The Deep Beyond: Cuckoo's Egg / Serpent's Reach

by C. J. Cherryh

  “We tricked them.” Lian’s voice, quavering, resumed. “We brought in human eggs and the equipment to handle them. Half a billion eggs, all ready to grow. And we set up where this building stands, and we set up our labs and we started breeding while our one ship made its trade runs and the others of us who had skill at communication developed agreements with the hives.” His voice grew stronger. “Now do you suppose, fellow Councillors, that the hives didn’t know by then what we were about? Of course they saw. But the human animal is a mystery to them, and we kept it that way. They saw a hive-structure. They saw an increasing number of young and a growing social order which well-agreed with their own pattern. We planned it that way. They still had no idea what a non-collective intelligence was, or what it could do. Just one large hive, this of ours, all one mind. They knew better, perhaps, in theory. But the pattern of their own thinking wouldn’t let them interpret what they saw.

  “When they began to learn, we frightened them with our differences. Frightened them most with the concept of dying. They locked into our chemistry and understood the process, worked out a cure for old age. They had finally gained the dimmest notion, you see, of what our individuality is. The hives are millions of years old. Do you reckon why the majat were worried about our dying? Because among majat, there are only four persons . . . red, green, gold, and blue. Those are their units of individuality. These persons have worked out how to deal with each other over millions of years. They’re accustomed to stability, to memory, to eternity. How could they deal with a series of short-lived humans? So they cured death . . . for some of us, for those of us fortunate enough to be born Kontrin. The beta generations, the product of our cargo of eggs . . . they go on dying at the human rate, but we live forever. Economic ruin, if there were many of us. So even we Kontrin kill each other off from time to time. The majat used to find that shocking.

  “But now things will change, won’t they? You’ve gotten red-hive Warriors to kill Kontrin; blue-hive has admitted a human. Things change. Now the majat have taken another vast leap of understanding. And one of the four entities which has lived on Cerdin for millions of years— is on the verge of extinction. Not beyond recall: majat have more respect for life than we do, after their fashion. But you persuaded them to kill an immortal intelligence, knowingly. Several of them. And one day you may live to see the reward of that. Thanks to majat science, some of you may live to see it.

  “Seven hundred years we’ve thrived here and across the Reach. The lot of you have all you could possibly need. The betas take care of the labor and the trade; and the betas, the betas, dear friends, discovered the best thing of all, discovered what the hives really prize: they trade in humanity, altered humanity, gene-tampered humanity, humanity that can’t reproduce itself, that self-destructs at forty, for economic convenience. So even the betas don’t have to do physical labor; they just breed azi and balance supply and demand. And the barrier to the Outside holds firm, so that the whole Reach and all it produces is ours— including the betas and the azi. None of us tries the barrier.

  “Ever been out that far, to the edge? I have. In seven hundred years a man has time to do everything of interest. Ugly worlds. Nothing like Cerdin. But we’ve established hives that far out, extensions of our four entities here . . . or whole new personalities. Has anyone ever asked them? We’ve entered into a strange new relationship with our alien hosts; we’ve become intimately involved in their reproductive process . . . indispensable to them. Without metals, majat could never have left Cerdin. They have no eyes to see the stars, just their own sun, their own sun-warmed earth. But we’ve changed that. Even majat don’t have to work much, not the way they used to seven hundred years ago. But they thrive. And their numbers increase. And back here at Alpha, this Council, this wise . . . expert Council . . . makes ultimate decisions about population levels, and how many of us can be born, and where; and how many betas; and where betas can be licensed to produce azi, and when azi levels have to be reduced. Humanity’s brain, are we not, doing for our kind what the queens do for the hives? And in that process, we’ve grown different, my young friends.

  “I was here. I was here from the beginning, and I’ve watched the change. I’m from Outside. I remember. You . . . you’ve studied this in your tapes, you young ones of a century or so, you Council new-comers. I’m an old man and I’m delaying things. You think you know it all, having been born here, in the Reach, in a new age you think an old Outsider can’t understand. But I’m going to go on telling you, because you need to remember it Because the majat will tell you that a hive that has lost its memory, that has . . . unMinded itself . . . is headed for extinction.

