The Innsmouth Heritage and Other Sequels

by Brian Stableford

  “Who’s he?” Adam asked, staring at Lilith’s companion.

  “This is Azazel,” Lilith said. “He’s a demon. He’s not such a powerful creator as the Lord God, but tilling the ground isn’t a solitary occupation; in order for his curse to work, the Lord God either had to make more humans himself, or give permission for someone else to do it. He gave permission—I suppose it seemed simpler in the short run, although I can already foresee complications. So you finally got around to trying the forbidden fruit?”

  “It wasn’t my fault,” Adam was quick to say.

  “It hardly matters,” Lilith said. “It’s not so bad out here—the fruit of the tree of life is the bitterest in Eden, but by far the most nourishing.”

  “It wasn’t that sort of forbidden fruit I ate,” Adam said. “I tasted the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. It wasn’t bitter, although it did have a very odd aftertaste.”

  “Maybe that’s for the best,” Lilith said. “I’ve tasted one and you’ve tasted the other, so we’ll have the benefit of both now.”

  “It was the woman who made me do it,” Adam said, defensively. “The serpent tempted her and she tempted me.”

  “Who’s the woman?”

  “I was lonely without you,” Adam explained. “I asked the Lord God to make me a replacement.”

  The only jealousy and anger within the garden had been the Lord God’s. Lilith’s jealousy and anger were not quite as terrifying to behold as the Lord God’s, but they did not seem trivial to poor Adam.

  “I didn’t know where you’d gone,” he protested, feebly. “The Lord God wouldn’t tell me why he got rid of you. I didn’t know you’d eaten forbidden fruit. You didn’t try to tempt me the way the woman did.”

  Lilith had calmed down while he was speaking, but Adam could not imagine that it was the effect of his excuses. Azazel had put a hand on her arm, and the demon’s touch appeared to have a considerable soothing effect.

  “The replacement,” Lilith observed, witheringly, “was evidently adequate, for a while.”

  Within the garden, Adam had never thought to compare the woman with Lilith, but he could hardly help doing so now. Lilith, his true counterpart, was very like him in every respect save one, but the woman had been shorter, softer and more in need of demonstrations of affection. While Lilith had been out of sight and out of mind, Adam had not spared a thought for those differences, but now that Lilith was standing in front of him he was forced to weigh them up. As soon as he focused his thoughts on the problem, he realized that Lilith and the woman were really very different. He wasn’t sure which of them he preferred—but it seemed only natural, in the circumstances, that Lilith’s advantages should leap more readily to the eye.

  Adam looked Lilith up and down—and then he looked at Azazel. Azazel was taller than Adam, considerably more muscular, and his expression was suggestive of great intelligence, if not of wisdom. Perhaps, Adam thought, Lilith had found her true soulmate now—in which case, he might have done better to wait by the garden, to see whether she would be driven out in her turn.

  “I don’t know what happened to the woman,” Adam said, feebly. “I would have waited outside the garden, but He posted angels there, and a flaming sword that moved in a threatening manner. It seemed wisest to come away. I see that there are some of the woman’s kind here, though, who have already taken to motherhood without waiting to be cursed. Azazel seems to have mimicked the Lord God’s second creation rather than his first.”

  Lilith was about to speak again when Azazel squeezed her arm. “You look tired and hungry, Adam,” he said. “Would you like to come in to rest, and have a bite to eat? I’m sure you’re thirsty too. We have a new drink here, which we prefer to water. It’s a trifle bitter, but I think you might like the after-effects.”

  * * * *

  Once Adam had been sent on his way, Eve faced up to Lord God’s further judgment. She suspected that there might be additional punishments yet to be visited upon her. She had eaten far more of the fruit than Adam, and its digestion had ensured that she was all too well aware of the awful extent of her fault.

  “Adam won’t wait for you outside the garden,” the Lord God said, spitefully. “He blames you for his expulsion. He wants to get away.”

