Bronz thought it over. “Hmm… You’re suggesting that maybe Kreegan is the kingpin? It’s possible, of course. Suppose, for example, such a man as he became thoroughly disillusioned with his job, with his employers, with the system he helped perpetuate? Suppose that somewhere in his work he stumbled over the aliens. It would explain much. It would explain, for example, how the aliens instantly knew so much about us, how they were able to use the Warden worlds to their advantage. Kreegan would be ideal for establishing, even masterminding an operation such as you described—and it would take time; He’d have to work his way up, like the rest of us. Maybe with a little alien help, of course, but it would still take time. Then, once in power, they’d start to implement their plans.”
“I’d originally been thinking along similar lines,” I told him. “But it would mean that our aliens were supremely confident we could be counted on to overlook them for the years it would take. And they would have to have much patience.”
Bronz shrugged. “Perhaps they do. And did you find them? How much did they learn before one of then: fancy machines finally got caught? It seems to me that, if your guess is right and these aliens are too nonhuman to do much of anything themselves, and if they knew they were well hidden or well disguised, this was the best route.”
“The only thing wrong with such a neat picture,” I said, “is in Kreegan’s character itself. He’s a good deal older than I am, but he came from the same place. Our lives parallel to a remarkable degree, even to the type of work we did. I just can’t see what would so disillusion him about the Confederacy that he’d want to destroy it, devote his whole life to doing so.”
“Well, now, you’ve got a point there,” Bronz came back, “but it’s not the point you think you made. I can see an awful lot to be disillusioned about in the Confederacy. I think perhaps you have Kreegan a little backward. I could just as easily picture him as a totally committed idealist willing to do anything for his cause. Out of that background I can envision a man who just might commit his very soul to such a project, not for gain but in an idealistic crusade.”
“I think you’re crazy,” I told him. “An idealist would have certainly changed the system on Lilith. At the very least pawns would be far better off, the ruling class taken down several pegs.”
Father Bronz laughed and shook his head in wonder. “You poor soul. Let’s look at Lilith first, in light of all I’ve said. The social system is not merely determined by individual power. It is determined by the need to have Lilith support a non-indigenous human population, something she was simply not designed to do. The-Warden organism defends the planetary ecosystem—the plant and animal balance, the rocks, the swamps, the air and water—against change. It struggles to retain an equilibrium. Total balance. We’re the aliens here, the incomprehensible ones, son. We have power, yes, but it’s of a very limited nature. We cannot reshape this planet, but can only adapt to its existing conditions. The Warden beasties won’t let us. Now, dump thirteen million totally wrong aliens here and see what happens.”
I couldn’t see where he was going and said so.
“It’s so simple,” he responded. “You’re so used to technology as the answer to all ills that you don’t see what we’re faced with here. All of human history is the history of technology, of using that technology so that man can change his environment to suit himself. And we have. On Earth we changed the course of rivers, we bent sun and wind and whatever it took to our ends. We levelled mountains when they were inconvenient, and built them where we wanted. We created lakes, cut down whole forests, tamed the entire planet. Then we went out to the stars and did the same thing. Terraforming. Genetic engineering. Using our technology, we changed whole planets; we even changed ourselves. Man’s history is warring with his environment and winning that war. But, son, on Lillith—and only on Lilith—man cannot declare war. He must live within the environment that was already here. On Lilith the environment won. One lonely skirmish, true, but we were whipped. Beaten. We can’t fight it. We can build a castle, yes, and get insects to carry us to and fro, but we can make only minor dents, dents that would be instantly erased if they weren’t being constantly maintained.
“You see, son, Lilith’s the boss here, thanks to Warden’s bug. We all dance to her tune or compromise with her, but she’s the boss. And yet we must feed and house thirteen million people. We must support thirteen million alien interlopers on a land not meant for them and on which we can’t really perform more than cosmetic changes. Somebody has to grow the food and ship it. Somebody has to raise the great insect beasts and keep them domesticated. The economy must be kept going, for if those thirteen million were suddenly left entirely to their own devices they’d go out and eat and drink their fill and denude the melon groves. They’d fight each other as savage hunters and gatherers, the most primitive of tribal structures, and all but the toughest would die.
“Don’t you see, son? Nobody enjoys the kind of hard labor it takes to keep the system going—but name me another that would work. Without technology at our disposal, we are condemned to mass muscle power.”
I was appalled. “Are you claiming that there’s no other way to do it?”
“Nope. There are lots of other ways, all more cruel and worse than this one. There may well be a better way, but I don’t know it. I suspect that’s the way Kreegan sees it, too. I’m sure he doesn’t like the system, since it’s so much like the Confederacy—if we’re right about him, that is—but unlike the Confederacy, he, like me, can’t see any better way.”
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. To have all one’s basic beliefs challenged in an offhanded manner like this was a bit much. “What do you mean, this system is so much like the Confederacy?” I challenged. “I certainly can’t see any similarities.”
