Lilith: A Snake in the Grass

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 hostile 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 result, 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.” “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 abput 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 Kob6, 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 oh 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 tune 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.