Serpent's Reach

by C. J. Cherryh

  Queen, worker insisted, perturbed.

  Dying, another Worker added, with an implication of untidiness.

  No rival, Mother reassured the hive, but distress persisted strongly in her taste, permeating all consciousness. We perceive that red-hive is massing in the vicinity of Kethiuy; golds are stirring; and now there is a human injured, perhaps others as well. We have not enough information. Red-hive is involved where red-hive does not belong. Red-hive has a taste of hostilities, of strange contacts, human contacts. The Pact is at issue. Feed Kethiuy’s young queen. Heal her. She is no threat to me. She is important to the hive. She contains information. She is an intelligence and contains memory. Tend. Heal.

  Worker departed, one part of the Mind, bent on action. Others raced off on their own missions, impelled by their own understandings of what Mother had said, reactions peculiar to their own chemistries and functions.

  Then the Mind did a very difficult thing, and lied to itself.

  Mother directed certain three Warriors, who rushed from the Chamber and from the hive and out into the heat of the day. Beyond the thorn-hedges, beyond the safe boundary of the hills, they stopped, and began purposely to alter their internal chemistry, breaking down all the orderly complex of their knowledge, past and present.

  The hive lost them, for they were then mad.

  They died, wandering inevitably into red-hive ambush in the valley, and red-hive could only believe the lie which it read in the chemistry of the slaughtered blues, that blue-hive had tasted the death of the young queen of Kethiuy hive, that no such survivor existed.

  iii

  “What is this?” Lian muttered, looking about him at the Council, the many-Coloured representatives who settled into place beneath the serpent emblem of the Kontrin. Suddenly there were new faces, new arrangements of seating. His blurred vision sought friends, sought old allies. The eldest Hald was gone; a younger man sat in his place. There was of the blue of Meth-maren…the black-bordered cloak of a Ruil; of several of the oldest septs and Houses…no sign, or younger strangers wearing their Colours. Lian, Eldest of the Family and first in Council, looked about him, hands trembling; and, having almost risen—he sank down again.

  He began to count, and took reckoning what manner of change had come on the Family in these chaotic days. Some of the House eldests looked at him across the room, glances carrying question and appeal: he had always opened the sessions…seven hundred years in the Council of Humans on Cerdin, the assembly of the twenty-seven Houses of the Family.

  “Uncle,” said Terent of Welz-Kaen. “Eldest?”

  Lian turned his face away, hating the cowardice which must now be the better part of common dense. Assassins had been planted. A purge had been carried out with extreme efficiency, not at one point, but at many. One had no idea where matters stood now, or what the count of votes would be on a challenge. There was something. new shaped or shaping, dangerous to all who stood too tall in the Family. One did well now to wait and hear others’ decisions.

  Lian felt his age, an incredible weight on him, memory which confused one with too many alternatives, too much of wisdom, experience heaped on experience, which always counselled…wait and learn.

  “Eldest!” the Malind elder called aloud, dared rise from her seat, marking herself among dissenters. “You will open the session?”

  The whole hall was waiting. He declined with a gesture, hand trembling uncontrollably. There was a sudden murmur of surmise in the hall, dismay from many. He looked last on Moth, aged Moth, seeming older than he in her face and her brittle movements, but she was half a century younger. Her pale eyes met his, shrouded in wrinkles.

  She bowed her head, having taken count as well as he; her hands occupied themselves with some minute adjustment in the trim of her robes.

  Of those who had come first into the Reach, first humans among majat, there had been few survivors. Even immortality did not stand well against ambition.

  This morning, in Council, there were fewer survivors still; and new powers had risen, who had waited a century in patience.

  The new Held rose, bowed ironically, and began to speak, setting forth the changes that were already made.

  iv

  Raen lived.

  She discovered this fact slowly, in great pain, and on the verge of madness.

  That she was Meth-maren, and therefore no stranger to majat at close quarters…this saved her sanity. She was naked. She was blind, in absolute darkness, and disoriented She suffered the constant touches of the Workers the length of her body, wetness which worked ceaselessly on her raw wounds, and over all her skin and hair; an endless trickle of moisture and food was delivered from their mandibles to her mouth. Their bodies shifted above and about her, invisible in the dark, with touch of bristles and grip of chelae or mandibles. They hovered, never stepping on her, and their ceaseless humming numbed her ears as the dark numbed her eyes.

  She was within the hive. No Kontrin had ever gone within a hive, not since the first days. The Pact forbade. But the blues, the peaceful blues, so long Kethiuy’s good neighbours—had not cast her out. Tears squeezed from her eyes. A Worker sipped them instantly, caressing her face with feather-touches of its palps. She moved, and the humming at once grew louder, ominous. They would not permit her to stir. Raw touches on her wounds were constant. She flinched and cried out in agony, and they hovered yet closer, never putting full weight on her, but hindering each movement. The struggle, the needed co-ordination, grew too much. She hurt, and surrendered to it, finding a constant level for the pain, which finally merged with the sound and the sense of touch. There was neither past nor future; grief and fear were swallowed up in the moment, which stretched endlessly, circular.

