Four Lords of Diamond - Book 1 (21 page)

The worst part of the journey was riding the
besils
themselves. The creatures were ugly, they stank, and they oozed a really nasty gluelike ichor when under stress—not to mention occasionally giving out with one of those earsplitting shrieks that seemed to come from somewhere deep within them. We were all inexperienced riders, too, and the sensation was much like getting whipped in all directions at once, that apparently seamless, fluid motion of theirs feeling quite different if you were actually on a
besil
back.

Still, the creatures were selectively bred types, born and raised for this sort of work, and they seemed never to tire. They were also easy to care for, since they foraged for themselves in the jungle below, eating almost anything that wouldn't eat them first, plant or animal. Being large animals, though, they ate often, and that slowed us down. They needed three times their considerable weight per day to keep going at any reasonable pace.

Still, the kilometers passed swiftly beneath us, although I saw less of the countryside than I would have liked. In order to maintain security, and to avoid meeting a lot of possibly bad company, we headed almost due east to the coast and skirted it, somewhat out from land, heading in for an encampment only when and where the wild reached the sea and gave us cover. The ocean was dotted with numerous uninhabited islands, but none provided the large amount of food our
besils
required, so some risk was necessary.

Our witches afforded us some protection, of course. I suspect that was the only reason we encountered so little in the way of other traffic on the way south. But though we could take care of individuals who might chance upon us we had nothing like the massed force to withstand an assault of the type Artur had mounted on the witch village. Sumiko couldn't even take her full core coven, since the most we could safely fit on and strap into a
besil
saddle was two, and Ti and I had one, O'Higgins and Bronz each had one of their own, and the other three held two of the aproned witches apiece. We had no control over the
besils
ourselves, either; Bronz and O'Higgins did the driving for all of us.

Days were spent in foraging, resting, and checking bearings. It was not a totally friendly group, with the witches paying little mind or heed to Ti or me and Father Bronz devoting most of his time, apparently without success, to trying to discover the nature of Sumiko O'Higgins's remarkable discoveries about the Warden organism.

I confess I was never really sure about the witch queen. A genius, certainly, with the single-mindedness to set herself impossible problems and then work - them out. A pragmatist, too, who was putting her discoveries to use building up some sort of superior army—for what it was hard to say. Discussing the plants and animals of Lilith, the Warden organism, and some rather odd ideas about the relationships between plant and animal biochemistry, she was as expert and as dry as a university professor. But whenever you started feeling that her Satanism was a sham, a device to accomplish some kind of psychological goal with her followers, or simply a means to an end, she would drop into a discussion of it with an unmistakable fervor and sincerity. Ti and I talked about her at length, and both of us were convinced that either she was one of the truly great actresses of all times or she really believed that junk.

I was able to pump Father Bronz a bit more on her, although he admitted his own knowledge was sketchy. She was the daughter of scientists, experts in the biological aspects of terraforming, and from what little we could gather, was something of an experiment herself, having been genetically manipulated in some way in an attempt to produce a superior being, an alternative to the civilized worlds for a rougher, frontier life. Tfiey had certainly produced
someone
unique, but I wondered what the psychological effects of growing up knowing you were just experiment 77-A in Mommy and Daddy's lab might be. Exactly what the crime was that got her sent to Lilith was unknown, but it was of truly major proportions and left inside her a legacy of hatred and revenge directed toward the civilized worlds. In point of fact, she was the quintessential Lord of the Diamond personality I'd come to expect, yet she disdained even that. To her, Marek Kreegan and the Confederacy were two sides of the same coin.

The relationship between Ti and me continued to develop, and I felt things within me that I had never known were there. In some ways it disturbed me— that a man of pure intellect could form such strong emotional attachments seemed somehow an admission of my weakness, an internal accusation that I was human when I had always clung to the notion that I was a superior human being above all those animalistic drives affecting the common herd. She was certainly not the type of woman I had ever thought myself attracted to. Bright, yes, but totally uneducated, highly emotional, and in some sense very vulnerable.

Still, I felt better with her here, awake, laughing and oohing and aahing and having fun like a kid with a new toy. It was as if I'd had a painful hole inside me, one that had been there so long that I wasn't even aware of it, had considered the ache and emptiness normal and not at all unusual, but now the hole was filled. The relief, the feeling of health and wholeness, was indescribably good. We were complementary in some ways, too—she was my hold, my perspective, on Lilith, where I would live out my, life, and I was her window to a wider and far different universe than she could now comprehend.

