Lilith: A Snake in The Grass

by Jack L. Chalker

  I checked all the possibilities, made my decisions, and was all set for the onset of darkness. Farewell, Zeis Keep, may you rot in the muck. I’d never see this place again, that was for sure.

  That thought suddenly brought me up short. Ti.

  She was still here, up there with that butchering sadist and his experiments.

  I didn’t know exactly why, but late in the afternoon, I made my way back to Medical. From experience I knew that just about everybody in Dr. Pohn’s little shop of horrors knocked off work early. There really wasn’t much reason not to go there, and the only real danger I faced was running into Pohn himself. Now that I knew the potential of a Master I had no desire to meet up with Pohn in an adversary role. I’d timed my arrival pretty much for supper, in the hopes that my route would be clear, and I was lucky. There appeared to be nobody in the Medical area.

  I stole quickly into the area that I would always think of as the morgue and saw the twelve silent sleepers there. Hurrying over to Ti’s tiny, still form, I looked down at her, trying to think clearly. Up until this point I’d thought of this as more of a goodbye visit than anything else. But now, looking down at her, I knew that I couldn’t leave her here to Pohn’s tender mercies.

  I looked around at the others in the gathering gloom. No lights needed here, but the darkness made the place look even more like a repository for the dead. And they were dead, I thought sadly. The walking dead. What ancient superstition could conjure up only as a nightmare, the twisted sciences of Lilith had made a reality. I wanted to take them all with me, and would have if I could. Surely what one madman had done others not so mad could undo—but there was no way.

  Without even thinking about it, I picked Ti up from the slab and carried her back to my service corridor hideaway. She seemed to weigh almost nothing; except for her shallow and almost imperceptible breathing, she was like a doll, a mannequin rather than a person. Picking her up again, I made my way toward my planned escape route, figuring I’d reach it at just about the point of total darkness. I had almost reached the point below the Castle’s left wall when it occurred to me that I had done something monumentally stupid in carrying Ti off. If anyone came back to that lab and saw her missing, they’d realize I was still on the grounds.

  Still, leaving her here now would be cold-blooded murder. Moreover, it wouldn’t gain me anything, since she’d still be missed upstairs. No, stupid or not, the deed was done and I was committed now.

  Although leaving Ti would have weighed on my conscience, what I was about to do didn’t bother me in the slightest. Somewhere there are classifications of crimes against others such as murder, and this came under the heading of “necessary.”

  Just outside the small tunnel I was in was the Keep itself, the outside world—and two young paramilitary supervisors from Artur’s force. If either of them so much as knew where I was, they could inflict pain and stop me dead, at least long enough to raise an alarm. I had now to get by without any of that happening, and that meant killing the guards. I wished for the power that had allowed me to fry Kronlon, to reconstruct a chair from basic cells, but that was denied me now. I was faced with the problem of eliminating two threats who didn’t even have to touch me to get me—yet I had to get both of them.

  I had the benefit of surprise, of course. They weren’t telepaths, nor did they have any special powers that would betray me any more than if they were two normal humans. And the knowledge of their power and my lack of it made them supremely confident.

  I had several different plans for drawing them near enough to get, but it suddenly occurred to me that I had the almost perfect diversion in Ti—if in fact I could control her actions as simply as Pohn had. I certainly intended to find out. I put her down on the cold stone, confident that I was far enough away from the exit not to be overheard.

  “Ti, open your eyes,” I commanded in a hushed tone.

  Her eyelids flickered slightly, then opened. I breathed a sigh of relief in the discovery that this wasn’t going to be as difficult as I thought, although tricky.

  “Ti, stand up and face me.”

  She did as instructed, and I began to feel a little better. Still, I didn’t know how many instructions in sequence she could carry out.

  “Ti, softly say hello.”

  “Hello,” she responded dully, without a trace of life in her tone. Its very woodenness made me shiver slightly.

