Lilith: A Snake in The Grass

by Jack L. Chalker

  I wasn’t worried about the men approaching from below. Being human and bored, they would stop and exchange small talk with the women coming down; that would buy me a few precious minutes to add to the distance. Then- lantern would be little help once they made the dew line, so they’d be going as slowly as I. If I ran into no one else and if I could just make it over the top before the sun came up, I felt I might just get away.

  The sky was certainly getting light by the time I reached the summit, but by then I really didn’t care any more. From this point on I’d be descending toward the wild—too early for any commercial traffic, I hoped—and into whatever brush there might be. I was out on my feet, every step a horrible experience, but I drove myself, knowing that I had to make it down, had to make it to cover, before the day really began. I hoped there would be only light patrols on this side of the range—if any at all. Not that they wouldn’t be looking for me here, but with limited manpower Artur would concentrate mainly on keeping me bottled up. Only when they discovered the dead guards would their search become frantic, and only after that would they begin to widen it into places they did not control.

  At least I hoped so.

  I was soaked through by the time I made it to the lower edge of the dew line, had been for a couple of hours. For the first time since being on Lilith, the combination of wetness, a light wind, and the slight elevation threw a genuine chill into me. It was getting really light now; the sun, I was sure, was going to peek through any minute now and perhaps burn off some of this cloud cover.

  Now, out of the thick mountain-bred fog, I could see ahead of me my first real view on Lilith of a place other than Zeis Keep. There were rolling, thickly forested hills, it appeared, the trees and hilltops peeking out a dark blue-green from trapped pockets of thick ground fog. The place had an eerie stillness about it, and I felt certain that I would at least make it to the shelter of those trees.

  I could no longer carry Ti, and ordered her to let go of my back and walk beside me. Though she could keep up by running if she had to, I took it slowly and carefully nonetheless. The stone path was slick and wet, and I wanted no accidents for either of us, not now—not when I had accomplished my immediate goal.

  The sun was well up and warming the place into a steam bath before I finally decided I couldn’t take any more and picked a spot not far from the road that seemed well concealed from prying eyes and barren of any obvious threat from natural causes. I sensitized Ti with a series of commands so that she would remain listening and would wake me if she heard anyone or anything approaching, then settled down under tree and bush cover on the grass and rock-strewn forest floor and let myself relax for the first time. No matter how rotten I felt, I did feel a strong sense of accomplishment.

  I’d escaped! I’d made it! I was, for the first time in this body, once more a free man, a free agent! It felt really good.

  Deep down, though, that nagging little voice I always carried with me sang a different tune. All right, superhuman, it mocked. So now you’re naked and unarmed in a strange and hostile world whose inhabitants are all raised against you, saddled with a robot-like girl, and you’ve got no place to go and no help to do anything else. All right, Homo superior— now what do you do?

  There was only one response to that. I fell into the deepest of sleeps.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Some Interested Parties

  How long I slept there I have no idea, but it was late in the day when I awoke, feeling none too good. My body still ached, at least those parts that weren’t already numb, and the uneven, rocky ground hadn’t helped matters much. Still, I felt now as if I could do all right as long as I didn’t have to climb any more mountains or carry Ti.

  I realized that at least we wouldn’t starve. Warden had described Lilith as something like Paradise, and in that he hadn’t been far wrong. All the cultivated food of the Keeps came originally from plants that grew in the wild, and though the naturally grown stuff wouldn’t taste as good or be as perfect there should be enough to sustain us.

  But sustain us for what? The trouble with breaking out of a prison is that all of your energies are directed toward the breakout. What you’re going to do once outside is vague and nebulous and never very practical. Such was the case here. Moab was roughly 4,800 kilometers south-southeast of where I was—a nice hike under any circumstances, and when the powers that be were hunting for you, it might as well be on another planet.

