Lilith: A Snake in the Grass flotd-1

by Jack L. Chalker

  While the vanguard of Zeis besils were occupied, the swamp itself seemed-to come alive, eerie shapes moving to and fro in the fog. Emerging now were the great twelve-legged, hairy snarks, raised for fur and used in stews by the people of Lilith. These creatures of that swamp like terrain were somehow able to avoid sinking into the muck and mire by shifting their centers of gravity at will. Herbivores, they were totally harmless to people, but they made effective troop carriers when a swamp was to be the battleground, and Lakk Keep had bred them for just that purpose.

  The great, hopping, green wuks leaped into action from the Zeis side, aiming at going so high and landing so exactly that they would come down right on top of the fragile snarks, spilling them and their contents into the swamp, ft should have worked, had the snarks contained combat soldiers, but this time was different.

  The snarks stopped suddenly, as if wailing for certain death, but the proud and lordly wuks were the ones that seemed to reel in mid-hop as if struck by gunfire and topple over, out of control, to the ground below.

  The snarks contained not soldiers but chemically enhanced witches, all concentrated on the center snark, where the leader was knocking wuks out of the air with a gesture. Seeing what was happening, Artur quickly shifted. Realizing from the pattern in which his wuks were falling that a central and single power was picking them off, he committed a section of his reserves to fan out across the entire basin, to keep a great distance from one another and to fan out over a wide enough front to divide the witches’ fire. Their concentrated power had only one metaphorical barrel, and it couldn’t point everywhere at once.

  Besils, too, were screeching and falling all over the place, unable to help either side in the battle below but keeping the other from also doing so. It was bloody carnage all around, and Artur’s plan was working to an extent. A wuk struck one of the witch-laden snarks, pulling up incredibly at the last minute so that it hit with its powerful bind legs out. The great spider like creature collapsed as if made of thin sticks, dragging its complement of passengers into the muddy quagmire—and diminishing Sumiko O’Higgins’ power by a small amount. From where we were, it was impossible to see how many were on any given snark, but considering the number of the beasts it had to be four or five at least. The whole scene was stunning, an eerie ballet of death and destruction as it might have been centuries ago on mother Earth.

  The wuk maneuver had weakened the witch force, but most of them had made solid land and were quickly descending and assembling into their groups. Some would not have their full complement, but since all worked with, through, and at the direction of Sumiko O’Higgins, however many managed to land would have impressive force indeed.

  Suddenly the grass blazed in front of the landing witches, a huge wall of fire across the entire field, blinding everyone for a moment.

  Warden power was being used against Warden power now, I knew.

  After a moment’s panic, the witches regrouped. Then, incredibly, a whirlwind of dirt like a great, gigantic plow shot up along the fire line, damping the fire, although small patches continued to burn. The witches advanced now, in a broad semicircle. I didn’t know exactly how many there were, but it was fifty or more, I was sure. Sumiko had bragged that she could level the Castle with less.

  Now fire was turned against the defenders. A terribly thin, bright wall of flame shot out from beyond the firebreak they’d just created, then started moving, widening out in an ever-increasing semicircle, pushing ground forces back and revealing large, dark holes that were obviously pits to trap invaders who -advanced that far.

  I frowned and turned my tiny telescope on the reserves, still sitting in front of the stockade. “He’s going to lose,” I muttered, more to myself than to Ti, “unless he sends those reserves in fast. They’ve got their beachhead. Why don’t they move?”

  Ti didn’t answer, and I couldn’t keep my eyes off the unfolding spectacle.

  I turned again to the. swamp, where hordes of snarks were now appearing, landing troops of Lakk behind the witches’ screen. I looked again to the reserves, still poised but unmoving, and shook my head.

  “They can’t be this incompetent,” I told myself. “Why the hell doesn’t he move before the beachhead is totally established?”

  I heard Ti gasp. “The besils have stopped fighting!” she cried. “Look!”