It took eleven days to reach Moab, with a little dodging of congested areas, neither pushing ourselves or taking chances. Moab Keep itself was below us now, a huge island in a great, broad tropical bay. Almost on the equator, it was insufferably hot and humid; but, looking down upon it, I could see why it had been selected.

The first manned expedition to Lilith had no idea what it would be getting itself into. It needed a base, one that would provide a good sample of the flora and fauna of Lilith without exposing the group to unknown dangers. The huge island of Moab was their choice, a place large and lush enough to provide a small lab and base for travel to other parts of the world but isolated enough with its high cliff walls and broad expanse of bay all around to be defensible against attack.

Time and knowledge had reshaped it only slightly. You could see cleared areas for agriculture, and lines of fruit trees too straight and regular to be haphazard. On a bluff almost in the center of the island was the headquarters for those who still lived and worked on the island. The hard rock of the bluff itself had been hewn out by the most primitive labor methods to build what was needed, a great rock temple that looked neither crude nor uncomfortable. In fact, it made Zeis's Castle seem like a small and fragile structure, although Moab had none of the fanciful design of Sir Tiel's edifice. It was straight, modern, utilitarian, functional—and huge.

Still, Father Bronz had warned us that this was not ^exactly all it seemed. The science of the founders was still here, for sure, and there was no authoritarian hierarchy such as the other Keeps maintained, but the purpose for the enclave had drastically changed as it became more isolated from the outside world. Today the thousands of men and.women below carried on their work in the name of some odd mystical religion that seemed anachronistically out of the dawn of man. In their years of studying Lilith they had come not merely to anthropomorphize it, as Father Bronz tended to do, but actually to regard it as a living, thinking creature, a god now sleeping that would someday awaken.

In other words, here was another nut cult, although one not formed from the history of humanity but rather by the conditions of Lilith itself.

We landed atop the great bluff and immediately attendants came from stairwells to attend to the
besils.
For a moment I thought we were being attacked, so rapidly did they come forth, but it quickly became obvious that we were on the Moab equivalent of a helipad.

I took note of the appearance of the attendants. Many were of civilized worlds standards, and all had some of the look within them. Many were naked, others lightly dressed, and all seemed young, yet none of them had the look or bearing of pawns. All were neatly groomed and had that scrubbed look.

Father Bronz, the only one of us who had been here before, took the lead, and we followed him to one of the nearby stairwells.

I have to say that they don't seem at all worried or even curious about us, I noted to him. It's almost as if we were expected.

We probably are, he replied. Remember, these people know all we've been able to find out about this crazy world. Their grandparents were the original colonists, and they and their children discovered the Warden organism, the Warden powers, the various drugs and potions we all use. They designed and perfected the methods by which anything can be done here. He glanced over at Sumiko Q'Higgins. They're unassailable and they know it. Even from you, my dear, I think.

She just looked at him expressionlessly and didn't reply. Even though I owed my life and my existence here to her I would never feel comfortable around her and would certainly never completely trust her.

We were met at the bottom of the long, winding stone stairs by a woman in flowing pure-white robes. She didn't look very old, but her billowing hair was snow white and her eyes a deep blue, while her complexion showed that she just about never ventured out into the sunlight. It was an odd appearance, sort of like one of Fattier Bronx's angels.

I bid you greetings, Father Bronz, you and your - friends, she said, her voice soft and musical.

Bronz gave a slight bow. ''My lady, I am happy to see that I am remembered, he responded somewhat formally. May I present my companions to you?

She turned and looked at us, not critically, but not curiously, either. I already know them all. I am Director Komu. I will see you all to quarters that have already been prepared for you where you may rest and refresh yourselves. Later on today I will arrange for a tour of the Institute, and tomorrow is soon enough to get down to business.

I looked at her, then at Ti. Lady Komu, I thank you for your hospitality, I said, trying to be as politely formal as seemed required here, but my own young lady here has need of medical assistance. She's already been feeling particularly sleepy and numb.

The director went over to Ti and looked at her thoughtfully for a moment, not touching or doing anything we could see. Finally she said, Yes, I see. Please don't worry about it—we will fix you up in no time at all. She turned. Now, if you will follow me.

The place inside was, if anything, more impressive than outside. The walls and floors were all tiled in light, micalike panels that seemed slightly .translucent and behind which some light source glowed. It wasn't electrical, of course, but neither was it the kind of localized and flickering light that oil lanterns would give off. In fact the place looked as if it were back in the Outside. I was about to ask about it when Sumiko O'Higgins beat me to it.

