The Innsmouth Heritage and Other Sequels (19 page)

The scar on Adam’s midriff, where his rib had been removed, began to ache. That, too, was the legacy of a fault; he had been lonely when his true counterpart had been driven out of the garden, and had asked the Lord God for a new wife. The Lord God had obliged, but not without a certain resentment, reflected in the rude manner in which the replacement had been achieved. Adam decided that he should have known that the woman was essentially untrustworthy, and that the Lord God must certainly have known it. Within the garden, Adam had never had cause to doubt the Lord God’s generosity, nor His forgiveness, but outside the garden, everything seemed doubtful.

As soon as Adam caught sight of the fields of corn he knew what they were. There had been no fields in the garden, but the Lord God had cursed him “to till the ground from whence he was taken” and the curse would have been impotent had he not been informed as to the nature of tillage. He was, however, surprised to find that some of the land outside the garden was already under cultivation. There had been little sense of the passage of time in the garden, where urgency and boredom were equally unknown, so Adam had no idea how many days and nights had elapsed since Lilith had been expelled. He could not imagine, though, that she had been able to sow a single cornfield unaided, let alone the dozens he could see.

It was evening by the time he reached the fields. There was no one working in them, but he could see a village of reed huts, and the flickering blaze of a cooking-fire. It was obvious that this was a considerable settlement, whose population must be counted in dozens.

Fearful as he was, Adam went directly to the village. He was only slightly reassured to discover that many of its inhabitants were similar in appearance to himself, and many of the rest similar to the woman, although some were much smaller in stature. Their sun-weathered skins were darker in hue and their clothing was more neatly tailored than the coat of animal-hides that the Lord God had given him. He had not plucked up the courage to speak to them before they began to crowd around him suspiciously. “Who are you?” their spokesman asked. “What do you want here?”

“My name is Adam,” Adam said. After the briefest of pauses, he added: “I’m looking for Lilith.”

The hostile attitudes of the villagers immediately relented. “We were asked to watch for you,” his interrogator said. “Come this way.”

Adam was taken to the centre of the village, to the largest of the reed huts that comprised it. As he approached with his escort, two individuals came out of the hut to greet him. One was Lilith. The other was not unlike himself in his physical form, but Adam sensed that he was not really a man. Within the garden, appearances had never been deceptive, but he was not in the garden now.

“I thought you would come after me long ago,” Lilith said to him. “At first, I assumed that you’d follow me of your own accord. Then I thought that it surely wouldn’t take the Lord God long to find fault with you. Then I began to wonder...but you’re here now, and I’m glad to see you.”

“Who’s he?” Adam asked, staring at Lilith’s companion.

“This is Azazel,” Lilith said. “He’s a demon. He’s not such a powerful creator as the Lord God, but tilling the ground isn’t a solitary occupation; in order for his curse to work, the Lord God either had to make more humans himself, or give permission for someone else to do it. He gave permission—I suppose it seemed simpler in the short run, although I can already foresee complications. So you finally got around to trying the forbidden fruit?”

“It wasn’t my fault,” Adam was quick to say.

“It hardly matters,” Lilith said. “It’s not so bad out here—the fruit of the tree of life is the bitterest in Eden, but by far the most nourishing.”

“It wasn’t that sort of forbidden fruit I ate,” Adam said. “I tasted the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. It wasn’t bitter, although it did have a very odd aftertaste.”

“Maybe that’s for the best,” Lilith said. “I’ve tasted one and you’ve tasted the other, so we’ll have the benefit of both now.”

“It was the woman who made me do it,” Adam said, defensively. “The serpent tempted her and she tempted me.”

“Who’s
the woman?”

“I was lonely without you,” Adam explained. “I asked the Lord God to make me a replacement.”

The only jealousy and anger within the garden had been the Lord God’s. Lilith’s jealousy and anger were not quite as terrifying to behold as the Lord God’s, but they did not seem trivial to poor Adam.

“I didn’t know where you’d gone,” he protested, feebly. “The Lord God wouldn’t tell me why he got rid of you. I didn’t know you’d eaten forbidden fruit. You didn’t try to tempt me the way the woman did.”

Lilith had calmed down while he was speaking, but Adam could not imagine that it was the effect of his excuses. Azazel had put a hand on her arm, and the demon’s touch appeared to have a considerable soothing effect.

“The replacement,” Lilith observed, witheringly, “was evidently adequate, for a while.”

Within the garden, Adam had never thought to compare the woman with Lilith, but he could hardly help doing so now. Lilith, his true counterpart, was very like him in every respect save one, but the woman had been shorter, softer and more in need of demonstrations of affection. While Lilith had been out of sight and out of mind, Adam had not spared a thought for those differences, but now that Lilith was standing in front of him he was forced to weigh them up. As soon as he focused his thoughts on the problem, he realized that Lilith and the woman were really very different. He wasn’t sure which of them he preferred—but it seemed only natural, in the circumstances, that Lilith’s advantages should leap more readily to the eye.

Adam looked Lilith up and down—and then he looked at Azazel. Azazel was taller than Adam, considerably more muscular, and his expression was suggestive of great intelligence, if not of wisdom. Perhaps, Adam thought, Lilith had found her true soulmate now—in which case, he might have done better to wait by the garden, to see whether she would be driven out in her turn.

“I don’t know what happened to the woman,” Adam said, feebly. “I would have waited outside the garden, but He posted angels there, and a flaming sword that moved in a threatening manner. It seemed wisest to come away. I see that there are some of the woman’s kind here, though, who have already taken to motherhood without waiting to be cursed. Azazel seems to have mimicked the Lord God’s second creation rather than his first.”

