Lilith: A Snake in the Grass

Chapter Ten Dr. Pohn and Master Artur

They let me sleep late and I did. I rarely if ever remembered my dreams, but that night was beyond all experience. I am convinced that to this day it was the deepest sleep I’d ever experienced. When I finally did awaken, it was as if a signal had been given by some means. More than likely somebody had been posted in some hidden recess to watch me throughout the night. That must have been boring as hell.

At any rate, I’d barely opened my eyes when a bell sounded somewhere far off and there was a knock on my door, which I answered with a dreamy “Enter if you will.” I had overslept to extremes and felt that I’d never really wake up.

The door opened and a young boy, certainly no more than ten or eleven, stuck his head in. “Please remain here for a while,” he said in a pleasant, boyish tenor. “Breakfast is being brought to you.”

I just nodded, and the door closed again. I wondered whether it was a good idea to tell them that I couldn’t go anyplace right now if my life depended on it. Every muscle ached, every part of my mind was filled with sponge and cobwebs. I had more than slept off my months of toil, I’d slept for the first tune free of the constant and intangible tension and uncertainty that life had produced.

I lay there, occupying myself as I could by trying to locate the peephole, which wasn’t difficult. In order to take in the entire room, it had to be above and probably opposite me as well. A cursory figuring of the proper angles led me to the small discolored brick niche that almost certainly had a human eye behind it.

Breakfast arrived shortly, and I struggled up to meet it. It was a relatively simple affair, true—just some wheat toast, jellies, a few small sweet rolls, and a glass of juice—but after the gruel I’d been fed the past few months, it looked like heaven. My greatest need was the mug of hot—well, I wasn’t sure what it was, but it tasted something like mocha and was obviously a strong stimulant Everything tasted simply wonderful and did the trick.

By the time young attendants of Supervisor rank had cleared my little portable breakfast table and taken it away, I felt ready for anything and anybody. The sight of people with the power acting as the most menial of servants fit my idea of what the Castle had to be like. From past experience in the service, I knew a general or admiral was boss, the authority figure to be feared and respected. But at Military Systems Command, for example, junior generals and admirals were only glorified messengers. Power wasn’t just what you had, it was always what you had compared to those around you.

Still, the Supervisor class had it easy compared to the masses on Lilith. Their toil was dignified, civilized, and most of all, comfortable. Still, the youth of many of them marked diem as native-born, and also reminded me that Ti, too, was somewhere here in the Castle. It would be delicate, but I had to see how she was faring and to help if I could. In a sense I owed all this to her.

All set for my introduction into society, I hadn’t long to wait before my guide and evaluator appeared. He hadn’t knocked, a sign of extreme rank, and he was something to see. Cal Tremon was a huge man, but this chap was equally large and as well proportioned, although a lot of his body was hidden by gold-braided clothing of the- deepest black—a rather fancy shirt and tailored pants, the latter held up by a shiny, thick belt and tucked into equally shiny and impressive black boots.

The man -himself was clean-shaven except for a thick and droopy mustache. He had a rough, experienced face, burned and etched by sun and wind. His imposing gray eyebrows set off the coldest pair of jet-black eyes I’d ever seen. His hair, carefully cut and manicured, was full and somewhat curly, the gray of it marking the type of man he was rather than his age —he might have been thirty or sixty for all anyone could tell.

I knew in an instant this was a dangerous man, one whose fierceness and aristocratic bearing made the late, unlamented Kronlon look as threatening as Ti. I stood up and bowed slightly, feeling we might as well get off to a good start.

“I am Master Artur,” he said, in a voice so low and thunderous that it alone would be intimidating enough to make most people jump when it sounded. Worse, I was convinced that tins was Artur’s nice, pleasant voice. I really didn’t want to see this old boy mad, at least not at me.

“I am Keep Sergeant-at-Arms,” he continued, looking me over. I could not fathom what might be going through his brain.

“I am Cal Tremon,” I responded, hoping that was sufficient.

He nodded. “So you fried old Kronlon, did you? Well, good riddance to the little rat anyway. I never did like him much, although he did his job well enough. Well, enough of that. I’m to take you over to Medical and then we’ll put you through your paces. Feel up to it?”