  I turned my gaze in that direction and saw that it was true. The survivors of the initial encounter, perhaps forty or so out of an initial hundred or more, had disengaged, but neither side was retreating.

  “They—they’re regrouping together!” I rasped, amazed. “What the hell… ?”

  I heard the sound of a tremendous explosion below, its roar echoing back and forth across the mountains, its very existence so jarring that I was forced to look for it. An explosion? Here?

  I looked at a great puff of smoke near the front of the witch line, then saw soldiers behind the witches wading into them and attacking them! Suddenly the reserves moved, the explosion an apparent cue. The reserve besils flew out of their mountainside nests and the wuks and ground troops started deploying—but not toward the invaders.

  “Look, they’re going after the witch groups guarding the trails!” I yelled, mouth agape. Still, I forced my attention back to the beachhead, only to see the unmistakable signs of slaughter. A wall of fire now trapped the witches between their own defensive wall and the attackers, formed and started to close in on them.

  Disorganized and confused, the witches dropped their own firebreak and started forward into Zeis proper, on the run. Now the besils, both yellow and red-colored, started moving in on them, dividing them. Bright flashes told me that Warden power was being used on them, killing them as they ran, as they tried to comprehend what was happening.

  Below, the reserves were taking something of a beating from the power of the covens, but it wasn’t a hundred and sixty-nine witches to forty besils now, as it had been back in the witch village. It was more like twenty besils plus a dozen wuks and running, well-armed ground troops against thirteen witches in each case. It was costly to take them out, but even though they took half the attackers with them, the witches went down—went down and were mercilessly hacked to death.

  I put down the monocular and looked at Ti for a moment. She seemed to sense it and turned to look at me, the stricken and confused look on her face mirroring, I’m sure, my own.

  “The Lakks attacked the witches,” she said wonderingly. “The two sides joined up. Cal, what’s going on here? Have we been taken for suckers?”

  I shook my head dully. “No, honey. Well, yes, I guess we have. It’s kind of crushing, though, finally to understand all this. Damn!” I smacked my fist in my other hand. “I don’t know why I didn’t figure it out from the start—at least from a few days ago, when I had all the pieces.”

  “But they were fightin’ for us, weren’t they? They were gonna get us Zeis Keep!”

  I shook my head slowly and sadly and squeezed her hand. “Baby, I doubt if anybody down there gives a damn about us one way or the other. I doubt if they have since the decision was made to fight.” I let her go and smacked my fist in my left hand again. “Pawns!” I muttered. “God damn it! All this way, all this far —and still pawns!”

  She looked at me uncomprehendingly. “Wha…?”

  I sighed and got up. “Come on. Let’s take a nice long walk down to the Castle. Don’t worry. Nobody’s going to stop us or probably even notice our existence.”

  With Ti still confused, we started on down.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  First Lord of the Diamond

  The extent of the carnage was enormous. The massacre of the witches had been most thorough, more gruesome than any autopsy.

  It took over two hours to reach the Castle, and by that time even the mop-up had been completed. Yellow and red forces were methodically surveying the field, helping those who could be helped, cleaning up the debris. It would be a long, tough job.

  As I expected, Fath
er Bronz and a number of others were sitting in wicker chairs outside the Castle’s gates, relaxing, eating, and drinking. I recognized Vola and her sister, Dola, Boss Rognival and the Ladies Tona and Kysil, and Master Artur. The others were not familiar to me but wore designs indicating they were of Zeis. One of them—a small, frail-looking man, bald and wizened—was dressed as elaborately in ornate silken tunic, heavy boots; he wore atop his head a tiara with a single large blue gem similar to, but not identical to, the one Rognival wore. Another man, dressed in a manner similar to the older, thin one but wearing mostly gold colors, as well as a wide-brimmed hat, relaxed nearby. He was an older man, with neatly trimmed gray beard, certainly once of the civilized worlds. Although he was many years my senior he looked to be in nearly perfect physical condition. •

  Father Bronz spotted us. “Call Ti! Please come over!” he called pleasantly, and we did. Up close Bronz looked dead tired, and very, very old. He’s put on at least ten years this morning, I thought. Still, he rose wearily from his chair, took my hand warmly, then kissed Ti on the forehead. Only then did he turn and nod toward the others.