Father Bronz snorted contemptuously. “Then you do not see what you see. Consider the so-called civilized worlds. Most of humanity have been equalized into a stagnant sameness beyond belief. On a given planet everybody looks pretty much the same, talks pretty much the same, eats, sleeps, works, plays pretty much the same. They’re pawns, all of them. They think the same. And they are taught that they are happy, content, at the pinnacle of human achievement, the good life for all, and they believe it. It’s true they are coddled more, their cages are gilded, but they are pawns all the same. The only real difference between their pawns and ours is that ours know that they are pawns and understand the truth of the whole system. Your civilized worlds are so perfectly programmed to think the same that they are never even allowed to face the truth.”
“It’s a pretty comfortable pawnship,” I pointed out, not really conceding his point but allowing his terms for argument’s sake.
“Comfortable? I suppose so. like pet canaries, maybe. Those are small birds that live in cages in people’s homes, in case you don’t know—not on the civilized worlds, of course, where pets are not thought of. But at any rate these birds are born in cages; they are fed there, and their cages are regularly cleaned by there owners. They know no other life. They know that somebody provides them with all they need to exist, and having no other expectations, they want for no more. In exchange, they chirp comfortably and provide companionship to lonely frontiersmen. Not only is no canary ever going to engineer a breakout that cage, but he’s not even going to imagine, let alone design and build, a better life. He can’t even conceive of such a thing.”
“Those are animals,” I pointed out. “Like Sheeba here.”
“Animals, yes,” he acknowledged, “but so are the humans of the civilized worlds. Pets. Everybody has an apartment that is just so in size, just so in furnishings, just so in every way the same. They look the same and wear the same clothes, as if it mattered, and they perform jobs designed to keep the system going. Then they return to their identical cubicles, get immersed in entertainment that involves them totally in some formula story that’s all about their own world, offering nothing-new in thought, idea, concept. Most of their free time they spend on d
rugs in some happy, unproductive never-never land. Their arts, their literature, their very traditions are all inherited from history. They have none of then- own. We’ve equalized them too much for that—equalized out love and ambition and creativity, too. Whenever equality is imposed as an absolute, it is always equalized at the least common denominator, and historically, the least common denominator of mankind has been quite low indeed.”
“We still advance,” I pointed out. “We still come up with new ideas, new innovations.”
“Yes, that’s true,” Bronz admitted. “But you see, my son, that’s not from the civilized worlds. The masters of those worlds, the Outside supervisors and knights and dukes and lords, know that they can’t let progress die completely or they die and their power with it. So we have the frontier, and we have selective breeding of exceptional individuals. The elite, working in the castles of Outside.”
“We don’t have those ranks and positions and you know it,” I retorted.
He gave a loud guffaw. “The hell you say! And what then, pray tell, are you? What is Marek Kreegan? What, for that matter, am I? Do you know what I my real crime was, Tremon? I reintroduced not merely |religion but the concepts of love, of spirituality, to those pawns. I gave them something new, a rediscovery of their humanity. And it threatened the system! I was—removed. As long as I was on the frontier giving aid and comfort to the miserable and the uncomfortable, why, I was fine. Let the churches be. But when I started making headway on the civilized worlds—oh, no, then I was dangerous. I had to be removed or I might accomplish the unthinkable. I might awaken those pawns from their total environmental entertainment mods and drug stupors and show them they didn’t have to be trained canaries any more, they could be individual human beings—like me. Like you. Like the ruling class. And I got slapped down.”
“For a man with that idea of the civilized worlds, you are mighty complacent about this one,” I noted.
He shrugged. “Here it is necessary—at least until somebody comes up with something better and has the power and win to enforce it and make it work. But back home—oh, no. Man is master of his environment, but he is also the slave of the technocratic class that rules so cleverly that the slaves don’t even know they’re slaves. What of complacency? Aren’t you guilty of the reverse, Cal ? Aren’t you raring to change Lilith, but totally complacent about the civilized worlds? Son, the time for carrying out the orders of your superior are over. You’re calling your own tune now. You can think what you like. It provides a fascinating contrast, does it not? Here on Lilith man is enslaved in body yet free to think, to love, to dance, to tell stories, whatever. The mind is free, although the body’s in chains—just like much of human history. Back where we come from it’s not the body they own—hell, they made it—it’s the mind. Nobody’s enslaving your mind any more, boy. Use it to solve your own, not their, problems.”
I recoiled from the dialogue. I didn’t like to think about what Bronz was saying, for if I lost my belief in my own culture and the rightness of it, I had nothing else, nothing left. Worse, if what he said was true, then what had my whole life been? Tracking down those who didn’t fit, ferreting out those who would challenge, subvert, or topple the system on which the civilized worlds were based.
If what he said was true, then in the context of the civilized worlds, I was…
Kronlon.
Could it be true? I asked myself unbelievingly. If so, did Marek Kreegan go out one day to find the enemy and come face to face with himself?
What had Marek Kreegan been like, Vola?
A lot like you, Col Tremon. An awful lot like you…
Chapter Sixteen
Sumiko O’Higgins and the Seven Covens
A few hours after darkness on the second night we made the rendezvous point. Until now I’d left myself entirely in Father Bronx’s hands, but now I wanted information.
“Who are these—savages?” I asked. “And what can they do for us?”
