Lilith: A Snake in the Grass flotd-1

by Jack L. Chalker

  “Well …” I thought about his question, which was a fan- one. Just what did I want to do? “I think, one day, if I have the power, I’d like to go back to Zeis Keep and take it for my own. Then—well, we’ll see.”

  He chuckled. “So you have designs on a knighthood, huh? Well, maybe you’ll make it, Cal. Maybe you will… Still, first things first we have to get you to help, we have to get Ti to help, and then somehow we have to get you down to Moab.”

  I nodded, looking serious and feeling worse. It was all well and good to spout dreams, but the reality was a naked and mud-caked man sipping tea beside a small fire.

  ’Til have to put in my appearance ahead, as I mentioned,” Father Bronz said. “I’ve got a little extra here and you should be fairly comfortable for a couple of days. I figure if you can avoid all the traps and patrols to get this far, you certainly can just lie low.”

  “And then what?” I pressed, not liking to be so out of control of things and feeling a little helpless.

  He grinned. “Once I reach the Keep I can pull a favor or two, send a little message to certain parties. I’ll work out a rendezvous and we can take it from there.”

  “Certain parties? I thought this bound-up world wouldn’t stand a resistance.”

  “Oh, they’re not anything of the kind,” he replied. “No, indeed. They’re savages.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  A Dialogue

  Two days, longer and worse on the nerves than any since I’d started this trip, I spent doing absolutely nothing near where I’d originally discovered Father, Bronz. I certainly trusted the odd priest far more than I had at the beginning. Not only did I have little choice in the matter, but if I hadn’t seen Artur’s grim face by this point, then Bronz wouldn’t be the one to torn me in. Now the anxiety was mostly that something would happen to him before he could aid me.

  I needn’t have worried, though. Bronz held a position on Lilith that, though perhaps not unique, was enviable in the extreme. He went where he wanted and did what he wanted without being answerable to anyone, not even to his church superiors. As a well-known face among the keeps, he was always welcomed and never threatened. As a friend of the Duke and most of the more powerful knights in the east-central region of Lilith’s single enormous continent, he was unlikely to be touched even by the most powerful psychopaths, since they, too, respected those more powerful than themselves. The price of all this, though, was that, though a Master himself, Bronz was simply not a threat to anybody else’s position. As a priest, he seemed sincerely to care for the downtrodden, seeing his role in life as one of the very rare bridges between the elites in their castles and manor houses and the pawns condemned to eternal serfdom. His message of an all-powerful being who promised a heavenly life in the Hereafter to those who were good in this life appealed to the ruling classes, as a major official religion always appealed to such groups. And yet his faith, no matter how wrong or misplaced it might be, was the only rock of sanity for the pawns, their only hope. They suffered under the ultimate tyranny on Lilith: the ruling class was revolution-proof because the masses were born without the ability to use the Warden power.

  Bronz returned late in the evening of the second day, looking very tired but satisfied. “All set,” he told me. “We’ll have to do some traveling, though. Our rendezvous is about two days’ ride from here, and that’s exactly how long we have in which to make it It’s pretty hairy with the patrols right now, and they won’t wait. Let’s get going.”

  “Now?” I responded, feeling a little rushed after two days of marking time. “It’s almost dark, and you look all in. I don’t want to lose you—not now.”

  He grinned feebly. “Yes, now. I have some straw and my bedding, so we’ll be able to hide Ti and, with some difficulty, your giant frame. But you’re right—I am dead tired after doing five days’ ministry in two as well as the usual politicking. That’s why we go now. You can do the driving while I get a little sleep.”

  I was startled. “Me? But you drive these damned things by talking to them, Warden-stylet I can’t do that!”

  “Oh, Sheeba’s a nice big bugger, she is,” Bronz responded casually. “She doesn’t need any kick in the pants, and once we get to the split down here a ways there aren’t any turnoffs we need concern ourselves with for thirty kilometers or more, so she’ll just plod right along.”

