Serpent's Reach (24 page)

He took it.

“The delivery,” she said, “of the guards for my house…today?”

“Yes.”

“And all equipage with them?”

“Yes. That can be arranged. We have warehouse access.”

“And the transfer of the azi to the Tel estate?”

“Will begin today, sera. I could suggest an abbreviated training, if only the use of arms is required, and not specialised security—”

“Hastening the program?”

“Hastening it by half, Kontrin.”

“Acceptable.”

“If the authorisations to clear the papers on the others could be given—”

“Not from this terminal, ser, but if you’ll check after your delivery to my house, number 47A, if you’ll kindly make a note of that, you may find that certain problems have vanished. And the Tel estate access is South Road 3. You have all that?”

“Yes, sera.”

She smiled. “Thank you, ser Itavvy. Payment will clear at delivery. And a further matter: should you ever notice on your housecomp a call from ser Tel in person…check the Sed account at once. There’ll be passage for Sed and family, to ISPAK and elsewhere. It would be wise at that point to use it. I do take care of my agents, ser, if it’s ever necessary.”

“Sera,” he breathed.

“We’re agreed, then.” She rose, offered her chitin-sheathed hand with deliberation, knowing how betas hated contact with it. Itavvy took it with gingerly pleasure, rising.

“Jim,” she said softly then, drew him with her, out of the office.

And in the foyer she looked back. Itavvy had not come out of his office…would not perhaps, for a small space. She took Jim’s arm. “All right?” she asked.

Jim nodded. Upset, she thought, how not? But he shored no signs of worse disturbance. She pressed his arm, let it go, led the way to the door.

The car still waited. She looked right and left, walked out into the heat. The filtered light coming down the huge well to the pavement was not screened enough: the ventilation was insufficient. When they reached the car, Merry opened the door with a look of vast relief and started the air-conditioning at once. He was drenched with sweat, his blond hair plastered about his face.

“Everything all right?” she asked, letting Jim in.

“At the house…quiet. No trouble.”

Raen closed the door, looked back yet again at Jim. He looked none the worse for the experience, even here, where he might have given way in private. He seemed quite composed, quite—she thought with disturbance—as composed as the faces which had looked up at them from the cells, silent, incapable of tears.

“Centre,” she directed Merry, settling forward in her seat again and folding her arms about her. “We’re going to pay another call. ITAK’s due one.”

It was very like the Labour Registry, the circle which was the heart of ITAK: it was only wider, taller, and perhaps deeper underground.

The Centre drew a great deal of traffic, cars prowling the circle-drive…probably every car in East, every car on the continent resorted here regularly, in a city where everyone but the higher ITAK officials must rely on public transport. A space was available in front of the main doors, probably vacant because it was restricted; Raen directed and Merry eased into it, parked, let them out and locked the doors.

She and Jim were actually well into the building before the reaction set in among the betas. It began with shocked stares. Word apparently flashed then throughout the building, for by the time she reached the main hall, with its central glass sculpture, there was a delegation to meet her, minor executives anxious to escort her upstairs where, she was assured, the Board was hastily assembling to meet her.

She cast a glance at the sculpture, which ascended in a complex shaft to a light-well all its own, and took advantage of beta Hydri’s glare to illumine colours and forms all the way down. “Lovely,” she murmured, and looked at the betas. “Local, seri?”

Heads nodded. Anxious gestures tried to urge her elsewhere, hallward. She shrugged and went with them, Jim treading softly in her wake, playing at invisibility. No one spoke to him, no one acknowledged his presence: the tattoo let them know what he was despite his dress. Bodyguard, they would think him, not knowing his harmlessness, and therefore he served the function well. Betas crowded about them, one babbling on about the glass-artist, an Upcoast factor’s son.

They entered the lift, rode it to the uppermost floors, entered directly from it a suite of offices the splendour of which equalled many an establishment on Andra, and a second crowd waited to greet the visitor: division heads, secretaries, minor officials, a chattering succession of introductions.

Raen smiled perfunctorily, reckoning those who might be worth recalling, met the Dain-Prossertys again, and ser Dain himself, the president, and two more Dains high on the staff. The inner office was opened, revealing chairs arranged about a vast hollow table, and the ITAK emblem blazoned on the wall like the Kontrin symbol in Council.