  “Do you know that no ship from Outside has ever tried to reach Cerdin? Ever, since Delia? We’re quarantined. They’re all around us, Outside. Human space. These few little stars . . . are an island in a human sea. But you don’t see them trying to come in. Ever wonder why?

  “They don’t want the majat, my friends. They want what the majat produce, the chitin-jewels, the biotics, the softwares. Humans from Outside meet the betas and the azi at Istra station, and they will pay for those goods, pay whatever they must. They cost us little and Outsiders value them beyond price. But they don’t want the majat. They don’t want hives in their space.

  “And above all, they don’t want us. Alpha Hydri, the Serpent’s Eye. Off limits by treaty. And no one wants in. No one wants in.”

  “Get to the point,” Eron said.

  Slowly Lian turned, and stared at Eron. There was quiet, anticipation. And suddenly outcries erupted, people throwing themselves from seats. A bolt flew from Moth’s hand to Eron, and the man fell. Raen flung herself to the back wall, expecting more fire, eyes scanning wildly for weapons on the other side.

  “When you practice assassination,” Lian said, while Moth held the weapon on Eron’s friend Yls, “recall that Moth and I are oldest.”

  Yls died. Men and women screamed and tried to bolt their seats. Moth continued to fire. There were bodies everywhere, on the floor, draped over seats, over the rail, in the aisles. At last she stopped, and the half of the Council that remained alive huddled against the door.

  “Resume your seats,” Lian said.

  Slowly, cowed, they did so. Moth still had her weapon in hand.

  “Now,” said Lian, “the matter of a vote.”

  Someone was sick. The stench of burning was in the hall. Raen clenched her arms about her and shivered.

  “Raen a Sul hant Meth-maren,” Lian said.

  “Sir.”

  “You may go. I think that it would be advisable to leave Cerdin and seek some House in obscurity. You have outlived all your enemies. Count that fortune enough for a lifetime. I don’t think it wise that you shelter with another House on Cerdin; you could too easily become a cause, and the Family has seen enough of that.”

  “Sir,” she began to protest.

  “There’s no reason to detain you for proceedings. The vote is only a formality. Kethiuy is gone; that is a fact over which Council has no control. You broke the Pact and involved majat. The ones principally involved are dead; their influence is ended. Your own judgment in what you’ve done was that of a child, and under compulsion. You refuse guardianship; I daresay you are competent to survive without it. So I charge you this, Raen a Sul: avoid majat hereafter. You are given all the privileges of majority, and if you cross Council’s notice again, it will be under those conditions. You are free to go, with that understanding. I suggest Meron. Council liaison there will be sympathetic. I have an old estate there that you can use. You won’t be without friends or advice.”

  “I don’t need it.”

  It was out of bitterness she said it. She saw Lian’s mouth go to a taut line, and reckoned that she should not have refused; but it was not in her nature to bend. She looked on Moth, looked on Eldest, and turned, walked, with difficulty, to the door and her freedom.

  She did n
ot stop, nor look back, nor shed the tears that urged at her. They dried quickly. She knew the passages from the Old Hall at Alpha to the beta City. She carried nothing, but the clothes she had been given and the identity on her hand.

  Leave Cerdin: she would, for there was nothing on Cerdin she wanted.

  x

  The betas of the City were shocked, alarmed that a Kontrin appeared alone among them, with bodyguards. Perhaps they had some apprehension of trouble, having heard of the decimation of Kontrin Houses, and of blue-hive, and therefore feared to involve themselves in her affairs; but they had no means to refuse.

  She bought medical care, and drugs for the pain; she slept a time in a public lodging, and recovered herself. She bought clothing and weapons, and engaged a shuttle up to station, where she hired a ship with the credit of the Family— the most extravagant she could find. She was moody and the beta crew avoided her.

  That was the first journey.

