Lilith: A Snake in the Grass flotd-1

by Jack L. Chalker

  “Look at the chair,” she ordered. “Be one with it. Know its pattern.”

  I did, and it was far easier than last time now that I knew just what to look for.

  “Now, using the chair as a model, put the other chair back together,” she instructed.

  I frowned. Having just been pulled down to earth from godhood, I was now being ordered to elevate myself again.

  “Is that possible?” I managed.

  “It is if you are powerful enough,” she responded. “Supervisors can destroy and, to a limited extent, stabilize things they make. You have already shown yourself a Supervisor. But the supervisor, like the pawn, must build or physically make everything himself. A Master may do more. A Master may take the very elements that make something up and rearrange them to suit himself. Are you a Master, Cal Tremon? Can you be a Master?”

  She was pushing, I realized, and I hesitated within myself before going further. We were beyond this lesson, I suspected, beyond whatever we were supposed to prove. Had I in fact done what Artur cautioned against—done what I was supposed to do too effortlessly, too well? Should I make this attempt she demanded of me?

  The hell with it, I told myself. Let’s see just what I’m made of, whether the computer that selected me as the best person for the job knew its stuff. If I had the potential to be a Master, and I’d better, I wanted to know it. I’d spent too long marking time in the mud and the muck and I was impatient.

  I stared at the chair again, saw its pattern, how it was bound up and tied together. Now I looked at the strange tubular plants growing where the other chair had been, and I again linked-with the Warden organism within them while trying not to lose the contact and, well, communion, with the chair. It was a tricky juggling act, since the molecular structure was the same for both and it was hard not to confuse them.

  I ordered the Wardens in the plants to disunite once again, to break down as they had before, untying their current plant pattern. Keeping a mostly mental eye on them, I concentrated hard on the existing chair, the pattern, the way it was bound up and tied together.

  There were a lot of false starts, a lot of confusion; at one point I almost had the chair dissolving instead of the plants recombining. I don’t know how long it took, but finally I succeeded. Two chairs stood there side by side, looking like twins from the same mass-produced, computer-controlled factory. I was sweating like mad and my head throbbed, but I had done it. Totally exhausted, I sank to the floor and gasped for breath. Vola, however, was more than pleased.

  “I didn’t think I could do it,” I admitted, breathing as hard as if I had been lifting heavy stones.

  “You are strong indeed, Cal Tremon,” she responded. “Very strong. Many of my past students have risen to be Masters, but only four have ever accomplished that exercise on one dosage. Most never are able to do it, and they remain supervisors. Many, like your Kronlon, could not even decompose the chair without killing the organisms within. Others, the bulk of them, manage that much—and no more. A very few can do the reassembly, but only four before —now five—have done it on the first try. It will become easier now each time you do it, although the pattern for such a chair is simple compared to most other things.”

  “The other four,” I pressed, feeling completely washed out. “Anybody I know?”

  She shrugged. “My nephew, Boss Tiel, for one,” she replied. “Also Dr. Pohn and Master Artur. And Marek Kreegan.”

  My head came up. “What? You taught him?”

  She nodded. “Long ago, of course. I was very young then, no more than sixteen or seventeen, but I was here, as I have always been. I am one of the rare ones, Tremon—a native of considerable power.”

  That was interesting, but the information about Kreegan was more so. This explained why he returned here off and on and why he might permit a party in his honor here, of all places. Decades ago Kreegan, too, had been landed right here in Zeis Keep, had worked in those same fields, had been brought to the Castle—if there was a Castle in those days—and had been trained by a very young Vola. There was too much going on here for it to be chance. The Confederacy had arranged this, of course. Picked the man who most matched Kreegan’s old agent profile and sent him to the same places under the same conditions. I could see their thinking clearly now, and I had to admit there was nothing wrong with it.

  “I’ll bet you made the chair the first time,” I said.

  She grinned and winked at me.

  “Tell me about Kreegan,” I pressed. “What’s he like?”

