Jack Chalker - Lilith - A Snake in the Grass

“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.

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 Kobe 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 Kobe and Boss Tiel,” she told me. “I asked ’em a few simple questions. One of ’em was how they kept the shuttle level. Kob6 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.”