Serpent's Reach

  “I have known you before, Warrior.”

  “Warrior memory,” it confirmed, and touched at her, touched at them both. “Meth-maren. Yesss. Not all Kontrin are friends. Trust you. Trust you, Kethiuy-queen.”

  A message had gotten through, eighteen, nineteen years ago. Warrior was with her. She touched it, her hand trembling.

  “We will be docking soon, Warrior. You must secure yourself for your own protection, and not trouble these beta humans. They are no harm, no harm to you.”

  “Yes,” it agreed. It reared up and looked about, head rotating half this way and half that. “Lost,” it complained. “Human-hive. Lost.”

  “Come,” she bade it, and brought it to a security panel, took its right chela and touched it to the emergency grip. It clenched it, secure then as a human safely belted. “You must stay here, Warrior. Let your skin dry. You’ve come high enough. Hold and wait, and harm no human who doesn’t threaten you. I’ll come for you when it’s time.”

  “Lost. This-unit must find Istra blue.”

  She stroked the sensitive side-pales, reckoning what a complex and fearful task Warrior faced, with no sun overhead, encased in one cold metal structure after another on its way. Majat did not easily comprehend that it was not all one sun and all one world. It had entrusted itself to betas for hire, hoping it was given right directions, set on the right ship; and blue messengers faced other obstacles, for Kontrin discouraged their travelling, and accidents befell one after the other. “I will guide you,” she told it. “Stay. Wait for me.”

  “Blue-hive,” it breathed, bowed under the pleasurable caress. Jaws clashed. “I wait. Yesss.”

  “My-chamber is twelfth door beyond the turning-left, as you face.”

  “This-unit guards.”

  “Yes,” she agreed, touched the pulps and drew back. The halls were cold; its processes were slow: it was all too willing now to sink down and rest. She thought of bidding it instead to her own suite, but there was Jim, who stood against the wall in a seeming state of shock. She soothed it a last time with her hand, turned away and took Jim with her, trusting it would be safe; indeed, no one would likely venture that ball, and if someone would have harmed it, of those aboard, that would have been done while it slept, helpless—not now.

  This messenger would get through.

  Is this the best action? the Mother of Cerdin had asked. Among majat there were no children, only eggs, and adults. Mother had asked a human for advice, and a child had answered: Mother had not known.

  It was wise that humans had been forbidden the hive, direct access to queens, to Drones, to the Mind. She abhorred now what she was doing, imprinting Warrior, while it was unadvised by any queen.

  That imprint would enter Istran blues, as truth, as true as Warrior’s legitimate message.

  It was her key to the hives.

  iv

  Jim exited the bath, whiter than he had been. He had lost the breakfast, and decided on another prolonged bath. Now, wrapped in a bathsheet, he flung himself belly-down on the wide bed and showed no disposition to move.

  Raen bent over him, touched his damp shoulders. “You’re sure you’re all right? You didn’t let it scratch you, did you?”

  “All right,” he echoed indistinctly. She decided that he was, and that the kindest thing she could do at the moment was to let him lie. He was shill overheated from the water. She pulled a corner of the bedclothes loose and flung over him, shrugged and walked back to her own business.

  She packed, settling everything with precision into bar several cases—scuffed and battered from much use, that luggage—but it contained so well the things she would not give up, from world to world. Most that she had bought on the ship she thought of leaving; and then she decided otherwise and simply jammed things in the more tightly: Istra did not promise their equal.

  To all of it she added the fifth and sixth cases, the deep. study apparatus and her precious tapes; she never trusted a strange apparatus, and the tapes—the tapes she kept much beyond their usefulness for casual knowledge, some for pleasure, some for sentiment, a few for reference. And there were half a dozen that Council would be aghast to know existed in duplicate; but Hal Ilit had admitted her within his security, and never seen beyond his own self-indulgence, his own vanity, not even in dying. She counted the tapes through, making sure everything was in its slot, nothing lost, nothing left to assumption.