  It brought her to Meron. She did not take Eldest’s offer, but bought a house and lived there on the endless credit which the chitin-pattern of her right hand signified. There were Halds onworld: her interest pricked at that . . . Pol and Morn; she stirred to care again. Plotting their assassinations and guarding against her own occupied her time . . . until Pol and Morn turned up boldly on her doorstep, and Pol swept her a mocking curtsy.

  Pol Hald. She had passed her sixteenth birthday; he was unchanged, whatever age he really was. He stared her up and down and she looked at him, and at Morn, who stood at his shoulder; and she realized with a chill that her gun was on safety in its belt-clip; she could not possibly be quick enough.

  “Your operation is entirely too elaborate,” Pol said, grinning at her. “But well-thought, little Meth-maren. I applaud your zeal . . . and your precocious cleverness. Please call them off.”

  She fairly shook with rage, but fear chilled her mind to clarity. Of a sudden she saw the reaction to take with this man, and grinned. “I shall,” she said. “Thank you for the courtesy, Pol Hald.”

  “What self-possession you have, Meth-maren.”

  “Shall I leave Meron?”

  “Stay,” he said, and laughed, with a flourish of his chitined hand. “You have what Ruil never had: a sense of balance. I know neither of us would be safe under those terms. There’d be a new plot by suppertime.”

  She regarded them through slit lids. “Then you leave Meron.”

  He laughed outright, brushed past her, into her home. Morn followed.

  She thumbed the safety off her gun and stared at them, watching their hands. Pol folded his arms and nodded a gesture to his cousin. “Go on,” he said, “Morn. You’ve no interests here.”

  Morn surveyed her up and down, his gaunt face untouched by any emotion. Without a word he strode to the door and closed it behind him.

  And Pol settled in the nearest chair and folded his arms, extended his long legs before him. His death’s-head face quirked into an engaging smile.

  He ate the dinner she served him; they sat across the table from one another: he made a proposal which she declined, and laughed rather regretfully when she did so. Pol’s humor was infamous, and infectious; and he hazarded his life on it now. She refrained from poisoning him; he refrained from using whatever weapons he surely carried on his person. They laughed at each other, and she bade him good night.

  He and she turned up at the same social events thereafter, in the busy winter season of Kontrin society on Meron. They smiled at each other with the warmth of old friends, amused at the comment that caused. But they never met in private.

  And eventually there was an attempt on her life.

  It happened on Meron, a year after Pol and Morn had taken themselves elsewhere, in separate directions, Morn to Cerdin and Pol to Andra. It happened in the night, on another Kontrin’s estate, a Delt, Col a Helim, who was her current, but not exclusive interest. She was twenty-one. Col died. She did not. None came back from that attempt, but they were azi who had done it, and their past was wiped, their tattoos burned away. She swore off Delts, suspecting something local and involving a rival, and moved and engaged a small estate on Silak.

  Word reached her there that Lian had died . . . assassination, and no one knew now how long he would have lived, so the longest human life in the Reach reached no natural conclusion and Kontrin everywhere had been frustrated. The attempted coup was a failure, and the assassins all died miserably, the penalty of failure and the revenge of Kontrin who had considered Lian’s long life a talisman of luck, an example of their own immortality.

  Moth held Eldest’s place, first in Council. The Council thus remained much as it had been, and Raen took no interest in its affairs . . . took no interest in the present for anything political. There was no more Kethiuy, although the nightmares lingered. She was mildly amused in one respect, for she reckoned at last that the attempt on her had been connected to Lian’s impending fall; but that had failed, the conspirators (Thel and some lesser Houses) decimated, and matters were settled again. The Family knew where she was at all times, and if she had been of continuing importance to any cause, someone would have attempted to enlist her or to assassinate her in the fear that she belonged to some other cause. Neither happened. The remnant of the House of Thon on Cerdin established itself as the new liaison with the hives. Raen settled again on Meron and, when she heard how Thon had usurped the post with the hives, she pursued vices in considerable variety and nuance and gained a name in Meron society. She was twenty-four.

