04. Birth of Flux and Anchor (51 page)

"I guess the computers wanted to make damned sure we stayed out here and they stayed in there."

"Well, as far as Anchor is concerned, they sure wanted to ensure that people could live and work without their machines, that's for sure. The only real contact so far has been between Signals and the church."

"No!"

"Uh-huh. They neither like nor trust anyone from the void, but they have to be able to communicate with other Anchors and keep the church and culture unified, and they need some trade between themselves. It seems our old buddy Dr. Patricia Suzuki is number two to Watanabe, and neither of them were subjected to the program. They are scared of Signals, it's true, and they don't consider them humans in any real sense, but they don't classify them automatically as demonic either, like they would anybody else. Ryan's going to get his control simply because they can't live without him and they have no choice but to do business with him."

"I heard about some of the other new lands that have been done. Haldayne's crazy place where everybody looks as androgynous as he does and treats him like hereditary royalty was one I knew about."

"It's to be expected, and a lot worse. The old board members read all our reports; they got themselves very much involved with their own computer interfaces even if they hadn't before. Ryan's got detainment orders out for all of them, but they've vanished. Probably, I think, into other identities, building their own little kingdoms out here. Nobody takes them lightly—they are the people who made this project work when all the odds were against it even being funded at the basic levels. They're even in the Holy Book of the Anchor church."

"No! How?"

"The Seven Who Come Before. The demons, the epitome of evil, to be feared and destroyed on sight. The ones who would open the gates of Hell and let the demonic forces in to overrun us. Coydt's people were damned clever. I have to admit that. Even in reducing the people to ignorance, they wanted to make sure they never would let those gates be opened. It's quite an ingenious system and theology. I got a copy and brought it back. You're going to have to read it. In its own evil, insidious way, it's brilliant."

"I will. I almost feel sorry for the board though. Some of them were really good people whose dreams have been shattered. They'd have given their lives for this project, yet now it's the worst form of perversion of those ideals. How they must hate! Yet there they are, out there, hunted by Signals and loathed by Anchors. No friends, no love, and little hqpe. If they survive at all, they'll be monsters."

He sighed. "I wonder. The more I see, the more I wonder why we keep going on with this at all."

"You're thinking about what the computer said again."

"Uh-huh. I want to deny the place in which it put us— obsolete, at the pinnacle, unable to progress—and yet I'm not certain I can. We progressed at such a great rate because of our machines. Ultimately, we reached a point where we could go no further without machines that were greater than we. This world exists because we made the 7800 series so powerful and so godlike.
We're
not the gods. Never have been, never will be. The bloody computer's the god. That's the only place that church got it wrong. They shouldn't be worshipping that big ball of poison gas up there. They should be worshipping their computers. So should we. We're the magicians, the sorcerers, the high priests of the almighty machine. We might as well just call ourselves that and our powers, which come from the computer and are beyond our comprehension, are granted to some of us because we serve some need or requirement of the machine. It gives the power to do miracles to a select group of ordinary human beings, and it can take it away. No matter whether God almighty, or Allah or Vishnu or whatever, exists or not. We truly created our own gods, as our ancestors fashioned their idols. The only thing different is that our idols really do have the powers."

"We created our gods in our own image," she noted. "None of the leaders back on Earth ever gave serious thought to where we were going, or the scientists either. What happened was inevitable. The physics for all this has been around as far back as the twentieth century. Even Borelli, who showed the physics of energy-to-matter transfer, never really considered that it was so complicated, we'd need to build machines with almost godlike speed and memories and who would, with that power,
be
godlike. You can't have the magic power without the machines, and you can't expect machines that advanced to not consider us irrelevant. Up to now we were partners, but we no longer have anything left to offer them on our part. I think we got off pretty lucky, considering. Look around our little pocket paradise and you will see what they gave us in return."

He gave a dry, humorless chuckle. "A few crumbs of their power as respect to senile parents."

"No," she responded softly. "They left us a mirror, and they challenged us, those who understood the process, to stare endlessly into that mirror and become our own reflections. The void is nothing but a great surface; the power is the high gloss. It becomes what we are. It can become anything we become. If we use that mirror to reflect our fears, our lusts, our egomania, then we are what they say. They didn't abandon us the way they abandoned the Anchors. Oh, no, they did something far fouler than that to us. They abandoned us to our own inner selves. That's what Seventeen was trying to tell you. What we are, inside, is what we'll get. It's a fair bargain."

"I supposed you're right." He sighed, drawing her close and kissing her softly. "I love you very much," he added suddenly. "You're the best thing that happened to me and the reason I'm going to stay here and build what's possible."

"I love you too," she responded, kissing him back. "You know, there are some things we got from the animal parts that aren't bad at all, that no damned computer will ever know. Maybe us old, obsolete animals will show them up someday." She shifted and smiled at him. "Besides, who but humans would make Catholic computers?"

"What?"

"Hell is for punishment. Purgatory is for justice."

Suzy Watanabe was in the Headquarters Anchor administration building learning just what could be salvaged and what could be used. Here was the primary network interface for the entire system; the walls were honeycombed with electronic connections and circuits, and, she felt, it was the best, perhaps the only, chance left to reestablish direct links with the computer. The Angel of the Goddess had said that she could travel freely and that the Signal corps would not harm her, and it had been so.

She had directed several walls be penetrated and had reached the master boards, but they were stone dead. As she'd determined back at X-ray, the computers hadn't really gone to the bother of totally reconstructing the buildings as temples, but it wasn't doing much good to discover that. The entire interfacing system was directly Flux-powered from the master control room far below, and that was closed to everyone, it seemed. What they
had
done was simply convert the temple equipment to two hundred and forty volts, sixty cycles, accessible only through the large transformer they'd placed in the sub-basement. She had no means to switch temple power to those boards, and it wouldn't have mattered anyway.