I nodded, although still a little hung over from my long sleep. “Now is as good a time as any,” I responded, and bowed again slightly.

“Come along.” He gestured with his hand, and with that he turned and walked briskly out the door. I followed as best I could, noting the big man’s proud, military-style gait. He was no native of Lilith, I decided, and I wondered just who and what he had been.

The Castle was far more alive during the day, with hordes of people all over,, many on cleanup and maintenance errands, but a lot seemingly just milling around. They all seemed so neat and clean and civilized, though, that they produced an odd set of comparisons in my mind. What these people were to the civilized worlds, ancient Greece of our ancestral world must have been to those of the early industrial revolution. Technologically primitive did not mean truly primitive at all.

Still, the technology that was in evidence was shock enough. Since coming to Lilith I’d been conditioned to believe that such clothing and buildings and things of this nature just weren’t possible here. That’s why people slept inside bunti trees and wore nothing. Now I was beginning to appreciate the other side of the power the Warden organism could bestow—the power that was fundamental to civilized thought and society.

The power to alter one’s environment for one’s own ends—that was the key denied to the pawns, the element that kept them in abject misery and slavery. The capricious rules of the Warden organism said that such a power was reserved to a select few.

I did notice, though, the slight traces of fear in these people’s faces as Artur passed, the sideward glances and forced attempts not to appear to be looking at us. No doubt about it—they were terrified of him, as were the few Masters we encountered.

Artur dropped me at Medical and told them where to find him when they were through. They just nodded respectfully and said as little as possible, but you could feel the relief when the big man left the room. They measured, poked, and probed as best they could, having no Outside instrumentation. They did have some clever substitutions, though, fashioned¹, apparently, out of things in the environment itself. A clinging sort of vine from which they appeared to be able to read my blood pressure; a small yellow leaf whose color change to red showed to experienced eyes my body temperature. All these and more were dutifully recorded with reed pens on some thin, leafy substance that served for paper.

All of these men and women were Supervisor class, though. Only after they were through with the preliminaries and satisfied did they call in their own chief. He was a small, pudgy, middle-aged man who had the look of the civilized worlds about him without the physical standards exactingly carried through. He wore a soft white satiny robe and sandals, apparently because that was what was comfortable.

“I am Dr. Pohn,” he began in the usual medical manner. He picked up the sheets and glanced idly at them. “I see you’re disgustingly normal. Believe it or not, just about everybody is, you know. That’s the Warden organism’s trade-off to us for living off our bodies. Damage almost anywhere except the brain itself is corrected, new limbs grown, and so forth. And the viruses here are too alien for any of us to have to worry about. Still, we go through the forms. You never know when you’re going to find someone unusual. Besides, we’re interested in comparative readings from people such as you who have demonstrated abilities with the power.”

I nodded, remembering now that Tiel was obsessed with breeding a class with the power. This, then, would be the man in charge of the Knight’s pet project.

“Were you a doctor—before?” I asked, both curious and trying to be friendly.

He smiled. “Outside? Yes, yes, of course. But it was a far different thing there, you know. All those computer diagnosticians, automatic surgery, and yes, despite all, some diseases to cure if we could. Here I give physicals and administer native-distilled medication when needed for minor aches and pains and nervous strain. Otherwise, I’m engaged mostly in research on the Warden organism itself.”

That was interesting, even if I did think I knew what he meant. “Have you found out anything new?” I asked carefully.

He shrugged. “A little, but it’s slow work. There are certain physiological and chemical factors common to those with it, but isolating them, let alone duplicating them—particularly in people not born with them—is beyond me. Perhaps with all my old laboratories and analytical computers I could do something, maybe even on Lord Kreegan’s satellite base, but here I am forced to be slow and primitive, I fear.”

I perked up. “Satellite base?”

“Oh, yes. Didn’t you know? The Medusans built it for him years ago. Since it’s Medusan, our own little pet Wardens won’t touch it, since it already has their cousins, who are much nicer about machines and such. He lives there most of the time.”