  And they were hunting. Just sitting there in the few minutes after waking up I could see, far off, huge black leathery shapes, two great wings supporting a giant, wormlike body whose head was a mass of tendrils, combing along the sides of the road. Besils from Artur’s force, without a doubt. I sat there and admired the way the riders could control the beasts, so that they didn’t seem to fly in any normal fashion at all but rather to swim and flow, snakelike, through the air.

  I had to make plans, both immediate and long-range, whether I wanted to or not. I certainly couldn’t stay where I was; for one thing, we needed to find food, and for another, it was too close to the road directly to Zeis for me to remain long. The more distance I could put between Artur and me the better.

  Nor would the trip be as comfortable as it would by necessity be leisurely. I was already becoming aware that chairs and castles weren’t the only things held in Warden patterns—the entire Keep was under such a pattern. Lilith was a world where plants and insects thrived, but there’d been no mammalian or reptilian development. The microbes were unimportant; aside from the Warden organism itself, all the microscopic beasties were far too alien to affect human beings. But the insects swarmed and bred and swarmed some more in millions of shapes and sizes. In Zeis Keep, the minor bisects and pests were in some way locked out, absent. Now I found myself in a world where millions of things, many quite small, flew and crawled and creeped and hopped. I already had several small itchy bites from something or other, and a close examination of Ti showed more of the same.

  True, though I had only a few hundred meters’ walk into the brush to find familiar, edible melons and berries, only a few were usable. The natural food chain here was oriented toward the insects, not people; and insects infested whatever was ripe for the picking. Nonetheless, I found enough to feel reasonable again and scooped and broke up enough to hand-feed to Ti. Water was less of a problem, since there were small pools and rivulets everywhere. Some of it looked pretty scummy, but I didn’t hesitate simply because I knew that my little Wardens—and Ti’s—would protect us from the worst.

  Only after these necessities were taken care of did I allow myself to think beyond to what I was. actually going to do next. I simply couldn’t manage to reach Moab Keep, help Ti, and stay out of Artur’s clutches all on my own. I needed help—friends, people who could do more than I. But whom did I know on Lilith that wasn’t either out to get me or locked inside Zeis Keep? The answer was obvious but unnerving.

  I was somehow going to have to find Father Bronz and talk him into helping me. If the old priest wouldn’t do it for me, I reasoned, he might do it for Ti, whom, I recalled, he had said he knew and for whom he had expressed some affection. Bronz it was —but where? I tried to remember. It had been a couple of weeks since I’d seen him, but he had mentioned where he was going next South, he’d said— and that was good, because that meant along this road. Shemlon Keep, I thought he’d said, making his rounds.

  The map in my head clicked into play once more, and I easily located Shemlon, about twenty kilometers down this road, or off it.

  Near dusk we started walking, not on the road but parallel to it, choosing whatever cover we could find from random patrols and routine courier and other service. The road was lightly traveled, but during the late afternoon a few carts passed and even a few individuals, almost all masters, heading one way or the other. I had no illusions that word of me would not have reached Shemlon long before now; the aerial besils would have been active.

  A long and dangerous trip, yes, but it didn�
��t bother me very much. At least now I had some place to go and some reason for going there.

  It took several days of lying low and several nights of slow walking to reach the border of Shemlon Keep.

  During that time we had occasional problems finding edible food, but in the main Lilith proved bountiful. I wouldn’t like to have had to feed a mob, but for just two of us it proved fairly easy going.

  Shemlon was definitely quite different than Zeis. For one thing, the hills seemed to vanish into a nearly flat plain, much of which appeared to be thinly covered with water. A more careful examination showed that they were growing rasti, a reddish, ricelike grain that was something of a Zeis staple. Now I knew where it came from.

