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mental breakdowns and some suicides and perhaps other problems we can't
imagine, but there are enough folks there with level heads and strong
personalities to pull it together with hard work. It's better than the
alternative."
"Alternative! You sneak out and leave them to be turned into whatever it is
they are. What we heard about them makes them total nonsense."
' 'Green French pom queens who have been double exposed is about the best I
can give it," the sorcerer replied, chuck-
ling a bit at the description. "Yes, I agree, a species that is apparently bom
animal and becomes plant doesn't make sense, and I have no notion as to what
the extra set of arms, let alone breasts, are good for, but we aren't exactly
well de-
signed, either. We only make sense because we're the norm to our own selves
against which we measure everybody and everything else. We could be designed
far more efficiently, HI tell you. But it's only form, and it's not a bad one
considering that many of the results of Changewinds I've seen
228 fack L. Chalker
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Japanese horror movie.
I expected far worse. I did get as many members of my own staff out as
possible, since I didn't want them to lose their power, but some volunteered
to stay, both because it was their home and because somebody had to maintain
that shield while I was gone for a sufficient time to convince old Rutanibir
and his flock that I was still home. The rest I couldn't help.
They would have been chewed to pieces in a panic evacua-
tion, and, frankly, the majority are far better off as a new race than as
millions of slaves of the new administration."
She hadn't thought of that. "You said it was better than the alternative. You
mean total slavery?"
"Oh, no- Klittichom's been getting very good at using the maelstrom effect of
the practice Changewinds his princess has been calling up all over the place.
In between the outplanes, dead center in the storm, it's a calm, almost a sort
of vacuum cleaner effect. She's been quite good at putting it where he wanted
it and he's been very neatly scooping up what he needed and dropping it down
to him here. The effect is hard to explain, but you have at least experienced
it. It's what he used to pick you up. You remember dropping through the
maelstrom to Akahlar. It's a natural phenomenon of the wind, which has picked
up and dropped a ton of stuff on Akahlar and the colonies and the lower
outplanes over the millennia, including probably the first Akhbreeds. There's
some evi-
dence that nothing is actually native to Akahlar; this is, as I
once told you, the ass end of the universe. Among the things he's picked up,
other than people, are heavy weapons and ammunition and, among other things, a
few thermonuclear devices."
She was shocked. "You mean atom bombs?"
"They're primitive- They are hydrogen at least. And it didn't take him long to
figure out how to bypass the fail-safe mechanisms and replace them with his
own, either. He didn't wind up down here with just the shirt on his back, you
know.
Among the things that came with him because they were caught in the same
vortex was his portable computer and much of his current notes and fancy
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mathematical programs.
That's what's made him a top dog so quickly. Once he grasped the basic
mathematics of magic here, he was able to build and solve enormous equations
with the thing, far beyond
WAR OF THE MAELSTROM 229
the abilities of even the greatest mathematical minds here.
Once he had a little experience, he could work out how to do
Just about anything and knock over any big-shot sorcerer who stood in his way.
And, of course, he is a genius, one of ihe rare true ones. Another Einstein,
da Vinci, or Fermi at least."
"Smarter even than you?" she asked him, wondering about his reaction.
"Oh, my, yes. Certainly. Although I am one of the few minds capable of not
only understanding but using and per-
haps refining his work. I, for example, never dreamed it was possible to enter
the Maelstrom through the weak point after it had passed, but once I saw that
he could, well, I figured out
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position, alas, is why all of this came to be. In a way, it's all my fault,
although 1 have days when 1 wonder if that is entirely true. Certainly some
basic defects in my character helped shape this crisis. You see, I'm a very
good wizard, my dear. I'm just not a very good man."
And slowly, as the miles passed far beneath them, Charley
^ teamed what lay behind all this mess, and it was sadder still
^' for being so, well, petty.
%
^
re Lang had been a professor at Princeton at the time; a boy genius he'd
had his Ph.D. and his voter's card at about the same time, and had already
accomplished a lot by the time he first met the man who was to become his
enemy.
Lang's interests lay in the far edge of theoretical physics;
the kind of pure intellectual activity in which men still sat in small offices
and thought deep thoughts and imagined the unimaginable and then built
mathematical and computer mod-
els to illustrate various principles that, in fact, probably had no practical
application ever, and in which only the mathe-
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