Serpent's Reach

by C. J. Cherryh

  He was there after midnight, when she came to bed, and even then she was not in a mood for conversation; he sensed this, evidently, and did not attempt it. But the work was almost done, and she could, for a time, let it go.

  She did so; he obliged, cheerfully, and seemed content.

  iv

  She went down alone in the morning, letting Jim sleep while he would; and the fear that some urgent message, some calamity, some profound change in circumstances might be waiting in the housecomp’s memory, sent her stumbling down to check on it before her eyes were fully open.

  Only the same sort of message that had been coming in during the last day and night. She scanned the message-function a second time, refusing to believe in her continued safety, and finally accepted that this was so—pushed her hair out of her eyes and wandered off to the kitchen to make a cup of coffee: Outsider-luxuries, cheaper here than in innerworlds, for all the threat of famine. Istra was not backward where it regarded what was obtained from Outsider trade.

  She drank her breakfast standing up, staring glaze-eyed at the en through the kitchen’s long slit window, thinking even then that the house had far too many windows, too many accesses, and that the walls were a good deal too low to serve even against human intruders: they masked what went on outside and close to them, and were no defense, only a delay.

  The rising of beta Hydri gave a wan light at this hour—wan by reason of the shaded glass. The light rimmed the walls, the edge of the azi-quarters which showed a gleam of interior light, and over the wall, far distant, showed a vague impression of the domes of another arm of the City, with brush and grassland intervening: another hazard. Within the walls was deep shadow. The light frosted edges of rocks, of hastate-leaved plants, of the garden’s few trees, which were gnarled and twisted and looked dead until one realised that the limp strings which hung along the limbs were leaves. A vine which ran among the rocks like a brown snarl of old cable by day had miraculously spread leaves for the dawn. Other things likewise had leafed out or bloomed, for the one brief period of moderate light and coolness. By day the garden reverted to reality. It was much like Cerdin. The Eln-Kests had had an eye for gardens, for Istran beauty, declining to import showy exotics from Kalind, which would have died, neglected: these thrived. It was a quality of subtle taste unsuspected in folk whose front room decor was as it was. Raen thought of the green-and-white bedroom, and the subtlety of that, and reckoned that the same mind must have planned both, a character unlike what she knew of betas.

  A large shadow appeared in the window, stopping her heart; it was Warrior—at least majat, wanting in. She opened the door, hand on the gun she had in her pocket, but it was in truth only Warrior, who sat down on the floor and preened itself of dew.

  A little sugar-water more than satisfied it; it sang for her while it drank, and she stroked the auditory palps very softly in thanks for this.

  “Others come,” it said then.

  “Other blues? How do you know so, Warrior?”

  It boomed a note of majat language. “Mind,” it translated, probably approximating.

  “Is blue-hive not far, then?”

  It shifted, never ceasing to drink, into a new orientation. “There.”

  It faced down-arm from residence circle 4.

  “Come that way,” it informed her, then reoriented half about. “Blue-hive there, our-hill.”

  They would come an eighth of the way round the asterisk-city and up the wild interstice to the garden wall. And majat runners could cover that ground very quickly.

  “When?”

  It stopped drinking and measured with its body the future angle of the sun, a profound bow toward the far evening. Late, then. Twilight.

  “This-hive hopes you remain with us, Warrior.”

  It began drinking again. “This-unit likes sweet. Good, Kethiuy-queen.”

  She laughed soundlessly. “Good, Warrior.” She touched it, eliciting a hum of pleasure, and went about her business. Warrior would of course do what the hive determined, immune to bribery, but Warrior would at least give its little unit of resistance to being removed, as valid a unit of the Mind as any other.

  And the hive was reacting. She went about her work, schooling herself to concentration, but burning with an inner fire all the same: the hive…had heard her, regarded her. The approach through Kalind Warrior had had its imprint.

  It was there again, the contact which she had lost. Nearly twenty years, and many attempts, and this one had taken: she had allies, the power of the hives.