  There was but one village, it appeared, a large complex of hollow bunti huts arranged in a huge circle around the main building — a large mansion that appeared to be painted adobe. The mansion was about as primitive as Tiel’s castle had been — eighty or a hundred rooms at least, in an odd geometrical assemblage of yellow-brown cubicles that looked as if it shouldn’t stay up. Shemlon was obviously much smaller in terms of personnel than Zeis, although it might have been as large in area. It could have been the economics of the operation or it could mean that the knight here was simply lower in rank, perhaps slightly less powerful, than Tiel.

  The layout worried me, though, since I’d spent a lot of time getting here and it had been some time since Bronx had been at Zeis. He had probably already been here and left. With put a single large village, I could hardly pass myself off as a pawn among them. I had to resort to extreme measures. My survival was at stake. So I bided my time for a day, checking out the layout and seeing who worked where, then selected a spot and finally a single individual working off by himself. He seemed to be repairing a gate on some sort of channel that fed river water to the paddies.

  Leaving Ti well hidden at the edge of the bush, I stepped out near dusk, a time when most of the field hands had already returned -to their village and the repairman was getting ready to depart himself. I stepped out plain as could be and walked boldly toward him. His nakedness showed him to be a pawn, albeit a skilled worker of some sort, and my casual manner and rough appearance did nothing to arouse alarm.

  I walked up to him with a wave and a nod. “Hi,” I said, really friendly. “I’m new here, and I think some people played me for a sucker, sending me over into the mud. When I got back there was nobody left in the field.”

  The man looked up, a rough old face with a beard flecked with gray, and chuckled. “Yeah, I know how it is. You wait up a moment and I’ll take you hi.”

  I nodded appreciatively. It had all gone so easily that I really hated myself for what I would have to do. This was an ugly business and an ugly world.

  We exchanged a little small talk, and then I got to the point. “You know, I was a Catholic back Outside. Somebody told me there was a traveling priest around. Was that just more kidding?”

  “Aw, no, he’s for real,” the old man replied. “Was through here not far back. Too bad you missed him. He probably won’t be back until after the harvest, several months from now.”

  I looked surprised. “Where would he go?”

  “Other Keeps,” the old man replied matter-of-factly. “He’s probably just getting to Mola Keep, way off to the west there, right “bout now. He’s a good man, though I don’t take much stock in his beliefs.”

  “How long ago was he here?” I pressed. “I mean, when did he leave?”

  “Day before yesterday—say, what’s that to you?”

  I sighed. “Because I’m Cal Tremon,” I told him, and while he was still looking surprised, I killed him —as quickly and painlessly as I could. Killed him and carried his limp and lifeless body back to the bush so that, perhaps, he wouldn’t be missed for a while.

  The map in my head clicked again and I saw where Mola was—another thirty kilometers, by a side road. Not a long ride, no more than two days by ak-cart, the method Bronz likely used, but another long, wet, itchy, hungry walk all the same.

  I felt bad about killing the old man. Certain people wouldn’t bother me in the least—the upper classes here in particular, ones like Artur and Pohn and Tiel and Marek Kreegan. I felt no remorse for Kronlon, yet I mourned the old man, so casual and friendly, so totally innocent in all this. Mourned him, yet accepted the necessity of doing what I had done. I could hardly have walked-back to the village with him, and any other behavior would have had him telling stories about me, stories that would be all too plain if he were pressed by a supervisor.

  Still, I couldn’t forget the look in his eyes when Td said my name, a look that would haunt me for a long time. A look that said he hadn’t the slightest idea who or what a Cal Tremon was.

  Another two days of cautious walking. Another two days of insect bites, rotten fruit, stale water, thunderstorms I couldn’t hide from, mud I couldn’t avoid, bruises, and sore feet. The only good point about leaving Zeis Keep was that now I could really see the sky, which was a deep blue streaked with hints of red and violet, filled with but not totally blotted out by brownish clouds. By night you could sometimes see stars, a sight both reassuring and sad as well. Stars I could never again reach. Stars forever closed to me.

  I was still three or four kilometers from Mola Keep when I spotted a small camp just off the road. This was highly unusual. I was curious to see what this was all about, curious and suspicious as well. Were they perhaps throwing up roadblocks now?

