Serpent's Reach (19 page)

The temperature was uncomfortably high. She wandered through the reception room and the dining room and located the house comp, found it already activated. That was likely the doing of the police, but the potential hazard worried her. With proper staff she would. have insisted on a checkout; as it was, she stripped off her cloak and set to work herself, searching for the most likely forms of tampering, first visually and then otherwise. At last she keyed in the air-conditioning.

Failing immediate catastrophe, feeling the waft of cold air from the ducts, she sat down, assured that she could see the door in the reflection of the screen, and ran through the standard house programs from the list conveniently posted by the terminal…called up a floor plan, found the usual security system, passive alarm, nothing of personal hazard: betas would not dare.

Then she keyed in citycomp, pulled Merek Eln’s ID from her belt and started inquiries. The deaths were already recorded: someone’s extreme efficiency. The property reverted to ITAK; the Eln-Kests had not used their license-for-one-child, and while Parn Kest had living relatives, they were not entitled: the house had been in Eln’s name. A keyed request purchased the property entire, on her credit.

Human officials, she reflected, might be mildly surprised when citycomp and ITAK records turned that up in the morning. And Parn Kest’s effects… Merek Eln’s too…could be shipped to the relatives as soon as it was certain there was no information to be had from them It was the least courtesy due.

Max and Merry came noisily downstairs, rambled about the lower floor and the garage looking for security faults, finally reported negative.

She turned and looked at them. They seemed tired—might be hungry as well. “Inventory shows canned goods in the kitchen stores. Azi quarters are out across the garden, kitchen out there too. Does that suit you?”

They nodded placidly. She sent them away, and began reckoning time-changes. She and Jim had missed lunch and; she figured, supper, by several hours.

That accounted for some of the tremor in her muscles, she decided, and wandered off to join Max and Merry in their search of kitchen storage. Warrior could make do with sugared water, a treat it would actually relish; Warrior would also, with its peculiar capacities, assure that they were not poisoned.

Jim ate, sparingly and in silence, and showed some relief. It was the first meal he had kept down all day. She noted a shadow about his eyes and a distracted look, much as the crew of the
Jewel
had had at the last.

Notwithstanding, he would have cleared the dishes after…his own notion or unbreakable habit, she was not certain. “Leave it,” she said. He would not have come upstairs with her, but she stopped and told him to.

Second door to the right atop the stairs, the main bedroom: Jim had set everything there, a delightful room even to a Kontrin’s eye, airy furniture, all white and pale green. There was a huge skylight, a bubble rain-spotted and showing the lightnings overhead.

“Dangerous,” she said, and not because of the lightnings.

“There are shields,” he offered, indicating a switch.

“Leave it. We wouldn’t be safe from a Kontrin assassin, but we probably will from the talent Istra could summon on short notice. Let’s only hope none of the Family has been energetic enough to precede me here. Where’s your luggage?”

“Hall,” he said faintly.

“Well, bring it in.”

He did so, and set about unpacking his own things with a general air of distress. She recalled him in the terminal, frozen, with the gun locked in his hands. The remarkable thing was that he had had the inclination to seize it in the first place…the dead guard, she reckoned, and opportunity and sheer desperation.

He finished, put his case in the closet and stood there by the door, facing her.

“Are you all right?” she asked. “Warrior’s outside. Nothing will get past it. No reason to worry on that account.”

He nodded slowly, in that. perplexed manner he had when he was out of his depth.

“That skylight—doesn’t bother you, does it?” The thought struck her that it might, for he was not accustomed to worlds and weather.

He shook his head in the same fashion.

She put her hand on his shoulder, a gesture of comfort as much as other feeling; he touched her in return, and she looked into his face this time cold sober, in stark light. The tattoo was evident. The eyes…remained distracted, perplexed. The expression was lacking.

His hand fell when she did not respond, and even then the expression did not vary. He was capable of physical pleasure—more than capable. He felt—at least approval or the lack of it. He suffered shocks…and tried to go on responding, as now, when a beta or Kontrin would have acknowledged distress.

“You did well,” she said deliberately, watched the response, a little touch of relief.

