Serpent's Reach

  He was in the house, and others were not. He had seen new things, the details of which were still a muddle to him, most even without words to call them or recall them, without comparisons to which to join them, only some that her tapes had given him. He had been with her in places far more important than even those powerful rich men had been, that society which drifted through the salon of the Jewel, offering snippets of their lives to his confused inspection, a stream dark before and dark after. He had gone out, into that unimaginable width in which born-men lived, and she was there, so that he was never lost.

  He had stood back over the pens, which he had half-forgotten, as all that time before the Jewel was confused in his memory, hard to touch from the present, for it had been go empty, so void of detail. Today he had looked down, as he had looked down in earlier times, and known that he was not on his way back from exercise, to return again to the pens and the half-world of the tapes breathing through his mind. This time he had come to look, and to walk away again, at her back, until the stink purged itself into clean air and light. There was no fear of that place again, forever.

  She prevented.

  She was there, in the night, in the dark, when his dreams were of being alone, within the wall, and only the white glare of spotlights above the tangled webs of metal, the catwalks…when one huddled in the corner, because the walls were at least some touch, somewhere to put one’s back and feel comforted. On the azi-deck everyone slept close, trying to gain this feeling, and the worst thing was being Out, and no one willing to touch. Being Out had been the most terrible part of the long voyage here, when he had borne the Kontrin like a mark on him, and no one had dared come near him. But she did…and more than that, more even than the few passengers who had engaged him for a night or even a short voyage, several with impulses to generosity and one that he tried never to remember…she stayed. The rich folk had let him touch, had shown him impressions of experiences and luxury and other things forever beyond an azi’s reach; each time he would believe for a while in the existence of such things, in comfort beyond the blind nestlings-together on the azi-deck. Love, they would say; but then the rich folk would go their way, and his contract rested with the ship forever, where the only lasting warmth was that of all azi, whatever one could gain by doing one’s work and going to the mats at night In with everyone, nestled close.

  Then there was Raen. There was Raen, who was all these things, and who had his contract, and who was therefore forever.

  Warm from the shower he lay down between the cool sheets, and thought of her, and stared at the clouds which flickered lightnings over the dome, at rain, that spotted the dome and fractured the lightnings in runnels.

  He had no liking for thunder. He had never had, from the first that he had worked his year in Andra’s fields, before the Jewel. He liked it no better now. Nonsense ran through his head, fragments of deepstudy. He recited them silently, shuddering at the lightnings.

  To some eyes, colors are invisible;

  To others, the invisible has many colors.

  And both are true. And both are not.

  And one is false. And neither is.

  He squeezed shut his eyes, and saw majat; and the horrid naked azi, the bearers of blue lights; and an azi who was no azi, but a born-man who had gone mad in the pens, listening to azi-tapes. The lights above the pens had never flickered; sounds were rare, and all meaningful.

  The lightning flung everything stark white; the thunder followed, deafening. He jumped, and lay still again, his heart pounding. Again it happened. He was ready this time, and did not flinch overmuch. He would not have her to know that he was afraid.

  She delayed coming. That disturbed him more than the thunder.

  He slept finally, of sheer exhaustion.

  He wakened at a noise in the room, that was above the faint humming of the majat. Raen was there; and she did not go to the bath as she had on the nights before, but moved about fully dressed, gathering things quietly together.

  “I’m awake,” he said, go that she would not think she had to be quiet.

  She came to the bed and sat down, reached for his hand as he sat up, held it. The jewels on the back of hers glittered cold and colourless in the almost-dark. Rain still spattered the dome, gently now, and the lightnings only rarely flickered.

  “I’m leaving the house,” she said softly. “A short trip, and back again. You’re safest here on this one.”

  “No,” he protested at once, and his heart beat painfully, for no was not a permitted word. He would have made haste to disengage himself from the sheets, to gather his own belongings as she was gathering hers.

  She held his arm firmly and shook her head. “I need you here. You’ve skills necessary to run this house. What would Max do without you to tell him what to do? What would the others do who depend on his orders? You’re not afraid of the majat. You can manage them, better than some Kontrin.”

  He was enormously flattered by this, however much he was shaking at the thought. He knew that it was truth, for she said it.

  “Where are you going?” he asked.

  “A question? You amaze me, Jim.”

  “Sera?”

  “And you must spoil it in the same breath.” She smoothed his hair from his face, which was a touch infinitely kind, taking away the sting of her disappointment in him. “I daren’t answer your question, understand? But call the Tel estate if you must contact me. Ask comp for Isan Tel. Can you do that?”

  He nodded.

  “But you do that only in extreme emergency,” she said. “You understand that?”

  He nodded. “I’ll help you pack,” he offered.

  She did not forbid him that. He gathered himself out of bed, reached for a robe against the chill of the air-conditioning. She turned the lights on, and he wrapped the robe about himself, pushed the hair out of his eyes and sought the single brown case she asked for.

  In truth she did not pack much; and that encouraged him, that most of her belongings would remain here, and she would come back for them, for him. He was shivering violently, neatly rearranging the things she threw in haphazardly.

