Lilith: A Snake in the Grass flotd-1

by Jack L. Chalker

  Kronlon laughed, enjoying his power and position. Here I was a giant of a man who could physically break him in two and he was my master as surely as if I were tiny and weak, like Ti. He roared with laughter and took another gulp of his beer. “She’s gone, boy!” he told me. “Gone forever. You better get used to an empty bed for a while, son, ’cause she ain’t never comin’ back and you may as well get somebody new. Poor big ol’ Cal ’s just got screwed.” He laughed again.

  My fury and frustration was growing almost beyond my control. All this tune I’d been bossed and terrorized by this moronic sadist and I was becoming fed up with it.

  “Where has she gone—sir?” I managed, still held back by the threat of that terrible power within him.

  My hesitant tone and manner caused him even more amusement. “You really feel somethin’ for her, don’t you?” he responded, as if this made his news all the more a cruel joke. “Well, boy, I got a message midmornin’ to fetch’her and bring her up to the Castle. She didn’t wanta come, I’ll tell you, but hell, she ain’t got no choice.” His stare suddenly became slightly vacant, his tone more serious. “Ain’t nobody got any choice in anything,” he added. I realized that Kronlon never liked to think along those lines. He covered his own fear and debasement by his cruelty and sadism, the only things his tiny ego really had.

  I should have felt some pity for him, but all I could see was a petty little man. who had neither the right nor the qualification to wash the feet of the people whom he terrorized from his position of power. I was starting to boil.

  “You know what they’re gonna do to her?” he taunted. “Turn her into a human cow, Tremon. You know what a cow is, don’t you? Big tits, no brains!” He roared at his joke.

  “You slimy son of a bitch,” I said evenly.

  He continued laughing for a moment, and I wasn’t sure he had heard me, nor, at that point, did I even care if he had. I was mad, howling, seething mad, perhaps crazy mad, too. I no longer cared what this worm, this lowest of the low, could do, what pain he could inflict. Agony was a price I was suddenly willing to pay if I could just snap his slimy neck.

  He had heard. “What’s that you said, boy? Some-thin’ on your mind? Why, hell, I’ll give you somethin’ else to think about, by damn!” He was almost shouting now, and he stood up. There was no mistaking it now—that sense of the Warden organism within him was stronger, more intense, brighter somehow, now. It was rising within him.

  “Hell, boy!” he roared. “Maybe I’ll fix you so’s you won’t get so worked up no more about no women! How’d you like t’be a gelding, boy? I can fix it, I can! I can fix you!”

  Then hit the force of that agony, that searing pain in every cell of my body. I reeled back, staggering, but this time that terrible pain only fuelled my anger and resentment. I exploded, no longer a thinking being, but a mass of raw emotions, a hatred such as I had never known all concentrated on this one terrible little man.

  I stumbled and fell to my knees; yet as that animal fury took complete control, I no longer felt the pain the way I had. It lessened, Still agonizing but somehow no longer relevant.

  Slowly, deliberately, I pulled myself to my feet and took a step toward him.

  Kronlon’s bushy eyebrows rose in surprise; his expression showed confusion, then concentration as he threw everything he had at me.

  I bellowed, a ferocious primal roar of rage that echoed throughout the whole village, then charged the startled and suddenly very frightened supervisor.

  He retreated a couple of steps, then came up against the table he was using and almost fell back onto it. I was on him in an instant, my huge hands around his beefy throat. Kronlon had taught me more than the true meaning of fear; he’d taught me absolute, single-minded hatred. He struggled to pry my hands loose from his throat Somewhere in the dim recesses of my mind I was aware that the pain, the agony, was fading now, fading fast. It didn’t matter. It wasn’t relevant.

  I felt a surge of energy grow within me, a strange, tangible power like some terrible fist. But before I could even comprehend what was happening, the tension broke and flowed outward from me, outward to the man whom I had pinned against the table. There was a searing burst of light and heat so intense I let him go and reeled backward. I recovered quickly but was still stunned as my head came up to see the supervisor lit in a strange glow, like some eerie supernatural flame.