  All possibilities shifted hereafter. Being here, at the Edge, was no longer a protracted act of suicide, a high refuge, a place where enemies could not so easily follow: the circular character of events struck her suddenly and amazed her with her own predictability. She had run, a second time, for the hive.

  It was time to attack.

  v

  House records had indicated a vehicle in the garage: systems in it seemed up and operable. Max and Merry both, by their papers, had some skill in that regard. “Go out,” she said, “and check it out by eye; I’m not inclined to trust housecomp’s word on it.”

  They went. Citybank provided an atlas in printout. A sorrowfully thin atlas it proved to be, only a few pages thick, for an entire inhabited world. Newhope and Newport were the two cities, Newport seeming a very small place indeed; and the town of Upcoast was the other major concentration of population, only an administrative and warehousing area for the northern estates. The rest of the population was dotted all over the map, in the rain belts, on farms and pumping stations and farms which served as depots on the lacery of unpaved roads. Over most of the land surface of Istra was nothing but blankness, designated Uninhabited. There was the spectacular upsurge of the High Range on East; and an extremely wide expanse of marsh southward on West, marked Hazard, which given the habit of Istran nomenclature, might be the name of the place as well as its character. Small numbers were written beside the dots that were farms…2, 6, 7, and those in black; and by depots and by the cities, like-wise, but ranging up to 15,896 at Newhope.

  Population, she realised. A world so sparse that they must give population in the outback by twos and threes.

  In the several pages of the atlas, three were city-maps, and they were all of the pattern of Newhope. The city was simplicity itself: an eight-armed star with business and residential circles dotted along its arms and with wedges between wistfully titled Park… Park doubtless being the ambition. Reality was outside, over the garden wall, a sun-baked tangle of weeds and native trees which could not have known human attention in centuries. Newhope must have had ambitions once, in the days of its birth…ambition, but no Kontrin presence to aid it: no relief from taxes, no Kontrin funds feeding back into its economy, for beautification, luxury, art.

  Most of the building-circles were warehouses: the two arms of the city nearest the Port were entirely that. There were local factories, mostly locally consumed equipment for agriculture, light arms, clothing, food processing. There were services and their administrations; worker-apartments for the ordinary run of betas; mid-class apartments and some residential circles for the mid-class well-to-do; and one arm was all elite residence-circles, like circle 4, which this house occupied. The highest ITAK officials lodged in circle 1, the lowest in 10. And the guest house was second circle of the eighth arm: the Outsider-mission’s residency, while ITAK officers were dead centre, zero-circle.

  Useful to know.

  There was a closing of doors upstairs. She heard footfalls, soft, wandering here and there. She punched time: the morning was well along.

  The reflection in the dead screen showed her Jim standing in the doorway, and she pushed with her foot, turned the chair nearly full about.

  “You certainly had your sleep this morning,” she said cheerfully.

  “No, sera.”

  She let go her breath, let pass the sera. “What, then? You weren’t meddling with the tapes, were you?”

  “I didn’t remembe
r them well. I tried them again.”

  “For enjoyment. I thought you would enjoy them. Maybe learn something.”

  “I’m trying to learn them, sera.”

  She shook her head. “Don’t try beyond convenience. I only meant to give you something to fill your time.”

  “What will you want for lunch, sera?”

  “Raen I don’t care. Make something. I’ve a little more to do here. I’ll be through in half an hour. We should have staff here. You shouldn’t have to serve as cook.”

  “I helped in galley sometimes,” he said.

  She, did not answer that Jim strayed out again. Warrior met him: she saw the encounter reflected when she had turned about again, and almost turned back to intervene. But to her gratification she saw Jim touch Warrior of his own accord and suffer no distress of it. Warrior sang softly, hive-song, that was strange in the human rooms; it trailed after Jim as he went kitchenward.

  “Sugar-water,” she heard from the kitchen, a deep harmony of majat tones, and afterward a contented humming.