  She was aware of Mother. There was a Presence within the hive which sent Workers scurrying on this mission and that, to touch her and depart again in haste. In her delirium she imagined that she sensed the touches of this mind, that she was aware of things unseen, the movements in countless blind passages, the logic of the hive. She was cared for. The dark was endless, the touches at her body ceaseless, the sound only slowly varying, which was like deafness, and the touches became numbness. It was, for a long time, too difficult to think and too hard to struggle.

  But from the latest sleep she wakened with a sense of desperation.

  “Worker,” she said into the numbing sound, on a delicate balance of returning strength and diminishing sanity. “Help. Help me.” Her voice was unused, her ears so long assaulted by majat-song that human words sounded alien in her hearing. “Worker. tell Mother that I want to speak with her. Take me to her. Now.”

  “No,” said the Worker. It sucked up more air and expelled it through chambers, creating the illusion, if not the intonations of human voice. Other sound fell away, Workers pausing to listen. Worker harmonised with itself as it spoke, the chambers all working in intricate combination. “Unnecessary. Mother knows your condition, knows all necessary things.”

  “Mother doesn’t know what I intend.”

  “Tell. Tell this-unit”

  “Revenge.”

  Palps swept her face, her mouth, her body, picking up scent. Worker could not comprehend. Majat individually had their limits. A Worker was not the proper channel for an emotional message and Raen knew it, manipulated the Worker with confusion. She had been cautioned against it from infancy, Workers going in and out of the labs, near at hand: never play games with them. Again and again she had beard the dangers of disoriented majat. It might call Warriors.

  It drew back abruptly: she suddenly missed that particular touch. Others filled the gap, constantly feeling at limbs and body.

  “It’s gone for Mother?”

  “Yes,” one said. “Mother.”

  She stared at the blind dark, hard-breathing, euphoric with her success. She moved her hand with difficulty past the hindering limbs and palps of Workers, felt of her wounds, which were slick with jelly…tested her strength, moving her limbs.

  “Are there,”
she asked, “azi within call?”

  “Mother must call azi.”

  “I shall stand,” she declared, rationally, firmly, and began to do so.

  Workers assisted. Palps and chelae caressed her naked limbs and urged her, perhaps sensing new steadiness, conscious direction of her movements. Leathery bodies, Chitin-studded, pushed at her. She trusted them, despite the possibility of pain. Their knowledge of balance and leverage was instinctive, none truer. With their support she stood, dizzied, and felt about her in the featureless dark. The floor of the chamber was uneven. Up and down seemed confused in the blackness. Her ears were still numbed by their voices; bet hands met jointed palps and the hard spines of chelae. The Workers moved with her, never overbalancing her, supporting her with unfailing delicacy as she sought a few steps.

  “Take me to Mother,” she said.

  The song grew harsh and ominous. “Queen-threat,” one translated. Others took up the words.

  They feared for Mother. That was understandable: she was female, and of females, the hive held only one. They continued to groom her, wishing to feed her, to placate her. She turned from their offerings, distressing them further. She was in pain and her legs trembled under her. The burn on her side had opened in the exertion of rising. They tended this, keeping it moist, and she could not fend them from it. The touches on raw flesh were familiar agony. She had time to reckon what might come of an intruding female, that there would be no welcome: she refused to think it. Mother must control all that happened here. Mother had tolerated her this far.

  Then Worker must have returned; she reckoned so from the commotion that had broken out in the direction of the principal draft. “Bring,” a voice fluted, human language, of courtesy. “Mother permits.”

  Raen went toward the voice, guided by delicate touches of bristling forelimbs, feeling to one side and the other in the blackness, following the currents of moving air. The tunnels were wide and high…must be, to afford passage to the tall Warriors. And once, when the right-hand wall vanished suddenly at a steep climb, she fell, in great pain, her body abraded by the hard earth. Workers chittered alarm and lifted her at once, steadied her more carefully as she climbed. The air began to be close and warm. Sweat ran on her bare skin, and distressed the Workers, who tried frantically both to walk and to remove the untidy moisture.

  The tunnel seemed all at once defined, the first light her unused eyes had perceived in uncounted days. It was the only proof she had had that she was not blind, and yet it was so very faint she doubted that she perceived it at all…circle patterns, oblong and irregular patterns. She realised with a surge of joy that she was seeing, realised the shapes for apertures, opening onto a faint greenish phosphorescence, in which majat shadows stalked, bipedal, deceptively human in some poses, like men in ornate armour. Raen hastened, misjudged, almost lost her senses in the warmth and closeness of this place. She gained her balance again, aided and supported into the Presence.

  She filled the Chamber. Raen hung in the grip of the Workers, awed by the sight of Her, whose presence dominated the hive, whose mind was the centre of the Mind. She was the one, if there was any single individual in the hive, with whom they of Kethiuy had so long dealt…the legends of all her childhood, living and surrounded by the seething mass of Her Drones, a scene of fever-dreams, males glittering with the chitinous wealth of the hive.

  Air stirred audibly, intaken.

  “You are so small,” Mother said. Raen flinched, for the timbre of it made the very walls quiver, and vibrated in Race’s bones.

