Lilith: A Snake in The Grass Page 7

  “Which are you?” a man asked.

  “None of the above,” she laughed. “I am a Journeywoman. Basically my power is similar to a Master’s, but I don’t belong to a Keep. Dukes need people to travel between Keeps, to carry messages, to work out commerce, to—well, give orientation talks to newcomers. We’re salespeople, ambassadors, couriers, you name it—answerable only to our Dukes. It’s mostly a matter of temperament whether you’re Journey or Master class. There are pluses and minuses for both jobs, and the fact that I’m a Journeywoman now doesn’t mean I might not take a Master’s position sometime.”

  “You’ve covered all the high spots,” I noted. “You’ve accounted for maybe several thousand people, but you said there were more than thirteen million on the planet. What about the rest?”

  “Pawns,” she answered. “They do the work. In fact they do just about anything they’re told to do. Consider—pawns need those more powerful to feed them, to provide shelter, to protect them against the savage beasts of the planet. They are in no position to do anything else.”

  “Slaves,” the man next to me muttered. “Just like the civilized worlds, only reduced to the lowest common denominator.”

  I didn’t agree with the man’s comparison at all, but I could understand nun completely now and why he was there.

  “You’ve left somebody out,” a woman—I think the one who was defiant back on the prison ship—spoke out. “The guy who runs the place. What kind of power does it take to be the Lord?”

  Patra appeared to be slightly embarrassed by the way in which the question was put, but she answered it anyway. “There’s only one Lord,” she pointed out. “Right now it’s the Lord Marek Kreegan. He got there because he challenged the previous Lord and killed him, thereby proving his power. Lords, of course, have all the powers of Dukes plus one extra ability that almost no one has—the ability to stabilize alien matter. They can possess a device that is not of this world. All alien matter except that stabilized by the Lord or his almost-as-powerful administrative aide, Grand Duke Kobé, decomposes. As well as undergoing extreme decontamination procedures, our two shuttles were stabilized by Lord Kreegan. If that weren’t so, even the shuttles would decompose here.”

  Well, there it was: the unbelievable reality of the pecking-order on Lilith and what individuals could— and could not—do, and the reason those folks didn’t have any luggage. This also explained the clothing, and lack of it, seen around. Since your ability to “stabilize dead matter” was what counted, the more clothes you could comfortably wear, the higher your rank. I wondered idly if Dukes wore so much clothing they looked like moving clothes racks; if so, there would be disadvantages to higher rank, which would seem to require that outer badge of office. No wonder Lord Kreegan wanted to remain anonymous. The ceremonial robes of office alone would probably suffocate him.

  On Lilith, clothes made the man or woman—and the man or woman made the clothes. That meant that because we remained naked, we all started out as low rank on the social scale. Well, at least on Lilith one wouldn’t freeze to death. However, a certain sense of social modesty had been ingrained in me—not that I really minded here, surrounded by a lot of new prisoners in the same state. But in a strange land and civilization I knew I was going to feel more than a little self-conscious, particularly around the midsection.

  Later that afternoon small blood samples were taken from each of us. I had no idea how they could analyze it, but apparently the results were satisfactory to everyone. Later that evening, Patra called us together for the last time as a formal group.

  “Tomorrow,” she told us, “the shuttle will return for you and take you to widely scattered Keeps. From then on you will be on the rolls of a specific Keep—I have no idea which—and will be assigned work. Your first few weeks will be an education, I think, in the powers of this world and the way it operates. Whether you remain pawns or whether you rise will depend on you. You will rise to your proper level—you won’t be able to avoid it, really—but the timing will vary from weeks to months to years. Just remember that almost three million on Lilith came here as you did; the rest are native born to the generations past and present that came here. You have the same potential as they.”

  There were murmurings from the group. This seemed to be the worst kind of culture to enter: a totally combative one that relied on powers the strength of which was totally beyond the individual’s control.