  And she would have taken the refuge deepstudy offered for an hour now, having finished all else: it was the best antidote for unpleasantness. But Jim was there, and she did not mean to make the hit’s mistake: under deepstudy, one was utterly helpless, and she would not, would never accept sinking into that state in another’s presence, even an azi’s. She paced the suite in boredom, and finally, sure beyond doubt that there remained nothing to do, she sat down and keyed in the viewer, one of the entertainment channels.

  Beta dramas, trivial and depressing…worse, when one knew the deliberate psych-sets which had gone into training their lab-born ancestors: work to succeed, succeed to be idle, consume, consume, consume, consumption is status. It worked, economically: on it, the entire economy of the Reach thrived; but it made excruciatingly boring drama. She keyed in docking operations, and found more interest simply in watching the station spin nearer, the abstract shift of light and shadow across its planes.

  She heard a sound from the other room. Jim was up and about. She listened for him to head for the bath again in distress, but he did not, and she decided that he had recovered. She heard a great deal of walking back and forth, the crumbling of plastics, and finally the click of a suitcase closing. She looked round the side of the chair and saw him, dressed in conservative street clothes, setting his case beside her several.

  He could indeed have been beta, or even Kontrin: he was tall. But he was a little too fair; and there was the minute tattoo beneath the right eye.

  “You look very fine, Jim.”

  He glanced down, seeming embarrassed. “I thank you, sera.”

  “Formalities are hardly appropriate in private.” She spun the chair about from the viewer and looked up at him. “You’re all right, then.”

  He nodded. “I’m sorry,” he said almost inaudibly.

  “You didn’t panic; you stood your ground. Sit down.”

  He did so, on the bench against the wall, still slightly pale.

  “Meth-maren,” she said, “is not a well-loved name among Kontrin. And sooner or later someone will make an attempt on my life.” She opened her right hand, palm down. “The chitin grafted there is blue-hive; blue-hive and the Meth-marens met a common misfortune two decades ago. Warrior and I have something in common, you see. And listen to me: I once had a few azi in my employ. Somehow a gate was left unlocked and red-hive majat got in. I sleep lightly. The azi didn’t. The room was no pretty sight, I may tell you. But an azi who would walk with me out there into the hall…might have been of some use to me that night.”

  “On the ship—” He always spoke in a hushed voice, and the more so now. “We have security procedures. I understand them.”

  “Do they teach you about self-defense?”

  A slight shake of the bead.

  “They just tell you about locks and accesses and fire procedures.”

  A diffident nod.

  “Well, that’s far better than nothing. Hear this: you must guard my belongings and things that I’ll use and places that I’ll come back to, with far more care than you use guarding me. I take care of myself, you see, and most of my enemies wouldn’t go for a head-on attack on me if there were an easier way; no, they’d go for something I’d use, or for an unlocked door. You understand what I’m talking about.”

  “Yes, sera.”

  “We’re docking in an hour or so. You could save confusion by getting a baggage cart up here. I really don’t think azi are going to be safe coming up here, not past Warrior out there. But it wouldn’t hurt you, not if you let it touch you and identify, you understand. No more than it
would me. You have the nerve for it?”

  He nodded.

  “Jim, perhaps we may stay together a long time.”

  He stood up, stopped. “Nineteen years,” he said. And when she gave him a puzzled frown: “I’m twenty-one,” he said, with the faintest quirk of a smile.

  Azi humour. He would live to forty. A feeling came on her the like of which only the blues had stirred in many years. She recalled Us, and the gentle azi of her childhood: their dead faces returned with a shock; and the slaughter, and the burning… She flinched from it. “I value loyalty,” she said, turning away.

  He was gone for a considerable time. She began to pace the room, realised that she was doing it and stopped, thought of going after him, hated to show her anxiety among betas.

  At last the blue light winked in the overhead and she hurried to open the door, stood back to admit him and the cart.

  “No trouble?” she asked him. Jim shook his head with a little touch of self-satisfaction and began at once putting the baggage on.

  He finished, and settled, lacking anything else to do; she sat, watching their approach to station. Their berth was in sight; the station was by now a seemingly stationary sprawl extending off the screen on both sides, an amazing structure, as vast as rumour promised.

