and routine operations of the center on automatic. She then blocked the command structure from her mind, surrendering command and control to the other three Guardians. She no longer had any more command power over the great computer. She and Cassie had equal and open access to the command files, but not on a rational basis.

She began to be afraid.

At the other end of the tunnel, the Samish continued to disgorge their horrible bodies and much materiel and equip¬ment from the ship. Sentries kept the humans near the tower under constant surveillance, weapons at the ready, covering the build-up.

Sligh was on the transceiver on the frequency the Samish had used, trying to reestablish contact. He was all mind— cold, hard intellect, and he was thinking fast and furious.

"The installation at the tower is no threat." he assured them. "The people in and around the tower and its build¬ings are not your enemies. We wanted you here. We opened the Gates for you. We wish only to learn from you. Do you understand this message?"

Finally, there came a reply. "You can access the power?"

"Some of us, yes, but not where we stand."

"Those of you who can will approach the installation with no weapons or other implements. Those who cannot must remain exactly where they are. Do this now."

The Haldaynes, Gabaye. Tokiabi and Stomsk all crowded around inside the small communications shack.

"I'm not going to walk alone and unarmed into the monster's nest." said Chua Gabaye firmly. "We're not even sure what they eat."

"We remain here as common prisoners, lowest of the low, or we go down and take our chances," the always impassive Tokiabi noted flatly. "We always knew that death was a possibility, but it is no more certain now than before."

"But there's no profit in it." Gifford Haldayne com¬plained.

"How do we know?" Sligh responded. "How can we be certain? Regardless, the stakes have been raised. As Ming so nicely put it, we either take our chances down there or, when they're ready for us, we'll be made into their mindless, worshipping slaves."

"There is no other choice," Stomsk put in. "You saw with what ridiculous ease they crushed the best trained and equipped Anchor army on World. Soon they will be able to drain off whatever power they require and take on the others. They're probably already in control of the north. In this instance, the odds say to be good, not evil. I will go down."

"Everyone can make up their own mind on this." Sligh told them. He turned back to the transceiver. "We are coming down. Your friends are coming down to you." Then he picked up the radio and smashed it against the wall before any of the others could stop him.

"What'd you do that for?" Haldayne asked angrily.

"No separate deals, no funny business. We play it their way as long as it is our only choice."

They went outside and looked across to where, on the apron, the creatures were swarming all over, building things whose purpose was not yet known with astonishing speed and using tools made for them.

"Funny," said Gifford Haldayne. "That's just where we trapped Tilghman last night. I kind of wish now I'd let him win."

Suzl's mind had become almost a complete blank. Like Cassie, she knew where she was and what was at the end of that tunnel, but overpowering contradictory emotions, urges, and impulses crowded out reason. They embraced, trying to draw some strength, some comfort, from each other's presence, to shut out the fear and fend off the isolation. It turned, oddly, into a session of passionate lovemaking on the tunnel floor between the great swirl of the Gate and the solid mass of the regulator.

The computers, drawing upon their past experience and partially directed by Spirit, orchestrated the scene.

Cassie loved Suzl. Suzl loved Cassie. that was all that mattered, that was all there was in the world. The fires of the Hellgate glowed in response and were drawn to them in a warm rush. Their minds were a sea of emotion without thought, and bathed by the glow and strength of the Gate forces they became as one.

But there were images. . . .

Suzl as a deformed freak, with breasts longer than her arms and a male organ longer than her breasts, begging, pleading . . . "Make love to me. . . ."

Matson on his great horse, laughing as he directs artil¬lery and rocket fire, then, suddenly, a mass of blood and falling, falling. . . .

Spirit, young, naked, and innocent, unable to communi¬cate, unable to understand, held in a cage for laugh¬ing and jeering onlookers as she screams uncomprehend¬ingly. . . .

Adam, falling, four bullets in him, coughing out his life and pleading for the life of a dream as his blood coats their naked bodies. . . .

Horrible, tentacled creatures with blood-red eyes and matted hair doing something disgusting, something they don't want to look at, something they don't want to look at.something they cannot avoid. . . . They are eating the children alive, and the children are screaming and plead¬ing, "Mommy! Mommy!"

Fields of death after a great battle: the patron of the Reformed Church walks among a field so littered with dead that the blood stains her robe and she cannot avoid stepping on what had so shortly before been young men and women, the future of world. . . . "No more . . . ! No more . . . !"

Countless Fluxlands filled with transformed people wor¬shipping their Fluxlords and being happy, obedient slaves, while they travel through them marveling at how pretty things look and how nice it all seems, ignoring the faces, the minds, the horror because it isn't theirs. . . .

'"No building can be built upon an existing site until the old one is demolished.'' Mervyn says matter-of-factly. "We must destroy World in the name of the Empire in order to save it. . . ."

"No more! No more!"

A world ruled by tentacled monsters, the Demons of Hell itself, their foulness owning and controlling everything, while a subject human population lives in soulless misery without hope, only with evil, even giving their children over to their Demon Masters as toys. . . .

Above, the Samish checked all systems, as power sud¬denly seemed flickering and intermittent. It switched to full battery power as an emergency and called back the scout ship. That there was a problem was undeniable, but all checkouts came back with "Undefinable error."

Below them the regulator clicked and whirled and fed what was necessary to the two tiny figures between it and the Gate. They could feel the power; it was all around them, a living, massive entity.

They're up ahead, at the end of the tunnel. The Monsters. The Demons of Hell. With them there is no hope. Under them there is no salvation. Thev are evil. They will devour you. They will devour love. No love, no joy, no dreams, no hopes. . . . No more . . . No more . . . !

Cassie's mind reached back into the computer and it fed her what she most wanted, the only thing she wanted. And with it flowed the continuing stream of images.

She saw Adam's dream, a land of beauty and love and peace and joy. She saw the land torn asunder by giant black tentacled shapes dripping foul slime and crushing the land and the dream.

Above, the Samish checked out its erratic lines and sent probes down along the Flux string to check the source of the difficulty, but they could not reach beyond a point of absolute brilliance, an energy wall that was unbelievably raw and churning.