  “So he should,” Eve lamented, painfully gripped by her newfound knowledge of good and evil. “It was all my fault. The serpent beguiled me, but it was me who beguiled Adam. Having fallen prey to temptation myself, I should have know better than to turn temptress—but I hadn’t had time to digest the fruit. Even so, I deserve to bear children in sorrow and to have my husband to rule over me. I admit that.”

  The Lord God did not respond immediately. He was much calmer now, having already vented the greater part of his sudden wrath. While she waited, Eve wondered why the garden looked so much lovelier now than it ever had before. It had always been lovely, but it was not until now that she had realized how very lovely it was.

  “I suppose it was as much my fault as yours,” the Lord God said, eventually, with a sigh. “I created you, after all, and deliberately made you weaker of will than his first wife so that you wouldn’t rebel of your own accord. I made the serpent too, and Adam. Mind you, I couldn’t have foreseen this. Omniscience only extends as far as things that can be known, and once you’ve created agents with free will, the future become unknowable, at least to the extent that it depends on the exercise of that free will. Freedom has to include the freedom to rebel—not to mention the freedom to be stupid and reckless. Once you create free will, you have to expect the unexpected.”

  “I’m sorry,” Eve said. “I wasn’t really rebelling, you know.”

  “I know,” the Lord God admitted. “You were being stupid and reckless—or perhaps just curious. Did you like the fruit?”

  “It wasn’t bitter,” Eve said, judiciously, “but it has a strange aftertaste. I’m not sure that I do.”

  “Knowledge of good and evil is awkward nourishment,” the Lord God observed. “The garden wouldn’t have been complete without the tree, though, any more than it would have been complete without the tree of life. Creation requires coherency; everything a Creator improvises on a whim has extensive corollaries, including unexpected ones. A Creator has to compromise with the logical consequences of His intentions. He can establish the raw materials of an entire universe with a momentary outburst inspiration, but once that’s done, matters of order and detail unfold of their own accord. At first I thought I could keep an entire planet under total control, but in the end I had to settle for cultivating one little garden...and it didn’t take long for that to go awry.”

  “I’m sorry,” Eve said, again, expressing sympathy rather than apologizing—but she knew that the sympathy was bound to ring false, given that she had no personal experience of the problems of creativity.

  “So am I,” said the Lord God, “but what’s done can’t be undone. Even an omnipotent God can’t change the past; that’s another corollary of bringing order and detail out of chaos and nebulosity. If I let you stay, it’s no use asking me to make you a new husband to replace Adam; I’ve already tried that kind of move. Those who can’t learn from their mistakes are condemned to repeat them, first as tragedy then as farce. I can tolerate my Creation taking a tragic turn, but if it turns farcical, that might be too much to bear. Now that you’ve digested the knowledge of good and evil, what do you think I ought to do with you?”

  Eve thought about the curses that had already been imposed on her, and those that had been on the serpent and Adam. She looked around at the garden, savoring its loveliness again, but knew as she did so that the loveliness was a lie. The garden’s beauty was a beguiling mask, a product of excessively careful artifice. Without the Lord God’s constant attention and continual hard work, the garden couldn’t sustain itself. It would return to wilderness soon enough. To live in the garden, she would have to live with the Lord God, obedient to his rules and whims alike.

  “I ought to go after
Adam,” she said, eventually, wondering how much room she had for negotiation with regard to the term of her expulsion. “I ought to try to make it up to him, to the extent that I can. I’d like to be able to help him, and to comfort him, if that’s possible.”

  “It might not be,” the Lord God observed. “He’s bound to meet up with Lilith.”

  “Who’s Lilith?” Eve asked. Adam had never mentioned the name to her; she had no idea that she was Adam’s second wife.