  “There’s no reason to be upset,” she said sharply. “There’s no cause. You can manage the house. You can trust Max to keep order outside, and you can manage the inside.”

  “Who’s going with you?” he asked, thinking of that suddenly, chilled to think of her alone with new azi, strange azi.

  “Merry and a good number of the new guards. They’ll serve. We’re taking Mundy, too. You won’t have to worry about him. We’ll be back before anything can develop.”

  He did not like it. He could not say so. He watched her take another, heavier cloak from the closet. She left her blue one. “These azi,” he said, “these—strange azi—”

  “Majat azi.”

  “How can I talk to them?” he exclaimed, choked with revulsion at the thought of them.

  “They speak. They understand words. They’ll stay with the majat. They are majat, after a fashion. They’ll fight well if they must. Let the majat deal with their own azi; tell Warrior what you want them to do.”

  “I can’t recognise which is which.”

  “No matter with majat. Any Warrior is Warrior. Give it taste and talk to it; it’ll respond. You’re not going to freeze on me, are you? You won’t do that.”

  He shook his head emphatically.

  She clicked her case shut. “The car’s ready downstairs. Go back to bed. I’m sorry. I know you want to go. But it’s as I said: you’re more useful here.”

  She darted away.

  “Raen.” He forced the word. Hid face flushed with the effort.

  She looked back. He was ashamed of himself. His face was hot and he had no control of his lips and he was sick at his stomach for reasons he could not clearly analyse, only that one felt so when one went against Right.

  “A wonder,” she murmured, and came back and kissed him on the mouth. He hardly felt it, the sickness was so great. Then she left, h
urrying down the stairs, carrying her own luggage because he had not thought in time to offer. He went after her, down the stairs barefoot…stood useless in the downstairs hall as she hastened out into the rainy dark with a scattering of other azi.

  Majat were there, hovering near the car with a great deal of booming and humming to each other. Max was there; Merry was driving. There were vehicles that did not belong to the house, trucks which the other azi boarded, carrying their rifles. Merry turned the car for the gate and the trucks followed.

  Max looked at him. He thrust his hands into the pockets of his bathrobe and looked nervously about. “Everything goes on as usual,” he told Max. “Guard the house.” And he went inside then, closed the door after him…saw huge shapes deep in the shadows, the far reaches of the hall, heard sounds below.

  He was alone with them. He crossed the hall toward the stairs and one stirred, that could have been a piece of furniture. It clicked at him.

  “Be still,” he told it, shuddering. “Keep away!”

  It withdrew from him, and he fled up the stairs, darted into the safety of the bedroom.

  One had gotten in. He saw the moving shadow, froze as it skittered near him, touched him. “Out!” he cried at it. “Go out!”

  It left, clicking nervously. He felt after the light switch, trembling, fearing the dark, the emptiness. The room leapt into stark white and green. He closed the door on the dark of the hall, locked it. There were noises downstairs, scrapings of furniture, and deeper still, at the foundations. He did not want to know what happened there, in that dark, in that place where the strange azi were lodged.

  He was human, and they were not.

  And yet the same labs had produced them. The tapes…were the difference. He had heard the man Itavvy say so: that in only a matter of days an azi could be diverted from one function to another. A born man put in the pens had come out shattered by the experience.

  I am not real, he thought suddenly, as he had never thought in his life. l am only those tapes.

  And then he wiped at his eyes, for tears blinded him, and he went into the bath and was sick, protractedly, weeping and vomiting in alternation until he had thrown up all his supper and was too weak to gather himself off the floor.

  When he could, when he regained control of his limbs, he bathed repeatedly in disgust, and finally, wrapped in towels, tucked up in a knot in the empty bed, shivering his way through what remained of the night.

  vi

  The freight-shuttle bulked large on the apron, a dismal half-ovoid on spider legs, glistening with the rain, that puddled and pocked the ill-repaired field and reflected back the floodlights.

  There were guards, a station just inside the fence. Raen ordered the car to the very barrier and received the expected challenge. “Open,” she radioed back, curt and sharp. “Kontrin authorisation. And hurry about it.”

  She had her apprehensions. There could be delays; there could be complications; ITAK could prove recalcitrant at this point. The azi with her were untried, all but Merry. As for Mundy, in the truck behind…she reckoned well what he would do if he could.

  The gates swung open. “Go,” she told Merry.

  Her own aircraft, guarded by ITAK, was at the other end of the port. She ignored it, as she had always intended to ignore it, simply giving ITAK a convenient target for sabotage if they wished one.

  It was the shuttle she wanted. Beta police and a handful of guard-azi were not sufficient to stop her, if her own azi kept their wits about them.

  Shuttle-struts loomed up in the windshield. Merry braked and half-turned, and the truck did go too, hard beside them. Raen contacted the station again. “Have the shuttle drop the lift,” she ordered. There were guards pelting across the apron toward them, but her own azi were out of the truck, forming a hedge of rifles, and that advance slowed abruptly.

  Evidently the call went through. The shuttle’s freight lift lowered with a groaning of hydraulics that drowned other sound, a vast column with an open side, lighted within.