  She stood up and stood back a moment, studying me. “A lot like you, Cal Tremon. An awful lot like you.” But she would say no more, leaving me to recover from my increasingly nasty headache as the effects of the drug wore off. Power was not without its price.

  Chapter Twelve

  Too Dangerous to Have Around

  1 slept fitfully, wrestling with my headache, and awoke several times to the stillness around me. Several times I thought someone had come into the room, and once I had a strong feeling that at least one individual was actually in the room standing next to the bed, looking down at me in deep thought. A mysterious figure, a wraith, yet huge, looming, dark, indistinct, powerful—the stuff of which children’s nightmares are made, yet so compelling you hesitate to open your eyes and see if anybody’s really there. I cursed myself for this reaction, for giving in to primal fears I never even knew I had, but that terrible feeling remained. Finally I shamed myself into a peek, but the room was dark and apparently empty.

  I was just about to turn over and try and get back to sleep when my ears picked up a slight sound near the door. I froze, half in caution and half hi—I was ashamed to admit to myself—fear of that nameless childish boogeyman.

  “Tremon!” I heard a soft, female whisper.

  Suddenly wide awake, I sat up cautiously. Fear had given way to puzzled curiosity now that another presence was tangible.

  “Here!” I whispered.

  A figure approached easily, not at all bothered by the darkness, and crouched down beside me. Although I could see only a slight form in the near-total darkness, I knew it was Vola.

  “What’s the matter?” I whispered.

  “Tremon, you have to get out of here,” she told me. “They’re going to kill you before morning. There has just been a meeting about you with all the big shots present.”

  I remembered Artur’s warning. So I had gone too far for prudence despite all the logic at my command.

  “Now, listen carefully,” she continued. “Tin not going to let them do it. Not even if what they say is true. I’ve seen your kind of potential too rarely here, and I won’t see it nipped in the bud.”

  I frowned and sat on the side of the bed. “What did they say?”

  “That you aren’t Cal Tremon,” she whispered. “That you’re some sort of assassin sent here by the Confederacy to kill Lord Kreegan.”

  “What!” I exclaimed, perhaps a bit too loudly. All traces of fatigue and headache vanished as the adrenaline started flowing.

  “Shhh … I don’t know how much time we have—maybe none,” she cautioned. “Still, I like you enough to give you a fighting chance.” She hesitated a moment. “Is it true?”

  I owed her an answer, but this wasn’t the time for honor. “I don’t know what they’re talking about,” I replied as sincerely as I could. “Hell, my prints, genetic coding—everything is on file. You ought to know I couldn’t be -anybody but me, and believe me, the last thing Cal Tremon could be is a Confederacy stooge.”

  “Maybe,” she responded uncertainly. “But even in-system the Cerbrians swap bodies all the tune, so I wouldn’t depend too much on that defense. Look, it doesn’t matter to me, I—what was that?”

  We both remained perfectly still, not even breathing. Whatever she’d heard, though, I couldn’t make out, and we both relaxed, although only slightly.

  “Look, you have to go now,” she said urgently.

  “Go? Where?”

  “I don’t know
,” she responded truthfully. “Away. Away from Zeis Keep entirely. Into the wild, I suppose. If you survive the wild and bide your time, make your way south to Moab Keep, find the Masters there, who are a sort of religious order descended from the original scientists who were stuck here. There and the wild are the only places you’ll be safe, and only at Moab can you complete your training. It won’t be easy. You’ll probably die anyway, or be caught by Artur and his agents, but at least you’ve got a chance. Stay here and you’re dead by sunup, I promise you.”

  “I’ll go now,” I told her.

  “Do you know how to get out at night?” she asked.

  “I know,” I told her. “I make it a point to locate all the exits as soon as I’m in a place.”

  “You’ll have to avoid the other organized Keeps,” she cautioned me. “The knights will all have the word in a few days, all over the planet. Now go. Fast and far!”

