Lilith: A Snake in The Grass

by Jack L. Chalker

  “The aliens,” I muttered, feeling like my last secrets were being stripped from me. He even knew about the transmitter.

  He grinned and shrugged. “Let’s just say, ah, powerful friends of mine—of all Warden citizens, but mostly of the Four Lords of the Diamond. Anyway, it must surely have occurred to you that any civilization able to penetrate the security chamber of Military Systems Command would have no trouble at all finding out about the Merton Process. And report same to me, who knows better than anybody how the great minds of the Confederacy run. I know they’d zero in on Lilith because I was running the place, and that the only logical person to send would be someone whose own past and career matched mine as closely as possible.”

  I said nothing to this because I’d been a lot slower than he was giving me credit for, a fact I didn’t like at all.

  “Well, anyway, we knew you were coming,” continued the Lord of Lilith, “and, Confederacy Intelligence being what it is, I had to figure that any agent sent down here would most logically duplicate my own initial situation as closely as possible, since they were setting one assassin to catch another. That meant Zeis Keep, since I had started here. That meant I just had to wait until Zeis got a new prisoner. Then you turned up. After your seasoning, I stepped in to size you up a bit and tantalize you as well. It was pretty clear to me that you were somewhat in the doldrums and needed a swift lack in the pants you couldn’t wear then to get moving. Ti was the all-too-obvious leverage.”

  I glanced over at Ti, and she bristled. The full implications of what a “pawn” really was were dawning on her, and she didn’t like it one bit.

  “So, anyway,” he went on, “I had already established myself in your mind as the only independent spirit on Lilith and told you pretty much where I was heading. Then I came back here and ordered Dr. Pohn to take Ti. I figured that, if you were anything like me, you’d get so damned mad you’d come after her, and that meant you’d have to have a Warden explosion. You were already ripe—I could see it in you.”

  “And if it hadn’t happened?”

  He smiled. “Then you weren’t any good to me or to the Confederacy and you would have been abandoned to plant beans for the rest of your life. But of course it did happen, the night of the banquet. When Dola came and told us here, we immediately made plans on what we’d do next. We had to expose you to Dr. Pohn at his worst, for example, and Ti in that totally helpless condition at his villainous “mercy. We had to show you not only Master Artur but his troops and beasts as well—Artur usually doesn’t show newcomers around personally, you know—so you’d realize it’d take an armed force to come after Zeis Keep. And of course we had to test you for Warden potential and give you a taste of what that power is like without actually giving you that power right off. Vola took care of that, then also got you on the run with that wonderful piece of midnight theatrics. I of course was nowhere near at the time, since I already had to be far to the south to lay my trail for you to follow.”

  “But I heard a voice …”

  “Duke Kobé, I’m afraid, using a reed tube,” he responded. Kobé shrugged apologetically. “It was important that natural early suspicions about me be allayed. I couldn’t be Kreegan in the hallways and also have gone to several Keeps in the time allowed, not without you finding out about it. I counted on you to file that away in your mind. On the other hand, I had to be the only person to whom you could turn for help.”

  “You took a chance there,” I noted, nettled by his manner. “I could just have gone to the wild.”

  “I never took a chance with you,” he replied. “If at any time you hadn’t been up to the job for one reason or another I could simply quit and find somebody else. But I had some insurance in Ti, here.”

  She shot him a glance that, had she had my Warden power, would have demolished the, hall.

  “Remember,” Kreegan said, “I’m forty years your senior, but we came out of the same background, went through the same training, did the same job for the same bosses. Oh, the faces and names change occasionally, but it’s always the same bosses. It’s a stratified and static society with a system it believes works. As a result, I knew how you thought. I could simply put myself in your place, decide what I’d have done, and act accordingly.”