Limited sensitivity. Suspicion washed over her, answers she did not want. He made appropriate responses, human responses, answered to affection. Some azi could not; likely Max and Merry were too dull for it. But even Jim, she thought suddenly, did not react to stress as a born-man might. She touched him; he touched her. But the responses might as easily be simple tropisms, like turning the face to sunlight, or extending cold hands to warmth. To be approved was better than to be disapproved.

Lia too. Even Lia. Not love, but programs. Psych-sets, less skilfully done than the betas’ own.

Beta revenge
, she thought, sick to the heart of her.
A grand joke, that we roll learn to love them when we’re children
.

She hated, for that moment, thoroughly, and touched Jim’s face and did not let it show.

And when she was lying with the azi’s warmth against her, in Merek Eln’s huge bed, she found him—all illusions laid aside—simply a comfortable presence. He was more at case with her than he had been the first night, an incredible single night ago, on the
Jewel
; he persisted in seeking closeness to her, even deep in sleep, and the fact touched her. Perhaps, whatever he felt, she was his security; and whatever his limitations, he was there, alive—full of, if not genuine humanity, at least comfortable tropisms…someone to talk to, a mind off which her thoughts could reflect, a solidity in the dark.

It stopped here; everything stopped here, at the Edge. She lay on her back staring up, her arm intertwined with Jim’s. The storm had passed and the stars were clear in the skylight: Achernar’s burning eye and all, all the other little lights. The loneliness of the Reach oppressed her as it never had. The day crowded in on her, the Outsider ship ghosting past them in the morning, the presence of them in the house.

What’s out there
, she wondered,
where men never changed? Or do we all…change?

Perspective shifted treacherously, as if the sky were downward, and she jerked. Jim half-wakened, stirred. “Hush,” she said. “Sleep.” And he did so, head against her, seeking warmth.

Tropism.

We created the betas, built all their beliefs, but they refused to live us we made them; they had to have azi. They created them, they cripple them, to make themselves whole by comparison. Of what did we rob the betas?

Of what they take from the azi?

She rubbed at Jim’s shoulder and wakened him deliberately. He blinked at her in the starlight. “Jim, was there another azi on the
Jewel
, more than one, perhaps, that you would have liked to have here with you?”

He blinked rapidly, perplexed. “No.”

“Are you trying to protect them?”

“No.”

“There was none, no friend, no—companion, male or female?”

“No.”

She considered that desolation a moment, that was as great as her own. “Enemy?”

“No.”

“You were, what, four years on that ship, and never had either friend or enemy?”

“No.” A placid no, a calm and quiet no, a little puzzled.

She took it for truth, and smoothed his hair aside as Lia had done with her when she was a child, in Kethiuy.

She at least…had enemies left.

Jim—had nothing. He and the majat azi, the naked creatures moving with will-o’-the-wisp lights through the tunnels of the hive—were full brothers, no more nor less human.

“I am blue-hive,” she whispered to him, moved to things she had never said to any human. “Of the four selves of majat…the gentlest, but majat for all that. Sul sept is dead; Meth-maren House is dead. Assassins. I’m blue-hive. That’s what I have left.

“There was an old man…seven hundred years old. He’d seen Istra, seen the Edge, where Kontrin won’t go. Majat came here to live, long ago, but Kontrin wouldn’t, only he. And I.” She traced the line of his arm, pleased by its angularity, mentally elsewhere. “Nineteen years ago some limits were readjusted; and do you know, they’ve never been redone. Someone’s taken great care that all that not be redone.

“Nineteen years. I’ve lived on every hive-world of the Reach. I’ve caused the Family a minimum of difficulty. Not from love, not from love, you understand. Ah, no. There’s an old woman in Council. Her name is Moth. She’s not dictator in name, but she is. And she doesn’t trouble me. She does the nothing she always preferred. And the things let loose nineteen years ago—have all come of age.

“The Houses are waiting. Waiting all this time. Moth will die, one of these days. Then the scramble for power, as the Reach has never seen it.”

“Sera—”

“Dangerous listening, yes. Don’t call me that. And you have sense enough to keep quiet, don’t you? The azi down in the azi quarters…are not to be… Never confide in them. Even Warriors knows the difference, knowing you were with me before they were. No, trust Warrior if ever you must trust anything; it can’t tell your face from that of any other human, but hail it blue-hive and give it taste or touch, it or any blue. I’ll show you tomorrow, show you how to tell the hive-markings apart. You must learn that and show Max and Merry. And if there’s ever any doubt of a majat kill it. I mean it. Death is a minor thing to them. Warrior—always comes back. Only humans don’t.”

