Read Online 05. Children of Flux and Anchor by Jack L. Chalker - Free Book Online

but it also reinforced that tight niche, that cocoon. You were afraid of becoming the drifting, aimless outsider again. The more you considered alternatives, the tighter the safe and warm cocoon gripped you. The same thing happened to me, only I was a professional woman, a healer. You have so many self-induced spells on you that they can't be counted, all reinforcing your safety image. So do I. So do Sondra, and Jeff, and the others. You must stop dwelling on what you could have been and accept what you are. You can accept it and find some happiness and comfort, or you can continue to reject it and remain miserable, guilt-ridden, and uncomfortable. But you will still be the same in either case."
    The terrible thing was, it explained so much, particularly about wizards. Why, even after centuries, wizards remained basically the same people, and why most of them feared changes. Why Fluxlands remained constant, and why, after half a century or so, they grew so negligibly.
    The worst part had been after, when, in defiance, she'd really tried some radical changes on herself. She tried, she really tried, just to prove it false, to prove herself the exception to the rule. She tried changing herself physically, and succeeded, but all she got was a different looking Fluxgirl. Worse, she felt uncomfortable until she changed back into the old form again. Now, at least, she understood why Mervyn was always an old-man figure. It was his niche, his self-image. Oh, he changed himself into others at times, to carry out his purposes, but as soon as he could he always changed back again. She wasn't as strong a wizard as Mervyn had been, and she didn't have his motivations even for his temporary changes.
    Worse were the changes inside. She had given up cigars years ago. They just didn't give her a charge anymore, and the idea of doing it now seemed, well, wrong. She used to cuss like a soldier, but somehow that had gradually faded away. It had just become, well, embarrassing, a word the old Suzl wouldn't even have known the meaning for. She liked personal privacy, but she didn't like being really alone. She'd gone off for a bit into Flux after the sessions, but she'd returned very quickly to Freehold. With others, fine, but out there, even with the power, she just couldn't stand being alone.
    Even here, with servants to wait on servants, she had automatically and without even thinking about it made the bed, cleaned up any mess, and even wiped out the washbasin and tub with a towel. A smudge on the window that didn't even look out on much of anything had so preyed on her that she'd wetted a cloth and cleaned it off, then did the rest of the window so it would all look uniform.
    Not that she was a true Fluxgirl, of course. She thought and acted independently, and could control her emotions at least as well as the old Suzl could, which wasn't all that much. She didn't believe for a minute the divine nature of all this. She was literate and did good math, although neither skill got much real use out of disinterest. It was still nice to send and receive letters and notes from faraway close ones like Spirit and Cass, but her own notes were stilted, phrased in simple sentences and written in block letters, and she read the notes aloud, one word at a time. When you haven't done something for fifty years it comes hard, and there was no incentive to improve. And, she was still pretty aggressive when she wanted to be. Any man who attacked her would find he'd attacked a tigress.
    The bottom line was that she desperately needed someone to love and to love her, and that someone was not in sight, had never really been in sight except for all-too-brief moments in the distant past with people now far changed from that time. Not love as her friends loved her, or love as her children loved her, but real, personal love. She had never loved or been in love in New Eden, but it had been an easy, comfortable time, and the job and role was something she knew how to do