Below the castle, in the valley itself, was what looked like a complex of straw huts much like those we’d used for orientation but a lot denser. That, then, was where the common folk lived, or at least the area around which their lives centered. I did note that there were other clusters of huts in various parts of the valley.
I heard a rumbling and turned to see a very plain sled like wagon made of some thick plant material. It was being pulled by a large green thing with a shiny, almost round shell and who knew how may legs underneath. The tiny head, which seemed to be a hornlike snout atop which sat two dim little red dots and a couple of thin antennae, was all that was visible.
The man sitting on a crudely fashioned seat behind the creature was a large, dark, nasty-looking fellow, but that didn’t really bother me—after all, I was now a large, dark, nasty-looking fellow myself. It did, however, seem interesting that he had no reins, no steering or other controls in his hands or attached to his body at all. He was just sitting there looking fcored, letting the green beast pull him.
I realized in an instant that I was seeing the first demonstration of this mysterious power. He was controlling that thing, but not with any mechanical apparatus.
The wagon came up to me and stopped, whereupon the man rose to his feet and just stood there, staring down at me. He was an imposing figure—solid muscle, a weightlifter’s physique—yet he wasn’t really a big man. His squat build and muscles just made him seem so. He wore what appeared to be a yellow jockstrap, around which, oddly, was a wide belt of some pliable dark-brown material, from which a nasty-looking coiled whip hung at his side.
“Well?” he growled. “You just gonna stand there gawking or are you gonna get aboard?”
Welcome to your new home, I thought sourly as I climbed up and sat next to him on the bench. It was, like a lot on this world, made from some kind of thick, hard plant material, possibly bark. Without another word the huge green creature started off again, almost knocking me off the seat.
The other man chuckled. “Yeah, it’s a rough ride,” he commented, “but you get used to it. Not that you have to worry much—pawns don’t do much ridin’.” He paused a moment, giving me a good look. “Nice muscles, good build. We can use you, all right. You got any skills from your old life that maybe would make you a little more useful? Carpentry? Masonry? Animal care?”
I almost laughed at the question. The concept of anybody from the civilized worlds even knowing the meaning of those terms was ridiculous. I checked my reaction because I remembered that this was not my old body, but that of a frontiersman from a rough life, an impression I wanted to maintain as long as possible.
So I just shook my head and replied, “No, sorry, nothing I can think of. Electrical and power systems, weapons, things like that.”
He snorted. “Electrical! Haw! Around here that don’t mean shit. You’re just a common laborer now. The only electricity we got on Lilith is lightning from the thunderstorms, and the only power is what some people got. Nope. Best forgit the old comforts—you’re a pawn of Zeis Keep now. I’m Kronlon, work supervisor for this section. You’ll be workin’ fer me. You call me‘sir’ and you obey orders from me, nobody else.”
“I’m not used to taking orders,” I muttered, low and deep but deliberately loud enough for him to hear. I expected this to provoke him and gain his measure, but he laughed instead. The wagon stopped in the middle of a field about halfway to a group of huts to the left of the castle.
“Get down,” he ordered, his tone more casual than menacing, gesturing with a beefy hand. “Go ahead. Get down.”
I shrugged and did as instructed. Ordinarily I’d have expected a menacing tone or perhaps a swing, but if this was any kind of fight preparation he was definitely the cool one.
He jumped down after me, then walked right up to me. I towered over him, but that seemed to increase his pleasure. “Okay, go ahead. Take a swing at me. Go on-—swing!” He thrust out his jaw. So it was a showdown after all.
I shrugged again, then hauled off and punched as hard as I could. Only 1 couldn’t. My arm was suddenly stopped in mid swing, fist tightly clenched. I couldn’t move it, not forward, back, up, or down. I felt my muscles, tensed for the punch, start to hurt from the unreleased tension, but I could do nothing to release that energy. The fist was only a few centimeters from his out-thrust jaw.
He hauled off and hit me in my midsection with a blow that seemed designed to shatter ribs. I went down hard, with a groan and yelp of surprise and pain. Lying there on my back, gasping for breath, I realized that my right arm was still stiffly clenched.
He walked over and grinned. “See? Kind of hard to believe, isn’t it?” He was clearly enjoying himself.
I felt my arm suddenly unfreeze, and lying there on the road, I completed the swing, almost rolling over in the process.
Kronlon laughed derisively, then turned and started to walk back to the wagon.
Marshalling my strength, I leaped up and rushed his back, attempting to tackle him. He might have heard me, but there was no way he could have seen me, and the combination of my new body and the low gravity gave me both force and speed. Suddenly, just a few meters from him, my legs seemed to turn to robber. I stumbled, cried out, and crashed to the ground once again.
He stopped and turned to look down on me, grinning like mad. “See? You can’t even sneak up on me. Listen—I got your number, see? I got your pattern inside my skull.” He tapped it for emphasis. “You don’t make a move against me I don’t know it ahead of time and tell your body to screw up. Okay, get up. You ain’t hurt.”
I got slowly to my feet, starting to feel a few slight bruises. My mind raced, first in frustration and fury that this man had me completely at his mercy, and second, because now that I’d seen this power in operation I still knew nothing about how it worked. And this guy was the lowest rung on the power structure!
He unhooked his whip from his belt and for a moment I was afraid he was going to use it on me—but to my surprise, he tossed it to me.
“Here, catch. Uncoil it. You know how to use one of these? All right, use it, then. Whip the living shit out-of-me!”
I was mad enough to do it, and though the whip was crude and fashioned out of some sort of shiny braided material, it was well balanced and long. I snapped it a few times, getting the feel of it, then took him at his word.
He just stood there and laughed. Try as I might, I could not make any part of that whip touch him. I could, after a little bit, pick up a stone or cut grass with it, but no matter how dead on my aim, the whip always seemed to miss him just slightly. I couldn’t believe it and kept at it for several minutes while he just stood there, laughing and taunting but not flinching.
“Okay, fun’s over,” he said at last, seeming bored with it all. “Now you see your problem. Drop a twenty-kilo boulder on my head from a fall of less than a meter and it’ll still miss me. But not the other way around!” He reached out and the whip seemed almost to leap from my hand to his, then coil back into its storage position. To my relief, he replaced it on his belt loop.
The grin grew wider. “I know what you’re thinkin’. I can see it on your face. You’re glad I didn’t use the whip on you. Want to know why? It’s just a badge of office—all supervisors carry ’em. I got it from Boss Tiel himself, matched to me, and I don’t like it to get mussed up or broke.” The grin vanished, and so did the casual tone. Menace now dripped from his lips.
“Now, you got two choices and that’s all,” Kronlon growled, “You obey orders. You listen, you live, for my orders, and then you obey ’em. You don’t ask no questions, you don’t wonder why or figure anything out. You just do it. Do that and you live. The other choice is you kill yourself. I won’t kill you. I don’t hav’ta. I can do much worse.”