I sighed. The usual dead end. How could you explain machines to somebody who was born and raised on a world where nothing worked and practically nothing lasted? I decided this could be used as a back way into the subject that really interested me.
“Where I come from nobody has the power,” I told her. “And when a place doesn’t have the power, you can change things, make things that last. Some of those are machines, and they do what the power does here.”
She mulled this over, trying to sort it out, but didn’t seem to understand. That was about as far as I’d gotten with anybody else, though, which indicated she had some brains.
“Why don’t they have the power?” she asked. I shrugged. “I don’t know. I don’t know why some people do. I don’t really understand what the power is even now.” Watch it, I warned myself. Be very careful. “I hear you got the power. Is that right?”
“Well, yeah, I guess so,” she admitted. “Don’t do me no good, though. Y’know, like you can feel it inside but can’t talk to it. I guess that’s what them others can do. They can talk to it, tell it to do things.”
“But you can feel it,” I prompted. “What’s it feel like?”
She unclasped her arms and slid down from the rock, stretching and rubbing her behind. She slithered over and sat right next to me. “I just can feel it, that’s all,” she replied. “Can’t you?”
I shook my head. “Nope. Either I don’t have it or I don’t know how to look or what to feel.”
She shrugged. “Ever look?”
I considered that, and filed it for reference.
I tried to press the subject, but she’d become bored with it and didn’t want to talk about it any more. I decided not to push her. I’d made an easy friend here, and I didn’t want to blow my advantage all at once. There would be other nights.
I was suddenly aware that she was sitting very close to me, and for the first time I realized why she was attracted to me and had noticed me before. My most outstanding outsized feature would be an almost irresistible magnet to somebody being manipulated as she was. And for the first time in this body, I did start feeling the urge, but something stopped me. She was so very young, damn it all, and for her the word “pawn” took on an even greater meaning.
After a little small talk elicited no response from me she sat up and looked at me strangely. “You ain’t one of them man-lovers, are you?” she asked, genuinely perplexed.
I had to laugh. “No, not that,” I replied carefully. “I—well, it’s just that, where I come from, somebody my age feels funny with somebody your age.” / could have a child your age, I added to myself.
She gave me a disgusted look. “That’s what I thought,” she pouted. “I dunno why that’s a big deal. It ain’t like I never done it, you know. I do it lots since I come out. Master Tang said it was good to do it.” She stood up, looking miffed. “Guess Til go up to the Super, then. He don’t mind.”
I sighed. This combination of child-woman was hard for me to accept, let alone cope with. I was also torn by my desire not to alienate her and my mental reaction to her as a child. How can I explain it? It was as if an adolescent who was very desirable had said, “If you don’t make love to me Til hold my breath until I turn blue, so there!” The contrast between willing and sensuous woman and small child was just something I couldn’t figure out how to handle, particularly when I knew that her avid sexuality was induced by cold, uncaring men who saw her as an animal, some land of domesticated beast. It seemed, damn it, somewhat incestuous to take advantage of that sort of situation.
I’d like to think that the reason I gave in that night had to do with my fear of alienating her and thus jeopardizing my only avenue of gaining knowledge.
The body Security had given me was, of course, a body of opportunity. Krega had said that they went through a lot of bodies before an imprint “took,” so it was pure chance that I wound up with this one—yet it proved to be my real break. Its primitive, throw-back nature gave me size and great strength, and its oversexed development had attracted Ti. In the days that followed she stayed with me and near me, at least in the evenings. On size alone I seem to have made, in her mind at least, the other men around seem inadequate. Furthermore, a playboy learns just about every variation, and variety wasn’t well known on Lilith.
I kept after her, subtly and without boring her, about this power she felt and its nature. Slowly, considering her fairly short attention span, I got what I could. Late at night, with Ti lying at my side, I tried to shut out everything and everybody else and see if I, too, could “feel it.”
It was an internal process, somewhat a mental process, but there was no real guide to it. Ti had been born with the power, had grown up with it, and therefore wasn’t the best person to tell me exactly what to look for. The best would have been a super or higher, and they weren’t going to reveal anything.
Kronlon was the key to my persistence. The man was a sadist, a petty little godlet without the brains he was born with. Yet somehow he’d found it, learned to use it. I will never understand the selection process for Warden worlds, I’m convinced, if a Kronlon could have been sent here instead of wiped. And sent here he’d been—or so Ti assured me. A long time ago now, of course, but that bastard had been spawned in my space, not here on this primitive and brutal planet.
What had he done to awaken those powers? I wondered each night. What did he feel?
Sometimes, on the border of sleep, I thought I could feel something stirring, something strange; but it was elusive, beyond my grasp. I was beginning to worry that it was denied me. Or perhaps the fact that this was not my body was the blocking factor. It was said to be a sense of alienness. To my mind, anyway, this body I wore, former property of the late and unlamented Cal Tremon, was alien, too—though becoming less and less so. I was not really aware of it at the time, but now, looking back, I can see more clearly.