  Well, now was the time to see how complex the instructions could be.

  “Ti, I want you to walk two steps forward, stop, turn around, raise your right hand, and say ‘come here,’ ” I instructed. Those were enough separate instructions to tell me what I wanted to know.

  She paused a moment after I gave the orders, then walked two steps forward, turned around, and did everything perfectly. I got a sort of erotic thrill from seeing her do it. The ultimate adolescent male fantasy, I reflected—except that it bordered on necrophilia.

  The only other thing left to check was whether this was similar to a case of hypnotism and if the effect could be delayed.

  I gave her a couple of minor instructions, then told her not to carry them out unless I said the word “escape.” Then I said the word and she did them, after which I tried a couple of other random instructions, then said “escape” once again. She immediately carried out my original commands, so I was satisfied.

  I had deliberately picked this exit because a fairly large rock stood right near the entrance. Now, I felt, I had the best way of using all the elements, and I began to think that perhaps bringing Ti along hadn’t been such a bad idea after all.

  “Listen carefully, Ti,” I said. “Forget all previous instructions. When you hear me say the word trap’ you will do the following ….”

  It was dark outside the mouth of the cave into which the service corridor dumped. The two guards, a young man and an older woman, each wearing the black cape, pants, and boots of soldiers in Artur’s force, sat around looking very bored. They had been there quite a while and had exhausted most of what small talk they could muster, yet they couldn’t do much else but stand guard for fear that someone would get by them or, worse, that Master Artur would make a surprise inspection and find them doing something other than their military duty.

  Still, each sat with the relaxed air of someone who is certain that the quarry is long gone and nothing whatever is going to happen. It was, then, with considerable surprise that they heard someone emerge from the small tunnel mouth. They both jumped to their feet, whirled, and advanced with tense curiosity.

  “It’s—it’s a girl,” the female guard said in wonder. Her companion nodded and called out, “Who are you? What are you doing here?” His voice possessed the confidence of authority; he was secure that he had the power to meet challenges.

  The tiny figure, several meters away, seemed to .start, then silently slipped behind the large rock near the cave opening, vanishing from view.

  “What kind of children’s trick is this?” the man muttered, irritated.

  The other was not so easily lulled. ‘Take it easy. It could be a trap of some kind. Remember, somebody tipped him off to run. Let’s just give her a jolt.”

  “Aw, you’re too nervous,” the man griped, but he was still unsure enough not to advance.

  ‘There. That should have fixed her,” the woman said confidently.

  “I don’t hear any groaning,” the man responded, becoming a little nervous himself now. “Did you get her?”

  “I’m sure I did,” she assured him. “Come on. Somebody that little probably passed out.”

  They advanced cautiously, turned behind the rock, and saw the girl, apparently unconscious, stiff and flat against the rock.

  “Jeez, Marl, what’d you do to her?” the man asked, concerned. “She looks like she’s dead.”

  They both approached the still form against the rock, no longer cautious. When their heads were but inches apart I leaped with a yell from the other side of the rock, and before either could recover from t
he freeze surprise brings, I brought their two heads together as hard as I could, knocking them down with my spring as I did so.

  I hadn’t done that sort of thing that way since practicing with androids in training, but by God, it worked. Tuning was the key, I told myself, feeling satisfied. Timing and a little knowledge of the weaknesses in human psyches.

  The man was dead, I saw. The woman seemed to be still alive, but was bleeding from the scalp. Quickly and quietly I snapped her neck and then dragged both of them into the cave and hid them as securely as I could. I wanted no alarms now, and the uncertainty over their disappearance, when it was discovered, would still raise alarms in the wrong places.

  Artur, after all, was charged with Castle security and would not be sure whether the two had been surprised by someone coming out or by someone going in. I counted on that, and on the general feeling these people would have that someone with the voluntary powers of a mere pawn could have neutralized and physically killed two trained supervisors.