This is most impressive, particularly the lighting,'' she noted. How do you do it?

Oh, a simple matter, really, the director responded airily. The light source is a lumen distilled from various self-illuminating insects common to Lil-ith. The power source is somewhat complex, but based very much on. the same principle the insects themselves use to brighten the material. The basis of the power is friction, fed by water power. Whoever told you such things were impossible on Lilith, dear?

There was no reply to that, and I was beginning to see that I would have to revise my world picture once again. There certainly
wasn't
anything in the rules governing Lilith to prohibit a lot of classical power sources; the limitation was that there were very few people who could talk the Warden organism into holding in new shapes of waterwheels and the like.

Our rooms were luxurious, furnished with fine hand-carved wood and a large bed that was as close to a stuffed mattress as I had seen on Lilith. The common baths were similar to those at the Castle, large tile-lined troughs filled with very hot, bubbly water that soothed as well as cleaned. I felt both more human and totally relaxed at the finish, and Ti had quite a tune with the first bath she'd ever experienced other than those in pools of rainwater or rivers. She was tired, though, and I just about had to carry her back to the room. She was awake enough to find the bed too soft and strange for her liking and for a while considered sleeping on the floor, which she finally did. As soon as she was asleep, though, I placed her on the satiny sheets and stretched out beside her. I hadn't realized what sort of tension I'd been under the past almost two weeks, though, and I was soon out cold.

We toured the huge Institute, as they called it, as ] evening fell. Not Ti—she was still tired and her body ! was continuing to fight Dr. Pohn's handiwork, so I decided to let her sleep. Everyone at the Institute seemed to live well, in Lilith terms. They seemed bright, alive, highly civilized, and happy. We saw the laboratories used by plant and animal experts to study all they could, revealing cleverly fashioned if primitive tools of the trade, including wooden microscopes whose lenses were actually quite good, and to my surprise, even a limited number of metal tools that looked like they'd been manufactured in major factories. I remarked on them, and was reminded that Lords such as Kreegan could actually stabilize a limited amount of alien matter, making it resistant to the Warden organism's attack. The intra-system shuttlecraft, for example, that had landed me on Lilith and carried me to Zeis Keep was one such example, and a pretty hairy and delicate one at that.

The food prepared for us was also excellent, although I recognized almost nothing except the melons. I was told that the meat was from certain kinds of domesticated large insects; specially bred types of plants and plant products provided many of the other dishes and a variety of beverages that, if not really beer and wine, served as excellent substitutes.

It seemed to me that the full potential of Lilith was exercised only here, at the Institute. Comfort, civilization, worthwhile work—all were possible here. This world didn't need to be the horror house it primarily was, not if those with the power were to use it more wisely and well.

Why, I began to wonder, wasn't it, then?

The next morning Ti was taken down to their Medical Section, which was a much more complex setup than Dr. Pohn's, although the doctors there used some of the same techniques for a lot of the routine measurements. The doctor, a woman named Telar who frankly didn't look much older than Ti, let alone old enough to be a doctor, placed Ti on a comfortable but rigid table, felt key points all over her body, then touched her patient's forehead in that classic manner and closed her eyes briefly. Less than thirty seconds later she nodded, opened her eyes again, and smiled.

Ti, who was neither drugged nor instructed to do anything more than lie still, looked puzzled. When will you start? she asked nervously.

Telar laughed. 'Tve finished. That's it.

We both stared. That's
it? I
echoed.

She nodded. Oh, I'd like to take a quick look at you as well. You never know.

That's all right, I told her. 'Tm fine. I started making all sorts of excuses at that point, since I was just reminded that there was something extra up there somewhere in my brain, an organic transmitter I might not have worried about if it had been anywhere else —but this doctor would spot it for sure.

Frankly, I hadn't really thought of it much since the early days. I don't even know why I didn't take advantage at that point of the opportunity to have it removed, to make myself a totally free and private agent. Perhaps, after thinking of you up there for a while as an enemy, I was now reluctant to cut this last umbilical to my former life and self. To cast it out, and you with it, would be the final and absolute rejection of everything Fd lived for all my life, and I wasn't quite willing to do that as yet. Not yet. If the information went directly to Intelligence, that would be one thing, but it went to me—that other me sitting up there somewhere, looking in. My Siamese twin.