My memories and personality were intact, but there is a biological side to us as well, one involving enzymes, hormones, and secretions. It is as if the individual, the personality, is a particularly vivid black-and-white photograph and those physiological elements add the color, the shading, the nuance. Even your sexual preferences are determined mostly by a small cluster of cells deep in the cerebrum. Such cells aren’t transferred in the process with the personality; you inherit the body you get with all its physiological and chemical properties, and they change you.
Tremon’s body was particularly sensitive to that sort of thing, since it was an unregulated one from the frontier. On the civilized worlds such physical and chemical properties are carefully regulated. But Tremon, the result of a random coupling of two unregulated people, was subject to all the ancient genes and the variations spawned not only by evolution but also by mutation, something spacers were particularly prone to.
Personality is built on these properties, not the other way around. Tremon was violent, aggressive, and amoral; he simply couldn’t be more of the brutish male, with all that implies than he was. All these physical factors now worked on me as they had on him, and were tempered only by my own memories and personality, my old ingrained habits and cultural inhibitions. Tempered, but not damped out. Of course the longer I remained in the body, the more completely these factors would come to dominate my behavior. Already I was beginning to look back on my old life and existence with more than a little wonder, trying in vain to understand how I could have acted this way or that, or done this or that, or enjoyed this rather than that. It was becoming more and more difficult to think of that old life as my own. Terribly clear and vivid and the only past I had, but increasingly I began thinking and acting as if I, Cal Tremon, had somehow inherited from Security the memories and knowledge of a total stranger.
Within a couple of weeks of first meeting Ti, I found it difficult to understand my earlier reluctance about her. I understood on an intellectual level, of course, but on the increasingly dominant emotional level it became harder and harder to believe that those objections
mattered.
Then one evening, on my way back to the village after a long, tiring day, looking forward to food and Ti, I heard the grass talking.
It was an eerie, alien sensation like nothing I’d ever experienced before; it wasn’t any kind of conversation we humans could comprehend. It was as if somehow the grass was suddenly filled with colonies of living things in contact with one another, even between blades and clusters of grass. I was aware of a discomforting protest when I trod down some of the grass, and of a tiny tickle of relief when I moved on. I don’t think it was intelligence I was sensing, but it was awareness, life of some sort, on a very basic, emotive level. And yet it was communication of a sort. For after a bit of walking I could sense a distant feeling of tension just ahead in the grass that I was about to step on.
It was a strange sensation, there and yet almost not there, sensed mostly because it was so pervasive, because there was just so damned much grass. The feeling excited me, even though I had to face the fact that I was tired, dirty, somewhat depressed, and just possibly was going nuts.
Ti, however, who joined me from her job at the nursery, seemed to sense something even before I told her about it. “You felt it today,” she said, not asked.
I nodded. “I think so. It was—odd. Hearing the grass, sensing countless billions of tiny interconnected living things.”
She didn’t follow some of the big words but she knew what I meant and I saw an unexpected look of pity on her face. “You mean,” she asked incredulously, “you couldn’t hear it ’fore now?”
It was a revelation to her, as if suddenly discovering that the supposedly normal person she knew had been deaf all his life and had suddenly acquired hearing. It was that acute—almost like another sense, a sixth sense, one that grew and developed as the days went on.
Once I knew what to look for, I could find it everywhere.
The rocks, the trees, the animal life of this world, all sang with it over and above their existence as separate entities. It was an incredible sensation, and a beautiful one. The world sang to you, whispered to you.
People, too—although they were the most difficult partly because their own activities partially masked the effect, so quiet and subtle it was, and partly because it’s almost impossible to observe a human being with the same objectivity as can be applied to a rock or tree or blade of grass. Yet each entity was also unique, and with a little concentration I could not only sense but actually mentally map a particular area with my eyes closed.
This, I realized, was the key to that mysterious power. My own Warden organisms, inside every cell, perhaps every molecule of my body, were in some way interconnected by some sort of energy to every other Warden organism. It was this interconnection I saw and felt and heard. It had to be what they all saw and felt and heard, all the ones with any vestige of the power.
A Supervisor sensed, what I sensed and had the ability to send, through his own body’s symbiotes, a message to yours—or to a rock’s or to anything else’s. A Master, then, could do it in more detail—could see the individual parts inside a human body and order changes in the way those cells operated.
When something died, or if it lost its primary form—such as when a lock was crushed—the Warden organisms died, and without them, the very structure of tiie thing became unstable and collapsed. A Knight, then, I realized, could somehow keep the Warden organisms alive under those conditions. But even then, the organism attacked and destabilized inorganic matter from outside its environment. Somehow I thought of antibodies, those substances in human blood that attack foreign substances such as viruses that invade pur bodies. It seemed to me that the Warden organism acted much like an antibody on inorganic alien matter: it attacked, destabilized, and destroyed it.
Kreegan, then, could do the impossible—convince the Warden organism not to attack and destroy alien inorganic matter. And each rank could also keep lower ranks from communicating with the Warden organisms inside their own bodies, thus protecting them.