  “I created humankind like every other species, in male and female versions,” the Lord God told her. “It seemed somehow appropriate to follow the pattern, although I really should have made an exception. The whole point of making two of every other animal was that the worldly members of the species could multiply once Adam had named their archetypes, but Adam and Lilith weren’t supposed to have any worldly equivalents, in the beginning. They were supposed to provide me with company in the garden—that’s why I gave them intellect as well as free will. I thought I needed more than one, so I made two—but I shouldn’t have made them different sexes. It was an unnecessary complication. I had a second chance once Lilith had gone, but Adam demanded another wife, not another man, and I felt obliged to humor him. Maybe I didn’t put my heart into the job. It’s surprisingly easy for a creator to become a trifle resentful of his own creations. That’s why I thought it might be a good idea to delegate some of the responsibility...but I’m not so sure about the way that’s turning out, either.”

  “Are you saying that Adam’s back with his first wife,” Eve said, grasping the essentials of the argument although some of the detail evaded her. “Does that mean that I’ll have to find some other husband to rule over me?” It wasn’t a pleasant thought, and felt rather like a curse in its own right.

  “Not necessarily,” the Lord God said. “Lilith’s been with Azazel for some time, and he’s even trickier than the serpent. There’s no telling what he might want or do.”

  “Who’s Azazel?” Eve asked.

  “A demon. In their native form, or rather formlessness, they’re free-floating entities of pure will, but they can take on material forms if they so desire. I thought it would be useful, or at least interesting, to have creatures around who could experiment with new possibilities on my behalf, but they developed their own agendas. At present, Azazel has taken on manlike form. He’ll get bored with it soon enough, but, for some time now, he’s been busy creating and shaping the kind of community that Lilith and Adam—and you, for that matter—will need if humans are to survive and thrive outside the garden.”

  Eve understood that if she were to be driven out of the garden, she too would need a community if she were to survive, let alone thrive, but the more she heard about Lilith and Azazel the less sure she was that she wanted to go after Adam. She also understood why the Lord God was so reluctant to subject her to the same fate as Adam now that He’d calmed down, even though He’d clearly intended her to share his punishment when He’d first started strewing curses around. The Lord God still needed intellectual companionship of some sort, perhaps even intellectual challenge. He had the option of raising the consciousness of some or all of the angels, but if he did that, they would acquire the same potential for rebellion as human beings and demons, and perhaps the same penchant. Eve realized that the Lord God was hesitating, wondering whether it might not be better to stick with the adversary he knew than to start creating new ones.

  Eve wasn’t at all sure that she wanted to provide the Lord God with intellectual companionship and challenge, until the time came when He lost His temper again and lashed out. It might, she thought, be better to come to some other arrangement while He was calm and relatively contrite. The garden was full of exquisite scents, but she knew now that perfume was direly unreliable as a guide to virtue.

  “I really do think I ought to share Adam’s fate,” she eventually decided, figuring that it probably was better to cleave to the adversary she knew, if she could. “It was my fault, after all. I’d like to be able to make things easier for him, if I can. I know you can’t take back what you said about bearing children in sorrow and my husband ruling over me, but you could make some compensating amendments, if you were so minded.”

  “That’s the fruit talking,” the Lord God said, with a sigh. “I told you to leave it alone.”

  * * * *

  “So where do we stand?” Adam asked, when he and Lilith were finally alone in the reed hut. “It seems that you’ve grown tired of waiting for me, and set up home with Azazel.” The hut was feebly lit by a tallow candle, and it was haunted by a humid animal stink that turned his stomach, but at least its walls sheltered his sensitive skin from the wind, and hid him from the inquisitive eyes of Azazel’s creations.

  “Azazel has done a great deal for us,” Lilith told him. “He’s a mine of information about tillage and all manner of crafts. We don’t have much in the way of tools as yet, but he’s set us on a progressive road and given us the means to follow it. He’s not going to stick around, though. He’s a demon—he can’t be content to maintain human form for long, or to take an interest in human beings. He has too much potential in him. He can’t even be content with one world for very long.”

  “Are there other worlds?” Adam asked.

  “More than you can imagine. Every star in the sky is a sun, with planets of its own, and the stars that the human eye can see are only an infinitesimal fraction of their number. The Lord God’s attention is focused here, at least for the time being, but there are trillions of other worlds. Azazel is learning while he teaches us, and he’ll doubtless put his education to good use elsewhere when he gets the urge to move on.”