Illusions, illusions
. She smiled to herself, and brought Jim in with her, offered him a seat at the table beside her, offending them all. Azi women appeared, to take requests for drinks. She ordered for herself and Jim, the same that he had ordered on-ship, and leaned back, waiting, while betas took their seats and made their orders and hissing whispers tried to solve the problem of a disturbed seating arrangement. A chair was brought in. The first drinks arrived: Raen’s, Jim’s, President Dain’s and the Dain-Prossertys’.

Raen sipped at hers and studied them all, who had to wait on theirs. The serving-azi hastened breathlessly…decorative, Raen thought, eyeing the young women with a critic’s cold eyes, reckoning whether they were homebred or foreign, and whether they were equally to the taste of the beta women on the board.

Foreign, she decided. Mixed as populations were in the Reach, seven hundred years had brought some definition among azi, whose generations were short and subject to brief fads. These had the look of Meron’s carnival decadence, elegant, sloe-eyed.

The last drinks appeared; the azi took themselves hence very quickly. Raen still mused the question of beta psych-sets, looked at Dain, who was murmuring some courtesy to her, and nudged herself out of her analysis to look on him as a man, plump, nearly bald, eyes full of anxiety. She kept seeing labs, and the Registry’s grey honeycomb of cells.

“Ser Enis Dain,” she said. “I recall your message.” She smiled and regarded the others. “It’s very kind of you to disarrange your schedules. I’ll take very little of your time.”

“Kont’ Raen Meth-maren, we’re very honoured by your visit.”

She nodded. “Thank you. Your people have been very co-operative. I’ve appreciated that. I know that my presence is a disturbance. And you’re doubtless wanting to ask me questions; let me save you time and effort. You’d like to know if my coming is going to disturb your operations here, and most of all whether the seri Eln-Kest, personally lamented, had anything to do with bringing me here.”

There was disturbance in their faces. They were not apparently accustomed to such directness. She sipped at her drink and three others did so by reflex.

“I know your difficulties here,” she said. “And I know other details, and I shall not confide in any until I am sure what other agency arranged that reception of my party at the port, thank you.”

“Sera,” said Dain senior, “Kontrin—the hives—the hives are beyond our influence, beyond our power to restrain. We apologise profoundly for the incidence, but it was a hive matter.”

She frowned darkly. This casting back of the Kontrin’s eternal answer for majat intrusions had, on the lips of a beta, suspicion of irony. For a moment she readjusted her estimate of ser Dain’s craft, and then, staring at his chin, which wobbled with anxiety, dismissed her suspicions of subtlety. “A hive matter. If so, ser, majat have come into possession of communications equipment—modified for their handling. Or how else would they have informed themselves? Tell me that, seri. How did they know we were coming?”

Dain made a helpless gesture. “The information was widespread.”

“Public broadcast?” The notion appalled her.

“ITAK general channels,” Dain answered faintly.

She waved her hand in disgust, dismissing the matter. “Trust that I shall find my own way and provide my own security. If you have any policy of allowing majat to walk freely in and out of ITAK agencies…revise it.”

“We have protested—”

“If majat object to being evicted, mention my name and invoke the Pact. If you can’t move them… Well, but you’ve let matters go too far, haven’t you? They’re all over the city.”

“They’ve done no harm. They—”

“If you will believe me, seri, hive matters and Kontrin affairs are better avoided. And while I remind myself of it…since you’re unaccustomed to the protocols of Kontrin presence…a bit of advice in self-protection. Houses have their differences. We all do. And if another Kontrin arrives here, your safest action is to inform me at once and stay neutral. Such a visitor would correctly assume that I have agents among you and that I have personal interests in protecting the world of Istra. A friend would of course treat you well—an enemy…if I were removed…could be very disruptive in his search for my agents, who would disrupt in their turn… You do see your hazard, seri. I don’t think Istra could easily bear that sort of thing.