But what tuned you to your own symbiotes, allowed you to relay commands through them to others outside your own body? That I had yet to discover. The mere discovery that I could sense the communication while most pawns could not was the best thing that could have happened to me. I no longer felt tired or depressed. I had the talent. I needed to explore my powers, test them, learn how to use them, learn my own limits.
Perhaps I wouldn’t equal the Lord; perhaps I’d need help, a valuable ally.
— For now, though, it was enough to know, finally, what was what on this mad world—and to know, too, that my days of hauling mud for sixteen hours were numbered.
More than enough.
Chapter Seven
Father Bronz
Over the following days my increasing sensitivity to the silent communication absorbed me, and I tried to learn everything I could about it. None of the pawns were any help except Ti, who could feel the power but had never learned how to control or use it properly. Since one’s position on Lilith was dependent on mastery of the power—and since social mobility usually led to the death of one of the contestants for a particular position—there were, needless to say, no instruction manuals.
Although I’ve lived with the sensation for quite some time now, it is still nearly impossible to describe. The best objective description I can give is a tremendously heightened sensitivity to an energy flow. The energy is not great and yet you can sense it, not as a static thing but as a continuous and pulsating energy flow from all things solid. Gases and water don’t seem to be affected by the flow, although things living in the water, no matter how tiny, possess it.
The energy itself is of the same sort—that is, there’s no difference between a flow from a blade of grass, a person, and the insects—and yet the patterns that it forms are unique. You can tell one blade of grass from another, a person from some other large creature; you even get different patterns from the billions of microbes we all carry inside us.
I was still experimenting when the stranger arrived in our little village. He’d apparently been there most of the day, walking around to different work parties and details, but hadn’t yet reached mine. Early in the evening I finally saw him, relaxing in the common and eating some fruit. He wore a toga of shiny white that seemed to ripple with his every move and a pair of finely crafted sandals that marked him as a man of extreme power. Yet he was sitting there at ease, eating with and socializing with us mere pawns. He was an elderly man, with a fine-lined face and carefully trimmed gray beard, but he was balding badly both in front, where only a widow’s peak remained, and around the top of his head. He looked thin and trim, however, and was in good physical condition, as would be expected. His age could not be guessed, but he would have to have been at least in his seventies, perhaps years older.
For a fleeting moment the idea entered my naturally suspicious head that this might be Lord Marek Kreegan himself. Why he’d show up here at this particular time, however, was a mystery that pushed coincidence to the limit. Besides, Kreegan would be of standard height and build, as all the other people of the civilized worlds and I had been. This man seemed a bit too short and too broad to fit into that absolute category.
It was interesting to see the pawns’ reaction to him. While they would not even address a supervisor and would treat such a person with abject servility, they freely approached this man and chatted with him, almost as equals. I found Ti and asked her who he was.
“He is Father Bronz,” she told me.
“Well? What’s that mean?” I responded, a little irritated. “Who and what is a Father Bronz?”
“He is a Master,” she responded, as if that explained everything when all it did was state the obvious.
“I know that,” I pressed bravely on, “but I’ve never seen pawns be so casual with anybody with the power before. They even steer a little clear of you because of your reputation. I mean, is he from the castle? Does he work for the Boss or the Duke or what?”
She laughed p
layfully. “Father Bronz don’t work for nobody,” she said scornfully. “He’s a God-man.”
That threw me temporarily until I realized that she wasn’t referring to his power but to his job. Obviously, she meant he was a cleric of some sort, although I’d seen no sign of any real religion on Lilith. I knew clerics, of course; for some reason those cults and old superstitions still held a lot of people even on the civilized worlds. The more you tried to stamp ’em out, the more strength they seemed to gain.
I stared again at the strange old man. Odd place for a cleric, I thought. He must have some really weird religious beliefs if he’s here on Lilith. Why condemn yourself here when you could be living the good life in some temple paid for by the ignorant? And, I wondered, how could a man of God, whichever one or ones it was, have risen to Master without blood on his hands?
I kept noticing the men and women going up to him, talking to him, in singles and small groups. “Why are they talking to him?” I asked her. “Are they afraid not to?” It seemed to me that if you were stumping for converts and had the power of a Master you could at least compel them to listen to your sermons—but he wasn’t sermonizing. Just talking nicely.
“They tell him their troubles,” Ti said, “and sometimes he can help them. He’s the only one of them with the power who likes pawns.”
I frowned. A confessor—or did he actually offer intercession? I considered it, but couldn’t really figure out his function. More stuff to learn, I told myself. Though there was really only one way to do so, I hated even the thought of going up to someone with ten times or more Kronlon’s powers.
I guess he noticed me standing there staring, for when the group thinned out, he glanced over in my direction and then gestured and called to me. “You there! You’re a big, hairy fellow, aren’t you? Come on over!” he called pleasantly, his voice rich and mellow. That was a charmer’s voice, a con man’s voice —the kind that could make a crowd do almost anything he wanted.
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