Lilith: A Snake in The Grass

by Jack L. Chalker

  The voice had paused, but now took up its instructions with no reference to the incident. “Right turn— now!” it commanded, and we did as instructed. “Walk slowly forward to the shuttle as instructed.”

  We walked in silence, definitely in no hurry. The metal floor of the corridor was damned cold, though —in fact, the place wasn’t any too comfortable as a whole—and this made the shuttle at least preferable to this damned refrigerator.

  The shuttle itself was surprisingly comfortable and modern, although the seats weren’t made for naked bodies. I found a seat about four rows back and attached the safety straps, then waited for the rest to enter. My first impression had been close, I noted. The shuttle itself could seat twenty-four, but there were only fourteen of us, eight males and six females.

  The hatch closed automatically, and I heard the hiss of pressurization. Then, without further fanfare, there was a violent lurch and we were free of the transport and on our way down.

  The shuttle was much too modern and comfortable for mere prisoner transport, I told myself. This, then, had to be one of the interplanetary ships regularly used for transportation between the worlds of the Warden Diamond.

  The overhead speakers crackled, and a much nicer female voice that actually sounded human came on. It was a great improvement.

  “Welcome to Lilith,” the voice said, sounding for all the world as if it meant it. “As has no doubt been explained to you, Lilith is your final destination and new home. Although you will be unable to leave the Warden system after debarking, you will no longer be prisoners but citizens of the, Warden Diamond. Confederacy rule ended when you entered this shuttle, which is owned in common by the Warden Worlds, one of a fleet of four shuttlecraft and sixteen freighters. The System Council is a corporate entity fully recognized as internally sovereign by the Confederacy and even with a seat in the Confederation Congress. Each of the four worlds is also under separate administration, and the governments of each planet are unique and independent. No matter who you were or what you might have been or done in the past, you are now citizens of Lilith and nothing more. You are no longer prisoners. Anything done prior to now is past history that will not be remembered, filed, or referred to ever again. Only what you do from this point on, as citizens of Lilith, Warden System, will matter.”

  It—or she, I really wasn’t sure—paused for that piece of information to sink in. The contrast between the attitude and tone taken now and the one we’d all just been subjected to was enormous.

  “Because of the unique properties of Lilith,” the voice continued, “the shuttle cannot remain long or it might become disabled. Furthermore, it has a schedule to keep, and others need to use it. We therefore would appreciate your debarking as soon as the hatch opens. Someone will be there to meet you, answer your questions and assign you to your new homes. Please cooperate with this individual, as Lilith is a primitive world and extremely dangerous to newcomers. We will arrive in approximately five minutes.”

  Although the lid was off, nobody really said anything for the rest of the ride—partly because we were still conditioned by our recent imprisonment; the rest was nerves, me included. This was it, I told myself. Here we go.

  A sudden sensation of falling as if we’d hit an air pocket in some flying craft was followed by the reimposition of weight and a hard thump. They had come in as fast as was safely possible, and I wondered for a moment what their hurry was. Then the hatch hissed and opened; to my surprise, a sudden rush of tremendously warm, moist air hit us.

  We lost no time doing as instructed—no use in alienating our new lords and masters before we even got the lay of the land—and debarked quickly. I was surprised to find a moving walkway extending from the shuttlecraft itself down to the bare ground. No spaceport, nothing. In a matter of moments we were standing, naked and disoriented and already beaded with sweat from the heat, on a grassy plain or meadow.

  We had arrived on Lilith—and even as that first warm rush of native air had hit us our bodies were being systematically invaded.

  Chapter Three

  Orientation and Placement

  _____________________________

  _____________________________

  I was aware of others around now—not the mechanics and service personnel one would expect but just other people—passengers for the outbound, I realized. A half-dozen or so wearing loose-fitting skirts or even shiny robes but not looking very different from the run-of-the-mill frontier individual I knew well. Not very different from us, really. After the last of us emerged, they moved quickly to replace us on the craft, a sleek, saucerlike vessel. The ramp retracted and the hatch closed almost immediately.

  “They sure don’t waste any time, do they?” a man near me remarked, and I had to agree.

  Reflecting for a moment on the passengers I did realize one odd thing about them that separated them from any passengers on any interplanetary craft I’d ever known. None of them, not one, carried any sort of luggage—and there certainly had not been time to load any before we got off. In fact, none of them had anything at all except the flimsy-looking clothes they had worn.

  We were well clear of the craft and watched it come to life, then rise very quickly. The ship was gone in an instant, yet all of us followed it with our eyes, continuing to stare at the exact spot where it had vanished into the deep blue sky. It was as if that shuttle represented our last link with the old culture, our last line to the places we’d been and the people we’d known—and the people we had been, too.

  I was among the first to look down and spotted a very attractive woman approaching us. Wearing only one of those flimsy but colorful skirts and what looked like a pair of flat sandals, she was extremely tall—almost 180 centimeters, surely—with long black hair, her skin tanned very dark, almost black.

