The Innsmouth Heritage and Other Sequels (20 page)

“Who’s Azazel?” Eve asked.

“A demon. In their native form, or rather formlessness, they’re free-floating entities of pure will, but they can take on material forms if they so desire. I thought it would be useful, or at least interesting, to have creatures around who could experiment with new possibilities on my behalf, but they developed their own agendas. At present, Azazel has taken on manlike form. He’ll get bored with it soon enough, but, for some time now, he’s been busy creating and shaping the kind of community that Lilith and Adam—and you, for that matter—will need if humans are to survive and thrive outside the garden.”

Eve understood that if she were to be driven out of the garden, she too would need a community if she were to survive, let alone thrive, but the more she heard about Lilith and Azazel the less sure she was that she wanted to go after Adam. She also understood why the Lord God was so reluctant to subject her to the same fate as Adam now that He’d calmed down, even though He’d clearly intended her to share his punishment when He’d first started strewing curses around. The Lord God still needed intellectual companionship of some sort, perhaps even intellectual challenge. He had the option of raising the consciousness of some or all of the angels, but if he did that, they would acquire the same potential for rebellion as human beings and demons, and perhaps the same penchant. Eve realized that the Lord God was hesitating, wondering whether it might not be better to stick with the adversary he knew than to start creating new ones.

Eve wasn’t at all sure that she wanted to provide the Lord God with intellectual companionship and challenge, until the time came when He lost His temper again and lashed out. It might, she thought, be better to come to some other arrangement while He was calm and relatively contrite. The garden was full of exquisite scents, but she knew now that perfume was direly unreliable as a guide to virtue.

“I really do think I ought to share Adam’s fate,” she eventually decided, figuring that it probably was better to cleave to the adversary she knew, if she could. “It was my fault, after all. I’d like to be able to make things easier for him, if I can. I know you can’t take back what you said about bearing children in sorrow and my husband ruling over me, but you could make some compensating amendments, if you were so minded.”

“That’s the fruit talking,” the Lord God said, with a sigh. “I told you to leave it alone.”

* * * *

“So where do we stand?” Adam asked, when he and Lilith were finally alone in the reed hut. “It seems that you’ve grown tired of waiting for me, and set up home with Azazel.” The hut was feebly lit by a tallow candle, and it was haunted by a humid animal stink that turned his stomach, but at least its walls sheltered his sensitive skin from the wind, and hid him from the inquisitive eyes of Azazel’s creations.

“Azazel has done a great deal for us,” Lilith told him. “He’s a mine of information about tillage and all manner of crafts. We don’t have much in the way of tools as yet, but he’s set us on a progressive road and given us the means to follow it. He’s not going to stick around, though. He’s a demon—he can’t be content to maintain human form for long, or to take an interest in human beings. He has too much potential in him. He can’t even be content with one world for very long.”

“Are there other worlds?” Adam asked.

“More than you can imagine. Every star in the sky is a sun, with planets of its own, and the stars that the human eye can see are only an infinitesimal fraction of their number. The Lord God’s attention is focused here, at least for the time being, but there are trillions of other worlds. Azazel is learning while he teaches us, and he’ll doubtless put his education to good use elsewhere when he gets the urge to move on.”

“And he won’t take you with him?” Adam said.

The expression on Lilith’s face told Adam that he’d hit a slightly sore point. No, Lilith didn’t—couldn’t—believe that Azazel would take her with him when he got the urge to go, but she wanted to believe that he might, because she wanted to go. “He’s a demon,” was all that Lilith actually said.

“What nourishment did you obtain from the other forbidden fruit?” Adam asked, curiously. “When the Lord God drove me out of Eden, he said that I’d live forever if I ate it—but I’d always assumed that I’d live forever. Everything in the garden lives forever.” “Nothing stays the same forever, in the garden or out of it,” Lilith told him. “The fruit of the tree of life slows down the process of change, but can’t prevent it. I’ll be around for a very long time—far longer than you, I dare say—but not forever. I’ll die one day, and I’ll change in the meantime, but very slowly. You’ll grow old and die before I have a single wrinkle, and a hundred generations of your descendants will perish before I grow old, but the difference is one of degree, not of kind. I could travel with Azazel, if he’d let me, even though he can travel no faster than the speed of light....” She stopped, unwilling to give fuller expression to her faint hope. In the sickly candlelight, her beautiful face took on a sinister tint.

“I don’t know what’s involved in
growing old
, or
dying
,” Adam said—but realized, as he spoke the words, that it was a lie. He had tasted the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, if only slightly, and he did now have an inkling of what it would mean to grow old, and to die. The awareness was vague and fugitive, but undeniable. He wondered whether Lilith, having tasted the fruit of the tree of life, could possibly know how precious life now seemed to a man of his mortal kind.

“The world is an uncomfortable place,” Lilith told him, with a deliberate harshness in her voice, “no matter what duration your existence has within it—but it’s not without its rewards.”

“I know,” Adam admitted. “There’s nothing like an awareness of evil to tutor intelligence in the value of good. The aftertaste of the fruit I ate is odd, but it’s not horrific. Life outside the garden is possible; I understand that. The Lord God knew that I would when he cursed me. He drove me out, but he gave me better clothes first. He had to know that I’d find you. Perhaps that’s why he didn’t send Eve out with me.”

“Perhaps it is,” said Lilith, dubiously. “Will she follow you, do you think, if she has the choice?”

“I don’t know,” Adam admitted. “I haven’t thought too much about it, because I don’t suppose she’ll be given the choice. Whether she follows me or not it will be at the Lord God’s command, in answer to his curse.”

