“Now,” Vola breathed, sounding slightly impressed, “put the chair back together again.”
That stopped me cold. Hell, that pattern was so complex it was almost unbelievable. I could undo it, of course, but to put it back—that was something else again.
Damned killjoy, I thought sourly. Until now it was so much fun to be a god.
“The next lesson,” she told me. “Power without knowledge or skill is always destructive. You can unmake with ease, but it takes a lot of study to build instead of destroy.”
“But how?” I cried in frustration. “How can I know how to build, to create?”
She laughed. “Could you have physically made that chair?” she asked me. “Could you have taken an axe, cut the right stalks to the right lengths, then bound them together physically to make such a thing?”
I thought about it. Could I? “No,” I had to respond. “I’m not a carpenter.”
“And that is the way of Lilith, as elsewhere,” she told me. “To use the power well in a specialized area is important but requires memorizing the proper patterns and then some practice. But we have an advantage here that those who do not have the power lack,” she went on, and I was aware she went to the door, stepped out, then came back in with an identical chair, placing it near the plant stalks in the corner. She stepped back.
“Look at the chair,” she ordered. “Be one with it. Know its pattern.”
I did, and it was far easier than last time now that I knew just what to look for.
“Now, using the chair as a model, put the other chair back together,” she instructed.
I frowned. Having just been pulled down to earth from godhood, I was now being ordered to elevate myself again.
“Is that possible?” I managed.
“It is if you are powerful enough,” she responded. “Supervisors can destroy and, to a limited extent, stabilize things they make. You have already shown yourself a Supervisor. But the supervisor, like the pawn, must build or physically make everything himself. A Master may do more. A Master may take the very elements that make something up and rearrange them to suit himself. Are you a Master, Cal Tremon? Can you be a Master?”
She was pushing, I realized, and I hesitated within myself before going further. We were beyond this lesson, I suspected, beyond whatever we were supposed to prove. Had I in fact done what Artur cautioned against—done what I was supposed to do too effortlessly, too well? Should I make this attempt she demanded of me?
The hell with it, I told myself. Let’s see just what I’m made of, whether the computer that selected me as the best person for the job knew its stuff. If I had the potential to be a Master, and I’d better, I wanted to know it. I’d spent too long marking time in the mud and the muck and I was impatient.
I stared at the chair again, saw its pattern, how it was bound up and tied together. Now I looked at the strange tubular plants growing where the other chair had been, and I again linked-with the Warden organism within them while trying not to lose the contact and, well, communion, with the chair. It was a tricky juggling act, since the molecular structure was the same for both and it was hard not to confuse them.
I ordered the Wardens in the plants to disunite once again, to break down as they had before, untying their current plant pattern. Keeping a mostly mental eye on them, I concentrated hard on the existing chair, the pattern, the way it was bound up and tied together.
There were a lot of false starts, a lot of confusion; at one point I almost had the chair dissolving instead of the plants recombining. I don’t know how long it took, but finally I succeeded. Two chairs stood there side by side, looking like twins from the same mass-produced, computer-controlled factory. I was sweating like mad and my head throbbed, but I had done it. Totally exhausted, I sank to the floor and gasped for breath. Vola, however, was more than pleased.
“I didn’t think I could do it,” I admitted, breathing as hard as if I had been lifting heavy stones.
“You are strong indeed, Cal Tremon,” she responded. “Very strong. Many of my past students have risen to be Masters, but only four have ever accomplished that exercise on one dosage. Most never are able to do it, and they remain supervisors. Many, like your Kronlon, could not even decompose the chair without killing the organisms within. Others, the bulk of them, manage that much—and no more. A very few can do the reassembly, but only four before —now five—have done it on the first try. It will become easier now each time you do it, although the pattern for such a chair is simple compared to most other things.”
“The other four,” I pressed, feeling completely washed out. “Anybody I know?”
She shrugged. “My nephew, Boss Tiel, for one,” she replied. “Also Dr. Pohn and Master Artur. And Marek Kreegan.”
My head came up. “What? You taught him?”
She nodded. “Long ago, of course. I was very young then, no more than sixteen or seventeen, but I was here, as I have always been. I am one of the rare ones, Tremon—a native of considerable power.”
That was interesting, but the information about Kreegan was more so. This explained why he returned here off and on and why he might permit a party in his honor here, of all places. Decades ago Kreegan, too, had been landed right here in Zeis Keep, had worked in those same fields, had been brought to the Castle—if there was a Castle in those days—and had been trained by a very young Vola. There was too much going on here for it to be chance. The Confederacy had arranged this, of course. Picked the man who most matched Kreegan’s old agent profile and sent him to the same places under the same conditions. I could see their thinking clearly now, and I had to admit there was nothing wrong with it.
“I’ll bet you made the chair the first time,” I said.
She grinned and winked at me.
“Tell me about Kreegan,” I pressed. “What’s he like?”
She stood up and stood back a moment, studying me. “A lot like you, Cal Tremon. An awful lot like you.” But she would say no more, leaving me to recover from my increasingly nasty headache as the effects of the drug wore off. Power was not without its price.
Chapter Twelve
Too Dangerous to Have Around
1 slept fitfully, wrestling with my headache, and awoke several times to the stillness around me. Several times I thought someone had come into the room, and once I had a strong feeling that at least one individual was actually in the room standing next to the bed, looking down at me in deep thought. A mysterious figure, a wraith, yet huge, looming, dark, indistinct, powerful—the stuff of which children’s nightmares are made, yet so compelling you hesitate to open your eyes and see if anybody’s really there. I cursed myself for this reaction, for giving in to primal fears I never even knew I had, but that terrible feeling remained. Finally I shamed myself into a peek, but the room was dark and apparently empty.
I was just about to turn over and try and get back to sleep when my ears picked up a slight sound near the door. I froze, half in caution and half hi—I was ashamed to admit to myself—fear of that nameless childish boogeyman.
“Tremon!” I heard a soft, female whisper.
Suddenly wide awake, I sat up cautiously. Fear had given way to puzzled curiosity now that another presence was tangible.
“Here!” I whispered.
A figure approached easily, not at all bothered by the darkness, and crouched down beside me. Although I could see only a slight form in the near-total darkness, I knew it was Vola.