The subterranean dimness shielded her. Isolated within her own silence, but not alone, she relaxed as her litter moved deeper into the familiar tunnels of the hive. Her bearers jostled past the bustling cho-ja, surrounded by the high-pitched commands of soldiers, and the clashing ring of chitinous forearms as patrol leaders slapped their midsection in salute to her retinue. Knowing her surcease was only temporary, Mara surrendered to the illusion of relief. For a space, she felt restored to past days when her responsibilities and her heartaches had been few. Her inner barriers loosened and moisture gathered in her eyes. She bit her lip, but did not blot away her tears. In the cho-ja hive, scantily lit by the violet-blue glow of light globes, her weakness would pass unnoticed. The worry, the frustration, the daily ache of her helplessness to redress the wrongs done her family by the Anasati, combined to oppress her. She could deny her emotions no longer. The death of two children, the break in rapport with her husband and closest confidant, threatened to overwhelm her.
The years when Mara had grown in confidence and ability to control any situation seemed empty. Her emergence to dominance in the time-honored Game of the Council became a false achievement, the edict of the Assembly at a stroke preventing the established ways of avenging wrongs against honor. Politics and intrigues had taken a turn down nontraditional paths. The advantage that Mara had always enjoyed, a willingness to break with convention, was now lost to her, as every Ruling Lord in the Empire scrambled to contrive new means to dominate ancient rivals.
The old ways had all been upset.
Even the destruction of the Hamoi Tong, and the clear knowledge of where Jiro's true culpability lay, brought little relief. For although one menace to the Acoma had been ended, the Great Ones yet prevented her from avenging a deep insult to honor.
Mara's return trip by river barge to the homelands of her ancestors had been a stopgap effort to set hurt and confusion at bay because, in truth, she had no sane place to seek solutions to the dilemmas that beset her.
Mara closed her eyes, rocked by the slight sway as her bearers wended their way downward into the tunnels. The air here was warmer, thick with the alien scents of the hive. Light globes were spaced at wider intervals, and the throngs of scurrying workers thinned. The tramp of humans' sandals became more prevalent than the click of chitinous claws. Mara knew her retinue must be nearing the Queen's cavern. But the route was no longer entirely familiar. Since her last visit, walls and arches that had been roughly hewn were now polished smooth, or carved and overhung with richly dyed hangings. If the arrangement of colors and tassels was unusual to human eyes, the effect was prosperous. The differences here seemed strangely at odds with impressions like untouched memory. But for the silver hair beginning to show at her temples, Mara might have been revisiting her girlhood. The house where she had played as a child, where she had first married and given birth, and acquired her taste for power, had initially appeared the same - until she remembered with a hollow stab to her stomach that silence ruled where once a young son had run roistering through the corridors.
She had felt a pang of loneliness. Ayaki was not the only loved one lost to her. The all too familiar surroundings brought heartache along with solace. By the gods, how she longed to see Nacoya, her onetime nurse and First Adviser, whose scolding and sage advice had more often than not averted disaster. Another trail of tears seeped from Mara's eyes as she thought of her red-haired barbarian, Kevin of Zun, who had taught her the meaning of love and womanhood in the kekali gardens here. Although Kevin had often infuriated her with his headstrong, mannerless ways, and Nacoya's fussy proprieties had sometimes been a hindrance, she missed them both. The understanding she had shared with Hokanu, which had grown to replace those lost relationships, had seemed a bastion of infallibility, until now. A shadow lay between them since his misgivings over the birth of his daughter. Still angry with him, Mara rubbed her cheeks on her fine silk cuffs. The fabric would water-stain, but she did not care! It had taken the near obliteration of her line to make Hokanu see her need to name Justin as Acoma heir. That she had needed to suffer the loss of their firstborn infant to convince him had caused less pain than this!