I doubted that very much. Although Kreegan might go there when he needed things, he’d be far too exposed to the Confederacy on such a satellite, liable to get blown out of the sky at any time. If I were Kreegan, I decided, I’d almost never go there. Rather I’d let underlings take the risk and just use it as my chief communications and command center with the other Warden worlds and Outside.

There was nothing more to be gained from that tack, but I wondered if I could draw him out a little in his project. “Interesting what you say about common chemical factors,” I said casually. “I had come to the conclusion that emotion triggered my surge of power and that the chemicals released into my body when I was really mad were the catalyst.”

“Very astute,” he responded, beaming a little. Clearly he enjoyed his subject. “Yes, emotion is the key, as you will find out. But each individual’s threshold level for release of those chemicals is very different, nor are the amounts the same—yet the Warden organism is very demanding of its precise catalyst Chemical triggering and will is the key. Your anger gave you the power to kill; your will to Mil him directed and released it. I have often suspected that the initial trigger is what we’ve always called the ‘killer instinct,’ for want of a better psychological term. Everybody on Lilith really has the latent power, but not everyone the force of will to use it. That’s why pawns remain pawns, I suspect.”

“You said you were trying to duplicate the catalysts in those who didn’t have it, or didn’t have it in sufficient quantities,” I prompted. “How?”

He shrugged and got up, obviously pleased with my interest. *’Come on, 111 show you.”

We walked out and down the hall a short way, then entered a larger chamber. I stopped, a little stunned at the sight. There were a dozen slabs, equally spaced, with bedding on top of each. On each slab there appeared to be a sleeping or comatose young girl. I looked hard and spotted Ti’s distinctive form far off on the slab opposite us, but while my heart felt a twinge I clamped down hard on myself so as not to betray anything I didn’t have to. Not yet, not yet, I told myself.

“Are they—still alive?” I asked, hesitant, a little fearful of his answers.

He nodded. “Oh, yes, very much so. These are pawn girls who’ve shown flashes of strong power, usually right around puberty, but have proved incapable of repeating it, or at least of doing anything by force of will. Between their first and twelfth menstrual periods girls undergo physiochemical changes far more radical than do boys at the same stage in their lives. Since a lot of these chemical changes trigger Warden phenomena, we tend to monitor all the young girls in the Keep at that stage. In these girls it was exceptionally strong, as you might guess from their highly overdeveloped bodies.”

“I thought you did that,” I blurted, then tried to cover. “I knew one of these girls. That’s why I’m so interested.” At least that much was the truth.

He appeared to be a little surprised, but accepted the statement without further thought. “Oh, no. The condition’s a by-product. I believe that during this critical change in the body, the Warden organism gets confused, misfires, or receives the wrong instructions —or misinterprets the chemical stimuli it does receive. Not all girls experience this, by any means. One in a hundred, at best, and out of these, one in another hundred show strong power and bodily mis-development. Those are the ones we test and measure and keep a close watch on, although the very unpredictability of the power during that stage limits me. I could be killed or maimed during such an involuntary exercise of the power, and though I’m willing to risk it, Sir Tiel is not. Therefore we leave them in pawn’ villages until the danger is past. Which one did you know, by the way?”

I pointed to Ti. “That one, over there.”

“Oh, of course. She’s the newest, so it’s most likely. I’m still doing a preliminary analysis on her, so I can’t say much as yet, but she had die most potential of any I’ve seen. All sorts of phenomena around her, including the most severe. Among other things, she crippled half a dozen people around her, including her mother.”

I shook my head in wonder. Little Ti a crippler? It didn’t seem possible, I told myself. Still, it made me slightly uneasy, too. I’d slept with her a great deal in the past few months, and if she’d still had any of that wild power I could have been harmed, too.

“What are you doing with them now?” I wanted to know.

“Testing and measurement, as I said,” Pohn replied. “All Masters and above have the power to see within others. Rank is mostly a matter of fine-tuning your reception, you might say, in our little society. A Supervisor senses, and therefore controls, only the total organism. You killed Kronlon, it’s true, but you couldn’t discriminate enough to affect just, say, his arm. I can isolate even more than that, much more. What I used to do with microscopes and microsurgery techniques I can now do without any mechanical aid. By concentration and study I can actually follow a single white blood cell completely through the circulatory system—and divert it, slow it, alter it, even destroy it. You can sense the Warden organism in everything, can’t you?”