  “How were you so sure I’d take Ti, though?” Again he grinned. “Well, first of all, your reaction to Ti had been strong enough to trigger the Warden effect and get you to the Castle. So you had to be emotionally attached to her. Additionally, Dr. Pohn was an inducement if you cared anything about her. However, just in case you suddenly turned into the total pragmatist of your self-image, Vola mixed a mild hypnotic herb in with the first batch of juice; this —reinforced your tendencies, shall we say. I needed Ti. She was essential. You had to take her, since she was the only possible inducement for Sumiko O’Higgins to get involved.”

  “Did you get her?” I asked.

  He nodded. “But that’s getting ahead of things. You must understand the threat she represented. She was a psychopath such as comes along only once in a century or more, thank heavens. There are some monsters who, when caught, deserve to be exterminated and had better be. Sumiko was one such. Had she not been caught in a fluke accident, she’d have accomplished the actual genetic code of the Institute for Biological Stability that determines the future look of the civilized worlds. Not just the look—well, you know how much genetics can really determine.”

  “You just got through telling me that the civilized worlds needed changing,” I pointed out.

  “Change, perhaps,” he replied, “but—monsters, Cal. Monsters in standard civilized world guise. They should have gotten rid of her, wiped her, vaporized her—but instead they sent her to Lilith, on the theory that anybody that smart might come up with something unusual. And she sure did!”

  I nodded. “I got a whiff of her plans, thanks to Ti.”

  “Not the half of it,” Kreegan told me. “You have no idea what a brilliance that twisted mind had. To tailor-made mutations in existing organisms. Mental genetic engineering! We had word of her activities, of course. She was hardly quiet about her recruiting of young women, that sort of thing. They performed human sacrifices, too, there in that village common. The same stone on which Ti rested was designed to hold a living human being; the grooves there were to drain off the blood, which they would all then drink. She was sick, Cal. Sick and enough of a genius to pull it all off. We had to stop her—but thanks to her brilliance, we couldn’t even find her.”

  I nodded again, seeing it all. “And, as Artur proved, she was unassailable even if you had been able to find her.”

  The sergeant-at-arms grumbled to himself.

  “That’s about it,” Kreegan agreed. “Understand, she had discovered nothing that the Institute didn’t already know about, but the Institute goes to a lot of trouble to keep things stable here. Using you and particularly Ti, I was able to get us all to her village. There I could tantalize her enough that I felt sure she’d come with us to the Institute—and come she did. A lot of evaluation went on there, without her knowledge, although she also learned from the library things she needed to know. Shortcuts, so to speak. We had to give her crumbs just to keep her as long as we could. Afterward, we had long discussions on what to do, the extent of her power, that sort of thing. We felt we’d given her enough new material for her to grow overconfident, and so it only remained to play the trump card—offer her a chance to find out how strong she really was. We made the bait as irresistible as possible.”

  “The object, in other words, was to create a situation by which Sumiko would leave her protective haven, split her forces, and not suspect that the enemy was not merely Zeis but everyone else.”

  “That is true,” Boss Rognival put in. “And the cost was great. We truly had to fight one another until they all landed on the beachhead. That was difficult but unavoidable. Regardless, we deployed sufficiently to allow some Zeis forces to get through and knock out as many witches as possible. Weaken her. But
We could not close in on her forces and destroy them until the bitch herself was dead.”

  “Just out of curiosity, Kreegan, how did you kill her?” I asked.

  “Oh, I had several options,” he replied. “As a last resort we had, thanks to the Institute, enough of the amplifier potion to mass me, the Duke, here, two knights, and about forty Masters against her—but we didn’t have to, for which I’m thankful. I had no idea how powerful she really was—still don’t—and I didn’t want to find out. It was you, Cal, who gave me the idea.”

  I started. “Me?”

  He nodded. “When you told me about her laser pistol. I figured she’d have it with her for insurance, and particularly for afterward. Look, only a Lord can stabilize offworld metal. You know that. That gives you some idea of her power.”

  I frowned. “But what does that … ?”

  “Come on, Cal! If you were in my shoes, and had my power, and if you knew she had a laser pistol on her, what would you do? Particularly knowing that her entire mind, her whole concentration, was elsewhere?”