  I slept very little that evening. I suppose few of us got much rest, considering the new day. As for me, I was feeling several emotions I had not experienced in a very long time and facing a situation I felt uncomfortable about. I felt doubt within me, and a sagging confidence in myself and my abilities. And there was still so much I didn’t know about this world—things I had to learn, even as I learned where this odd system would place me. The only thoughts that consoled me were that Marek Kreegan had come here from the same background as me and that he had risen to rule it. Most importantly, he was a man like me, a person, a human being. He had enormous power, it was said, but he was mortal, and he could die.

  Besides, I already knew an awful lot about him. I knew his age, sex, and general appearance, and I knew that he had a passion for anonymity and disliked the soft life. That meant he had to masquerade as a Journeyman, in order to be able to travel about and observe both great and small. Naturally others would also have figured this out, so he obviously had extra tricks up his sleeve to preserve his disguise. But, I realized, though Journeymen might have only the power of a Master, they would have a more exalted position, particularly the middle-aged men. Not even the greatest Duke could avoid being paranoid about such people. Journeyman would be the rank I’d find best suited to my own purposes, I decided—but that was a factor beyond my control.

  That idea brought the depression back once again, and I consoled myself with the thought that, here only a few days and having seen almost none of this strange world, I had already narrowed my suspects down to a mere handful, perhaps less than a thousand.

  Yeah, sure. The assignment was becoming simple.

  Chapter Four

  Zeis Keep

  The shuttle that had brought us to the orientation point—I was never sure where that was on Lilith— had been silver; although the one that took us to our new homes was a dull rusty-red color, it looked like the first on the inside. I wondered whether it was the same one. Maybe it got a new paint job every time it reached orbit, to replace what was lost. Undoubtedly the schedule for the shuttle, which had to operate from an orbital base, had to be carefully worked out in advance. Somebody bad to do it without benefit of transceivers—that meant a representative of all the Dukes and the Lord of Lilith, since the schedule would have to be coordinated well in advance, yet be available as need arose.

  I still hadn’t much of a clue as to what this special “power” might be like, either in execution or from the standpoint of just seeing it work. Nothing had dissolved around me, nobody had shot thunderbolts from their fingertips, nothing like that. If I never saw the power in operation, I didn’t know how I could find out whether I had it myself. If I didn’t, and in sufficient quantity, I’d lose before I had really started. I had to have some faith in Security there. Their computers had carefully selected me for this job, and that would have been one of the prime considerations— factors favorable to great power. But those same computers and the best scientists in the galaxy had absolutely no nice, normal, and natural physical explanation for the Warden phenomena, either.

  I kept coming back to Kreegan. He’d known what he was getting into, and he’d voluntarily and confidently consigned himself to Lilith. Obviously the man had a strong reason to expect gaining great power or he wouldn’t have done it.

  Before it was my turn we landed four times, picking up and discharging not only those from my party but regular passengers as well. It was not wasted on me that we newcomers were the only passengers without clothing. Then we landed once again—the shuttle made orbit between stops to c
leanse itself, which meant a slow journey—and the speaker called my seat number. The hatch hissed and opened, the ramp extended, and I walked out once more onto the surface of Lilith.

  The scene was incredible. It was a beautiful valley surrounded by tall mountains, some of which had slight traces of snow on them. The valley itself was out of some children’s fairy tale: broad fields in which long, leafy plants grew up to three meters in the air, all in nice, neat rows; a few small lakes that looked shallow enough to be paddies of some sort; and a meadow where really hideous-looking livestock grazed. This was my first look at the kinds of things that went into those stews, and my stomach automatically recoiled. Giant insects that resembled monstrous roaches except for their enormous, glittering, multi-faceted eyes on stalks and their thick, curly brown fur. I’d seen an awful lot of alien life in my travels, including some creatures even more repulsive than those, but I’d never eaten them.

  To one side stood groves of fruit trees. The fruit was unfamiliar but large and of different varieties. Another area seemed to be devoted to bushes covered with berries. They all at least looked comfortably edible.

