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with its vegetation. He had expected to have to plant it or to wait perhaps
years for it to grow out. But it was the huge expanse of blue water with its
waves foaming and crashing into the shore that truly shocked him. He had never
imagined that such an expanse of water could exist. Broad rivers and great
lakes, yes, but nothing like this.
They should have known, he realized. They should have guessed, at least, that
all that water, deprived of conversion back into Flux at the boundaries, would
have to collect somewhere but this much water was beyond comprehension.
Sitting incongruously a few hundred meters beyond the edge of the sea was the
master control amplifier that had created this, now clearly visible, its
rectangular form having sunk a bit in the soft, moist earth, now a useless
relic, the agent of its own obsolescence. The door to the lead-
lined operator's cage opened, and a shaken figure eased himself out and
dropped down to the ground, then stopped, struck as senseless as the rest of
them by the sight he'd helped create.
The temperature of the air at this time of year was generally twenty-one or
twenty-two degrees centigrade; now they began to shiver a bit, for the
temperature had dropped fully five or six degrees in the operation and
continued to do so. By early the next morning it had dropped all the way down
to seven, but it would take weeks before it was determined that the
temperature range had altered to a spread of about sixteen for a high to five
for a low. They were heading into the warmest season under the old conditions,
and hoped that it would hold true now, but no one wanted to think right away
about what the cold season's temperatures might be.
Communications had been severed the moment that the program had been
activated, but troops from all four Anchors and from positions outside the
cluster now proceeded in to check out the new land and pick up the pieces.
Without strings or familiar landmarks, however, it would be slow going, and
many would be dispersed or lost. The only thing that allowed them to negotiate
the new land was the instant discovery that magnetic compasses, used for
generations by stringers as a supplementary aid and known to all, were still
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apparently drawn tp the Hellgate; but with only that one reference point and
the known point of departure, it was going to be tough going.
More difficult was the discovery of just how much of the new area was
water and not fresh water, but contaminated with salt to such a degree that it
could not be used for agriculture.
Estimates ranged between a third to more than half of the former void now
being covered by water, which greatly raised the humidity of the entire
region. Clearly the new climate was not only going to be far chillier, but
also much wetter.
No one would ever be able to know how many thousands, or perhaps tens of
thousands, of innocent people and their arrogant Fluxlords, not to mention
stringers, duggers, and travelers of all sorts, were drowned in the massive
transformation of Flux energy to water, but bodies washed up on shorelines
after every storm for months.
After the terrible shock of the sight had lessened and the men on the platform
had regained enough composure to leave, either to investigate this new place
or to organize their commands for the aftermath, Adam Tilghman and four
bodyguards remained, gazing out on the strange and terrifying landscape.
Matson. too. remained. He would have to travel that landscape soon enough, if
he could. He took out a cigar and lit it, then approached Tilghman. The Judge
didn't turn his gaze from the new scene to see who it was, although from the
whiffs of cigar smoke he certainly could surmise it.
"Well, Judge, that's a right pretty trick," the old stringer said. "Looks like
everybody in New
Eden's gonna have to learn how to swim, and it's gonna be another neat trick
to string wires across that
."
"It's so
huge
," Tilghman breathed. "It must be what the ancient writings call a 'sea.' I I
never thought of a sea as anything more than a lake. Nothing like
this."
"You had all those nice programs and instruction manuals to do all this, but
did anybody give you an instruction manual for how to live with it? Those
ancient boys, they were smart ones, with smarter machines and a whole lot of
experience, I bet. You got the basics all right, but I bet you don't have any
idea what's supposed to be done next. What kind of fish could live in that
stuff."
He sniffed the strong salt air. "You can tell it's all contaminated water from
here. Best that you can do with it is try to corner the salt market. Hell,
Judge, didn't you ever wonder, if they know how to do all this, why they
didn't?"
Tilghman could not turn away, but the question stung him. "What?"
"You know what we talked about. They came here to live, somebody got to
chasing them, and they locked the doors but they kept all their machines and
the power to do this. Why didn't they? Why'd they leave it as Flux?"
"I I thought the powers of Flux corrupted those who could use it. I we, all of
us, the scientists as well thought that the first wizards moved to prevent
it. It's the only explanation of why it wasn't done, and why the records,
manuals, and programs were dispersed. They took them into Flux so that no one
could enact them."
Matson puffed away on his cigar. "Uh uh. That's as good a theory as any, but
it might have been different. I don't have the old history that you have,
Judge, but if you look at all this you can see that this sort of thing isn't a
simple kind of spell, it's the most complicated thing in the universe, maybe.
Somebody planned this all out as part of a whole, part of what World was
supposed to look like, but then the enemy came knocking at the door. You don't
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create a world like you create a Fluxland, Judge. A world's a zillion zillion
elements, all of 'em in some kind of balance and working this way or that
together. You got the landscaping for this section right, but not the fine
tuning, the finishing touches, the things that make it real nice and homey.
You got the land, and the water, and the plants, and maybe the basic
animals judging from Anchor, there'll probably be insects and that sort of
thing. But no big animals, no water creatures any more complicated than those
insects or grasses, none of that. I don't think they had all the programs, as
you call 'em, yet. Or maybe it takes a hundred years or so of real careful
planning. Maybe they didn't do it because it wouldn't work right, and with the
door locked they couldn't go get the rest.
Maybe they dispersed all that for the same reason they made it so hard to
unlock the Hellgates
so nobody would get tempted to do what you just did."
Tilghman suddenly turned and stood up, facing Matson. "No! Even if you're
right, it doesn't matter. What's done is done, for one thing. For another,
there's every sort of plant and animal,
bird and insect, in the Anchors. They'll spread out there now, and in time,
the land will teem with life in abundance. We have the plans for great farm
machinery and we have a large population that knows farming, cultivation, and
land management. No matter how big and how deep that sea out there is, we'll
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