  I grabbed her and hugged her. “Vola, fine lady, I won’t forget this.”

  She laughed softly. “I really think you might make it,” she said with a mixture of sincerity and wonder. “I really think you might. I have to admit I sort of hope you do.”

  I left her and eased out into the hallway, which was dimly lit by two lanterns far down on either side. I knew the way out, but I wasn’t about to take it right away. Instead, I waited in a darkened recess until I saw Vola leave and go the other way. Maybe she was doing me the biggest favor of my Lilith existence, but I never trusted anyone completely.

  Once she’d gone, I sneaked back into the room and used the bedding and pillows to make a rough form in the bed. Then I went out and down to one of the small holes that accessed the service corridors and crept back toward the room on the level above it. I located the peephole with some difficulty in the pitch darkness only by knowing where it had to be and by counting the number of such holes from my entry back to the room. I wanted to see what would happen next. Zeis Keep was a large area; I could hardly clear it before the alarm went out anyway, so I didn’t intend to try, not right away. First I would see if anyone did come in the night to do me in—and if so, who. If not, I was fully prepared to return to the room in midmorning and face down Vola.

  The fact that they’d somehow gotten word I was an agent was important enough.

  There probably weren’t three or four people in the whole Confederacy who would have known, and everyone but my counterpart hovering up there somewhere would have been mind wiped of the knowledge. Then I remembered the penetration of Military System Command’s core computers and realized that somewhere in there the information could be pieced together. What they had done once they could very well have done again. For all I knew, the Confederacy was currently at war with those mysterious aliens.

  But the fact that they’d pieced together some facts and come to the correct conclusion about my status didn’t mean they were totally convinced of it. This could merely be a test to see if I really would jump. At this point I was determined to play by my own rules.

  Suddenly I heard noises in the corridor. Two, maybe more, people walking with firm, confident steps toward me. I heard them now below, just outside the door to my room, then saw the door open cautiously.

  There were three of them, I decided, two of whom stepped into the room while the third remained outside. One was Artur—he was hard to miss. The other was a rather ordinary man of middle years who was obviously from the civilized worlds. He, too, was dressed as a Master and held a small lantern which lit the room with an eerie glow.

  “He’s gone!” the stranger whispered unbelievingly.

  “What?” Artur thundered; then he stalked over to the bed and violently ripped the fluffed-up bedding away. He spun around angrily, and I had never seen as nasty a look as he radiated then. “Someone tipped him off. m know who and I’ll make him pay, by Godl”

  “You will do nothing of the kind,” said the third man, out of sight outside the door. His voice had an odd quality, somewhat diffuse and unfocused, almost mechanical; it hardly sounded human at all. “He is a fully trained and capable agent. One of their best, we must assume, perhaps the best of the current crop. I think he realized he overplayed his hand this afternoon. We will have to find him, Artur. I charge you with that task. You find him while he’s still weak and vulnerable and untrained, or he’ll fry you with a glance and eat you for breakfast. Right now he is a minor nuisance, but potentially he is the most dangerous man on this planet, possibly as dangerous or more so than I. You find him and kill him, Artur—or one day he will seek out and kill us all.”

  Artur bowed subserviently, his face impassive to that threat, which did a lot for my ego and hopes. And then the dark Master uttered words that chilled me beyond belief.

  “Yes, My Lord Kreegan.”

  I cursed inwardly that I had no way of getting a look at the Lord of Lilith himself without his also getting a look at me.

  Artur gestured to the other man. “Come on, let’s roll out the troops. We have work to do. He’s got to cross a lot of open area within the Keep to get to the wild, and he’ll be moving fast to beat the sun. We may catch him yet”

  With that, both men left and I heard their boots against the stone and tile floor clicking swiftly away. Still I did not move, nor did I intend to do so for quite some time. Artur was right, of course—there was almost no way at all I could cover the distance from the Castle to the wild in the remaining darkness, and to be caught in daylight with all the pawns out would be to be absolutely trapped. No, I intended to stay right where I was for the next hour or two, then to exist by day inside the corridors of the Castle itself. I would flee, yes, but as prepared as I could and on my own terms and schedule, not theirs.