  But what made the pastoral scene so unreal was the castle in the middle, set against the mountains and built on a possibly man-made ledge right into the mountainside at an elevation of perhaps a hundred meters. The stone building came complete with towers, parapets, and battlements; it was the kind of place found only in fantasy.

  Below the castle, in the valley itself, was what looked like a complex of straw huts much like those we’d used for orientation but a lot denser. That, then, was where the common folk lived, or at least the area around which their lives centered. I did note that there were other clusters of huts in various parts of the valley.

  I heard a rumbling and turned to see a very plain sledlike wagon made of some thick plant material. It was being pulled by a large green thing with a shiny, almost round shell and who knew how may legs underneath. The tiny head, which seemed to be a hornlike snout atop which sat two dim little red dots and a couple of thin antennae, was all that was visible.

  The man sitting on a crudely fashioned seat behind the creature was a large, dark, nasty-looking fellow, but that didn’t really bother me—after all, I was now a large, dark, nasty-looking fellow myself. It did, however, seem interesting that he had no reins, no steering or other controls in his hands or attached to his body at all. He was just sitting there looking bored, letting the green beast pull him.

  I realized in an instant that I was seeing the first demonstration of this mysterious power. He was controlling that thing, but not with any mechanical apparatus.

  The wagon came up to me and stopped, whereupon the man rose to his feet and just stood there, staring down at me. He was an imposing figure—solid muscle, a weightlifter’s physique—yet he wasn’t really a big man. His squat build and muscles just made him seem so. He wore what appeared to be a yellow jockstrap, around which, oddly, was a wide belt of some pliable dark-brown material, from which a nasty-looking coiled whip hung at his side.

  “Well?” he growled. “You just gonna stand there gawking or are you gonna get aboard?”

  Welcome to your new home, I thought sourly as I climbed up and sat next to him on the bench. It was, like a lot on this world, made from some kind of thick, hard plant material, possibly bark. Without another word the huge green creature started off again, almost knocking me off the seat.

  The other man chuckled. “Yeah, it’s a rough ride,” he commented, “but you get used to it. Not that you have to worry much—pawns don’t do much ridin’.” He paused a moment, giving me a good look. “Nice muscles, good build. We can use you, all right. You got any skills from your old life that maybe would make you a little more useful? Carpentry? Masonry? Animal care?”

  I almost laughed at the question. The concept of anybody from the civilized worlds even knowing the meaning of those terms was ridiculous. I checked my reaction because I remembered that this was not my old body, but that of a frontiersman from a rough life, an impression I wanted to maintain as long as possible.

  So I just shook my head and replied, “No, sorry, nothing I can think of. Electrical and power systems, weapons, things like that.”

  He snorted. “Electrical! Haw! Around here that don’t mean shit. You’re just a common laborer now. The only electricity we got on Lilith is lightning from the thunderstorms, and the only power is what some people got. Nope. Best forget the old comforts—you’re a pawn of Zeis Keep now. I’m Kronlon, work supervisor for this section. You’ll be workin’ fer me. You call me ‘sir’ and you obey orders from me, nobody else.”

  “I’m not used to taking orders,” I muttered, low and deep but deliberately loud enough for him to hear. I expected this to provoke him and gain his measure, but he laughed instead. The wagon stopped in the middle of a field about halfway to a group of huts to the left of the castle.

  “Get down,” he ordered, his tone more casual than menacing, gesturing with a beefy hand. “Go ahead. Get down.”

  I shrugged and did as instructed. Ordinarily I’d have expected a menacing tone or perhaps a swing, but if this was any kind of fight preparation he was definitely the cool one.

  He jumped down after me, then walked right up to me. I towered over him, but that seemed to increase his pleasure. “Okay, go ahead. Take a swing at me. Go on—swing!” He thrust out his jaw. So it was a showdown after all.

  I shrugged again, then hauled off and punched as hard as I could. Only I couldn’t. My arm was suddenly stopped in midswing, fist tightly clenched. I couldn’t move it, not forward, back, up, or down. I felt my muscles, tensed for the punch, start to hurt from the unreleased tension, but I could do nothing to release that energy. The fist was only a few centimeters from his out-thrust jaw.