  “Some of these fine people you know,” he began, “but I don’t think you ever met Sir Honlon Tiel.” The thin old man nodded in my direction, and I could only stare at him. So that was the knight I was to take on, I thought glumly. The Boss of Zeis Keep. The Warden cells glowed more in Artur than in him.

  “The gentleman in gold there is Grand Duke Kob6,” Bronz continued, and the other also nodded. He also introduced the others, but they were all of Zeis’s ruling group. Then he turned back to me. “I assume you understand everything now?”

  “Pretty much,” I told him. “I can’t say it makes me happy to be used in such a way, though. I feel like the child promised the new toy he’s always wanted for his birthday, only to have nobody even come to his party, let alone getting the gift.”

  Bronz laughed. “Oh, come now! It’s not all that bad.”

  “Will somebody,” Ti interrupted in an even but slightly angry voice, “please tell me what the hell is going on here?”

  I looked at her and sighed. “Ti, may I present Ma-rek Kreegan, Lord of Lilith, First Lord of the Diamond?”

  The fact that she gasped when Father Bronz bowed indicated she still had a lot to learn.

  The full explanation came later, after we’d bathed, changed, and sat down to a sumptuous feast in the great hall of the Castle. Ti still hadn’t recovered from the shock of Father Bronx’s true identity, but given that, she had managed to figure out the basics, I’ll give her that. And she was mad as hell.

  Still, I wanted to hear the tale from the man who had planned it all.

  “From the top, then,” agreed Marek Kreegan. “Of course, we had a problem. Lilith, as I told you long ago, is a rigid ecosystem “in which we humans play no part. Its economy is fragile, its ability to support a large population in the wild very much in doubt without Warden protection of the masses. The pawns don’t enjoy a wonderful life—but who does? The ruling class, always, that’s who. Because while everybody would love to be king, if everybody was a king there’d be no labor to support this monarch. The civilized worlds are no different, only thanks to technology on a massive scale the standard of living for their pawns is higher than is currently possible on Lilith.”

  “I still can’t see the masses on the civilized worlds as pawns with a privileged class,” I responded.

  His eyebrows rose. “Oh? Were you born in that body?”

  “You know I wasn’t,” I growled.

  “Exactly. The Merton Process, right? Potential immorality for anybody and everybody, right? But will the masses get it? Of course not! For the same reason that cures for the big three diseases that kill people have been withheld. We are at maximum and the frontier can expand only so fast. New planets take decades to develop, particularly to the point of self-sufficiency. Cal, no system can survive if its population doesn’t die. Nor is the Merton Process’ any cure-all, since you need a body for it. That means massive cloning—a couple of trillion clones. Ridiculous. They have to be raised and supported by some biomechanical means until needed. But the leaders of the Confederacy, now—that’s a different matter. They’re already immunized against diseases people don’t even know are killing them. They get age-retardant processes like mad. And when they finally do wear out, they now have the Merton Process to keep ’em going for an infinite number of cycles. The masses count, in Confederacy society, only in the plural. Masses. Averages. Everything’s an average. Only the elite get the plums. Exactly the same as here.”

  “I’ll agree with you to a point,” I admitted, “but leadership is available to those who wish it.”

  Again he laughed. “Really? You think so? You think you got where you were because of willpower and dedication? Hell, man, you were bred for it. They designed and manufactured you as they would any tool they needed, because they needed it. The same as they did me.”

  “But you crossed them up,” I noted. “That’s why you’re here.”