  My mouth fell open in surprise as I realized what he had done. “You concentrated on nothing but that pistol,” I told him. “You undid the Warden pattern on the insulating coating. The Warden cells in the area would start immediately attacking the pistol.”

  He smiled and nodded. “Yep. It exposed the power supply, which overloaded and exploded. She had it tucked in her belt at the time. I’ll tell you, I sweated blood waiting for that to happen. I was only going to give it another few minutes before we switched to a mass attack and damn the consequences. But it blew, praise God, and the bang was the signal for everybody to stop fighting, join hands, and take those witches from all quarters.”

  “You still took a terrible chance,” I noted. “It could have gone off any time—maybe hours later. And you yourself said your mass attack might not have been strong enough.”

  “I’ll admit I had a third backup,” he said tiredly. “The Wardens act fast, but not that fast. If all else had failed, my orbital satellite would have released a null-missile right into Zeis. Everyone and everything would have been atomized, but of course so would all the witches. That’s how seriously I took the threat.”

  That answered all the questions.

  “What about this Father Bronz act?” I asked him. “You couldn’t just invent the character.”

  “Oh, I’ve been Father Bronz for ten years,” he told us. “It’s the easiest way to get around inconspicuously.” He paused. “Of course I’ll have to undergo some physical changes now and find a new persona.” He sighed. “Too bad, too. Old Father Bronz really did some good. I’ve been considering asking for some real clergy here.”

  I let the topic go and finally asked him the most important question. “What about me?” I asked. “What happens now?”

  “You’ll do fine,” he assured me. “Stay here as a Master for a while and get some experience, then either outlive the Boss, here, or go find yourself a weak Knight and start it all. You’re going to be at least a Duke someday, maybe even Lord. I told you. It took me seventeen years.”

  “I’ll beat your record,” I told him, not at all jokingly.

  He stared at me hard. “I think you might at that.”

  Dinner broke up soon after that, with Kreegan saying that he was catching the shuttle when it put down the next day. “Business,” he told us. “Four Lords business.”

  And Boss Tiel, to my surprise, had a few words for me as well. “I’d like you to stay here,” he told me sincerely. “I’m an old man now, Tremon. You could take me out right now, as you originally planned. But a number of the Masters, Artur in particular, are strong, and you might take me out only to find yourself losing, on experience alone, to somebody else. Maybe even Rognival, who’d love to swap that island for Zeis. A couple of years here, though, learning technique and the full use of your power, making contacts, doing the proper politics, and you’ll have the knighthood by acclamation. You’re the best qualified. Artur’s a great soldier but a lousy administrator. The others are pretty much the same. No talent or no ambition. It’s up to you, of course, but you’ve impressed me.”

  I told him I’d think about it, but I knew the answer. I would stay, of course, because that was the path to my own ambition most open to me and because of Ti. She’d never like or forgive many of these people, but as she said, she was a part of Zeis.

  Finally, I sought out Dr. Pohn. I still didn’t like the little son of a bitch, and I knew that he’d be one of the first to go in the Tremon regime that was coming. Still, now I needed him.

  The next afternoon he would undertake a little Warden-style operation. Okay, my twin and counterpart up there somewhere—I failed miserably. I got played for a sucker. I learned nothing about your precious aliens, and Lord Marek Kreegan, curse his black soul, remains Lord of Lilith and First Lord of the Diamond. But that’s it. I’ve done all I can do for now and I find myself less and less anxious to do you any more favors. Up yours, Confederacy! Maybe when I become Lord of Lilith I won’t like those aliens; but then again, maybe I will. But whether or not I feed you. any information will be based on my own assessment at the time, from the viewpoint of my own interests.

  Cal Tremon, none too respectfully, resigns.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  A Little Unfinished Business

  The air was warm and moist. We’d just had another of Lilith’s nasty little thunderstorms, and the cloud ceiling was extremely low. Nonetheless, the shuttle arrived right on schedule—as if it would stand up Lord Marek Kreegan.

