Four Lords of Diamond - Book 1 by Jack L. Chalker Page B

been able to do the real work to find out, but whatever it needed other than you was found only in the Warden system. Whatever it was wasn't in the air, because shuttles ran between the worlds of the Diamond and in them you breathed the purified, mechanically produced stuff with no ill effect. It wasn't in the food, either. They'd checked that. It was possible for one of the Warden people to live comfortably on synthetics in a totally isolated lab such as a planetary space station. But get too far away, even with Warden food and Warden ah-, and it died; and since it had modified your cells to make itself at home, and those cells depended on the organism to keep working properly, you died, too —painfully and slowly, in horrible agony. That distance was roughly a quarter of a light-year from the sun, which explained the location of the base ship.
    All four worlds were more than climatologically different, too. The organism was consistent in what it did to you on each planet, but—possibly because of distance from the sun, since that seemed to be the determining factor in its life—it did different things to you depending on which world you were first exposed to it, and whatever it did stuck in just that fashion even if you went to a different world of the Diamond.
    The organism seemed somehow to be vaguely telepathic in some way, although nobody explained how. It certainly wasn't an intelligent organism; at least it always behaved predictably. Still, most of the changes seemed to involve the colony in one person affecting the colony in another—or others. You provided the conscious control, if you could, and that determined who bossed whom. A pretty simple system, even if nobody had yet been able to explain it.
    As for Lilith, all I would remember was that it was some sort of Garden of Eden. I cursed again not having been fed the proper programming to make me fully prepared. Learning the ropes there would take time, possibly a lot of it.
    About a day and a half—five meals—after I'd arrived at the base ship, a lurching and a lot of banging around forced me to the cot and made me slightly seasick. Still, I wasn't disappointed. No doubt they were making up the consignments and readying for the in-system drop of these cells. I faced the idea with mixed emotions. On the one hand, I wanted desperately to be out of this little box, which provided nothing but endless, terrible boredom. On the other, when I next emerged from the box it would be into a much larger and probably prettier box—Lilith itself, no less a cell for being an entire planet. And what it would make up for in diversion, challenge, excitement, or whatever, it would also be, unlike this box, very, very final.
    Shortly after the banging about started, it stopped again, and after a short, expectant pause, I again felt a vibration indicating movement—much more' pronounced than before. Either I was on a much smaller vessel or located nearer the drives. Whatever, it took another four interminable days, twelve meals, to reach our destination. Long, certainly—but also fast for a sublight carrier, probably a modified and totally automated freighter. The vibration stopped and I knew we were in orbit. Again I had that dual feeling of being both trapped and exhilarated.
    There was a crackling sound, whereupon a speaker I'd never even known was there suddenly came to life. Attention, all prisoners! it commanded, its voice a metallic parody of a man's baritone. We have achieved orbit around the planet Lilith in the Warden system, it continued, telling me nothing I didn't know but probably informing the others, however many there were, for the first time. I could understand what they must be going through, considering my own feelings. A hundred times mine, probably, since at least I was going in with my eyes open even if no more voluntarily than they. I wondered for a fleeting instant about Lord Kreegan. He had gone in voluntarily, the only one I ever knew about. I