  And then he started decomposing before my eyes.

  It was a gruesome sight, but one that, given my mental state, I could view without thought and, suddenly, without feeling of any kind. His skin fell from him, then his tissues, and finally the skeleton itself, which first glowed with a terrible brightness, then faded.

  As my senses started to return, I just stood there, gaping at the impossible scene I had just witnessed. Finally I approached the place where Kronlon had stood and stared at it in the near darkness.

  Everything, literally everything that was solid or liquid on Lilith burned with the tiny glow of Warden organisms. Everything—the table, the grass, the dirt, the rocks, the trees, even the lamp post. Everything. Everything but the grayish powder that now coated part of the table and a little of the ground beneath it.

  All that was left of Kronlon.

  Intellectually I was aware that I had caused it, but deep down, I could not believe it. The truth was incredible, impossible. Somehow, in my animal fury, my own Warden organisms had picked up that emotional power and transmitted it to those in Kronlon’s own cells. Burned them up. Killed them.

  I turned, stunned, suddenly aware that I was not alone. A crowd of villagers stood just outside, gaping in shocked silence at the scene, scared but unmoving—almost, it seemed, afraid to breathe. As I walked toward them, they quickly drew back, their fear a real and tangible thing. Fear not of Kronlon or of retribution.

  Fear of me.

  “Wait!” I called out. “Please! Don’t be afraid! I’m not—like him. I won’t hurt you! I’m your friend. I’m one of you. I live among you, work among you.”

  My protestations were in vain. Clearly I was not one of them any more. I was a man with the power. I had separated myself from them forever, drawn an unbridgeable gap between my own existence and their eternal toil.

  “It doesn’t have to be like this,” I almost pleaded with them. “It doesn’t haye to be a tyranny. Kronlon’s gone, and I am not Kronlon.”

  Torlok, an elderly man in a village where most never survived that long, was something of an authority figure; he ambled forward. The others were shrinking from me as if I had some terrible disease. Even Torlok would only come so far, but he was old and experienced and past a lot of caring about men and women with the power.

  “Sir, you must go now,” he croaked. “You are no longer one of us.”

  “Torlok—” I began, but he put up a hand.

  “If you please, sir. When Kronlon does not check in tomorrow morning they will send someone to see why. They will find out why and they will send us another Kronlon. Things have changed only for you, not for us.”

  “You could leave,” I pointed out. “You have until at least midday.”

  Torlok sighed. “Sir, you think you understand, but you do not. You are still new on this world of ours. You say flee—but where to? To another Keep run the same? To the wild to live in near starvation with the savages, unprotected from the nobles and the wild’s own beasts? Or perhaps to be hunted down like some sporting beast?” He shook his head. “No, there will be no change for us. You must go now. You must go to the Castle, tell them what you have done. You belong to their life now, not ours. You cannot go back. We cannot go forward. Go—before you unknowlingly bring the wrath of the Masters upon us. If you feel anything at all for us, go—go now.”

  I stared at them for a moment, not quite believing what I was hearing. They were fools, I thought, who deserved their miserable lot. They actually preferred it to any sort of challenge!

  Well, let them go back to their miserable lives, I told myself. This me
ntion of the Castle reminded me that I had more than one good reason for going there. As Kronlon had said, we didn’t have a choice, any of us, least of all me in this situation.

  The adrenaline was ebbing, though, and I no longer felt as cocksure and all-powerful as I had only moments before. I turned and looked off into the distance, up at that fairy-tale place built into the side of the hill. Somewhere in there was Ti.

  Without another word, I turned my back on the crowd that had disowned me and walked silently out of the village, out across the grassy fields toward the Castle.

  Before I was halfway there Td come down completely from the high that the power and emotional fury had given me. Now my intellectual self, my old self, was able to assume control once more—not necessarily for the better, I realized.