  I had spent most of the night calming Ti down. “I hate that man,” she kept saying over and over. In a sense, she’d lost as much as I had, and her world picture now included bitterness. As much as Sumiko O’Higgins had upset her, she could not forgive the man who had caused her to fall into the hands of Dr. Pohn, to degrade her so much for somebody else’s cause. She felt as if she’d been raped by Marek Kreegan, more so than if he’d assaulted her sexually. It was a total violation, and she’d be a long time getting the stain off her soul.

  Still, she was learning. She was there with me when the shuttlecraft landed to the west of the Castle as it always did, appearing out of the clouds and settling to the ground. The Elaborate set of airlocks and safeguards came into play, although they were less necessary with Kreegan on board.

  Kreegan still wore his old priest’s robe, but I knew it would soon be exchanged for something else. I might not even know him the next time I saw him, although I felt sure I’d recognize that man anywhere. And one day, Kreegan, I told myself, we’d have more than a little chat.

  Duke Kobé remained behind, although usually he was the one who used the shuttle. I wondered idly if Kreegan hadn’t made one mistake this time after all, since he knew that the broadcaster had been in place until this afternoon. It was entirely possible that the orbiting Confederacy troops would blast his little shuttle. But no, I told myself. They wouldn’t do it because that would involve a choice of record. That’s why they hired—created—people like me. Nobody up there would want to take the open responsibility without clearing it back to the Confederacy itself, and by that time Kreegan would have vanished to who knew where?

  Besides, he had powerful friends. Would they permit him to be blown to bits? I doubted it. He was their most valuable ally, the man who knew how the Confederacy establishment thought. The aliens wouldn’t want to lose him.

  He waved, smiled, and entered the shuttle, and the stairway retracted. I heard the soft whir of the engines starting up again, and, slowly at first, it started to lift.

  “Cal,” I heard Ti say beside me.

  “Yes, hon?” I responded and looked at her.

  In that moment something in my head seemed to explode. My Warden cells seemed to flare, and the energy flowed from me, maximum energy, beyond my control, flowing straight at Ti! But she didn’t burn, nor even do more than shake slightly. Instead she turned and looked directly at that lifting body, heading slowly up
into the clouds, cautiously trying to clear the mountains before full thrust.

  I stood transfixed, unable to move, think, breathe.

  The sound of the shuttle engines varied slightly, coughed, then sounded very, very wrong.

  There was a sudden explosion, and a brightness in the clouds, and then, tumbling down, crashing again and again against the rocky mountainside, the shuttle plunged. It struck bottom with a thunderous roar and suddenly was bathed in a terrible glow, too bright to look at. Ti turned away, and I felt myself abruptly freed from that mysterious, terrible hold.

  I turned, stunned, first in the direction of the shuttle, but it was now just a smoldering, bubbling and hissing mass of molten metal. Soon it, too, would be gone. When it cooled enough, I knew, the Warden cells would begin their relentless attack on the alien matter, reducing it to dust in a matter of days.

  I turned back to Ti in shock. “Wha— What the hell did you do?”

  She smiled, as evil and self-satisfied a smile as I had ever seen on another human being.

  “Back at the witch village a few days ago—you remember?”

  I could only nod dully.

  “I swiped some of that potion. I drank it all this morning, just before coming down here. I was lucky. I was hopin’ to surprise you and be able to use your power before you could stop me. And I did.”

  “But—but how?”

  “Last night after dinner I talked a lot with Duke Kobé and Boss Tiel,” she told me. “I asked ‘em a few simple questions. One of ‘em was how they kept the shuttle level. Kobé was particularly nice about showin’ me. Drew me a picture of somethin’ called a geoscope or some such. I asked him if the shuttle had a thing like that and he told me it did, but not like that. He told me what it looked like. And using your power, I just did the same thing to the shuttle that Kreegan did to Sumiko’s gun. I just took the spell off.”

  “But—but it would be in a vacuum chamber!” I protested. “It shouldn’t have made any difference.”