  “Why do you even need me, then?” I asked, still apprehensive.

  “To stand guard, to wake me if there’s any trouble, and if we are stopped by a patrol, to run like hell—but loudly.”

  And it was as simple as that. The huge beetle like creature Father Bronz called Sheeba was as docile and plodding as he said and kept right to the road. The worst problem I had, other than contending with the priest’s snores, was seeing every kind of terrible threat in the shadows. Twice I woke Bronz, convinced I’d seen something large shadowing us, once from the side of the road, once from the air. But after the second, his patience wore thin. “Grow up and be a big boy, Tremon. You’re much too old to be scared of the dark. Listen for the bugs, boy. As long as you can hear the bugs there’s nobody around.”

  The truth was I felt more than physically naked standing in the ak-cart looking at nothing except an occasional star that peeked through the ever-present clouds. But the ever-present crescendo of insect noises, a background I’d gotten so used to by this time I’d just about tuned it out of my conscious, never ceased.

  Bronz awoke before dawn on his own, and we stopped for tea.

  “Damned nuisance, this place,” the priest muttered. “You can’t take food with you, it rots in a day unless you have a couple of agriculture masters around to see it shipped safely and some others to store it properly. Me, I get along by roadside pickings and save my Warden energies for my gourds and teas.”

  I took the hint, and shortly before dawn was on a foraging expedition into the bush. I didn’t come back with much, since I dared not risk going too far from the road, but it was enough—a few melons, a handful or two of berries. Bronz worked some of his Warden magic on them so that we were able to keep a tiny supply, but clearly his area of expertise, if he had one, lay elsewhere.

  Daylight was the time of greatest risk. Although Bronz had chosen a route that took us away from the more congested Keeps and where the wild was dominant, we came upon the occasional traveler nonetheless.

  Scrunching down in the cart, covering myself with straw and bedding as best I could, I had to stay there, still as possible, praying I could keep from coughing or sneezing or moving no matter how long the conversation (and some were very long). Most were supervisors, some with a/fc-carts of their own, who were delivering something from one Keep to another, but there was an occasional master as well. All were worrisome, since I doubted if Father Bronz would kill even to protect me. But the masters were the most irritating, since they possibly could outdo Bronz himself.

  . One time we even ran into an actual roadblock, the one thing we never expected, which indicated just how far afield Artur was willing to go. Fortunately, Father Bronz knew the two guards and talked us through it. Since I didn’t really have a low opinion of Artur, I suspect that if those two mentioned in their report they passed Bronz without conducting an inspection there would be two fewer guards from Zeis Keep, no matter how reliable the priest was deemed to be.

  It was like that all over, though, I knew. Act as if you own the place, betray no anxiety, and you can get away with the damnedest things, even in a crowd.

  Most of the time, though, the road was empty, so Bronz and I could talk—and did we ever. There was little else to do, and I was anxious to learn.

  “You don’t much like the system on Lilith, I note,” he commented once.

  I gave a dry laugh. “Stratified oppression, a tiny ruling class in permanent power—mostly the best criminal minds humanity has produced. I think it stinks.”

  “What would you do, then?” he came back, sounding amused. “What sort of system would, say, Lord Cal Tremon
impose that would supplant this one?”

  “The Warden organism makes that tough,” I replied carefully. “Obviously power corrupts”—Bronz gave me a hurt look—“most people,” I rescued myself. “The people with the power are generally the most corrupt to begin with, since outsiders tend to have a higher degree of this power, and only the corrupt are sent here.”

  He smiled. “So corruption cometh to Paradise, and the snakes rule Eden, is that it? Get rid of the snakes and Eden returns?”

  “You’re mocking me. No, I don’t believe that and you know it. But a more enlightened leadership could produce a better standard of living for the pawns without all this torture and degradation.”