  He hauled off and hit me in my midsection with a blow that seemed designed to shatter ribs. I went down hard, with a groan and yelp of surprise and pain. Lying there on my back, gasping for breath, I realized that my right arm was still stiffly clenched.

  He walked over and grinned. “See? Kind of hard to believe, isn’t it?” He was clearly enjoying himself.

  I felt my arm suddenly unfreeze, and lying there on the road, I completed the swing, almost rolling over in the process.

  Kronlon laughed derisively, then turned and started to walk back to the wagon.

  Marshaling my strength, I leaped up and rushed his back, attempting to tackle him. He might have heard me, but there was no way he could have seen me, and the combination of my new body and the low gravity gave me both force and speed. Suddenly, just a few meters from him, my legs seemed to turn to robber. I stumbled, cried out, and crashed to the ground once again.

  He stopped and turned to look down on me, grinning like mad. “See? You can’t even sneak up on me. Listen—I got your number, see? I got your pattern inside my skull.” He tapped it for emphasis. “You don’t make a move against me I don’t know it ahead of time and tell your body to screw up. Okay, get up. You ain’t hurt.”

  I got slowly to my feet, starting to feel a few slight bruises. My mind raced, first in frustration and fury that this man had me completely at his mercy, and second, because now that I’d seen this power in operation I still knew nothing about how it worked. And this guy was the lowest rung on the power structure!

  He unhooked his whip from his belt and for a moment I was afraid he was going to use it on me—but to my surprise, he tossed it to me.

  “Here, catch. Uncoil it. You know how to use one of these? All right, use it, then. Whip the living shit out of me!”

  I was mad enough to do it, and though the whip was crude and fashioned out of some sort of shiny braided material, it was well balanced and long. I snapped it a few times, getting the feel of it, then took him at his word.

  He just stood there and laughed. Try as I might, I could not make any part of that whip touch him. I could, after a little bit, pick up a stone or cut grass with it, but no matter how dead on my aim, the whip always
seemed to miss him just slightly. I couldn’t believe it and kept at it for several minutes while he just stood there, laughing and taunting but not flinching.

  “Okay, fun’s over,” he said at last, seeming bored with it all. “Now you see your problem. Drop a twenty-kilo boulder on my head from a fall of less than a meter and it’ll still miss me. But not the other way around!” He reached out and the whip seemed almost to leap from my hand to his, then coil back into its storage position. To my relief, he replaced it on his belt loop.

  The grin grew wider. “I know what you’re thinkin’. I can see it on your face. You’re glad I didn’t use the whip on you. Want to know why? It’s just a badge of office—all supervisors carry ‘em. I got it from Boss Tiel himself, matched to me, and I don’t like it to get mussed up or broke.” The grin vanished, and so did the casual tone. Menace now dripped from his lips.

  “Now, you got two choices and that’s all,” Kronlon growled, “You obey orders. You listen, you live, for my orders, and then you obey ‘em. You don’t ask no questions, you don’t wonder why or figure anything out. You just do it. Do that and you live. The other choice is you kill yourself. I won’t kill you. I don’t hav’ta. I can do much worse.”

  Suddenly my whole body was consumed with the most horrible, agonizing pain I had ever known. I cried out and fell, senseless to anything but the pain, rolling about the grassy earth in sheer agony. I could not bear if, the pain was so intense, so all-encompassing. Almost immediately I longed for death, for anything to give me release.

  And just as suddenly the pain was gone. The relief was tempered by echoes of the agony in my nervous system and the burning memory in my brain. I just lay there face up on the grass, panting.

  “Get up!” Kronlon ordered.

  I hesitated, still in shock and unable to get my bearings fully. Instantly the pain was back, if only for a fleeting second that seemed like an eternity. I turned, I crawled, I scrambled to my feet, still trembling and gasping.