  He shrugged good-naturedly. “The trouble with their system is that their human tools have to be smart guys and they have to be thrown out into the cold, cruel world to do-their jobs. Eventually we wise up and have to be eliminated ourselves before we become a threat. That’s done by promotion to the inner circle—if they can fit you someplace—or sometimes by just having a junior knock you off. Hell, they can do it just by having you show up at the Security Clinic for normal processing, then instead of feeding you your past and what you need, reducing you to the common pawn vegetable with a nice little job as a widget monitor or something. I discovered this fact almost too late and mostly by accident, and I ran like hell.”

  “To Lilith,” I noted. “Why in heaven’s name Lilith?” Everybody at the table laughed at that, except of course the native-born.

  “I’m not going to tell you,” he responded. “At least not until we’ve gotten that damned organic transmitter removed from your skull and until you’ve been around enough to know whose side you’re really on.”

  “The aliens,” I muttered, feeling like my last secrets were being stripped from me. He even knew about the transmitter.

  He grinned and shrugged. “Let’s just say, ah, powerful friends of mine—of all Warden citizens, but mostly of the Four Lords of the Diamond. Anyway, it must surely have occurred to you that any civilization able to penetrate the security chamber of Military Systems Command would have no trouble at all finding out about the Merton Process. And report same to me, who knows better than anybody how the great minds of the Confederacy run. I know they’d zero in on Lilith because I was running the place, and that the only logical person to send would be someone whose own past and career matched mine as closely as possible.”

  I said nothing to this because I’d been a lot slower than he was giving me credit for, a fact I didn’t like at all.

  “Well, anyway, we knew you were coming,” continued the Lord of Lilith, “and, Confederacy Intelligence being what it is, I had to figure that any agent sent down here would most logically duplicate my own initial situation as closely as possible, since they were setting one assassin to catch another. That meant Zeis Keep, since I had started here. That meant I just had to wait until Zeis got a new prisoner. Then you turned up. After your seasoning, I stepped in to size you up a bit and tantalize you as well. It was pretty clear to me that you were somewhat in the doldrums and needed a swift lack in the pants you couldn’t wear then to get moving. Ti was the all-too-obvious leverage.”

  I glanced over at Ti, and she bristled. The full implications of what a “pawn” really was were dawning on her, and she didn’t like it one bit.

  “So, anyway,” he went on, “I had already established myself in your mind as the only independent spirit on Lilith and told you pretty much where I was heading. Then I came back here and ordered Dr. Pohn to take Ti. I figured that, if you were anything like me, you’d get so damned mad you’d come after her, and that meant you’d have to hav
e a Warden explosion. You were already ripe—I could see it in you.”

  “And if it hadn’t happened?”

  He smiled. “Then you weren’t any good to me or to the Confederacy and you would have been abandoned to plant beans for the rest of your life. But of course it did happen, the night of the banquet. When Dola came and told us here, we immediately made plans on what we’d do next. We had to expose you to Dr. Pohn at his worst, for example, and Ti in that totally helpless condition at his villainous “mercy. We had to show you not only Master Artur but his troops and beasts as well—Artur usually doesn’t show newcomers around personally, you know—so you’d realize it’d take an armed force to come after Zeis Keep. And of course we had to test you for Warden potential and give you a taste of what that power is like without actually giving you that power right off. Vola took care of that, then also got you on the run with that wonderful piece of midnight theatrics. I of course was nowhere near at the time, since I already had to be far to the south to lay my trail for you to follow.”

  “But I heard a voice…”

  “Duke Kob6, I’m afraid, using a reed tube,” he responded. Kob6 shrugged apologetically. “It was important that natural early suspicions about me be allayed. I couldn’t be Kreegan in the hallways and also have gone to several Keeps in the time allowed, not without you finding out about it. I counted on you to file that away in your mind. On the other hand, I had to be the only person to whom you could turn for help.”

  “You took a chance there,” I noted, nettled by his manner. “I could just have gone to the wild.”