The only interface left now was the master regulator in the Gates, the only exposed hardware remaining on the planet. There were ways to tap into that, at least to the 7240 series computers in maintenance, which would be sufficient for now, but it would be one hell of a complex undertaking, particularly without also triggering the Gates into incoming and opening them, a very remote possibility, or frying the regulators and shutting the Gates down, which would have meant a slow, cruel death for the world.

She sighed and finally accepted it. The world was as it was now. The past was gone forever. Even the Angel of the Goddess had not convinced her, deep down, that this was so, which was why she'd come here. Now she'd proved it to herself, and that was that.

Still, she decided, these past weeks had been among the happiest of her entire life. The divine will had worked itself out, and humanity at last was given a great gift. It was no longer tied to the machine, but
it also no longer would ever truly want. As simple communal peasants, guided by a common faith and culture, protected from the corruption outside and unencumbered by the burden of knowing their own past and origins, they could truly cleanse their spirits and purify their souls. Now they were free to attain inner perfection, without fear, without want, without jealousy or hatred or the legacies of their ancestors. It was enough.

She went down to the inner temple to give thanks and to pray and finally cleanse her own soul. She opened the double doors and entered and saw that four priestesses in the robes of temple administration were kneeling in the front row. It made her feel very joyous, and she went forward to the altar, passing them, and knelt at it, the statues of the angels looking down at her from both sides.

After a while she rose and turned to go, then stopped, absolutely dumbstruck. The four "priestesses" were now revealed as four fairly large men, two now guarding the entrance with submachine guns while the other two faced her grimly with two identical weapons.

She recognized the nearer pair. "Mustafa! Kamal! You must not be in here! You should not be in Anchor at all! It is sacrilege!" They were two of Ngomo's officers who'd been at the presumed "test" at X-ray.

"This is in the name of Allah, Daughter of Satan," said Kamal, his voice shaking with emotion. "And for our wives and children and faithful comrades whom your devil's scheme has enslaved."

Before members of the temple wardens assisted by two Anchor Guard soldiers who happened to be nearby could cut them all down, they had pumped sixty-one bullets into her frail body.

Suzuki rushed to the temple as soon as she heard, and all the priestesses backed off from her and let her through. She stared hard at the crumpled body, like some discarded rag doll, for a very long time. Suddenly, her mind cleared, and she knew exactly what she had to do.

"Find diggers and masons. The square in front of this temple is to be excavated and crypts placed there before it is replanted. Take her body down to the medical section and clean and preserve it until that is done. We will lay her in it, with full honor, and pray to her memory."

"Yes, Reverend Mother," responded one of the high-ranking administrative priestesses.

"Patch the holes and repair the damage, but do not ever touch the bloodstains on the altar or the statues. Encase the blood-spattered altar cloth so that it is preserved. From this point, all novices will give of their blood at their altars as a sacrament of ordination, and those there will drink of it, so that we may never forget her or her sacrifice and never again drop our guard against the forces of evil that would pull this holy church down."

"It will be done, Reverend Mother."

"This place is particularly consecrated by her blood. It shall henceforth be known as Holy Anchor and will be the seat of the Holy Mother Church. This day will forever after be known as Martyr's Day, and shall be a day of prayer and fasting and soul-cleansing. We will notify each Sister General to make an individual pilgrimage here, to witness and to shed her own blood in commitment."

She turned, kneeled, and dipped a finger into Watanabe's blood, then got back up and faced them. "Do you accept me as the truly anointed successor to the saint slain here today?"

They were shocked by the actions and in no mood to think things through. They took, as she expected they would, the path of least resistance.

Suzuki held up the bloody finger. "This is her blood." She put it into her mouth and licked it clean. It tasted lousy. Forty-year-old drama classes were coming back as if they were yesterday. "It is now in me. By that authority and action shall this mantle pass from leader to leader. Her blood shall continue and link together this responsibility. Do you accept my leadership?"

No one spoke.

"You here will be the body of the church. I will be its head. We will have a sacred rite of coronation following thirty days of mourning. I would like to see everyone in charge of temple departments in the big office upstairs in one hour. Before anyone arrives, I want all Sisters not engaged on anything vital to begin work on sealing off the power plate in the temple sub-basement. It is a way for evil to enter. Wall it off and fill it with concrete. Is the chief temple Warden present?''

"Yes, Reverend Mother."

"Effective now, all entrances to the temple will be staffed at all times. Anyone, regardless of rank or position, will be required to completely disrobe so that no such sacrilege as this might ever occur again. Any lay women entering, no matter how young, will be required to disrobe and be given a special temple robe. Effective immediately, no undergarments or jewelry of any kind will be worn within the temple. The robe and sandals will be the only things accepted by me, with the sole exception of the ring we all wear to wed us to the church. Understand?"

"Yes, Reverend Mother." There would be no more weapons of any sort brought in
this
building. Suzuki was not about to be found someday with bullets in
her,
nor strangled or anything else.

Except for sealing the transmission plates, much of this would be optional with the Sister General in each Anchor, but she would get to an entire regimen for all priestesses in good time. It would be a fascinating lifelong new experiment in mass psychology and sociology. Because she had great power herself, she would ensure, somehow, that all Sister Generals knew who to obey and what to do and not do. She'd work out a way to manage it. She hadn't asked for this, and had tried to avoid it, but here it was. What the hell. She had nowhere else to go and nothing else to do.

O.K., Ryan, you got yourself a deal,
she thought, not without some excitement.

Brenda Coydt returned to Ryan's field headquarters because she had no place else to go, only to discover that he was too busy to see her. She had remained, persistent and getting in the way, until he finally
had
to talk with her.