Fluxlands, the independent places in the Flux, and they run them like gods as well. Watch out for them.
"As for the rest, there are those who have vary- ing degrees of skill in manipulating the Flux. Some of 'em are what we call false wizards. They, say, turn you into a bird. You think you're a bird, and everybody else thinks you're a bird, and when you jump into the air off the cliff you and everybody else thinks you're flying. But you're still you, and you can't fly, so you crash and die. Watch out for the false wizards. In their own way they're more dangerous than the real ones."
He looked them over, then allowed a half-smile to conie over his face. He knew they didn't under-
SOUL RIDER: SPIRITS OF FLUX AND ANCHOR 87
stand much of it, and probably the ones that did didn't believe a word of it, but that was okay. This lecture would come in handy when they saw the reality of Fluxlands.
"Now, within the next day we'll he going into the Flux itself," he told them. "You'll be on my strings, but relatively free and loose. It might be possible for somebody to escape." He turned back towards his tent. "Jomo! Kolada! Front and center!"
From the direction of the tents came two crea- tures that probably were human once. One of them, Jomo, must have weighed a hundred and fifty ki- los or more, but that was not what struck anyone who looked at him. His face was a mottled, mis- shapen mass with the standard features barely recognizable in it. His hands were massive, claw- like things that seemed useless for grasping much, and his shoeless feet were enormous caricatures of what feet should be- He looked, in fact, very much like Cassie's vision of a troll from the old children's stories. He wore only a skirt-like rag fastened by a crude belt-
Kolada was even worse. It was hard to tell if the creature was male or female. It was tall and humanoid, but its entire body was covered by tre- mendously thick brown hair including the face, from which gaped an animal-like mouth with two fangs rising up from the lower jaw and a pair of blood-red eyes that seemed to shine with an inhu- man fury- Its arms were so long that they just about reached the ground, terminating in two huge paw-like hands.
"These two duggers are my chief driver and my point guard," Matson told them. "To answer your question even though you haven't asked, both are, or were, human just like you. Both, at different times, escaped from stringer trains into the Flux. Anybody who does that and either has no natural power over it or doesn't run into somebody who
Jack L. Chalker
88
lives there will be dead quickly, for there's no food and water you don't make yourself in the void, nor any way at all to get your bearings to know where you are, where you've been, and where you're going. Only stringers and wizards know their position in the Flux, and we make certain that nobody else ever finds out how we do it. No dugger can do it, and they try all the time.
"Now, if you're wondering what happened, both of them did run into others, but they ran into different sorts. Jomo has a little of the real Flux power, you see, but no control. We've all got our little fears and insanities in the back of our minds. Well, see what Jomo's do to him. He doesn't always look like this. Sometimes he looks worse, occasionally better. Kolada, on the other hand, ran into somebody with real power in the Flux, somebody who was very, very dangerous. In a story far too long to go into here, that person changed a nice, normal Anchor woman into the creature you see here. And, because it was a wizard, she's abso- lutely stuck like this unless somebody even more powerful changes her, for she has no Flux powers at all.
"Most of the people on the apron, the daggers, have similar stories. They're all quite mad and they've all been changed in one way or another by wizards or their own minds. But they're the rare lucky ones. They survived in the Flux, and,
"As for the rest, there are those who have vary- ing degrees of skill in manipulating the Flux. Some of 'em are what we call false wizards. They, say, turn you into a bird. You think you're a bird, and everybody else thinks you're a bird, and when you jump into the air off the cliff you and everybody else thinks you're flying. But you're still you, and you can't fly, so you crash and die. Watch out for the false wizards. In their own way they're more dangerous than the real ones."
He looked them over, then allowed a half-smile to conie over his face. He knew they didn't under-
SOUL RIDER: SPIRITS OF FLUX AND ANCHOR 87
stand much of it, and probably the ones that did didn't believe a word of it, but that was okay. This lecture would come in handy when they saw the reality of Fluxlands.
"Now, within the next day we'll he going into the Flux itself," he told them. "You'll be on my strings, but relatively free and loose. It might be possible for somebody to escape." He turned back towards his tent. "Jomo! Kolada! Front and center!"
From the direction of the tents came two crea- tures that probably were human once. One of them, Jomo, must have weighed a hundred and fifty ki- los or more, but that was not what struck anyone who looked at him. His face was a mottled, mis- shapen mass with the standard features barely recognizable in it. His hands were massive, claw- like things that seemed useless for grasping much, and his shoeless feet were enormous caricatures of what feet should be- He looked, in fact, very much like Cassie's vision of a troll from the old children's stories. He wore only a skirt-like rag fastened by a crude belt-
Kolada was even worse. It was hard to tell if the creature was male or female. It was tall and humanoid, but its entire body was covered by tre- mendously thick brown hair including the face, from which gaped an animal-like mouth with two fangs rising up from the lower jaw and a pair of blood-red eyes that seemed to shine with an inhu- man fury- Its arms were so long that they just about reached the ground, terminating in two huge paw-like hands.
"These two duggers are my chief driver and my point guard," Matson told them. "To answer your question even though you haven't asked, both are, or were, human just like you. Both, at different times, escaped from stringer trains into the Flux. Anybody who does that and either has no natural power over it or doesn't run into somebody who
Jack L. Chalker
88
lives there will be dead quickly, for there's no food and water you don't make yourself in the void, nor any way at all to get your bearings to know where you are, where you've been, and where you're going. Only stringers and wizards know their position in the Flux, and we make certain that nobody else ever finds out how we do it. No dugger can do it, and they try all the time.
"Now, if you're wondering what happened, both of them did run into others, but they ran into different sorts. Jomo has a little of the real Flux power, you see, but no control. We've all got our little fears and insanities in the back of our minds. Well, see what Jomo's do to him. He doesn't always look like this. Sometimes he looks worse, occasionally better. Kolada, on the other hand, ran into somebody with real power in the Flux, somebody who was very, very dangerous. In a story far too long to go into here, that person changed a nice, normal Anchor woman into the creature you see here. And, because it was a wizard, she's abso- lutely stuck like this unless somebody even more powerful changes her, for she has no Flux powers at all.
"Most of the people on the apron, the daggers, have similar stories. They're all quite mad and they've all been changed in one way or another by wizards or their own minds. But they're the rare lucky ones. They survived in the Flux, and,
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