03. Masters of Flux and Anchor Read Free

people are not happy, but their reli¬gion teaches that unhappiness, pain, and suffering is their lot until they attain Heaven. The women of the Brother¬hood are happy and contented with no thoughts of Heaven."
    "Because they have been brainwashed and Flux-changed into it!"
    "Ah, yes. Yet some people take drugs to chemically induce a happiness they cannot otherwise achieve; others drink to excess for the same reason. Still others throw themselves into religious frenzies in a bout of self-intoxication. All are seeking happiness. But happiness, even Heaven, is the absence of further progress. When one is happy, one wants no more than that, and will spend his life in a search to keep the brain's pleasure center perma¬nently on. It is the essence of humanity. We learn, we progress, by our unending quest for eternal happiness—yet should we achieve it, it all stops."
    Sondra shook her head as if to clear it. "You make the world seem ugly and upside down."
    "The world is ugly, but only viewpoints on it are upside down, not the world itself. All I am saying is that people pursue happiness in order to obtain it, then try to force it on everyone else. That's the way of things. I do not like the Brotherhood, but I also do not like most of World. That's why I tend to keep apart from it as much as possible. When I was forced into active long-term partici¬pation in it, during the reign of the Empire, I found myself acting just as ugly and ruthless as the other wizards. I didn't like it."
    "You'll not eliminate my hatred of the Brotherhood with cold logic, even of the irrefutable sort." she told him.
    "I know," he sighed. "That's why people still fight wars."
     
     
    World had changed much in only twenty years, but it was arguable whether it was for the better or worse. The way. Mervyn thought, the position on that question de¬pended on just what you wanted.
    Cass had broken the grip of the old Church by splitting it in two, and uniting opportunistic Fluxlords and Anchors chafing at the old system to create an empire that had at its height spanned more than half of World. In the end, though, the Empire spread itself too thin. Internal jealou¬sies and love of power cracked the empire in various places. While Mervyn and others of the most powerful wizards attempted a unified governmental authority, in the end the glue that held the Empire together and drove it onward had been the will of one woman: Cass, Sister Kasdi the warrior-saint. And so the enemies of Empire, led by Coydt van Haas, had set a trap for her, a trap she escaped—but at a great price.
    Coydt had been stronger; he had, in fact, defeated her in a test of wills, and only a shotgun blast from a cynical stringer seeking revenge had allowed her to triumph, her self-confidence shaken. But in his death throes, Coydt had achieved his aim, for he removed from her all of the spells that bound her, that made her the saintly leader, leaving her open to more human feelings, desires, and needs. Already wilting under the enormous weight of her responsi¬bilities, she had taken her drive from the fact that she could enjoy no alternatives. With those spells removed, the choice of going back to that miserable life was impossible. She had retreated to a Fluxland with her daughter, Spirit, who had been cursed to neither speak nor understand, and to be forever forbidden all tools and artifacts.
    With them had gone her grandson, Jeffron, whom Cass and the agents of Mervyn would raise.
    And with the "death" of Sister Kasdi and the with¬drawal of Cass, the Empire had quickly crumbled. The conciliatory leader of the old, original Church met with the highest priestesses of the Reformed Church, and after much argument and tribulation they hammered out a con¬cordat which reestablished a single Church once more under a single set of doctrines that incorporated the funda¬mental changes of the Reformers with the basics for which the old Church had fought. None could lead the Church, or become a