Lilith was about to speak again when Azazel squeezed her arm. “You look tired and hungry, Adam,” he said. “Would you like to come in to rest, and have a bite to eat? I’m sure you’re thirsty too. We have a new drink here, which we prefer to water. It’s a trifle bitter, but I think you might like the after-effects.”

* * * *

Once Adam had been sent on his way, Eve faced up to Lord God’s further judgment. She suspected that there might be additional punishments yet to be visited upon her. She had eaten far more of the fruit than Adam, and its digestion had ensured that she was all too well aware of the awful extent of her fault.

“Adam won’t wait for you outside the garden,” the Lord God said, spitefully. “He blames you for his expulsion. He wants to get away.”

“So he should,” Eve lamented, painfully gripped by her newfound knowledge of good and evil. “It was all my fault. The serpent beguiled me, but it was me who beguiled Adam. Having fallen prey to temptation myself, I should have know better than to turn temptress—but I hadn’t had time to digest the fruit. Even so, I deserve to bear children in sorrow and to have my husband to rule over me. I admit that.”

The Lord God did not respond immediately. He was much calmer now, having already vented the greater part of his sudden wrath. While she waited, Eve wondered why the garden looked so much lovelier now than it ever had before. It had always been lovely, but it was not until now that she had realized how very lovely it was.

“I suppose it was as much my fault as yours,” the Lord God said, eventually, with a sigh. “I created you, after all, and deliberately made you weaker of will than his first wife so that you wouldn’t rebel of your own accord. I made the serpent too, and Adam. Mind you, I couldn’t have foreseen this. Omniscience only extends as far as things that can be known, and once you’ve created agents with free will, the future become unknowable, at least to the extent that it depends on the exercise of that free will. Freedom has to include the freedom to rebel—not to mention the freedom to be stupid and reckless. Once you create free will, you have to expect the unexpected.”

“I’m sorry,” Eve said. “I wasn’t really rebelling, you know.”

“I know,” the Lord God admitted. “You were being stupid and reckless—or perhaps just curious. Did you like the fruit?”

“It wasn’t bitter,” Eve said, judiciously, “but it has a strange aftertaste. I’m not sure that I do.”

“Knowledge of good and evil is awkward nourishment,” the Lord God observed. “The garden wouldn’t have been complete without the tree, though, any more than it would have been complete without the tree of life. Creation requires coherency; everything a Creator improvises on a whim has extensive corollaries, including unexpected ones. A Creator has to compromise with the logical consequences of His intentions. He can establish the raw materials of an entire universe with a momentary outburst inspiration, but once that’s done, matters of order and detail unfold of their own accord. At first I thought I could keep an entire planet under total control, but in the end I had to settle for cultivating one little garden...and it didn’t take long for that to go awry.”

“I’m sorry,” Eve said, again, expressing sympathy rather than apologizing—but she knew that the sympathy was bound to ring false, given that she had no personal experience of the problems of creativity.

“So am I,” said the Lord God, “but what’s done can’t be undone. Even an omnipotent God can’t change the past; that’s another corollary of bringing order and detail out of chaos and nebulosity. If I let you stay, it’s no use asking me to make you a new husband to replace Adam; I’ve already tried that kind of move. Those who can’t learn from their mistakes are condemned to repeat them, first as tragedy then as farce. I can tolerate my Creation taking a tragic turn, but if it turns farcical, that might be too much to bear. Now that you’ve digested the knowledge of good and evil, what do you think I ought to do with you?”

Eve thought about the curses that had already been imposed on her, and those that had been on the serpent and Adam. She looked around at the garden, savoring its loveliness again, but knew as she did so that the loveliness was a lie. The garden’s beauty was a beguiling mask, a product of excessively careful artifice. Without the Lord God’s constant attention and continual hard work, the garden couldn’t sustain itself. It would return to wilderness soon enough. To live in the garden, she would have to live with the Lord God, obedient to his rules and whims alike.

“I ought to go after Adam,” she said, eventually, wondering how much room she had for negotiation with regard to the term of her expulsion. “I ought to try to make it up to him, to the extent that I can. I’d like to be able to help him, and to comfort him, if that’s possible.”

“It might not be,” the Lord God observed. “He’s bound to meet up with Lilith.”

“Who’s Lilith?” Eve asked. Adam had never mentioned the name to her; she had no idea that she was Adam’s second wife.

“I created humankind like every other species, in male and female versions,” the Lord God told her. “It seemed somehow appropriate to follow the pattern, although I really should have made an exception. The whole point of making two of every other animal was that the worldly members of the species could multiply once Adam had named their archetypes, but Adam and Lilith weren’t supposed to have any worldly equivalents, in the beginning. They were supposed to provide me with company in the garden—that’s why I gave them intellect as well as free will. I thought I needed more than one, so I made two—but I shouldn’t have made them different sexes. It was an unnecessary complication. I had a second chance once Lilith had gone, but Adam demanded another wife, not another man, and I felt obliged to humor him. Maybe I didn’t put my heart into the job. It’s surprisingly easy for a creator to become a trifle resentful of his own creations. That’s why I thought it might be a good idea to delegate some of the responsibility...but I’m not so sure about the way that’s turning out, either.”

“Are you saying that Adam’s back with his first wife,” Eve said, grasping the essentials of the argument although some of the detail evaded her. “Does that mean that I’ll have to find some other husband to rule over me?” It wasn’t a pleasant thought, and felt rather like a curse in its own right.

“Not necessarily,” the Lord God said. “Lilith’s been with Azazel for some time, and he’s even trickier than the serpent. There’s no telling what he might want or do.”