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Weiz nodded. The steps were in ruins, but were still serviceable for about
three quarters of the distance. It wasn't easy, but a crew managed to get up
with hooks and ropes and lower down net-
ting for the troopers to climb up. One of the first to survey the apron from
the top turned and shouted back, "Sir! There's a lone civilian standing there
just below us! Looks like a stringer! He says he wants to talk to you!"
"Don't shoot!" Shabir ordered. "Tell him I'm coming up. Keep him covered, but
that's all!" He turned to Weiz. "Want to come with me?"
The captain nodded.
The stairs on the side leading to the apron had been blown out about a meter,
but they had somehow escaped catching fire. They were singed, but serviceable,
and were easily drawn back and secured with hooks. With a hundred guns trained
on him, Matson stood calmly and waited for the brass to show up.
The military men approached him cautiously but correctly. He had dropped his
weapons belt and was clearly unarmed. "My name is Matson," he told them, not
offering his hand. "Coydt van
Haas is dead. Your wizard is dead over there, and I've blown up your pretty
machine. If we can't come to some agreement fast, in an hour or so an awful
lot of power is going to burst right through that area right there."
The military men swallowed hard at the news. Dimly, in the void, they could
see where the ma-
chine should have been, and there was nothing.
"One of you wouldn't happen to have a cigar on you, would you?" the stringer
asked. "I'm dying for a smoke."
One of the infantrymen looked to the officers, who nodded, then handed Matson
a cigar and a safety match. He lit it and seemed much more content.
"If what you say is true," the general said slowly, "then it is the end of
Anchor Logh. Many of my men are scum, I freely admit, but they've been made
that way. They've marched and died on command in other people's armies for
nothing. The Fluxlord I once served, and deserted for this, is a particularly
nasty sort. The military leadership here is experienced and superior. They
were
given a chance to take their own land, and they did it. They will not return
to the way they were, and they will leave this place a costly hell."
The stringer nodded. "I figured as much. That's why we have to take this time
to make a deal.
We have to keep all this quiet from the rest of Anchor Logh, or the other
wizards will panic and let the shields drop as they run, and everybody will be
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primed for the last stand. Then it might be too late."
The general frowned. "Too late for what?"
"A deal. Suppose there was no invasion outside of this small area? Suppose we
let you keep
Anchor Logh and run it without any interference? What would you say then?"
Both officer's mouths fell open in surprise. Finally, the general recovered.
"At what price?"
"The empire controls the machines, and the temple becomes a sort of embassy.
We need to insure that it's not a free and easy passage to the Hellgate.
Beyond the temple, no one leaves or enters without the permission of your
government and the empire's. The stringer guild will deal with you at east and
west gate. I've seen a thousand Fluxlands, General, and so have most of the
others. We'll keep your trade open, and we'll be the intermediaries between
the empire and your people. It makes no sense to cost a million lives and make
this a wasteland. No sense at all, for either side. They want to keep this
contained. If you're here, running the place, they can do so.
They do it by co-opting you into the empire. Making it legitimate. Anchor Logh
is restored, but has total internal self-government. Everybody benefits and
nobody else dies."
"If we could only trust the empire on that," Weiz put in. "But it's a
theocracy. How can we trust it?"
"Guarantees can be worked out. You and the Church have both been working with
an illusion.
The empire isn't the Church; the Church serves the empire. Nine wizards set
policy and control everything that it does, and none of them are in the least
bit committed to the Church. The war has bled off the surplus population so
far, but that won't last forever. Flux will absorb the surplus, though, as it
always has in one way or another. The ones with the power, the Nine Who Guard,
are really mostly concerned with securing those Hellgates. Secondarily, they
went as far as they could in learning. They needed a mechanism to break the
control of the wizards, each of whom had some piece of old knowledge that
usually meant nothing to them until fitted into the whole.
They needed a way to pry the ancient stuff out, and they needed Anchors, with
fixed laws, to experiment with what they learned. I think they can spare
Anchor Logh."
"It seems reasonable to me," Weiz noted. "But it'll have to be sold to
higher-ups, in secret, while everything is contained here."
"Just keep your men on the wall. I'll stop them and explain the conditions
there, too. I think the head of the Nine will be among the first through. You
sell it to your side; I'll sell it to mine."
"It's a tough job," the general noted. "Still, I agree, for what that's worth,
and I'll cooperate so long as there are no tricks. But no empire forces are to
cross the wall or extend more than a kilometer in either direction. If they
do, it's all off."
"These are hard choices you're handing both sides, Matson," Weiz noted.
"You're the only one free and clear in all this. You don't give a damn."
"Life is all hard choices, Captain," the stringer replied. "I've had more than
my share. But most folks never get any choices at all, and hard as they are,
I'd rather be the one making the decisions."
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Weiz stirred. "Did you see a woman in Flux? Short, chubby, kind of cute?"
"Yeah, Suzl's alive. Why? What's she to you?"
"I . . . sort of married her."
Matson chuckled. "On orders, of course."
"Well, yes, on orders. But I find her a little special."
"You can hardly even know her!"
Weiz shrugged. "I'm a gambler."
"Well, we'll see if she is. Do your job first, Captain. The rest is academic
if we fail."
It had been kind of imposing, even threatening, to stand in front of a point
in Flux and try to talk an invading force into not going into Anchor.
Fortunately, the initial shield opening was quite small, and there were few
soldiers to work with and a wizard. The wizard had contained the as-
sault and sent for Mervyn.
Weiz was a glib talker, and it had been a surprisingly easy sell on the Anchor
side, although, of course, it would be years before the military government
felt safe enough to relax and remove its martial law organization designed
mostly to fight a tough war. On the empire's side, there was al-
most a feeling of relief at Matson's offer. Many of them were appalled at
legitimizing such a terrible and repressive sexist regime, but when you had
the Fluxlands for an example, the bizarre could be made palatable and the
unthinkable allowed. The people of Anchor Logh knew the hard choice. All-out
war to the death or the system they had now. Most hardly liked the system, but
they were terrified of the alternative. They consoled themselves that such a
rigid system would have to bend someday, and slowly reforms would return. They
would wait, making a characteristically human decision that none not in their
place could comprehend.
They had seen the burned-out and desolate future, and they had decided no
more, no more.
They would accept the system, with faith that it would eventually change from
within, if not in their lifetimes, then in their descendants'. Slavery and
repression, in the end, only ever existed with the consent of the slaves and
the repressed, who preferred their condition to death. On a mass basis, there
was no other way for such systems to survive.
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