Not yet, I decided. Not yet.

Classes started shortly after. They decided that both Ti and I would undergo as much training as we could take, although separately, of course. Only the basic stuff could be group-administered, and I'd already had that. I was curious to see what Ti might come up with, and hopeful, too.

I had been somewhat nervous when told that they were a religious cult, but aside from a few offhand references and the fact that there were occasional prayers, like before meals, and temple hours, when the staff went off somewhere and did whatever they did, there was no pushing of the faith, no mumbo-jumbo, and no attempt either to convert us or to indoctrinate us with their beliefs. Their religion interested me no more than the faiths of Bronz or O'Higgins did, and I was thankful for its lack of in-trusiveness.

Of the others who had come with us I saw nothing. About two weeks into the training I was informed that the witches had gone, returning to their strange village, but Father Bronz was said to be involved in some project of his own at the Institute, something that required the use of their massive handwritten library scrolls and some of their lab facilities. I wondered idly whether he, now seeing that it was possible, was trying to crack the O'Higgins secret.

I made easy progress in the use of the power itself, but I began to realize that things would still be very slow, since, as Ti's example had so graphically pointed out, just having the power to do something wasn't enough. You needed the knowledge to apply it properly, and
that
could take years.

Still, a lot could be done in general terms, and it became absurdly easy for me to do so. Weaving patterns, duplicating patterns as I had with the chair, were sun-pie as long as we were talking inanimate objects. O'Higgins had likened the Warden organism to some sort of alien^organic computer, and that was a pretty good analogy. But not a lot of little computers, all components in a single, massively preprogrammed organism.

'Think of them, one of my instructors said, as cells of Mother Lilith. Your own cells all contain DNA spirals encoded with your entire genetic makeup. Also, one part of that complex code tells that particular cell how to behave, how to form and grow and act and react as part of the whole. The Warden cells, as we call them, are like those in your own body. They are preprogrammed with an impossibly complex picture of how this planet should be, and each one knows its own place or part in that whole; What we do is slightly mutate the Warden cell. Essentially, we feed it false data and fool it into doing what
we
want instead of what
it
wants. Because our action is extremely localized when compared to the whole of Lilith, and because we can concentrate our willpower on such a tiny spot, we are able to do so. Not on a large scale, of course, but on a relatively localized scale.

I looked around at the sumptuous surroundings of the Institute. Localized?

My instructor just nodded. Consider the mass of the planet. Consider the number of molecules that go into its composition. A colony of Wardens for every molecule. Now, do you think this is more than a tiny aberration, a benign cancer, as it were?

I saw the point.

The more I practiced, the easier everything became. Although I was a little put off when I discovered that most of the silky cloth I'd seen was made from worm spit, I soon dismissed that as another cultural prejudice and had my own clothing with the option and ability to make more. Burning holes in rock and shaping those holes to suit my design also proved very easy: you just told the Wardens governing the molecules to disengage. Unfortunately, the skill aspect again came into play here, and I decided that I was cut out to be neither an engineer nor an architect. What I had done to Kronlon, the Institute considered an abuse of power, since what it seemed to amount to was an overloading of the Warden input circuits. They burned themselves out in some manner.

Classes in combat emphasized defense, but took a lot of the mystery out of what I'd seen. Knowing the proper points in an opponent's nervous system was as important in the mental combat of Warden cells as in physical stuff like judo. The trick was to keep total control over your own Wardens while knocking out those of your opponent, a really nasty task requiring not only that you have more willpower and self-control than your opponent but also that you have an enormous ability to concentrate on several things at once.

I learned as much as I could learn, and although I felt elated when they no longer gave me the potion and I grew stronger still, I realized that only experience could fine-tune my skills. The key test of my power was when they brought two small steel rods from Medusa, which, though containing Warden organisms as well, was a thing alien to our Lilith parent strain and beyond my ability to communicate with.

I was aware, though, that Warden cells were already attacking the alien matter, much as antibodies attacked a vims in the bloodstream, trying to break it down, even eat it, in some mysterious way.

Here there was no pattern to solve or imitate. I somehow had to work out a form of protection, some sort of message that would keep this metal from corroding to dust under the Warden cell onslaught. I failed miserably time after time. There seemed nothing to grab on to, nothing I could even reprogram to protect the alien matter, which even to me had a somewhat dark, dead appearance in Contrast to all of the Warden-alive matter around me.

After two days the stuff crumbled into dust.

