Lilith: A Snake in the Grass

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 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.”

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

“She did more than that, young man,” said a voice behind me. I whirled and saw Duke Kobe standing there, looking more thoughtful than angry. “You sure as hell have some power, son, and she hated old Marek worse than anybody should be hated by anybody, that’s for sure. I could see it, feel it, but I couldn’t do a damned thing about it.”

“What do you mean?” I asked, feeling suddenly totally drained.

He shook his head in wonder. “The gyros didn’t get him, no matter what she thinks. She punched a hole with Warden cell material clear through the outer hull and right through the power supply!”

I sat down on the grass. “Oh, my God!”

“If nothing else, you can see now that even Sumiko didn’t have an idea of just what the power of a Lord could do,” the Duke noted.

I thought he was taking the death of Marek Kreegan pretty lightly and told him so.

He just smiled. “It’s the way of Lilith,” he said philosophically. “I did all the administrative work for the whole damned planet plus, yet I was still his toady. No, son, I had no love for Marek Kreegan.”

“Cal is Lord now!” Ti exclaimed forcefully. I could still feel her tug on me, but knowing what was going on, I found I could block it.

Kobe shook his head slowly from side to side. “No, little clever and ambitious one. He’s not. He didn’t kill Marek Kreegan—you did. I doubt if he could muster that much hate on his own. No, the position is open, pending someone claiming it and being able to hold on to it. That’ll take weeks, at least. In the meantime, I’ll act in his stead.” He sighed. “Damn. Guess I’ll have to attend that damned conference now myself.”

Ti flared at him, but I was now able to dampen her rage. In a few hours, I knew, the effect would wear off. In the meantime, I had to keep a really close watch on her.

I looked up at her, still a little stunned. “You don’t have any more of that juice, do you?”

She looked a little hurt at the question and stared down at me. “Would I lie to you?”