I nodded.

“Well, imagine being able to isolate individual cells in any organism. That’s what a Master can. do. Naturally, without my medical training they’d have no idea what they were doing, so my knowledge gives me the edge here. Masters have different skills based on knowing what they are looking for and what they want to accomplish. All the power of a Marek Kreegan will do you no good at all if you don’t have the knowledge and the fine touch, the skill or art, to make full use of it. That’s why you see the power used so often for purely destructive ends. To destroy something is easy and requires far less knowledge or skill.”

I could see his point, and thought that many doctors back on the civilized worlds would envy his power as much as he envied their technology. To be able to look into the human body, to focus on any part of it one wanted, to study it at will in the most exacting and intimate ways possible—none but sophisticated medical computers Outside could accomplish anything like it, and the doctors and technicians controlling them had to trust them, never knowing exactly what it was the computers saw as they probed and analyzed.

Pohn, however, knew.

“They’re so still,” I noted. “Drugged?”

He shook his head. “Oh my, no! That would simply complicate things. No, I simply applied a block to certain areas of the brain, one I can remove at will. They go into deep coma and I can then study them, probe, do whatever I want or need to do. Of the batch, I’m looking for ones with key enzymes in sufficient quantities perhaps to trigger the power. Those I’ll work with until I feel I can trigger them at will; then I’ll start trying to educate and train them as best we can. Kria there, for example, can now dissolve solid rock at my command.” He pointed at one girl near the door.

I frowned. I had a bad, uneasy feeling about all this and about Pohn in general. Why was a doctor like this on Lilith at all? I asked myself. Did he perhaps have an unhealthy fondness for little girls? Or did he perhaps experiment capriciously on such people back Outside? I knew him now, although I’d never met him or heard of him before. There have always been people like Dr. Pohn in human history, the monsters whose thirst for experimentation caused a total disregard for any concept of morality. Shades of the old story about the man who’d created a bloodthirsty monster, leaving the question of who truly was the monster—the thing, or the man who created it?

These young girls—reduced to zombies, biological specimens, perhaps playthings for this man’s sport. I thought of Ti in his hands and didn’t like what I was thinking at all. Still, I said nothing of my feelings. Instead I asked, “I assume you’re trying breeding experiments, too?”

He nodded. “Oh, yes. Based on the idea that the proper chemical in the proper amount is an inherited and inheritable characteristic. Frankly, I doubt it is more than one in many factors, but Sir Tiel is obsessed with the idea. I’m afraid that his level of biological sophistication is about on a par with the belief of spontaneous generation, but what can I do? I work for the man, and he’s a skillful and able administrator. I humor him; he indulges me. What’s the harm?”

What’s the harm? 1 thought sourly. What, indeed? As long as you didn’t regard any of these girls as more than lumps of flesh, no higher or lower than the great insects raised and bred in the Keep. That was the barbarity at the core of this civilization, I told myself. Only a select few were people.

Precisely the underlying philosophy you’d expect on a world run by the most brilliant criminal masterminds humanity had spawned. Men like Dr. Pohn, sociopathic and probably psychopathic—and men like Cal Tremon, pirate and mass murderer, I reminded myself.

“We really have to ring for Artur now,” Pohn said, turning and leaving the chamber. I followed him. “I’m afraid I’ve taken much too long with you, and it doesn’t pay to get him too angry.”

“This Artur—what did he do? Outside, I mean?”

“To get here?” the doctor chuckled. “Oh, I don’t know the details. He was somebody very big in the Confederacy military hierarchy, I think. A general, maybe, or an admiral. Ignited the atmosphere of some planet years ago, as I remember. Killed a few billion people. Something like that. Always said he was scape-goated for doing somebody else’s dirty work. That’s all I know. A nasty man, though.”

I had to agree. Killed a few billion people…

Given enough time I’d remember who he was, I was sure of that. I’d also remember that the comment on the death toll meant as little to Dr. Pohn as if the death toll had been in cockroaches.