  “You are beautiful,” Raen answered, and felt it. Tears started from her eyes…awe, and pain at once.

  It pleased Mother. The auditory palps swept forward, Mother inclined Her great head and sought touch. The chelae drew her close. Mother tasted her team with a brush, of the palps.

  “Salt,” said Mother.

  “Yes.”

  “You are healed.”

  “I will be, soon.”

  The huge head rotated a few degrees on its circular jointing. “Scouts report Kethiuy closed to them. This has never happened since the hills have stood. We have killed a red-hive Worker on Kethiuy’s borders. Young queen, majat Workers do not enter an area until Warriors have secured it. We tasted it in traces of greens, of golds, recent in red-hive memory. Of humans. Of life fluids. Greens deal with golds and avoid us. Why?”

  Raen shook her head, terrified. Her mind began to function in human terms. Majat were still in the valley, when the Pact dictated restrictions. Red-hive. Ruil’s allies. The whole Family might have risen against Ruil; it had not; it had agreed, and red-hive remained. She forgot the other questions, ignored logic. Reason could not be on her side. “I’ll take Kethiuy back again,” she said, knowing that it was mad. “I’ll get it back.”

  “Revenge,” Mother said.

  “Yes. Revenge. Yes.”

  More air sighed into Mother’s reservoirs. “Since before humans were known, blue-hive has held this hill. Humans came, We majat killed the first. Then we understood. We under. stood stars and machines and humans. One Family at last we permitted, all, all, red-hive, blue, green, gold…one human ship to come among us, one human hive. One ship, which brought the eggs of other humans. We were deceived so. Yet we accepted this. We permit Kontrin-hive to trade and breed and build, instead of all other humans. We permit Kontrin. hive to keep order, and to keep all other humans out. So we have grown, majat hives and Kontrin. We have gained metals, and azi, and consciousness of things invisible; we have enlarged our hives and sent out new queens beneath other suns. Azi work for us with their human eyes and their human hands, and trade gives us food, much food. We can support more numbers than was so in many cycles. We have ridden Kontrin ships to Meron and to Andra and Kalind and Istra, making new extensions of the Mind. We have been pleased in this exchange. We have gained awareness far surpassing times before humans. Your hives have multiplied and prospered, and increased nourishment for ours. But suddenly you fragment yourselves, and now you fragment us. Suddenly there is division. Suddenly there is nest-war among humans; this has been before: we have seen. But now there is nest-war threatened among majat as it has not been since times before humans. We are confused. We reach out to gather the Mind and we have grown too wide; the worlds are too far and the ships are too slow to help us. We do not gain synthesis. We failed to foresee, and now we are blind. Aid me, Kethiuy-hive. Why are these things happening? What will happen now?”

  Drones sang, and moved, a tide of life about Mother. The Drone voices shrilled, much of the song too high for human ears; sound drowned words, drowned thought, grated through bone.

  “Mother!” Raen cried. “I don’t know. I don’t know. But whatever is going on in the Family, we can stop them, blue-hive could stop them!”

  Air sighed. Mother heaved Herself lower, and breathed a bass note that made silence. “Kethiuy-queen, Kethiuy-queen—is it possible that our two species have overbred? What is the proper density of your population, young queen? Have you reached some critical level, which humans did not foresee? Or perhaps the equation for both our species is altered by some complex factors of our association. This should not have happened yet. We reach for synthesis and do not obtain it. Where is human synthesis? Have you the answer?”

  “No.” Raen shivered in the battering sound of Mother’s voice, conscious of her own inexperience…of that of all men with majat. She reached in the utmost irreverence and touched the scent-patches below the compound eyes, imprinting herself as her kinsman would do with majat Workers, establishing friendship. Mother suffered this without anger, though the jaws might have closed at any instant, though the Drones were disturbed and disturbance ran through all the others. “Mother, Mother, listen to me. Kethiuy was blue-hive’s friend, we always were, and I need help. They’ve killed—everyone. Everyone but me. They think they’ve won. Ruil-sept has brought red-hive in with them. And do you think that Ruil will ever send them away again, or even that they know how? No, they’re not going
away. Ever. Red-hive will always be in Kethiuy, in spur valley, and the Family isn’t going to stop them or they would have done something by now.”

  “This seems an accurate estimation.”

  “I can take it back. If blue-hive helped me, I could take it back again.”

  Mother lifted up Her head, mandibles clashing. While She considered, She brought half a dozen new lives into the world. Workers snatched these up and carried them away. Drones groomed Her, uttering soft, distressed pipings, that shrilled away into higher ranges.

  “It is very dangerous;” Mother said. “Intervention violates the Pact. It adds confusions. And you have no translation computers. Without precise instruction, Warriors and humans cannot co-operate.”

  “I can show them. They can work that way. I can guide them. Some know Kethiuy, don’t they? They’ve been there. And the others can follow them.”

  Mother hesitated. Again the head rotated slightly. “You are tight, young queen, but I suspect you are right for the wrong reasons. All, all Warriors know Kethiuy. We do not fully understand how your thoughts proceed. But you can serve as nexus. Yes. Possible. Great risk, but possible.”