“Why—” From Jim, question was a rarity. “Why did they attack us at the port?”

“I don’t know. I think they wanted Warrior.”

“Why?”

“Two questions in sequence. Delightful. You’re recovering your balance.”

“Sera?”

“Raen.” She struck him lightly with her fist, an excess of hope. “My name is Raen; call me Raen. You can manage that. You were entirely wasted on the
Jewel
. Handling of arms: everything that pair downstairs can do; and anything else, anything else. You can learn it. You’re not incapable of learning. Go back to sleep.”

He did not, but lay to this side and that, and finally settled again when she rested her head against his shoulder.

Security.

That, she reckoned, was somewhat mutual.

The Mother of Istra blue took taste, and heaved herself back, mandibles working. Drones soothed Her, singing in their high voices. She ceased, for a moment, to produce new lives.

“Other-hive.” She breathed, and the walls of the Chamber vibrated with the low sound. “Blue-hive. Blue-hive Kontrin. Meth-maren of Cerdin. Kethiuy.”

The Drones moved closer, touched. She bowed and offered taste to the foremost, and it to the next, while She gave to a third. Like the motion of wind through grass it passed, and the song grew in its wake. An impulse extraordinarily powerful went out from them; and all through the Hill, activity slowed. Workers and Warriors turned wherever they were, oriented themselves to the Chamber.

In the egg-chamber, frightened Workers, sensing vague alarm, began building a seal for the shafts. Theirs was the only activity. Mother lowered Her head and reached out for the reporting Warrior yet again; and Warrior, knowing fear of Mother for the first time in its existence, locked a second time into Mother’s chemistry, suffering the reactions of Her body as the messages swirled through Her fluids.

Others crowded close, seeking understanding.

They could not interpret fully. Each understood after its own kind.

There was impression of a flow of chemistry which had begun many cycles ago, a tiny taste of Cerdin, homeworld. The Mind Remembered. There had been a small hill. The memory went back before there were humans, salt-tasting, quick-perishing; before the little lake had filled; before the hill itself had stood. There were ages, and depths. The Mind reeled in ecstasy, the reinforcement of this ancient memory. There were partings, queens born of eggs ship-sent, hives hurled out to the unseen stars, over distances the Mind comprehended only when majat eyes beheld a new heat source in the heavens, different in pattern and timing and intensity, only when majat calculations reckoned angles and distances and an impression of complexities beyond the comprehension of the Mind, mysticism alien to majat processes.

Vastness, and dark, and cold.

Where the Mind was not.

Death.

At last the Mind had something by which to comprehend death, and finitude of worlds, and time before and after itself. It staggered in such comprehensions, and embraced abstracts.

Finite time, as humans measured it, suddenly acquired meaning.

The Mind understood.

Kalind-mind. There was dazzling taste of it, which had tasted of Andra, and of Meron, which had tasted of Cerdin, a wave starting at Cerdin and rippling outward: violence, and enmity. Destruction. Cerdin. Destruction.

The motion in the hive utterly ceased. Even the egg-tenders froze, paralysed in the enormity of the vision.

Growth since. Growth, denying death.

Mind reached outward, where there was no contact, for the distances were too far, and synthesis was impossible. There was only the longing, a stirring in the chemistries of the hive.

“Hazard,” a Warrior complained, having tasted Kontrin presence, and the slaughter of blues, the murders of messengers.

It could comprehend nothing more; but the hive closed the more tightly.

“She—” Mother began, interpreting across the barriers of type, which was queen-function, while chemistries meshed on other levels, “she is Meth-maren hive. She
is
the hive. She is Kethiuy. Her Workers are late-come, gathered from strange hives. Azi. She tastes of danger, yess. Great hazard, but not hostile to blues. She preserved us the messenger of Kalind. She was on Meron, and Andra; her taste is in those memories. She was
within
the Hill on Cerdin. She has patterned with Warriors, against majat, against humans. Istra reds…taste of hate of her. Cerdin-taste runs in red-memory, taste of humans and death of blues. Great slaughter. Yess. But the entity Raen Meth-maren is blue-hive Kontrin. She has been part of the Mind of Cerdin.”