“Cal, the savages in these parts—in fact, in most parts I’ve seen—aren’t savage, except to members of a Keep,” he told me. “They are the misfits. People with the power but untrained, people with no power but determined never to work the fields their whole lives, renegades, political outcasts like yourself, and of course their children. I picked this group because of its relative power. They are strong and highly skilled, if somewhat anarchistic.”
“I thought you said that wouldn’t work here,” I taunted, feeling good that I’d scored at least once.
“Oh, it doesn’t,” he responded airily. “Not on a large scale, anyway. Not even on a small one, really, but people can be made to think they’re in an anarchy if that’s what they want. On a very small scale they can be truly savages, of course—but they meet the fate of all true savages. They die young and usually violently. No, these folks have an organization and powerful people, but they are, ah, a bit unorthodox.”
Father Bronz crossed himself when he said that last, and it was such an interesting reaction I had to press it. I’d seen him do that only a very few tunes, such as just before and just after the roadblock.
“These people are dangerous, then?”
He nodded. “Very. You might say that we—that is, they and I—are in the same business. Competitors.”
“Another church?”
He chuckled. “In a sense, yes. They are the opposition, my lad, and you don’t know how it galls me to have to use them, let alone trust them. They are witches, you see, and worship Satan.”
I had to laugh. “Witches? Oh, come on, now.”
“Witches,” he acknowledged gravely. “I don’t know why that should surprise you. Let’s just say you were of a magical or romantic bent. Take a look at Lilith then. A spoiled Eden. Now, instead of Warden organisms and mathematical constructs, chemical catalysts and the other stuff of science we take so much for granted, replace it with the word magic. The upper classes, those with the power, then become magicians, wizards, sorcerers. Utilizing the Warden organism as you tell me you did, on that chair for example. A thing of nature? How about a ‘magic spell’ instead? You know what runs this world, and how, and / know, but do most people? Without that knowledge, isn’t it a world of wizards and magic spells?”
I saw his point, although it didn’t cheer me. “So we’re being placed in the hands of people who believe all this?”
He nodded. “So watch your step. They’re doing this mostly because it gives ’em a kick to have a priest ask a favor of Satanists. But they believe it, and they don’t have much of a sense of humor about ft, either. Some of ’em can fry you, too, so watch that sharp tongue.”
I shut up. Whatever craziness these people believed, no matter how absurd it might be, they were the only hope I had. We waited for the Satanist party.
They appeared without our having ever detected their presence. At one moment we were just lounging by the cart, relaxing and hoping that one of Lilith’s frequent and violent thunderstorms, which was looming close on the horizon, would not hit where we were when I was suddenly aware of a number of people standing around us. I jumped up and turned in fighting posture, but quickly relaxed when Bronz seemed less concerned.
They were all women, about a dozen of them, some with the look of the civilized worlds about them—but certainly different-looking in this context Their hair was cut very, very short, and then* faces and skins had that rough, weathered look pawns get, although these women were not pawns. All wore some sort of breech-clout that as nearly as I could tell was made of some tough and weathered leaf, held on by carefully braided and tied rope like vines. On a loop of that vine, each bore some sort of weapon—a stone axe, some kind of mineral-carved knife, or in at least two cases, bows and flint-tipped arrows.
One of them, a large woman who was tall and imposing, was the exception to the hair rule, her long, silky-black hair reaching down past her buttocks. She was obviously the leader and radiated a charismatic confidence you could almost feel. Not that she could fail to dominate any
scene she was in; at more than two meters in height, she was almost as big as I was.
“Well, well, Father Bronz,” she said, her voice deep and rich. “So-this is the fugitive in trouble.” She looked at me and I felt as if I were being examined by some scientist unpleased with the odor and look of her specimen. She turned back to the priest. “You said something about a girl. Was that just a papist lie?” -
“Oh, stow it, Sumiko,” Bronz growled. “You know me better than that. She’s in the cart.”
A flick of the leader’s head and three of the other women rushed to the cart, pulled the straw off Ti, and gently removed her.
“Sons of bitches,” the leader snorted in genuine anger and stalked over to the comatose girl. She repeated what Bronz had done when he’d first seen her, placing her hands on Ti’s forehead and concentrating hard. After a moment she drew back, opened her eyes, and turned again to face us. “What bastard did this?” she almost snarled.
“Pohn, over at Zeis,” Bronz responded wearily. “You’ve heard the stories, and now you know they’re true.”
She nodded gravely. “Someday, I promise you, I will get that worm in my hands and I will slowly, very slowly, dissect him as he watches.”
“Can you do anything for her?” I put in, both concerned and piqued at being ignored.
She nodded thoughtfully. “I think so. A little. At least I can bring her out of it, but there’s the danger of clotting or brain damage if she’s not gotten to a doctor—a real one who knows just what repairs to make. From what I can see of the spell, Pohn is less powerful than I am, but he’s damned tricky and clever.” She gestured to us and started walking. The other women put Ti back in the cart, and one jumped up behind Sheeba, saying nothing. The cart started, and so did the witch queen—that was the only way I could think of her. We followed off into the bush of the wild.
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