Now Hokanu's incomprehensible reluctance to accept Kasuma as Shinzawai firstborn was building another wall between them. A son, and only a son, would satisfy him, so it seemed. As if she could not bear a boy child in the future, Mara raged bitterly; or as if he were not free to exercise his right as Ruling Lord to lie with a dozen concubines to give him issue. No, the message behind his behavior was hurtfully clear: what he could accept in his wife he found unimaginable in a daughter, that a woman could be worthy of ruling a great house.
As she had so many times in the past when disheartened by despair, Mara had entered the cho-ja tunnels seeking an alien perspective, a different point of view that could give rise to new ideas.
A light touch roused Mara from reminiscence; Lujan nodded ahead, reminding that her retinue had reached the chamber of the Queen.
As her litter was borne through the final arch, with its squatting rows of sentries so still they might have been polished black statues, Mara composed herself. Entering the huge cavern, she used an old, silent meditation chant to shed her smoldering resentment. When at last her bearers lowered her down before the grand dais, she had recovered her proper decorum.
The cho-ja Queen dominated the chamber, her bulk supported by a massive pedestal of earth. Mara remembered how tiny the Queen had been when they had first met, far away in the hive where she had been hatched. The delicate creature had matured, coming to her full growth within the first year of her accouchement at the Acoma estate. Now she bulked many times the size of her attendants, dwarfing even the largest of her warriors, with just her upper torso and head retaining their original size. Workers scurried around her mammoth body, keeping her clean and comfortable, as she produced the eggs that provided the different classes of cho-ja: warriors, workers specialised in any of a dozen different crafts, and, should the hive became prosperous to the point of overcrowding, a new queen.
Mara gave a bow of the head, as was proper between equals.
'Greetings, Lady of the Acoma, Servant of the Empire,' said the Queen, her high-pitched tones clear over the bustle of workers in the gallery.
'Honors to your hive, Queen,' answered Mara as Lujan provided a hand to guide her to the cushions waiting for her. The rapidity of cho-ja communication was still a mystery to Mara; somehow the Queen always seemed to know in advance of her arrival, and as much could be determined, the hive ruler seemed to enjoy these visits. Mara had ceased trying to understand the cho-ja in human terms; living with an outworld barbarian had taught her that persistently seeing through Tsurani eyes kept her blind to refreshing insights.
While Lujan oversaw the placement and disposition of her honor guard, her servants laid out sweets and Midkemian tea for her refreshment, and also to share with cho-ja factors. Against Jican's pessimistic predictions after the poisoning by the false Midkemian trader, Mara had developed a fondness for the pungent drink. Never one to waste an opportunity, she had overcome her personal misfortune and had cornered the market in tea, coffee, and chocolate.
Once the banalities of tea-tasting and trade were concluded, the Queen tilted her head in what Mara had come to interpret as inquiry. 'What cause brings you to us, Lady Mara? The delicacies you have brought as samples could as easily have been sent by runner.'
Mara floundered for a reply. Her hesitation was unusual enough that Lujan broke his warrior's formality to glance askance to ascertain nothing was amiss. Made aware by his lapse that her quiet might be misinterpreted as duplicity, Mara chose honesty, though she risked appearing foolish. 'I had no set purpose, beyond a need for your wisdom.'
The Queen was silent. Around her, the attendants scurried on about their tasks. The guard warriors remained squatting in immobility, but Mara knew how swiftly they could move upon command. Uneasy lest she transgress some alien point of etiquette, she resisted an impulse to follow
up with excuses. If she should cause offense, and then show weakness before cho-ja strength, she might never escape these tunnels alive.
As though the Queen sensed her guest's discomfort, she said, 'Many of your concepts are unknowable to us, Lady of the Acoma. This you name "wisdom" is such a thing. Your human tonalities indicate an idea handed down from a past generation to a mind of less life experience. Forgive me, I do not wish to imply that our kind are in any way superior to yours, but our consciousness is not isolated. The hive mind we share by your terms would span millennia. To us your perspective is fleeting, tied as it is to the duration of one human life. Insomuch as we cho-ja can share a thing outside our understanding, we shall seek to give our aid.'
Here the Queen folded her tiny, vestigial forelimbs, to indicate patience and an attitude of waiting.