  Up to that point I had never been anywhere near the Castle. The only people I knew who had were those like Kronlon who weren’t exactly the chatty sort. I had no idea how many people were there, and of what potential power. The Knight and his family were there, of course,, most of the time, and I already knew that I was no match for a Master, let alone a Knight. I wondered if I was even a match for a trained person of Supervisor rank. Kronlon was where he was because of the land of person he had been—petty, mean, cruel, and stupid. I suspected that the first three might not matter so much, but the last was unforgivable.

  I began to think that individuals like Kronlon, with a little power and small mind, were actually the sacrificial lambs. Somebody had to do that kind of work. But the risk always existed that one of the pawns who had been abused was potentially as strong or stronger than the Supervisor. When that happened, you’d probably scratch one Supervisor.

  That observation led to a different line of thought. If I had been merely as strong as Kronlon, we’d have fought to a draw. If I had been slightly stronger, well, he’d be in terrible pain but probably alive. Master strength, at the very least.

  Master strength… yes, but untrained. I was unable to muster that power on command, automatically, as even Kronlon could. More like Ti, I supposed, at least at this point. I wondered if that had been the reason for the caution about her. Had she at some point gotten mad and fried somebody to atoms? Somehow done so, and yet been unable to repeat the act.

  I stopped in the darkened field. Was I in fact one of the elect, or, like Ti, merely a Wild Talent? That was the most sobering question I had asked myself on the journey and the most disquieting.

  All those nights I had sat there, sensing the Warden organism even as I felt it now in everything around me, trying to make it do something, anything—just bend a blade of grass. I’d failed miserably, despite intense concentration and force of will. And yet I had willed a man to decompose into dust and he had done so. How? Why?

  It wasn’t the absence of thought, although that was certainly true in this case, since the rulers, even those like Kronlon, could accomplish such things effortlessly and at their command. Yet there was no communication with the Warden organism itself, not really. The little buggers didn’t think, they reacted to stimulus. External stimulus. If the power didn’t depend on thought, but could be consciously mustered, then what was it?

  The answer was so obvious I had only to ask the question of myself in order to be able to answer it. It was emotion, of course. My hatred, my sheer contempt and loathing for Kronlon had triggered the Warden organisms in my own body to transmit that devastating energy signal to the organisms in his.

  Hatred, fear, love—all these emotions triggered chemical actions in various parts of the body, including most particularly the brain. These chemicals, then, were the catalyst that the Warden organism, living symbiotically in each and every cell of my body, needed to trigger its own powers. Emotion, reduced to its chemical products and by-products, was what was needed—and that explained a lot. Training, then, in the use of these powers was really concerned with controlling areas of the brain and body normally beyond control, much as yoga and other disciplines.

  The criminals who were sent here were a bundle of messed-up psyches and unbalanced, often uncontrolled emotions. In the main, those born here were more naturally balanced as a result of their static society. Furthermore they were born with the Warden organism already growing and multiplying with their cells, in a better balance with then: host’s bodies; thus they were more like the creatures of Lilith, in perfect balance with the organism rather than alien to it. Outsiders, then, would naturally have the edge in triggering these odd powers. Ironically, while my cold, trained, logical mind had been unable to do a thing with this power, Cal Tremon’s emotional imbalances —that new part of me that made me alien from myself—had done the job so well.

  I resumed walking, but slowly, reflecting on what I knew and still didn’t know. It was perhaps two hours, before I reached the carved stone stairs leading, in a series of switchbacks, up to the Castle itself. For the first time in a. very long time I was aware of and a little ashamed of my nakedness, my dirt and grime, my wild and savage appearance that was unfit for civilized company. Those up there in the Castle were civilized, no doubt about that. Perhaps not sane by any known definition, but certainly civilized—perhaps even cultured.

  I wondered what-1 was supposed to do now and cursed myself for not asking someone back in the village. Did you just go up and knock and say, “Hello, I’m Cal Tremon. I just killed Supervisor Kronlon and I want to join your club?” What were the procedures here?