  “Could it?” he mused. “I wonder. This is a complex planet, but I think you are being too one-dimensional on its limitations. You think of the Warden organism only in terms of the power it gives some people. You must recognize it as a total fact of life tot everything on Lilith, not merely for who’s got the power. The Warden organism is a peculiarity of the evolution of this world; it was not designed for human beings. It is just a freak of nature that we’re able to tap into it.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Think of the Warden beast as a regulator, a balancer that evolved of necessity here. Exactly why it evolved is not for me to say, but my best guess would be that this world, for much of its past, went through some pretty violent changes. I don’t know the nature of them, but there are reptiles, mammals, crystalline creatures of some sort—all sorts of creatures on the other Warden worlds that are not found here. Here only the insect was able to survive, it being the most adaptable and, ironically, the least likely to change. But I suspect that even the insects and the plants were threatened by whatever changes the planet underwent, so much so that there evolved a mechanism in nature to keep things stable—at equilibrium, you might say. Why the planet needs to be kept in that state is another question for which I don’t have any answers, but it does. In some funny way the planet needs this ecosystem, at least to survive. That’s the reason for the Warden organism.”

  “You talk as if the planet itself were alive.”

  He nodded slowly. “I have often found it more convenient to think that way. Look, when man originally set out from Earth centuries ago he expected to find very alien worlds. What did he find? Mostly worlds that were crater-strewn and dead, gas giants, frozen rock piles, and occasionally a planet that perhaps was a mess but could be terraformed. Most of the liveable planets not needing a lot of work were already inhabited, some by mere plants and animals but some by other species. And yet—no matter how crazy the biology was or the ecosystem balance or the patterns of thought and behavior of nonhumans—they were all comprehensible. We could say, ‘Oh, yes, the Alphans are tentacled protoplasmic blobs, but look at the environment they evolved in, look how we trace it thus and so, and look how the environmental conditions shaped their cultures, their ways of thinking, and so forth.’ Their own cultures and ways of life might have been so crazy that we couldn’t find anything in common with them, couldn’t follow their reasoning at all, but taken as a whole they were all comprehensible. We never met a world so alien we couldn’t at least understand, under the laws of physical and social science, how it got that way. Not until Lilith and her sisters.”

  I looked around at the foliage, at the deep blue sky, and at the remains of melon and berries. “Frankly, I can’t see where you’re heading,” I told him. “In terms of familiarity, this world is more familiar than many I’ve been on.”

  He nodded. “Superficial familiarity, yes. These insects are all unique to Lilith, but they are recognizably insects. The plants are recognizably plants, since an atmosphere that will support us requires photosynthesis for complex plant life. But consider. The Warden Diamond is a statistical absurdity. Four worlds, all within the life-supporting range of a sun just right for them. Four worlds very close together—the distance between Charon and Medusa is only about 150 million kilometers, practically next door, with two goodies in between—almost as if they’d been placed there just for us. The idea is simply absurd. You know the sum ratio of solar systems to even terraformable worlds. And yet here they are, right in our way, and each with a tiny, inexplicable little additive that damned well keeps us here.”

  “You’re giving the old argument—that the Wardens are all artificial,” I pointed out. “You know there’s never been any evidence of that”

  “That’s true,” Father Bronz admitted, “but remember what I said about comprehensibility? It seems to be that, in this enormous universe of which we know so little, we are handcuffed by our rigid concepts. What we have here is something that’s not comprehensible—truly alien—and so we ignore it, dismiss it, forget it. These planets do not fit our cosmology, so we dismiss them as aberrations of chance and forget about it. My feeling is that anything you find that can’t be explained by your cosmology means that your cosmology’s got some holes in it.”

  “The hand of God, perhaps?” I retorted, not meaning to make fun of his religion but unable to refute him, either.

  He didn’t laugh or take offense. “Since I believe that the universe was created by God and that He is everywhere and in everything and everyone, yes. I have often reflected that the Wardens might be here simply to slap down our smugness. But God is supremely logical, remember. The Wardens fit the rest of the universe somehow, of that I am convinced, even if they don’t fit our perception of it. But we’re off the track. I was discussing why your fine dream of returning Lilith to Paradise is impossible to realize.”