  The car functioned, with no problems. Raen watched the short street flow past the tinted windows and settled back with a deep breath. Merry drove, seeming happy with the opportunity. Max and Warrior, minutely instructed regarding each other as well as intruders, were guarding the house and grounds; but Jim she would not leave behind, to the mercy of chance and Max’s skill at defense. Jim sat in the back seat of the Eln-Kests’ fine vehicle, watching the scenery she saw when she looked back, with a look of complete absorption.

  Doing very well with this much strangeness about him, she reckoned of him. Doing very well, considering. She smiled at him slightly, then gave her attention forward, for the car dipped suddenly for the downramp to the subway and Merry needed an address.

  “D-branch circle 5,” she said, the while Merry took them smoothly onto the track for Center.

  The program went in. The car gathered speed, entering the central track.

  Something wrong whipped past the window on Max’s side. Raen twisted in the seat, saw an impression of stilt-limbed walkers along the transparent-walled footpath that ran beside the tracks.

  Tunnels. Natural to majat, easy as the wildland interstices. But there were beta walkers too, and no sign of panic.

  “Merry. So majat have free access here? Do they just come and go as they please?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  She thought of calling the house and warning Max; but Max and Warrior had already been stringently warned. There was no good adding a piece of information that Max would already know. The danger was always there, had been. She settled forward again, arms folded, scanning the broad tube, the lights of which flicked past them faster and faster.

  “Majat make free of all Newhope, then, and betas just bear with it, do they?”

  “Yes, sera.”

  “They work directly for betas?” She found amazement, even resentment, that majat would do so.

  “Some places they do. Factories, mostly.”

  “So no one-at the Port found a Warrior’s presence unusual. Everyone’s gotten used to it. How long, Merry, how long has this been going on?”

  The azi kept his eyes on the tracks ahead, his squarish face taut, as if the subject was an intensely uncomfortable one. “Half a year… There was panic at first. No more. Hives don’t bother people. Humans walk one side, majat the other, down the walkways. There are heat-signs.”

  Redsss, redsss, Warrior had tried to tell her. Go here, go there. Redss pushhh.

  “What hive, Merry? One more than others?”

  “I don’t know, sera. I never understood there was a difference to be seen, until you showed me. I’ll watch.” His brow was creased with worry. Not so slow-wilted, this azi. “Humans don’t like them in the city, but they come anyway.”

  Raen bit at her lip, braced as the car went through a manoeuvre, scanned other majat on the walkway. They whipped into the great hub of Central and changed tracks at a leisurely pace. There were human walkers here, swathed in cloaks and anonymous in the sunsuits which Istra’s bright outdoors made advisable; and by twos, there were armoured police… ITAK security: everything here was ITAK.

  They whipped out again on another tangent. D, the signs read.

  More majat walkers.

  Majat, casually coming and going in a daily contact with betas…with minds-who-died. Once majat had fled such contact, unable to bear it, even for the contacts which gave them azi, insisting to work only through Kontrin. Death had once worried majat—azi-deaths, no, as majat deaths were nothing—but betas they had always perceived as individual intelligences, and they had fled beta presence in horror, unable to manage the concepts which disrupted all majat understanding.

  Now they walked familiarly with minds-who-died, unaffrighted.

  And that sent a shiver over her skin, a suspicion of understanding.

  D-track carried them along at increasing velocity; they took the through-track until the lights blurred past in a stream.

  And suddenly they whisked over to slow-track, braking, gliding for the D circle 5 ramp. Merry took over manual as they disengaged, delivered them up into a shaded circle free of traffic and pedestrians, a vast area ringed by a pillared overhang of many stories—which must outwardly seem one of those enormous domes. The summit was a tinted shield which admitted light enough to glare down into the centre of the well of pillars.

  They drove deep beneath the overhand, and to the main entry, where transparent doors and white walls lent a cold austerity to the offices. LABOUR REGISTRY, the neat letters proclaimed, 50-D, ITAK.