  There seemed nothing to do but climb the stairs and wing it.

  Chapter Nine

  The Castle

  It was an imposing structure, I had to admit that. Nothing like it had existed in the civilized worlds for a thousand years or so, if then, except in children’s fantasies.

  And they lived happily ever after.…

  Towers rose on either side of the main gateway, a huge double door of some bronze-colored wood that filled a massive stone arch. Windows in various parts of the place, which looked big enough to house several hundred, were all of stained glass and alit with the varying colors of the artist’s hand. Judging from the lights, I deduced that at least the inhabitants were still up and I wouldn’t be waking anybody.

  I looked around for some simpler entrance, but it seemed as if the huge wooden door was it. I wondered whether every knight on Lilith had such a building, or whether this was the aberration of Boss Tiel. Certainly on Lilith there was nothing that walls and gates would keep out to be feared by one of such power.

  There being no bell, apparently, nor any other system for summoning those inside, I pounded on the great wooden doors as hard as I could without hurting myself.

  I hardly expected an immediate response, and I didn’t get one. Vaguely, through the thick stone walls and gate, I could hear the sound of a crowd and some music, which meant I had to compete with some interior function. Still, I kept banging away, resting a bit between tries, although I was beginning to think I might have to camp out on the Knight’s doorstep until the Castle opened for business in the morning.

  With all my muscles I could pound pretty good, and somebody did eventually hear the pounding. I heard a voice from above me call out “Hey! You, there! What the hell do you want?”

  I jumped slightly, then turned to locate the speaker. He was standing at one of the small tower windows. He was too far away for me to see his features and how he might be dressed, or to get any idea of his rank.

  I shrugged to myself. What the hell. “I’m Cal Tremon, sir!” I responded in my loudest, boomiest voice. “I just disintegrated one of your supervisors and I was told in no uncertain terms to get my ass up here.”

  The man hesitated a moment, as if considering what to do. Finally he called, “Just a moment! I’ll have somebody come down and take care of you!”

  I shrugged again. I sure wasn’t going anyplace until they came, having no place to go, I wondered what was going on inside. For all I knew I was speaking to the lowest servant in the place—or to the big boss himself.

  After a few mi
nutes the huge wooden doors creaked open a bit and a young woman emerged. She was tall and thin and had an almost aristocratic bearing about her. Years ago she’d probably been a really pretty woman, but she was now well into middle age and that usually didn’t wear well on this kind of primitive world. Her hair was white and her face more wrinkled than even her age should have permitted.

  What was important was that she was fully dressed in a long dress or robe of deep-purple silk embroidered with gold—an impressive uniform. At least a Master, I told myself, feeling even more helpless and not a little embarrassed by my appearances.

  She approached me and walked around me, examining me as if I were some prize animal stock. Her nose twitched a bit, indicating that mingling with the common stock was not altogether to her taste. She smelled of perfumes too sweet to remember the time long ago when she must have been out in the muck herself.

  Finally she straightened up, stood back, and took the overall view. I decided it was better to say nothing until she did. No use in blowing protocol. Finally she said, “So you killed Kronlon, eh?” I nodded. “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Gior said you claimed to have, ah, disintegrated him or some such term?”

  I could only nod again. “That’s true. He decomposed into dust at my touch.”

  She nodded back thoughtfully, more to herself than to me. “You use those cultured words freely,” she noted, a trace of surprise in her voice. “Disintegrate. Decompose. And your speech is cultured. You are from Outside?”

  I grimaced, knowing her thoughts on my filthy appearance. “Yes, ma’am. I’ve been here some time—how long I’m not sure.”

  She put her hand to her chin in a gesture of deep thought. “What were you when you were Outside, Tremon?”

  I tried to look as innocent as possible. “I was a, ah, gentleman privateer, ma’am.” • She snickered. “A pirate, you mean.” “For political motives,” I replied. “The Confederacy had a basic concept that I disagreed with and I took action against it.”