  I chuckled. “I didn’t mind the digression. What else do we have to do, anyway?”

  He shrugged. “Who knows? Discussion may be vital or it may be inconsequential. I have a feeling that you are somehow driven to command this world. You’ll probably get killed in the attempt, of course, but if you survive—well, at least it’s interesting to fence with you and see what you have in mind.”

  “Lord Tremon,” I laughed. “Boy! Wouldn’t that give the Confederacy heartburn!”

  “You’re no more Cal Tremon than I’m Marek Kreegan,” Bronz came back casually. “We might as well stop the pretence, since nobody believes in it any more—and I never did.”

  I froze. “What do you mean?”

  “You’re on the wanted list here because Kreegan got information from his Confederacy agents that you were a plant, a spy, an assassin sent here to get him. You and I both know it’s true. You’re far too idealistic and ethical and all that to be somebody like Tremon, who was the sort of fellow who enjoyed making chopped hamburger out of his still-living enemies with carving knives. I knew that the first time we met, back in Zeis, just talking to you. You’re too well-educated, too well-bred for Tremon—not to mention, of course, that you’re too much a product of your culture. Who are you, anyway, by the way?” I considered what he said, then thought about what it meant to me. I really didn’t need to keep up the pretence any more. Kreegan knew it, Artur knew it—hell, everybody knew it.

  “My name doesn’t matter, does it?” I replied carefully. “I no longer exist as him. I’m Cal Tremon now and forever; I’m just not the Cal Tremon in the court dockets. And since this is his body, I’m more of him than I’d have believed.”

  He nodded. “All right, Cal it is. But you are an agent?”

  “Assassin grade,” I answered truthfully. “But it’s not quite what you think. You and I know that, once down here and locked here forever, the only reason I’d have for killing Kreegan would be to challenge him for Lord of the Diamond. No, I’m here for something quite different.”

  “I find it interesting that they finally got that personality transfer process down mechanically. On Cerberus it’s a product of the Warden organism, as physical shape-change adaptation is to Medusa and reality perception to Charon.”

  “You knew they were working on something like that?” I prodded suspiciously.

  He nodded. “Sure. I told you I used to be a really influential power, didn�
�t I? A few of the people involved in the research were Catholics who were very worried about the theological implications-—the soul and all that. Frankly, though, not only I but the church as a whole dismissed the entire question as impossible. See what I mean about cosmologies not fitting facts?”

  His story didn’t ring altogether true, as I knew how absolute the security had been on the process, but I had to let it stand. Maybe my only ally on Lilith was holding out on me—but I was holding out on him, too.

  “So you say it isn’t Kreegan you’re after,” he went on, changing the direction of the conversation. “Then what? What is so vital that the Confederacy is willing to sacrifice one of their best just to find out about it, and what would force you to remain true to that end once you got here?”

  Then I told him about the aliens, the penetration of the top levels of Military Systems Command, the whole story. It seemed the best course—and he might know something.

  When I finished, he just sighed, then said, “Well, now … alien enemies, huh? Using the Four Lords … Damned clever beasts, you must admit that, to understand us so well.”

  I was disappointed. If anyone other than those at the very top of the hierarchy would know about the aliens, I felt certain Bronz would. “You’ve heard nothing about this?”

  “Oh, yes, rumors,” he responded. “I didn’t put much stock in them, partly because of Kreegan. He’s not like the others. He came here voluntarily, of his own free will’, after serving the Confederacy well and loyally for his whole life. The revenge that would motivate the others would be lacking in him.”

  My heart sank. Wasted. All of it, me, wasted here. Bronz was right—it had to be one of the other Lords.

  But… did it?

  “That might be true,” I admitted, “but do you know why an otherwise sane and even superior man like Kreegan would volunteer to come to a place like this? And could such a man be kept ignorant of things as momentous as the aliens even if he weren’t directly involved at the start?”