  It was the beginning of understandings, at least. Raen contemplated it with apprehensions, reckoned whether she wanted to leave the azi both in the car or not, and decided against.

  “Merry, I don’t think well be bothered here. It’s going to be hot; I’m sorry, but stay in the car and keep the doors locked and the windows sealed. Don’t create trouble, but if it happens, shoot if you have to: I want this car here when I come out. You call Max every ten minutes and make sure things are all right at the house, but no conversation, understand?”

  “Yes.”

  She climbed out and beckoned to Jim, who joined her on the walk and lagged a decorous half-pace behind as she started for the doors. She dropped a step and he caught up, walked with her into the foyer.

  The offices were unnaturally still, desks vacant, halls empty. The air-conditioning was excessive, and the air held a strange taint, a combination of office-smells and antiseptic.

  “Is this place going to bother you?” she asked of Jim, worried for that, but she reckoned hazards even of leaving him here at the door.

  He shook his head very faintly. She looked about, saw a light on in an office down the corridor from the reception area. She walked that way, slowly, her footsteps and Jim’s loud in the deserted building.

  A man occupied the office—had heard their coming evidently and risen. It was modern, but untidy; the desk was stacked high with work. DIRECTOR, the sign by the door declared.

  “Ser,” Raen said. He surveyed them both, blinked, all at once seemed to take the full situation into account, for his face went from ruddy to pale; a Kontrin in Colour, a man in impeccable innerworlds dress and with an azi-mark on his cheek.

  “Sera.”

  “I understand,” Raen said, “that there are numerous personnel to be contracted.”

  “We have available contracts, yes, sera.”

  “Numerous contracts. I’d like a full tour, ser—”

  “Itavvy,” he breathed.

  “Itavvy. A tour of the whole facility, ser.”

  The smallish beta, greying, balding…looked utterly distressed. “The office—I’ve responsibility—”

  “It really doesn’t look as if you’re overwhelmed with visitors. The whole facility, ser, floor by floor, the whole process, so long as it amuses me.”

  Itavvy nodded, reached for the communications switch on the desk. Raen stepped across the interval and p
ut out her chitined hand, shook her head slowly. “No. You can guide us, I’m sure. Softly. Quietly. With minimum disturbance to the ordinary routine of the building. Do you object, ser?”

  vi

  The Labour Registry was a maze of curving corridors, all white, all the same. Lifts designated sub-basements down to the fifth level; Raen recalled as many as twenty stories above ground, although the lifts in this area only went to the seventh: she recalled the overhang. They passed row on row of halls, a great deal of seemingly pointless walking with ser Itavvy in the lead. There were doors, neat letters: LIBRARY: COMP I: LEVEL I: RED CARDS ONLY.

  She made no sense of it, had no idea in fact what she was seeking, save that in this building was what should have been a thriving industry, and in the front of it were empty desks and silent halls.

  Itavvy paused at last at a lift and showed them in, took them to third level, into other identical halls, places at least populated. Grey-suited techs stared at the intrusion of such visitors and stopped dead in their tracks, staring. White-suited azi, distinguishable by their tattoos, stepped from their path and then resumed their cleaning and their pushing of carts.

  Itavvy led them farther.

  “I’m tired of walking aimlessly,” Raen said. “What do you propose to show us on this level? More doors?”

  “The available contracts, sera.”

  Raen walked along in silence, scanning doors and labels, searching for something of information. Periodically corridors branched of from theirs, always on the right. Inevitably those corridors ended at the same interval, closed off by heavy security doors. RED CARD ONLY, the signs said.

  She stopped, gestured toward the latest of them. “What’s there, ser Itavvy?”

  “General retention,” Itavvy said, looking uncomfortable. “If sera will, please, there are more comfortable areas—”

  “Unlock this one. I’d like to see.”

  Itavvy unhappily preceded them down the short corridor, produced his card and unlocked the door.