“As for the benefits of my presence, you’ll see them very soon. You want licenses; I understand that some Kontrin somewhere has blocked all your appeals. I shall expect, in fact, that any opposition who turns up here will probably be that agency, do you see, Seri? I can grant those licenses. I’ve already begun to purchase…extravagantly…items which will permit me to live in comfort and safety, of course to the aid of your tax balance and the security and prosperity of the company. Council on Cerdin hasn’t received your appeals; you’ve been cut off deliberately; and if it goes on, your economy will collapse. I shall take immediate steps to improve matters. And I do imagine that that action will turn up enemies—mutual enemies—very quickly.”

“Kontrin,” said ser Dain, hard-breathing. “In no wise was the attack on your person of our doing. There is no one in ITAK who would desire—”

“You can only speak of your hopes, ser Dain, not certainties. I’ll look to myself. Simply afford me your co-operation.”

“Our utmost co-operation.”

She gave them her almost-best smile. “Then I thank you, seri. I’ve found possibilities in Istra, a change from the ordinary. I’d like to travel a bit: An aircraft—”

“Your safety—”

“Trust me. An aircraft would be very useful. Armed, if you feel it necessary.”

“We’ll provide it,” Dain said; the man at his left confirmed his uncertain look with a nod.

“I’ll furnish my own security about my property; I’d appreciate ITAK security temporarily about the aircraft allotted to my use. All these things of course are not gifts: they’ll be credited against ITAK’s taxes. Kontrin presence is never financially disadvantageous, seri.”

“We are enormously concerned—” This was sera Ren Milin, head of Agriculture, “enormously concerned for your personal safety. Dissidents and saboteurs are presently confined to attacks on depots, but one more deranged than the rest.”

“I do appreciate your concern. You have heavy arms…for onworld security…surely. I’d appreciate it if a goodly number were delivered to my estate, say, sufficient for a thousand men.”

Faces went uniformly stark with shock.

“Precaution, you see, against dissidents, saboteurs, and deranged persons. If it’s generally known that we’re armed, ITAK being so inclined to general broadcast channels, there will be less temptation. I certainly hope not to use them. But you wouldn’t like the consequences of a Kontrin killed here…by your own locals. No. You’d be surprised how even Houses at odds with mine would look on that: the Family…would be forced to make a very strong answer to that. The facts of policy. Kindly see that the arms arrive. They’re quite safe in my hands. My security, after all, is yours. And enough, enough unpleasantness. I’m quite delighted by your courtesy. I’ll extend you my own hospitality as soon as I’m decently settled and housed. If there’s entertainment to be had, I’d appreciate knowing. I suffer from boredom. I do hope there’s some society here.”

The pallor did not entirely depart. They murmured courtesies, professed themselves honoured and delighted by the prospect of her company socially. She laughed softly.

“And Outsiders!” she exclaimed ingenuously. “Seri, I saw an Outsider ship at station…an ordinary sight for you, surely, but profoundly exciting for one from innerworlds. I’ve met these folk, had some chance to talk with them. Do you include them in your society?”

That brought silence, a moment of awkwardness.

“It could be arranged,” sera Dain said.

“Excellent.” Raen finished her drink and set it aside.

“We’ll be pleased to provide what we can in all respects,” ser Dain managed to say. “Would you care for another drink, Kont’ Raen?”

“No, thank you.” She gathered herself up and waited for Jim, deliberately slipped her hand within his arm. “I’m quite content with your courtesy. Very pleased. Thank you so much. And don’t worry about what I shall uncover. I know that you’ve been driven to unusual methods, unusual sources. I give you warning that I know…and I shall refrain from seeing what perhaps shades your license. The maintenance of order here under trying circumstances is a tribute to your ingenuity. I don’t find fault, seri. And do forgive me. My next call will be entirely social, I assure you.”

Men moved to reach the door, to open it for her. She smiled at them one and all and walked out, with Jim beside her, in a crowd of security agents who made turmoil in the outer offices.

The agents, armoured police, and Dain senior himself insisted on staying with them, in the lift and out into the foyer. She lingered there an instant, with the crowd milling about, looking up to the glass sculpture.

“Find me the artist’s address,” she said to Dain. “Send it to me this evening. Would you do that?”

“Honoured,” he said. “Honoured to do so.”

She walked on. The crowds broke and closed.