  I wondered idly why the hell I hadn’t done that to Kronlon long ago. This damned world had sapped my self-confidence; I was only now feeling like myself again.

  Picking up Ti for speed’s sake, I made my way out of the Castle and down into the valley below.

  Now for the first time the map Intelligence had arranged to be imprinted in my head came in handy. Wild areas, not under any knight or other administrative control—jungle and forest and mountains and swamp—lay as buffers between the keeps.

  The Keep itself was easy to navigate in the darkness. The villagers were mostly bedding down for the night or relaxing after eating, so no one would be in the fields except for herdsmen, who could easily be bypassed.

  Zeis was a bowl-like valley on three sides and ran up against a swampy and somewhat unhealthy lake on the fourth. The lake was definitely out—I had no desire to navigate through unknown water in daylight, let alone in darkness. Who knew what quagmires and hostile creatures were about? That meant going over or through the mountains, which was almost as bad. Naked, without tools, and carrying Ti along, I would be restricted to well-worn trails that were probably staked out by Artur’s boys.

  The map in my head told me I had at least a six-hundred-meter climb ahead Of me, at which point I’d have to descend almost that far to make a forest on the other side. Unfortunately, though the map included both physical and political information, it was no road map. I would have to ferret out the trails myself, and I couldn’t be too choosy about the ones I found, either.

  It was easy to find the trails, although none looked particularly well-worn. The network of pathways in the Keep all led to them in the end, of course. A number of times I’d had to flatten when great flying besils with mounted riders flew past. Their buzzing sounded like a great series of motors in operation, but they were too large and cumbersome to be more than a deterrent patrol. To spot anybody while atop those creatures would take a lot of luck indeed. But if someone on the ground sounded an alarm, they’d be on me in a moment, and then I’d be totally defenseless.

  If the trail I finally made was typical, at least I knew I wouldn’t have problems mountain climbing. Obviously designed for cart traffic, it was wide, with a great many broad switchbacks. Those switchbacks, though, would make anyone on the path plainly obvious to guards further up, and I worried a little about this. After all, this wasn’t like escaping from some armed force; these adversaries merely had to see you to knock you off the path with a strong glance.

  All I could do was start up the trail as rapidly and cautiously as possible and then trust to a little luck and the fact that the hunt would still be a day stale at this point. By this point I had Ti clinging to me piggyback and was certain that her grip would never falter.

  I was about a quarter of the way up and feeling pretty confident when I heard voices below. I froze, listening, but they were still far below me and, from what I could determine, on foot. The sounds of voices carried along here but with little definition, so I really couldn’t tell who they were—as if I needed to know who’d be walking a trail like this in the dark so late in the evening.

  After deciding that my best course was simply to keep ahead of them, I resumed my climb. A few minutes later I realized I was also hearing other voices from the trail. These sounded like the voices of two women, whereas those below me had both definitely been male—of that I was certain. I now realized that Artur had done the most obvious thing under the conditions Lilith and the geography of the Keep imposed on him. At intervals, probably somewhat at random, one team would start down the trail. A little later, another would start up, and they would cross somewhere in between. On a trail like this anybody else would be caught in between.

  I tried to judge how far away from me the pair coming down were. It was almost impossible. So I had to take the chance that perhaps they were far enough up to allow me to make the edge of the accumulating fog that always shrouded the sky of Zeis Keep because of the inversion caused by the mountain ring. The fog had been thickening and lowering as the night wore on. I hurried to reach the almost tangible blanket of gray I could see perhaps two turns of the trail ahead of me, the blanket that currently masked me from the descenders’ view as they were masked from mine.

  Without Ti I would have been more agile, but she had become something of a crusade, an obligation to me now. I was determined that she would at least awaken and be whole once again. She no longer weighed nothing. I was becoming tired, and forty-two kilos was beginning to have a real effect on my back and neck muscles.