  She had her privileges: those never failed; and she had no lack of anything money could buy. She amused herself, sometimes within Kontrin society and sometimes in moody withdrawal from all contact. She looked on betas and azi with the disdain of her birth, which was natural, and her tedious lifespan, which was (since Lian’s assassination) indefinite, and her power, which was among betas as fearsome as it was negligible where she would have desired to apply it.

  She had as her current interest Hal a Norn hant Ilit, a remote and seldom-social member of the House most involved in Meron’s banking; she reckoned he might be a direct relative, and tried to jog his memory which of his kinsmen Morel a Sul Meth-maren had had for a lover, but he avowed it was several, and she went frustrated. He was frustrating in other ways, but he was a useful shelter, and they had some common interests; few could argue comp theory with him, or for that matter, cared to: she did, and for all the vast disparity in their ages (he was in his third century) and in outlook, he avowed himself increasingly infatuated.

  She found herself increasingly uncomfortable, and began, as gently as possible, to break that entanglement, coming out of her isolation into the society he hated; a part of that society was his grandnephew Gen.

  In all of this, there was a certain leisure.

  The order which Moth maintained in Council and in the Reach was a calm one, and a prosperous one, and no one on Cerdin or off seemed energetic enough to seek Moth’s life: it Seemed superfluous, for no one expected that life to extend much longer. What enemies Moth had were evidently determined to outwait her, and that meant a surface peace, whatever built up beneath. Raen reckoned with Moth in power she might even have gone home to Cerdin, had she asked. She simply declined to make the request, which required on the one hand a humility toward Council she had never acquired; and on the other, faith that Moth would survive long enough for her to entrench herself among friends: she did not think so. And more than all other reasons, she simply refused to face the ruin at Kethiuy; there was nothing there for her.

  On Meron, there was.

  Then strife erupted among majat on Meron, reds and greens and blues at odds. Golds took shelter and stayed out of sight. Reds strayed into the passages of the City on Meron, terrifying betas and occasioning several deaths in panicked crowds. A Kontrin estate or two suffered minor damage.

  Raen quitted Meron then, having lost the four azi who had served her the last seve
ral years.

  The four azi, dying in their sleep, did not suffer. Raen did, of bitter anger. It gave her temporary motivation, settling with the erstwhile Hit lover who had let red-hivers into the estate; but that was arranged with disappointing lack of difficulty; and afterward she was tormented with doubt, whether Hal Ilit had had choice in the matter. Blue-hive, she heard, skirmished with the others and retreated, sealed into its hill again, while reds came and went where they would: Thons came from Cerdin to try to persuade them back into quiet.

  There was similar disturbance on Andra, and Raen was there, . . . attempted last of all to contact blue-hive directly, but it evaded her, and sealed itself in, while other hives walked Andran streets with impunity.

  She was thirty-four. It had been nineteen years since Kethiuy, since Cerdin.

  She began, obsessively, to practice certain skills she had let fall in recent years. She withdrew entirely unto herself, and ceased to mourn for the past.

  Even for Kethiuy, which was the last thing she had loved.

  She was utterly Kontrin, as Moth was, as Lian had been, as all her elders were. She had come of age.

  “She’s on Kalind,” Pol said.

  Moth regarded him and his two kinsmen with placid eyes.

  “She can be removed,” Morn said.

  Moth shook her head. “Not yet.”

  “Eldest—” Tand leaned on her desk, facing her with a lack of respect not uncommon in Halds, not uncommon in his generation. “Blue-hive has been astir on Meron; she was there; and on Andra; she was there; and on Kalind; she is there now. The indications are that she’s directly involved, contrary to all conditions and advice. She’s broken with all her old contacts.”

  “She’s learned good taste,” said Pol. He smiled lazily, leaned back in his chair, folded his slim hands on his belly. “And about time.”

  Morn fixed him with a burning look. Pol shrugged, made a loose gesture, rose and bowed an ironic goodbye. The door closed behind him.