  “Hello!” she called out in a deep, throaty, yet pleasant voice. “I am your orientation guide and teacher. Will you all please follow me and we’ll get you settled hi?”

  A few of the others continued to look skyward as if spellbound or hypnotized for a few moments, but eventually all of us turned and followed her. We were all survivors and life went on.

  The Garden of Eden description of Lilith I’d heard was mostly an impression of a warm, resort-type world. At least that had been how I’d pictured it. But nearly naked women and grass huts were a bit more primitive than I’d imagined—or been used to.

  Yet grass huts they were, with yellow reed walls and thatched roofs. I could see the others having thoughts similar to my own. We’d been prepared for almost anything, but we’d grown up in a slick, automated world. Even those in the lowest classes were used to glancing at their watch for time, date, and whatever; to lights turning on when you entered rooms; to having food ready to be ordered when you were hungry with a command and a touch of a wall plate.

  A primitive place was one where the weather wasn’t always controlled and buildings might be made of stone or wood, things like that—and a place with grass and trees. But this—not only did I now look like some prehistoric man, but I was living the part.

  We all sat down in front of one of the huts and the woman introduced herself to us. “I am Patra,” she told us, trilling the r sound slightly. “Like you, I was a convicted felon sentenced here about five years ago. I won’t reveal what my offenses were, nor my old name—such things are not asked on the Warden worlds, although the information is sometimes freely given. It remains your choice to tell as much or as little about your past as you wish, and to whomever you wish. It is also your choice to use your old name or to choose any new one you like, as I did.”

  There were murmurs and nods at that, and I liked the idea myself. Barring a chance meeting with someone who had known the old Cal Tremon, I’d be spared the embarrassing questions and consequent chances of being tripped up somewhere.

  “You will stay here a few days,” Patra continued. “For one thing, you are now on a new and very hostile world. I realize that many of you have been on new and hos
tile worlds before, but never one quite like this one. In the past, you’ve had maps, charts, reference computers, all sorts of mechanical aids— not to mention effective weapons. There is none of that here, so you will have to get your information from me. Furthermore, as you are no doubt aware, the Warden organism invades our bodies and lives within us, and during the first few days, that process can have some unpleasant side effects. I don’t want to alarm you—mostly some dizziness, disorientation, stomach upset, things like that. You won’t be really sick, just a little uncomfortable from time to time. The discomfort passes quickly, and you’ll never even think about it again. And it has some advantages.”

  “Yeah, keeps us planeted on this rock,” somebody muttered.

  Patra just smiled. “Not exactly, although it keeps us in this solar system. It’s a fact of life, so accept that fact. Don’t even think about escape, beating this system. Not only can’t it be done—and some of the best minds in the galaxy have tried—but the death it brings is the worst, most horrible sort imaginable.”

  She paused to let that sink in, knowing it probably wouldn’t, then continued. “The advantage of the organism is that you’ll never have to worry about even the slightest ailment again. No toothaches, no colds, no infection, nothing. Even pretty large wounds, if not fatal or of an extremely critical nature, will heal quickly, and tissue regeneration is possible. There has never been a need for any doctor on Lilith, nor will there be. In other words, the Warden organism pays for what it takes.”

  She went on for a while, detailing some of the basics of the planet that I had already gotten from the briefing; then it was time for food. That took the most getting used to. The cuisine of Lilith seemed to consist of cooked insects of all sorts and lots of weeds, sometimes mixed with a grain of some sort that was a very unappetizing purple in color.

  There were a few of my group who just couldn’t manage the food for a while, but of course everybody would come around eventually. For a few it might be really tough going, or prove to be a very effective form of dieting.

  Getting used to insect stews and chewy purple bread was going to be tough, I told myself, but I would have to learn to eat it and like it or else. Over the next few days I did manage to adjust to eating the food and to crapping in the bushes, using leaves instead of automatic wipers, and all the rest As I said earlier, we were chosen for our ability to adapt to just about anything—and this was the “just about” the training manuals had implied.

  Patra was also right about the side effects of the organism’s invasion. I experienced strong dizziness, some odd aches and pains, and a feeling of itching all over inside—damned unpleasant, but I could live with it. We all had the runs, too, but I suspect that was mostly due to the food, not to the organism.

  So far, though, Patra’s orientation lectures had mostly covered things I already knew about, and though they went into greater detail than any I’d had before and were therefore welcome, she hadn’t covered the facts I needed so far. On the fourth very long day—it was hell sleeping in that climate as it was, without the days and nights being so much longer— she finally got around to material of more interest.

  “I know a lot of you have been wondering and asking why there are no machines, no spaceport, no modern buildings or conveniences here,” she began. “So far I’ve put you off, simply because this was important enough for me to want you all to be through most of the ill effects of arrival. The reason is easy to explain but damned difficult to accept, but it’s the explanation for everything you’ve seen around here.” She seemed to look at each of us in turn, a half-smile on her face.

  “Lilith,” she said, “is alive. No, that doesn’t make sense—but none of the Wardens do. I am going to tell you what is in terms that can only be approximations of what is going on.