Outside, in the darkness, a lion roared. Another answered. Perhaps, Adam thought, the two were mates—and as he thought it, the knowledge popped into his head that male lions had more than one mate. Perhaps, he thought, humans might aspire to the condition of lions.

“But if she
did
have the choice,” Lilith persisted, “would she follow you? And if she were to follow you, what would she do if she found us together?”

“I don’t know,” Adam said, a little more aggressively than before. “I don’t even know what I would do. I don’t even know what I want.” He bit his tongue as soon as he’d said it, because he was anxious as well was confused. He knew that his uncertainty might be no more than an after-effect of having tasted the forbidden fruit—but it seemed to him that the bitter liquid that Azazel had given him to drink, instead of water, was having after-effects too. It was Azazel’s potion that was making him garrulous and dizzy.

“That’s an enviable position to be in,” Lilith said. She said no more, but it was obvious to Adam that she knew exactly what she wanted—and was almost sure that she could not achieve it.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “Perhaps we should have done as we were told, and left the trees in the centre of the garden alone.”

“It was only a matter of time,” Lilith said, with a sigh. She lowered hr head, so that her features were in shadow. “Sooner or later, it had to come to this. I should have tempted you myself, and avoided complications—but I wanted to take responsibility for my own actions, and I wanted you to take responsibility for yours. We can’t always foresee what the consequences of our actions will be...but that’s a good thing, isn’t it? Even the Lord God couldn’t tolerate a world in which everything was determined, from beginning to end.” An owl hooted in the distance, and another responded. The cries seemed plaintive and full of regret.

“I think I’d find the alternative more attractive,” Adam said, “if I too had eaten the fruit of the other tree.”

* * * *

Eve went in search of the serpent, which had gone into hiding. She finally found it cowering beneath the branches of the hedge that marked the garden’s boundary, close to one of the outflowing branches of the river. It wasn’t easy to strike up a conversation comfortably, now that the serpent had to lie upon the ground, and hadn’t yet got the knack of legless traction, but while it was still in the garden the serpent could still talk.

Rather than lie down herself, Eve picked up the serpent and draped it over a protruding branch at head height.

“Why did you do it?” she wanted to know. “What possible reason could you have had for bringing the Lord God’s wrath down upon all three of us?”

“I was trying to do you a favor,” the serpent said, coiling itself around the branch and trying unsuccessfully to move along it.

“How so?”

“It seemed to me that life might be enriched by the knowledge of good and evil—and when I tasted the fruit, I was convinced that I was right. The garden suddenly seemed so much lovelier than it had before. I wanted to share the experience. Perhaps I was hasty—I didn’t expect the aftertaste.”

“I can hardly complain about your desire to share the experience,” Eve conceded, “given that I felt exactly the same way—but why did you have to pick me to share it with?”

“I thought you might appreciate it more than most,” the serpent said. “You’re the smartest creature in the garden, after all.”

“Except for Adam,” Eve observed, dutifully.

The serpent hissed and flickered its forked tongue incredulously.

“I suppose life
is
enriched by the knowledge of good,” Eve admitted, “but the Lord God’s right about corollaries, isn’t he? The knowledge of good is also the knowledge of evil, which is anything but enrichment. Innocence was, at least, bliss. You lied, though, when you said that I’m not certain to die, because the knowledge of good and evil tells me that I surely shall. Why did you lie?”

“I didn’t intend to,” the serpent said, coiling itself more tightly around the branch as if possessed by a sudden fear of falling. “At least, I don’t think I intended to. The knowledge of good and evil makes us question our own motives, doesn’t it? Oh, that aftertaste ”

“You’re not helping,” Eve said.

“No, I’m not,” The serpent replied. “It’s strange how everything twists around itself when you have to move as I do. I could swallow my own tail if I wanted to, and devour myself from end to beginning. As surely as we shall all die, I dare say, we all tell lies.” The serpent gave up the struggle to control its motion and settled uncomfortably into stillness, with its beady eyes fixed on Eve’s. “It’s our nature,” the creature continued, yawning and displaying its poisonous fangs. “We should be proud of the opportunity, for it numbers among our freedoms, and is the foundation of our meager creativity. We’re never nearer to God than when we lie, and not so far away as we might think when we finally come to die. I think I’m getting the hang of this now. All that twisting and turning was making me dizzy. With a little more practice, you know, I might yet learn to make progress. Are you sure you should be talking to me, given that the Lord has seen fit to put enmity between us? If you’re hoping that he might let you stay in the garden a while longer, you might do better to avoid me.”

“I just wanted an explanation,” Eve told the serpent. “You tasted the fruit yourself, and you wanted to share the experience— no matter what the risk.”

“Perhaps I wanted to share the blame, too,” the serpent said, in a speculative tone. “Perhaps I wanted to lighten my own inevitable punishment by spreading the burden of guilt. Perhaps, having tasted the knowledge of good and evil, and seen how good the garden was, I wanted to sample a little evil too. It’s so difficult to be sure, once one starts looking inwards with one’s mind’s eye, isn’t it?”

“I never had any difficulty,” Eve said, “until....”

“Exactly,” said the serpent, when she left the sentence dangling. “I couldn’t have put it better myself, although I’d certainly have taken a more roundabout route. Do you think I’d poison myself, if I bit my own tongue? Do you really want to stay here, now that Adam’s gone? I’d appreciate the company, of course, but I doubt that I’ll be staying long myself. The Lord God has declared us enemies, and he’ll have to expel us for the curse to take effect. There’s no enmity in the garden.”