They were a lively, yet somewhat tragic group, largely ignorant of anything beyond then- own miserable existence, which they accepted as normal and natural because they knew nothing else. So thoroughly ingrained was the system that I cannot recall a single instance in which a supervisor had to exercise his or her terrible powers.
As for me, I was in a curious state of mental catalepsy. I functioned, did my job as ordered, ate and slept, but basically didn’t think. Looking back on the period now, I can see the reasons and understand, although I can’t really forgive myself. It was not the defeat at Kronlon’s hands or the crushing blow to my ego and pride that was inexcusable. What bothers me, really, is that I retreated into being a mental vegetable at the end of the contest.
I don’t know how long I remained that way—days, weeks; it was hard to be sure, since there are no watches or calendars on Lilith. Still, slowly my mind struggled for some kind of control, some sort of re-assertion of identity—first in dreams, then in fleeting memories. The real danger in this situation was that I could have gone mad, could have retreated into some sort of fantasy world or unreal existence. I realize now that the inner struggle was caused by compulsions placed on me by the Security Clinic programmers. They were not ones to take chances, and they could always program another body—but once a body was programmed and sent to the Warden System, they had to make sure it would remain true to them.
Find the aliens… kill the Lord…
These commands echoed in my dreams and became the supports to which other parts of my shattered ego could cling.
Find the aliens … kill the Lord…
Slowly, very slowly, night after night another fragment would return and coalesce around those deeply hidden commands, commands I might never have known were there had this not occurred.
Find the aliens… kill the Lord…
And rationality finally returned to me. In the evening hours and just before falling asleep, I was able to try to sort out just what the hell had happened to me, to regain some of my confidence. I needed hope, and the only hope I could have was in reasoning a way out of my predicament.
The logic chain I forged may have been faulty, but it worked, and that alone was important. First and foremost was the realization that everyone who came here had undergone substantially the same treatment I had. It had cowed them all, driven them into some sort of grudging submission from which they’d had to learn to cope. Was that insanity, or perhaps a fatalistic acceptance?
Patra, that Knight up there in his fairyland castle, even Lord Marek Kreegan. There were no inherited positions or titles on Lilith, except perhaps for those skilled in things useful to the rulers. No political position, no position of authority, was hereditary or elected, either. All those positions, from Supervisor up to Lord, had been taken, won in a contest of power. Find the aliens… kill the Lord… Everyone on this world who rose at all from the muck of pawn slavery rose from the bottom through the ranks. Everyone.
How did this power operate? How did you find out if you had it?
I felt ashamed of myself for my reaction to Kronlon. I had been in bad situations before, situations in which the enemy had all the power, and I had been stalled only temporarily by those conditions. The only difference between those situations and this one was that in this one I had looked at the lay of the land and the forces of the enemy, and instead of considering the problem and working out how to beat the enemy—or at least die trying—I had instead meekly surrendered. The day I faced and accepted the fact that I had run across a tremendously powerful obstacle, not an impassable barrier, was the day I rejoined the human race.
I started talking to people, although that was a pretty limited thing. Few topics for small talk were available—the weather was always hot and humid, for example—and it was difficult to talk down to people who might be bright and alert but whose whole world was this primitive, non-mechanized existence. What could you say to people whose world view, if they had one, was that the valley was the world and the sun rose and set around it? Oh, they knew there were other Keeps, but they saw them all as being just like this one. And as for mechanization, they had seen the shuttle come and go, but that was as far as it went —after all, they were familiar with large flying insects.
The concept of any machine not powered by muscle was simply beyond them.
That was the core of my problem. I didn’t know enough, not by a long shot, but I knew a hell of a lot more than these natives. Also, now that I’d pulled myself together, I craved some kind of intelligent conversation. I’d always been a loner before, but there is a difference between being alone by choice and being alone by force. Conversation and diversion had always been available when I had needed it. Everything seemed stacked against me. I hadn’t gotten a single break on this whole mission since waking up. But I did get one now.
Her name was Ti.
A few days after my recovery I encountered her in the village common one evening, after the last meal of the day. I had seen her a few times before, and once you saw her you couldn’t forget her.
She was about 160 centimeters tall and very thin, particularly at the waist, but she had large breasts and nice buttocks and sandy brown hair—unusual in itself—down to those buttocks. A pretty, sexy young woman, you might say—except that her face was amazingly young and innocent, the kind of face not seen on a body like that in my experience. It was a pretty face, all wide-eyed and innocent. But it was the face of a child, one no more than eleven or twelve, atop that well-developed body. Though the two would eventually reconcile, the body seemed to be developing several years ahead of that face.
I could have understood the contrast more if such a thing had been common on Lilith, but it was not—at least not from this pawn sample. Here was one minor mystery that perhaps I could learn something about, and I asked a couple of my co-workers about her.
“Oh, that’s Ti,” one explained. “A chosen of the Bodymaster. He’ll pluck her in a little while, I’d say. Only thing that’s slowed it is that she’s got some wild talent in her and they want to see what it’ll do.”
Several items of new data. I felt like I was on to something new, something that would be of value.
“What do you mean, a chosen of the Bodymaster?” I asked. “Remember, I wasn’t born here.”
The question got me one of those looks of incomprehension I was becoming used to, since the natives just couldn’t picture any other place as being any different than Zeis Keep. But the man shrugged and answered anyway. They had reconciled themselves to me by convincing themselves that the shock to my system, which they could comprehend, had made me funny in the head.
“Boss Tiel, he breeds women like he breeds snarks,” the laborer explained. Snarks were those hairy monsters in the pasture that were raised for their highly prized meat. “When a child, particularly a girl child, is born with looks or something else special, well, she gets marked by the Bodymaster in charge of the breeding. He brings ’em along ’til they’re the way he wants ’em, then he breeds ’em with selected boys. See?”
I did see, sort of, although the concept repelled me more than anything yet about this foul world. Repelled, but didn’t surprise.