  “I want you to imagine that every single thing you see—not just the grass and trees, but everything: rocks, the very dirt under your feet—is alive, all cells of a single organism, each of which has its own Warden organism inside it in the same symbiotic relationship as it is establishing in your bodies. That organism likes the world exactly the way it is. It maintains it. Chop a tree down and another grows from its stump in record time. Meanwhile the original starts decaying with equal speed—in a full day it’s started to decompose; within three it’s completely gone, absorbed into the ground. Same for people. When you die you’ll be completely gone to dust in under three days. That’s why our food is what it is. It’s what can be caught, killed, and prepared within a day. You probably have noticed that people arrive with our rations every morning.”

  There were a few nods, but I frowned. “Wait a minute. If that’s true, then how do these grass huts stay up? They’re dead matter.”

  She smiled again. “A good question. The truth is, they aren’t dead. They’re single living bunti plants, related to those yellow stalks you see growing here and there in the woods.”

  “You mean they obligingly grow into houses for us?” a woman asked skeptically.

  “Well, not exactly,” came the reply. “They grow into houses because they were ordered to do so.”

  Eyebrows shot up at this. “Ordered by whom?” somebody else asked.

  “Life is a contest of wills everywhere,” Patra responded. “On Lilith, it is more so. That is at the heart of the culture we’ve built here. You see, though the Warden organism isn’t intelligent, at least as we understand such things, it is a truly alien organism that more or less becomes an integral part of whatever it lives in—and it lives in everything. You are no longer human beings. You are something else now—alien creatures, really. If you master your own body and it your mind is strong enough and has enough natural ability and sheer willpower, you can sense the Warden organism in all things around you. Sense it, and in a way talk to it. Somehow, nobody knows how, all Warden organisms are linked together. You might think of them as single, independent cells of a great creature. Unlike our cells, they don’t adjoin, but like our cells, they are linked together somehow in a manner we don’t yet understand. They communicate. You can make them communicate. You might, if strong enough and powerful enough, instruct Warden organisms not a part of you to do just about anything.”

  A sense of stunned unbelief swept over the group, but I was a little better prepared. Even so, I found the idea hard to visualize.

  “The power of the individual over the organism,” Patra explained, “varies wildly. Some people never get much of anything—the majority, I’m afraid, re-. main as you are now—and thus are at the mercy of more powerful minds that have more control and thus can control Warden organisms necessary to you—for food, for shelter, even within your own bodies. There are also those wild talents with the ability to exercise power, sometimes considerable power, but not under any sort of control. Like the majority, they are essentially powerless—but they get a little more respect, particularly if their wild talents are dangerous or deadly. The degree of control you have is fixed. We have no idea why some have it and others don’t. But I can tell you that for some reason non-natives in general tend to possess a higher level of power than those born here. Perhaps this is because the Warden organism remains alien, something we are always aware doesn’t belong in us. If you have the power, it’ll show up on its own. Once it does, though, training and practice are required to bring you up to your full potential—and that’s when you’ll find out where you fit in this world.”

  It was something to think about, and worry about —a wild-card factor beyond my control, and I felt more than a little nervous. Whether or not I’d go far around here depended on how well I got along with the little buggers in my cells.

  “Lilith is divided into political regions,” she explained. “These areas, or districts, are based on population. As of this moment, each District contains roughly twenty-eight thousand people and there are a total of four hundred and seventy of them, each headed by an official called a Duke. They are enormously powerful, having the ability to stabilize dead matter. As a res
ult, they live in fine mansions and often have art, dinnerware—all the finer things you can think of. And weapons, too.

  “The Duke of a District is the most powerful Knight in his District. Therefore the officials below him are called Knights, and each Knight rules an area called a Keep. Knights also have some control over dead matter, but nothing like on the scale of a Duke— there’s really no difference in power between Dukes and Knights with regard to the rest of the population. A Duke is only the most powerful of Knights. The Keeps, by the way, vary in size from very small to huge, depending on the number of people living in them. The more powerful the Knight, the more people he or she controls and the larger the Keep. The Duke, also being a Knight, has the largest Keep, of course.”

  I nodded to myself. Knights and Dukes had their way around here. The place was beginning to sound like a monarchy, but one determined by some indefinable natural ability, not heredity. Well, at least it kept dynasties down.

  “Keeps,” Patra went on, “are administered by Masters. Think of them as department heads. Each runs a particular area of Keep administration. Masters can control living things, but their ability to stabilize dead matter is very, very limited. A Master could make these bunti grow into a house, though, to his or her particular design.

  “Below Masters are Supervisors, who are just what the term says. They manage the actual work. Their ability to stabilize dead matter is limited to usually a few articles of basic clothing, but they still have power over living things—mostly destructive. However, they can regenerate parts of themselves, even whole limbs, and can cause regeneration in others— as can, of course, Masters, Knights, and Dukes. I must warn you, they can also do the opposite—cause a limb to wither, inflict pain by sheer will.”