  “And he won’t take you with him?” Adam said.

  The expression on Lilith’s face told Adam that he’d hit a slightly sore point. No, Lilith didn’t—couldn’t—believe that Azazel would take her with him when he got the urge to go, but she wanted to believe that he might, because she wanted to go. “He’s a demon,” was all that Lilith actually said.

  “What nourishment did you obtain from the other forbidden fruit?” Adam asked, curiously. “When the Lord God drove me out of Eden, he said that I’d live forever if I ate it—but I’d always assumed that I’d live forever. Everything in the garden lives forever.” “Nothing stays the same forever, in the garden or out of it,” Lilith told him. “The fruit of the tree of life slows down the process of change, but can’t prevent it. I’ll be around for a very long time—far longer than you, I dare say—but not forever. I’ll die one day, and I’ll change in the meantime, but very slowly. You’ll grow old and die before I have a single wrinkle, and a hundred generations of your descendants will perish before I grow old, but the difference is one of degree, not of kind. I could travel with Azazel, if he’d let me, even though he can travel no faster than the speed of light....” She stopped, unwilling to give fuller expression to her faint hope. In the sickly candlelight, her beautiful face took on a sinister tint.

  “I don’t know what’s involved in growing old, or dying,” Adam said—but realized, as he spoke the words, that it was a lie. He had tasted the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, if only slightly, and he did now have an inkling of what it would mean to grow old, and to die. The awareness was vague and fugitive, but undeniable. He wondered whether Lilith, having tasted the fruit of the tree of life, could possibly know how precious life now seemed to a man of his mortal kind.

  “The world is an uncomfortable place,” Lilith told him, with a deliberate harshness in her voice, “no matter what duration your existence has within it—but it’s not without its rewards.”

  “I know,” Adam admitted. “There’s nothing like an awareness of evil to tutor intelligence in the value of good. The aftertaste of the fruit I ate is odd, but it’s not horrific. Life outside the garden is possible; I understand that. The Lord God knew that I would when he cursed me. He drove me out, but he gave me better clothes first. He had to know that I’d find you. Perhaps that’s why he
didn’t send Eve out with me.”

  “Perhaps it is,” said Lilith, dubiously. “Will she follow you, do you think, if she has the choice?”

  “I don’t know,” Adam admitted. “I haven’t thought too much about it, because I don’t suppose she’ll be given the choice. Whether she follows me or not it will be at the Lord God’s command, in answer to his curse.”

  Outside, in the darkness, a lion roared. Another answered. Perhaps, Adam thought, the two were mates—and as he thought it, the knowledge popped into his head that male lions had more than one mate. Perhaps, he thought, humans might aspire to the condition of lions.

  “But if she did have the choice,” Lilith persisted, “would she follow you? And if she were to follow you, what would she do if she found us together?”

  “I don’t know,” Adam said, a little more aggressively than before. “I don’t even know what I would do. I don’t even know what I want.” He bit his tongue as soon as he’d said it, because he was anxious as well was confused. He knew that his uncertainty might be no more than an after-effect of having tasted the forbidden fruit—but it seemed to him that the bitter liquid that Azazel had given him to drink, instead of water, was having after-effects too. It was Azazel’s potion that was making him garrulous and dizzy.

  “That’s an enviable position to be in,” Lilith said. She said no more, but it was obvious to Adam that she knew exactly what she wanted—and was almost sure that she could not achieve it.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “Perhaps we should have done as we were told, and left the trees in the centre of the garden alone.”

  “It was only a matter of time,” Lilith said, with a sigh. She lowered hr head, so that her features were in shadow. “Sooner or later, it had to come to this. I should have tempted you myself, and avoided complications—but I wanted to take responsibility for my own actions, and I wanted you to take responsibility for yours. We can’t always foresee what the consequences of our actions will be...but that’s a good thing, isn’t it? Even the Lord God couldn’t tolerate a world in which everything was determined, from beginning to end.” An owl hooted in the distance, and another responded. The cries seemed plaintive and full of regret.