Mara stared unseeing into the dregs of her tea. She was aware that a cho-ja's individuality was never separated from the hive mind; personal autonomy played no part in their culture, and only centuries of interaction between species had allowed the insectoids to conceptualise any sense of a human identity apart and alone from the whole. Individuality, to hive thought, held puzzling and conflicting ironies. The concept of foolishness, of someone acting against his own best interests or those of his family, seemed an insanity of irredeemable proportions to cho-ja perspective. And without foolishness, Mara thought wryly, the process of human learning could hold no meaning; the abstract term 'wisdom' became too ephemeral for the hive mind to grasp.
Mara frowned, and tried afresh. 'In my brief experience, your counsel and that of other humans has taught me I live in a small world. Until recently, I thought I had some control over that world.' She need not repeat Ayaki's fate; nor any other event. Word of the Assembly's intervention between herself and the Anasati had spread to the most remote province of the Nations, and although the cho-ja might not understand all the nuances of human affairs, they held an astute recollection of events.
Perhaps the hive mind sensed that the interdiction of the Assembly lay at the root of Mara's inquiries; certainly something warned them off. While the Queen customarily sat massive and unmoving, for the first time in Mara's experience the attendants around her went from frenetic motion to utter stillness. All activity in that vast hall ceased, though no apparent order called for silence.
Mara's uneasiness coalesced into fear.
The Queen had long ago revealed that cho-ja alliances were sold as commodities. Mara had paid lavish sums for the loyalty of the hives on both her estates. She shivered at the thought that the Great Ones' influence might extend even here, and that in words or inference she might call down their chastisement. A spell-wrought earthquake even a fraction as violent as the one that had shaken the Holy City when the Black Robe Milamber had unleashed his might would utterly devastate these tunnels. Arches and vaults would crumble into dust, and tons of black earth would fall . . . Aware how her hands trembled, Mara thrust them into her sleeves. She must not think! Only act. And in truth, the Queen had not spoken to indicate which way hive allegiance might lie.
All that could be done was wait.
The silence became eerie in its intensity. In time, Mara's hyperextended senses detected a faint buzzing, high-pitched as the beat of insect wings. She wondered whether this sound might signal some sort of wide-ranging communication, then decided it indeed must, since the Queen spoke with the authority of one who had reached a decision. 'Mara of the Acoma, you made a point which, if I venture to presume, your kind might call wise. You observed that you live in a small world. You would do well to redefine the boundaries of that world, and look to other worlds that coexist with your own.'
Mara chewed her lip, thinking fast. Behind the stilted, careful etiquette of the cho-ja Queen's phrasing she sensed reluctance. Alert for hidden opportunity, Mara pressed for more information. 'What sort of worlds should I examine?'
The workers remained frozen in postures of repose as the Queen said, 'This world of Kelewan, firstly. You have visited with us often, something no noble of your people has ever done. Even at the dawn of the Nations, when our two races forged the treaty that still binds, no Tsurani Lord tried this.'
Mara raised her eyebrows. No scrolls of history she had seen ever mentioned any formal agreement between cho-ja and human. Relations between Tsurani and cho-ja were dictated by tradition, she had assumed, as were all other facets of her life and culture. And yet the Nations extended back into antiquity; as the Queen so tactfully reminded, human memory was brief. 'I have never heard of this treaty you speak of. Could you tell me more?'
The Queen's massive bulk held so motionless, she might have been a monument in black lacquer. 'That is forbidden.'
Astonished, Mara forgot the unearthly quiet and the frozen attitudes of the breeding workers. Her words echoed as she blurted, 'Forbidden? By whom?'
'That is forbidden.'