  “Crew is not aboard,” she heard over the radio. “Only ground watch. We can’t take off. We’re not licensed—”

  “Merry,” she said, ignoring the rest of it. “Get a squad aboard and take controls. Have them call crew and ground service to get this thing off, and take no argument about it. Shoot as last resort…move! My azi,” she said into the microphone, “will board. No resistance and there’ll be no damage.”

  Merry had bailed out of the car and gathered the nearest squad. She opened the door, the gun in one hand, microphone in the other. Other figures exited the truck, dragging one who resisted: Mundy; stilt-limbed ones followed. The police line disordered itself, steadied.

  “Kontrin,” a voice said over the radio, “please. We are willing to co-operate.”

  Rain blew in the open door of the car, drenched her, slanted down across the floodlights, hazing the stalemated lines. Mundy fought and cursed, disturbing the momentary silence: nuisance, nothing more. Police would not move for so slight a cause, not against a Kontrin; policy would work on higher levels.

  There was a sound of machinery inside the open cargo lift: the lights were extinguished… Merry’s orders. They would make no targets.

  Shadows passed the car: the three Warriors skittered over the wet pavement and into the lift, following their own sight, that cared nothing for darkness.

  No one moved. An inestimable time later she heard Merry’s voice over the radio advising her they had the ship.

  She left the car. “By squads,” she shouted. “Board!”

  She went with the first, that drew Mundy along with them—reached the dark security of the lift. Mundy screamed at the police, a voice swiftly muffled again. The next ten started their retreat.

  “Be still,” she said, annoyed by continued struggles from the outsider. “They’ll do nothing for you. Don’t try my patience.”

  The last squad was coming in, rifles still directed at the police. Her attention was fixed on that. And suddenly there was another truck coming. She expelled a long breath of tension, held it again as the truck scattered bewildered police, as it came straight for the cargo lift and jolted up within, rain-wet and loud, the azi with her dodging it. More of her men poured from it, dragging prisoners.

  Tallen. They had got him, and all his folk. She found her heart able to beat stably again, and shouted orders as the truck backed out again. It almost clipped the hatch, missed. The azi driver bailed out while it was still moving and raced for the hatch, pelted aboard.

  She hit the close-switch, and the lift jolted up, taking them up, while the ITAK police gazed at the diminishing view of them. Just at total dark, she hit the lights, and looked over the azi and the Warriors and the shaken prisoners.

  “Ser Tallen,” she said, and nodded toward Tom Mundy, who had no joy to see his own people. Pity took her, for Mundy turned his face away as far as he could, and when she bade Tallen released to see to him, Mundy wanted only to turn away, a shaven ghost in grey.

  “You’re going home.” she said to Tallen. She had no time for other things. She gave brief orders to an older azi, setting him in charge, and set herself in the personnel lift, rode it up to more immediate problems.

  A nervous pointing of weapons welcomed her above; she waved them aside and looked past Merry to the watch crew, who huddled under the threat of guns, way from controls, in the small passenger compartment.

  “Kontrin,” the officer-in-charge said, and rose: the azi let him. He was, she noted, ISPAK, not ITAK. “We’ve done everything requested.”

  “Thank you. Come forward, ser, and run me some instrument checks; I suppose that you can do that, until the crew shows.”

  The ISPAK beta wiped at his face and came with her, well-guarded, showed her the functioning of the board; it was exceedingly simple, lacking a number of convenient automations. Outside, there was the ministration of ground-service. That, she reflected, simply had to be trusted: one simply minimised the chances.

  She
settled into the nearest of the cushions, folded her arms and closed her eyes as the first touch of dawn began to show, for she was robbed of sleep this night, and she reckoned that this frightened beta would hardly risk anything with so many armed azi at her back.

  Then crew arrived, with a flurry of distressed calls to the bridge; they were no more relaxed by the time they had negotiated the personnel lift, past the azi below and the Warriors with them, and into the upper level to the welcome of Merry’s armed squad.

  “Just do your job,” Raen advised them. They settled in, speaking only in fragments and that when they must. “We’re not scheduled,” was the captain’s only protest. “We may not have a berth up there.”

  “We’ll get one,” Raen said. She reached for the com switch herself, requested lift clearance, obtained it, priority. If traffic was in the way, it would be diverted or aborted. The shuttle’s engines were in function; it settled earthward as its stilts drew in, and engaged its moving-gear, trundled ponderously out toward the lifting area.

  “Merry,” she asked of the passenger area. “All right back there?”

  “Yes, sera.”

  “Have Tallen up after lift. Strict security on the rest.”

  They were entering position, wings extruding, gathering speed. Then wings locked, and they made their run. “Use the handholds,” she remembered to snap at the azi still standing, and they left the ground, under heart-dragging acceleration.

  Pol, she thought in that vulnerable moment, Pol was on world, ship-based—could down a shuttle if he would, if she had guessed wrong; and there was ISPAK to contend with. She doubted then, whether she should not have gone back to ISPAK at once, taken it first, instead of delaying on-world.

  But there was also blue-hive. Principally, there was blue-hive.