  And ships, ships of remarkable design, linked to their berths—freighters, as bizarre in shape as they needed to be, never landing, only needing the capability to link to station umbilicals and grapples; the only standard of construction was the docking mechanism, the same dimensions from the tiniest personal craft to the most massive liner.

  A ship was easing out as they came in, slowly, slowly, an aged freighter. The symbols it bore were unlike any sigil or company emblem in Raen’s memory; and then she realised it for the round Sol emblem. A thrill went through her.

  An Outsider ship.

  A visitor from beyond the Reach. It drifted like a dream image, passed them, vanished into the Jewel’s own shadow.

  “Outsider,” she said aloud. “Jim, look, look—a third one at berth is the same design.”

  Jim said nothing, but he regarded the image intently, with awe on his face.

  “The Edge,” Raen said. “We’ve reached the Edge.”

  v

  Merek Eln’s hands trembled. He folded his arms and paced, and looked from time to time at Parn Kest.

  “We’d better call in,” he said. “There’s time enough.”

  “With a majat involved—” she objected. “A majat! How long can the thing have been aboard.”

  “It’s with her. Has to be.” He looked toward the door with an inward shudder, thinking of the majat stalking the corridors at liberty, half-sane from its dormancy. The Kontrin had at least calmed the creature: the emergency channel had said so, and thanked her, whether or not the Kontrin cared for anyone’s gratitude. But worse could go wrong than had. They had been long away from Istra, half a year removed from the situation there, long removed from the last message.

  He stepped suddenly to the console.

  “Merek,” Parn said, rising, and caught his arm. Sweat stood on her face; it did on his. Her hand fell away. She said nothing. Their cover no longer served to protect them. There was no more guarantee of safety, even in coming home.

  He sat down at the console and keyed in the communications channel. Communications was fully occupied with the flow of docking instructions; a message would have to go Priority, at high cost.

  Communications wanted financial information beyond ordinary credit; it accepted a string of numbers and codes to bounce back through worldbank, and finally a chain of numbers which was the destination of the message, ITAK company representative on-station.

  GO, it flashed.

  Merek keyed response. NOTIFY MAIN OFFICE MERON MISSION INBOUND. URGENT ITAK ON STATION MEET US AT GATE WITH SECURITY. AWAIT REPLY WITH DEEP DISTRESS.

  There was the necessary long delay.

  “You shouldn’t have mentioned Meron,” Pare said at his shoulder. “You shouldn’t have. Not on a public channel.”

  “Do you want to do this?”

  “I wouldn’t have called.”

  “And there wouldn’t have been anyone to meet us but maybe—maybe some of the office staff; and maybe things have changed on the station. I want our own security out there.”

  He mopped at his face, recalling codes. DEEP: that was trouble; and DISTRESS at the end of any message meant majat. He dared not talk of Kontrin. One had no idea where their agents might be placed.

  ITAK REPRESENTATIVE WILL BE AT GATE, the reply flashed back. DEEP DISTRESS UNDERSTOOD. OUR APOLOGIES.

  It was the right code, neatly delivered. Merek bit at his lip and keyed receipt of the message.

  ITAK took care of its people, if ITAK had the chance to move first. And if other messages had been sent, from the Kontrin or another agency, surely it was best to have broken cover and asked for help.

  Parn took his hand in hers, put her arm about his shoulders. He was not sure that he had done the right thing; Pare herself had disagreed. But if some message had gone ahead, if the ship had even done something so innocent as flash its tiny passenger list ahead, then it was necessary to be sure that among those gathered to meet the Jewel, ITAK would be chiefest.

  vi

  “Warrior,” Raen called softly.

  It stirred, let go its hold on the emergency grip.

  “Warrior, we are docked now. It’s Raen Meth-maren.” She came and touched it, and it must touch in return, and examine Jim as well, swift gestures.

  “Yes,” it said, having Grouped.

  “Jim.” Raen gestured at the nearby lift. Jim manoeuvred the baggage cart in, pressed himself against the inside wall as Warrior eased in, and Raen followed.