Shocked back to caution by the Queen's whipcrack inflection, Mara analysed. If she had been rude, she had not yet been ordered from the royal chamber. Though Lujan's hands had whitened in alarm on his spear haft, the warriors of the Queen stayed crouched at rest. Pressed by curiosity and need to aggressive risks, Mara chanced that the Queen's reticence might stem from some outside source. As best she had determined, the cho-ja had no religion, no devotion to or belief in gods and forces beyond an earthly nature. If the prohibition were not from heaven, what remained? Tradition? Mara rejected that idea; the cho-ja were mercenary in their interactions, by human standards. Their consistency was due more to hive consensus than to habit. A covenant of secrecy seemed unlikely, since the hive consciousness disallowed the very concept: privacy was only possible between individual minds.
Choosing her way carefully, Mara ventured, 'What of the cho-ja, my Queen? What is the history of your race?'
The Queen clicked her front claws in response to some unknowable impulse. Except for the fact that her attendants stayed locked in place, her tone might have been conversational. 'We come from the Beginning, like any race, growing and gaining knowledge. There was a time, ages gone, when we lived simply. We were one of many intelligences that sought our place on a rich world and who strove at the time that man first came —'
'The Golden Bridge?' Mara interjected, trying to tie into what she knew of her own people's origins.
'So our history tells us,' said the Queen. 'Cho-ja eyes did not witness the arrival, but one day there were no men, and the next day a nation of refugees was encamped upon the shore near the place you name the City of the Plains.'
Barely able to hide excitement, Mara asked, 'You have tales from before the Golden Bridge?'
'Tales?' The Queen twitched a forelimb, as if in deprecation. 'Your word translates to imply exaggeration, or embellishment based upon imperfect recollection. Please take no injury at my bluntness, but our kind need not dramatise for posterity. We remember.'
Mara felt her heart race. 'Do you tell me that you have that record in the hive mind?' she said, probing carefully because she sensed something momentous was at issue here. 'Or that you actually have recall, as if you saw with your ancestors' eyes?'
'We are of one mind, and one people.' At no discernible signal from the Queen, the breeding attendants surged back to their customary frenetic industry. 'What is experienced by one is shared by all, save when one dies in isolation, far from others.'
Relieved to be restored to a less sensitive subject, Mara considered the implications. She had long known that messages seemed to reach other hives with unbelievable speed; but in her wildest imaginings, she had not conceived that such communication might be simultaneous. 'You can . . . speak with the voice of one who was there . . . ?' Her mind fought to encompass the immensity of a consciousness that held complete recall of the past.
The Queen clicked her mandibles, amused. 'We were there, Mara. As you humans might frame the concept, I was there . . . not this body, of course, or this mind, but . . . we were there. What my forebears saw I know as they knew.'
&nb
sp; Mara signaled a servant to fill her teacup, forgetting that the water by now was cold. Lujan suppressed a grin at her absorption. While not so nimble of wit as his mistress, he had watched her turn obscure knowledge into advantage in the political arena too many times to discount her fancies as whim. As no man's fool, he, too, could imagine the profound impact of the Queen's revelation. Whatever one cho-ja saw was remembered by all cho-ja, obviously over centuries. Intrigued, he observed as Mara turned the discussion once more onto sensitive ground.
'What of the cho-ja, since the coming of man?'
The attendants kept up their ministrations as the Queen said, 'We were first among many, though not so numerous as now. We were forced to contest with other races, the Thun, the Nummongnum, the Cha-desh, the Sunn.' Of those names, Mara knew only the Thun. She resisted the temptation to sidetrack in pursuit of details. If she survived to find means to secure her safety from the magicians, she would have years and leisure to pursue her fascination.
As if the Queen sensed her guest's bent, or perhaps from other, more sensitive reasons, the facts she revealed remained general. 'Our warriors are bred to protect; cho-ja is never set against cho-ja, save in times of starvation when one hive may contest with another so that only the most vigorous line will continue. A hive challenge for survival is performed without hatred; killing is not our preferred nature. But against other races we made war, for they have a different sense of their place in the worlds. Much hive life perished needlessly, for beings came among us who were terrible beyond intelligent law, who slew for more than food or protection. They make war for the love of slaughter, it seems to us then and now. They seize land they do not need, and start battles to award themselves an essence of thought we cannot comprehend, called honor.'
The blood drained from Mara's face. 'Tsurani.'
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