  I had only one more switchback to go until I reached the edge of the cloud cover, but I was to be denied it, I now realized. The sound of the women’s voices was coming in quite clear and I could see an eerie, disembodied glow from a yellow lantern one of them was obviously carrying. I looked around for a place to hide, but the trail had been cut into sheer bedrock, the only thing at its outer edge except air and a long, long hard fall was a small sculpted rim that obviously served to keep wheeled carts from slipping over.

  I had no time and no choice: the rim would have to do. I was about to see just how strong and able this Cal Tremon body was, I thought sourly.

  I worried about the men below me, but they were the least of my problems, I realized. It was pretty damned dark up here, and their light would not carry far.

  As carefully as I could, I eased myself and my burden over the side and held on to the trail rim with both hands, otherwise dangling free. The drag from Ti on my back became so great I almost cried out, but I hadn’t gone through all that training for nothing, nor had a week or so of soft living undone months of hard toil. I managed to keep myself hanging there; how long until I lost my grip and dropped off, I couldn’t tell.

  Again I counted on normal human behavior to help me—and I needed all the help I could get These people had been walking the trail, up and down, down and up, for all their shift, and they were likely to be more bored than totally vigilant, like the two guards at the Castle had been.

  They came out of the clouds, walking slowly down the trail. One of them idly picked up a pebble and tossed it over the side, barely missing me only one level and one switchback below them.

  “Well, we finally got outta that stinkin’ mist,” one of the women noted with relief.

  “Yeah, let the guys get soaked,” the other one cracked. “Maybe if we take it slow enough it’ll be dawn and we’ll be relieved before we havta go up again.”

  “You said it,” the first one agreed. “I’ve had it with this mountain business. Me for a hot meal, bath, and bed, and I don’t care in what order.”

  They were very close now, around the turn and coming back toward my precarious and increasingly agonizing perch. All I could think of was Don’t stop! Just don’t stop! But there is a law governing such things and stop they did, not more than three or four meters from where my aching, raw hands were visible if they cared to look.

  “Hey! Look! I see ‘em coming!” one noted, pointing—I could see the ar
m and finger outstretched, far too close for comfort.

  “Wanna wait here for ‘em?”

  No, no, you don’t want to do that! I thought and prayed so loud that if there had been any such thing as ESP receptivity here they would certainly have heard me.

  “You mean stall?” the other responded, thinking it over. “Naah. Why bother? Let’s get this over with.”

  As they both turned and left the ledge, I chanced a glance downward to see where the approaching men were. Too close, I decided. Their lantern was already lighting the way only a couple of levels below me, and the women’s own light would expose me when they made the turn. I would have to time my move pretty well and do it silently. I judged the light from their lantern that was thrown forward against the curve of the switchback to be about twenty or so meters further on and watched it grow brighter and brighter.

  I almost blew it, for they actually came in view just as I hoisted myself and my heavy burden up and over onto the roadway, flattening there and freezing as still as Ti.

  “You hear something?” one of them asked the other.

  “Yeah,” the other replied suspiciously. “Sounded just ahead. Let’s take it slow and easy.”

  Not too slow, I wished, nor too cautious. I had to get up and start moving before the men got too close—and never had I felt less like moving. My neck and back ached, and my arms felt as if they were disjointed and incapable of anything. I summoned what reserve strength I had and tried some mental exercises to sponge away as much of the discomfort and ache as possible. Controlling my pain centers was no trick, but it was a false control, of course. My muscles and joints were in such pain because they had been pushed to the edge of endurance, and no longer feeling the warnings of the body didn’t lessen that fact. I wondered how much further it was to the top, and whether I was up to it. I didn’t even want to think about meeting yet another patrol on its way down or at the top. Judging by the light and sound, I made my way up toward the still-inviting fog, and made it.

  The going was a lot slower now, since I couldn’t see three meters in front of me, and the air became suddenly very wet and sticky. Still, I welcomed the gray cloak as a friend and ally, the first and only one I had ever had on this insane world.