It was a strange sensation, there and yet almost not there, sensed mostly because it was so pervasive, because there was just so damned much grass. The feeling excited me, even though I had to face the fact that I was tired, dirty, somewhat depressed, and just possibly was going nuts.
Ti, however, who joined me from her job at the nursery, seemed to sense something even before I told her about it. “You felt it today,” she said, not asked.
I nodded. “I think so. It was—odd. Hearing the grass, sensing countless billions of tiny interconnected living things.”
She didn’t follow some of the big words but she knew what I meant and I saw an unexpected look of pity on her face. “You mean,” she asked incredulously, “you couldn’t hear it ’fore now?”
It was a revelation to her, as if suddenly discovering that the supposedly normal person she knew had been deaf all his life and had suddenly acquired hearing. It was that acute—almost like another sense, a sixth sense, one that grew and developed as the days went on.
Once I knew what to look for, I could find it everywhere.
The rocks, the trees, the animal life of this world, all sang with it over and above their existence as separate entities. It was an incredible sensation, and a beautiful one. The world sang to you, whispered to you.
People, too—although they were the most difficult partly because their own activities partially masked the effect, so quiet and subtle it was, and partly because it’s almost impossible to observe a human being with the same objectivity as can be applied to a rock or tree or blade of grass. Yet each entity was also unique, and with a little concentration I could not only sense but actually mentally map a particular area with my eyes closed.
This, I realized, was the key to that mysterious power. My own Warden organisms, inside every cell, perhaps every molecule of my body, were in some way interconnected by some sort of energy to every other Warden organism. It was this interconnection I saw and felt and heard. It had to be what they all saw and felt and heard, all the ones with any vestige of the power.
A Supervisor sensed, what I sensed and had the ability to send, through his own body’s symbiotes, a message to yours—or to a rock’s or to anything else’s. A Master, then, could do it in more detail—could see the individual parts inside a human body and order changes in the way those cells operated.
When something died, or if it lost its primary form—such as when a lock was crushed—the Warden organisms died, and without them, the very structure of tiie thing became unstable and collapsed. A Knight, then, I realized, could somehow keep the Warden organisms alive under those conditions. But even then, the organism attacked and destabilized inorganic matter from outside its environment. Somehow I thought of antibodies, those substances in human blood that attack foreign substances such as viruses that invade pur bodies. It seemed to me that the Warden organism acted much like an antibody on inorganic alien matter: it attacked, destabilized, and destroyed it.
Kreegan, then, could do the impossible—convince the Warden organism not to attack and destroy alien inorganic matter. And each rank could also keep lower ranks from communicating with the Warden organisms inside their own bodies, thus protecting them.
But what tuned you to your own symbiotes, allowed you to relay commands through them to others outside your own body? That I had yet to discover. The mere discovery that I could sense the communication while most pawns could not was the best thing that could have happened to me. I no longer felt tired or depressed. I had the talent. I needed to explore my powers, test them, learn how to use them, learn my own limits.
Perhaps I wouldn’t equal the Lord; perhaps I’d need help, a valuable ally.
— For now, though, it was enough to know, finally, what was what on this mad world—and to know, too, that my days of hauling mud for sixteen hours were numbered.
More than enough.
Chapter Seven
Father Bronz
Over the following days my increasing sensitivity to the silent communication absorbed me, and I tried to learn everything I could about it. None of the pawns were any help except Ti, who could feel the power but had never learned how to control or use it properly. Since one’s position on Lilith was dependent on mastery of the power—and since social mobility usually led to the death of one of the contestants for a particular position—there were, needless to say, no instruction manuals.
Although I’ve lived with the sensation for quite some time now, it is still nearly impossible to describe. The best objective description I can give is a tremendously heightened sensitivity to an energy flow. The energy is not great and yet you can sense it, not as a static thing but as a continuous and pulsating energy flow from all things solid. Gases and water don’t seem to be affected by the flow, although things living in the water, no matter how tiny, possess it.
The energy itself is of the same sort—that is, there’s no difference between a flow from a blade of grass, a person, and the insects—and yet the patterns that it forms are unique. You can tell one blade of grass from another, a person from some other large creature; you even get different patterns from the billions of microbes we all carry inside us.
I was still experimenting when the stranger arrived in our little village. He’d apparently been there most of the day, walking around to different work parties and details, but hadn’t yet reached mine. Early in the evening I finally saw him, relaxing in the common and eating some fruit. He wore a toga of shiny white that seemed to ripple with his every move and a pair of finely crafted sandals that marked him as a man of extreme power. Yet he was sitting there at ease, eating with and socializing with us mere pawns. He was an elderly man, with a fine-lined face and carefully trimmed gray beard, but he was balding badly both in front, where only a widow’s peak remained, and around the top of his head. He looked thin and trim, however, and was in good physical condition, as would be expected. His age could not be guessed, but he would have to have been at least in his seventies, perhaps years older.
For a fleeting moment the idea entered my naturally suspicious head that this might be Lord Marek Kreegan himself. Why he’d show up here at this particular time, however, was a mystery that pushed coincidence to the limit. Besides, Kreegan would be of standard height and build, as all the other people of the civilized worlds and I had been. This man seemed a bit too short and too broad to fit into that absolute category.
It was interesting to see the pawns’ reaction to him. While they would not even address a supervisor and would treat such a person with abject servility, they freely approached this man and chatted with him, almost as equals. I found Ti and asked her who he was.
“He is Father Bronz,” she told me.
“Well? What’s that mean?” I responded, a little irritated. “Who and what is a Father Bronz?”
“He is a Master,” she responded, as if that explained everything when all it did was state the obvious.
“I know that,” I pressed bravely on, “but I’ve never seen pawns be so casual with anybody with the power before. They even steer a little clear of you because of your reputation. I mean, is he from the castle? Does he work for the Boss or the Duke or what?”