I was discouraged, feeling somehow inadequate. To have come so far and not to go the last little bit to rank me near the top in potential on this world was tremendously depressing. If I could not solve this last problem, I knew I would be no match for the Dukes, let alone for Marek Kreegan.

Ti tried to console me. But, living here at the Institute at a higher level than she'd ever dreamed of or known was possible, she had a more limited ambition than I. Her own lessons had helped somewhat; as both Sumiko O'Higgins and Dr. Pohn had intimated, the •power was at least latent in everyone. But even with all the training, her power was limited more to the Supervisor level, although she certainly could use it more discriminatingly and effectively than the Supervisors I'd known. The only thing they could offer beyond that was something of the witch methods: if she were truly consumed with emotion toward something, her power could be multiplied; but to make it controlled and effective she'd need temporary augmentation from the potion. Even then it would be only a destructive power and very limited.

This aspect worried me a bit at first, since she
was
highly emotional and I was more than a little concerned that lovemaking would cause problems. Occasionally it did, but not anything serious, since she would never aim anything destructive, even subconsciously, at me. If ever we had a falling out, I was strong enough on reflex alone to protect myself. Still, occasionally when we
did
make love and her power ran a bit wild, the earth really
did
move.

Her powers, particularly with my help, allowed her to create her own clothes, which was particularly important to one brought up in the pawn world of the Keeps, where clothing was status. Still, she had enough of an understanding of the Warden power to understand my problem and my frustration, and did think of it. In fact she came up with part of the solution.

Look, she said to me one day, the problem is that Warden cells ridin
^?
dust and everything else in the air just rush in to eat this metal stuff, right?

I nodded glumly. And I can't stop it because that metal stuff, as you call it, doesn't have anything I can talk to, let alone control.

Why not talk to the attacking stuff, then? she wanted to know. Why not talk them out of it?

I was about to respond that that was a ridiculous idea when I suddenly realized it wasn't crazy at all. Not in the way she meant, of course, but suddenly I saw the key; it was so ridiculously simple I didn't know why I hadn't thought of it before.

Talk to the attacking cells . . . Sure. But since the attack was continuous and from all quarters, just protecting something the size of a nail would be a full-time job. But if the metal was coated in some Lilith substance and the Warden cells in that coating were told not to attack . . . Accomplishing that would not be all that easy. In fact, the process was hideously complex, but it was the right answer. When you extended the concept to a really complex piece of machinery, it became a nightmare, clearly, a lot of practice and hard thought was needed.

The Institute people were pleased, and so was I, though. Few were ever able to master the stabilization of metals on
any
scale, and I felt as if the Confederacy had certainly made its point about me. I knew now that what they'd done was feed Marek Kreegan's entire file into their computers, and that alone .was why I had been selected. My life, profession, outlook, you name it, had most paralleled his —therefore I was most likely to attain the potential of Lord.

I
had
learned, though, that I was not the only one with that power and potential besides Kreegan. A number of people, as many as forty or fifty, would qualify. Kreegan simply embodied not only the greatest single power on the planet but also the greatest single power who had the will and capacity to rule and the skills to pull it off. And that, of course, was what it all boiled down to—not power, but skill. The question was brought home to me by one of my most advanced instructors when she asked, Well, now that you have joined the circle of the elect, what will you do with your powers?

It was a good question. I now had the power, all right, all of it. I didn't have to fear this planet and its petty leadership any longer, and I had a good deal to live for, embodied in Ti and my hopes for a comfortable future.

But just what
were
our skills? Ti was trained mostly to run a nursery, to look after small children, and I certainly intended her to exercise that skill with our own children. But what
could
I do? What was I trained to do? Kill people efficiently. Solve sophisticated technological crimes—here on a planet where the technology was not at issue. In point of fact, the only jobs on a world like this I was in any way qualified for were ones like Artur's, but the challenge of fighting for the sport of my employers didn't appeal to me. In defense of employers or for a cause, yes, but not just to let out aggressions and give the violent folks something to do.

It was the same problem that had faced Marek Kreegan at this stage in his own life, I reflected, and his own conclusion was the only one that I, too, could reach. We were more alike -than even I had realized, and our fates somehow seemed bound up together. What in fact did he have that I did not? Experience, of course. He'd worked his way up. I was already a Master, although a Master of nothing in particular. The next step, administratively speaking, was Knight. From Knight to Duke. And finally, with all that experience behind me, from Duke to Lord.