  There was a small campfire, out now and glowing slightly, and a fairly fancy-looking bedroll. I looked at the ak, the huge rounded creature with the tiny head you could barely see almost dwarfing the cart it normally pulled. Though it was still, it looked alive and in good shape, as did the cart. Not a breakdown, then, I told myself—but one person alone, asleep out here in the wild. One person of some rank—a Master, probably.

  Leaving Ti again in the protection of the bush, I crept as close as I dared,’ wanting to check out who or what this person might be. Definitely a man, snoring fit to wake the dead. I felt hope rise within me. It couldn’t be, I told myself. He’d be too far ahead, and in any event wouldn’t have any reason not to make Mola—but sure enough, there he was.

  I had found Father Bronz.

  In my excitement I made a rustling noise that, considering the level of snoring, shouldn’t even have been heard. Suddenly his eyes opened. Lying still, he cocked his head, a slightly puzzled expression on his face.

  “Father Bronz,” I called to him in a loud whisper. “It’s me—Cal Tremon!”

  The priest chuckled, sat up, yawned and stretched, then rubbed his eyes and looked around. I stepped cautiously out into the open. I had no real reason to trust the man, but all things considered, I had no choice but to place myself in his hands.

  “Tremon!” he croaked, still sounding half asleep. “About time you got here. I’d about given you up.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Savages and Amazons

  I just stood there dumbstruck, staring at him. Finally I managed, “You were expecting me?”

  He looked around. ‘“Why else would I stay in such a wondrous natural hotel?” he grumbled sarcastically. “Come on over and sit. I’ll put on some tea.”

  I walked toward him, then stopped. “I’ve forgotten Ti!” I exclaimed, mostly to myself.

  “I have tea here,” he responded, sounding confused.

  “No, no. Ti. The girl.”

  He laughed. “Well, well! So you did take her! There was some question as to what happened.”

  I decided to fetch her before getting the details. At least I was no longer alone, and I hadn’t been incinerated or otherwise molested, so whatever game Bronz was playing was in my favor.

  I carried her back to Bronx’s camp and he rose and walked over to her immediately, doing a fairly good imitation of Dr. Pohn but with far more compassion and concern. “That bastard,” he muttered. “May he rot in hell forever.” He closed his eyes and placed his hand on her forehead.r />
  “Can you do anything for her?” I asked, genuinely concerned. “She’s nothing more than a living robot right now.”

  He sighed and thought for a moment. “If I were a doctor, yes, I could. If I knew my biology a little better, maybe. I can see where he’s meddled, all right, but I don’t dare risk doing anything myself. I might cause permanent brain damage or even kill her. No, we’ll have to find help for her, that’s all.”

  “Not at a Keep,” I responded hesitatingly. “All they’d do is give her back to Dr. Pohn.”

  “No, not at a Keep,” he agreed, thinking. “Not you, either. We have to get you someplace safe where you can get some help and Ti can get some expert care, though. I did anticipate the problems we’d have finding friends and allies and a hideout, although I didn’t realize I’d have this kind of difficulty.” He sighed again and went back over to the rekindled small fire, taking the gourd of water from the flame and adding some ground leaves from a pouch on his belt—one of several, I noted.

  “Come on over and sit down,” he invited. “It’ll be ready in a few minutes and we have some time to kill anyway.”

  I did as instructed, already feeling a little better. I wanted to know a little more about Father Bronz, though.

  “You said that you anticipated our needing a hide-out, that you were waiting for me,” I noted. “Maybe you better explain a little.”

  He chuckled. “Son, I was late getting out of Zeis. They had all the bigwigs coming for a party and it was decided that I should attend. Besides, the Duke and I are old Mends—I occasionally do him some favors.”

  “I remember the night,” I told him. “It was the night I killed Kronlon and graduated, you might say. I thought you were long gone, though.”