  I spent most of the day hidden from everyone I could, and this proved easier than most people would think. The Castle would be the last place in which they would look for me, the last place they expected me to be. Trained cops and agents might have thought of it, but these were mostly petty crooks, naive natives, and a couple of tough old ex-military birds like Artur. Several times I ran into people, but I just looked like I belonged and nobody really noticed. All I was really concerned about was minimizing my visibility and not running into anybody who knew me. I even managed to liberate a meal or two from the ones packaged for on-duty personnel, so I was hardly uncomfortable.

  Still, I didn’t want to make the mistake of vastly underestimating my opponents, either. If Kreegan was still around, and I had no reason to believe he was not, he would at least block the exits as an afterthought. That wouldn’t entail much—just posting a couple of supervisors at every exit, particularly those from the service corridors. Getting out would be no picnic, and I really couldn’t afford a week within the walls. Each hour increased the risk of discovery and pushed my luck.

  I checked all the possibilities, made my decisions, and was all set for the onset of darkness. Farewell, Zeis Keep, may you rot in the muck. I’d never see this place again, that was for sure.

  That thought suddenly brought me up short. Ti.

  She was still here, up there with that butchering sadist and his experiments.

  I didn’t know exactly why, but late in the afternoon, I made my way back to Medical. From experience I knew that just about everybody in Dr. Pohn’s little shop of horrors knocked off work early. There really wasn’t much reason not to go there, and the only real danger I faced was running into Pohn himself. Now that I knew the potential of a Master I had no desire to meet up with Pohn in an adversary role. I’d timed my arrival pretty much for supper, in the hopes that my route would be clear, and I was lucky. There appeared to be nobody in the Medical area.

  I stole quickly into the area that I would always think of as the morgue and saw the twelve silent sleepers there. Hurrying over to Ti’s tiny, still form, I looked down at her, trying to think clearly. Up until this point I’d thought of this as more of a goodbye visit than anything else. But now, looking down at her, I knew that I couldn’t leave her here to Pohn’s tender mercies.<
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  I looked around at the others in the gathering gloom. No lights needed here, but the darkness made the place look even more like a repository for the dead. And they were dead, I thought sadly. The walking dead. What ancient superstition could conjure up only as a nightmare, the twisted sciences of Lilith had made a reality. I wanted to take them all with me, and would have if I could. Surely what one madman had done others not so mad could undo—but there was no way.

  Without even thinking about it, I picked Ti up from the slab and carried her back to my service corridor hideaway. She seemed to weigh almost nothing; except for her shallow and almost imperceptible breathing, she was like a doll, a mannequin rather than a person. Picking her up again, I made my way toward my planned escape route, figuring I’d reach it at just about the point of total darkness. I had almost reached the point below the Castle’s left wall when it occurred to me that I had done something monumentally stupid in carrying Ti off. If anyone came back to that lab and saw her missing, they’d realize I was still on the grounds.

  Still, leaving her here now would be cold-blooded murder. Moreover, it wouldn’t gain me anything, since she’d still be missed upstairs. No, stupid or not, the deed was done and I was committed now.

  Although leaving Ti would have weighed on my conscience, what I was about to do didn’t bother me in the slightest. Somewhere there are classifications of crimes against others such as murder, and this came under the heading of “necessary.”

  Just outside the small tunnel I was in was the Keep itself, the outside world—and two young paramilitary supervisors from Artur’s force. If either of them so much as knew where I was, they could inflict pain and stop me dead, at least long enough to raise an alarm. I had now to get by without any of that happening, and that meant killing the guards. I wished for the power that had allowed me to fry Kronlon, to reconstruct a chair from basic cells, but that was denied me now. I was faced with the problem of eliminating two threats who didn’t even have to touch me to get me—yet I had to get both of them.