  The doors sealed, and the lift moved. The air grew very close very quickly with the sealed system and the big majat’s breathing. Warrior smelled of something dry and strange, like old paper. The chitin, still wet-looking from shedding, was dry now; where Warrior had broken his old shell, the ship’s crew might find a treasure-trove…none of the Drone-jewels, of course, but material which still had value in ornament: so the hive paid a bonus on its passage. Warrior regarded them both, mildly distressed as the lift reoriented itself; the great head rotated quizzically: compound eyes made moiré patterns under the light, shifting bands of colour buried in jewel-shard armour.

  It was beautiful. Raen stroked fits palps to soothe it, and softly it sang for her, Warrior-song.

  “Hear it?” Raen asked, looking at Jim. “The hives are full of such sound. Humans rarely hear it.”

  Again the lift shifted itself to a new alignment, hissed to a stop. The doors opened for them. Azi on duty fled back, giving them and their tall companion whatever room they wanted.

  There was the hatch, and a wafting of the cold, strange air of Istra station, dark spaces and glaring lights. Crew waited to bid them farewell, a changeless formality: so they had surely wished every passenger departing over the long voyage; but there was the strained look of dementia in their eyes and behind their smiles. Andra’s Jewel could go home now, to safe and friendly space, to ordinary passengers, and her staterooms would fill again with beta-folk, who never thought of Kontrin or majat save at distance.

  Raen lingered to shake hands with each, and laughed. Their hands were moist and cold, and their fingers avoided the chitin on her hand where they could.

  “Safe voyage,” she wished them one and all.

  “Safe voyage,” Warrior breathed, incapable of humour.

  No one offered to help them down the ramp. Jim managed the baggage, struggling with the cart which they had tacitly appropriated. They boarded the conveyer and rode it down.

  There at the bottom of the ramp stood the Istran pair, inside the security barriers, with a clutch of business types and three other: who might be azi, but not domestics: guards. Raen moved her hand within her cloak, rested it by her gun, calculating which she might remove first if she had to…simple reflex. Her hand
rested comfortably there.

  The moving ramp delivered them down, and there was view of a drab, businesslike vastness, none of the chrome and glitter of Meron, none of the growing plants of Kalind, or the cosmopolitan grandeur of Cerdin station. This station wasted nothing on display, no expensive shielded viewports. It was all dark machinery and automata, bare joinings and cables and every service-point in sight and reach of hands. It was a trade-station, not for the delight of tourists, but for the businesslike reception of freight. Conveyers laced overhead; transport chutes and dark corridors led away into narrow confinements; azi moved here and there, drab, grey-clad men, unsmiling in their fixation on duty.

  Raen inhaled the grimness of it and looked leftward, third berth down, hoping for exotic sights of Outsiders, but all docks looked alike, vast ramps, dwarfing humans, places shrouded in tangles of lines and obscured by machinery. A few human figures moved there, too far to distinguish, tantalising in their possibilities. And she could not delay to investigate them.

  “Lost,” Warrior complained, touching nervously at her. The air was cold, almost cold enough to make breath frost. Warrior was almost blind in such a place, and would grow rapidly sluggish.

  And the Istrans came forward, further distressing it. Raen reached left-handed to comfort it, and gave Merek Eln a forbidding stare.

  “I’d keep my distance,” she said.

  Ser Merek Eln did stop, with all his companions. His face was ashen. He looked at the tall majat and at her, and swallowed thickly.

  “My party is here,” he said. “We have a shuttle engaged would you consider joining us on our trip down, Kont’ Raen? I…would still like to talk with you.”

  She was frankly amazed. This little man, this beta, came offering favours, and had the courage to approach a majat doing it. “My companions would make that rather crowded, ser.”

  “We have accommodation enough, if you would.”

  “Beta,” warrior intoned. “Beta human.” It moved forward in one stride, to touch the strange human who offered it favours, and Raen put up her hand at once, touched a sensitive auditory palp, restraining warrior. It endured this indignity, fretting.