Serpent's Reach (35 page)

Jim shook his head slowly.

“You know,” Pol said, as Max finished; he brushed distastefully at his clothing. “You know where she is.”

“No, ser. You know well she wouldn’t tell me.”

“She would have established other contacts. Other points. Numbers, records. Names.”

“She wouldn’t have confided them to me.”

“There had to be records.”

“Max!” Jim said. “Have Warrior keep a guard about the comp centre. Now. Do it! Warrior!”

Max moved, drew his gun: Pol’s instant move was stopped cold. The Hald stepped back, then.

And there was a shadow in the door, that filled it, moiré eyes that swept them. “This-unit guardsss,” it said.

“This stranger,” Jim said, “must not go near the comp”

“Understandss. Comp centre: many-machine. Sssafe.”

Pol’s eyes hooded. “You’ve killed us all. Morn won’t hesitate at wiping out this whole house. Do you understand that?”

“I understand it very well.
We’re
only azi.”

Perhaps Pol caught that sarcasm. He gave him a long and penetrating look. “It’s Raen’s mind-set,” he said. “Male, she’s no different.”

Jim swallowed at the sickness in his throat.
Calm, calm,
an old tape kept insisting somewhere. And:
Distraction is argument that needs no logic,
another advised him, Kontrin. Pol was skilled in the tactic. Jim painted a smile on his face and tucked a corner of the blanket about him against a tendency to chill, reckoning that what happened would at least be quick, unless Pol or Morn directly laid hands on him. “The staff,” he said, “will make you comfortable, ser. But you’ll stay away from the computer.”

“You realise a direct strike could wipe this house out That with the stakes I fear she’s playing-the Family may not care that betas or a Kontrin die in the process.” Pol’s mouth twisted as though the words choked him. “I don’t care for a few betas or a houseful of azi and majat But
she’s
another matter with me. You hear me. I’ll not be taken down by a houseful of azi.”

“There are majat.”

The Kontrin went stone-faced.

“The staff,” Jim repeated, “will make you comfortable in this room. But you’ll not leave it.”

Pol folded big arms.

“She’ll come back,” Jim said.

Pol shook his head. “I doubt that she can, azi. The shuttle was never meant for landing elsewhere. She’ll die, if she’s not dead already.”

It undermined his confidence of things. He could not keep that from his face.

“You know,” Pol said reasonably, “that she admitted me here herself. She’d never have let an enemy that close to her. You have her mind. You know that better than anyone would. She wouldn’t have let me in the door to see the lay of things, if she didn’t know that I wasn’t the enemy.”

“I don’t try to think as she does.” Jim hugged the blanket about him, stared bleakly at the Hald. “I don’t know enough. I only know what she told me, which was to stay and hold this house. You can say what you wish, ser. It may entertain you. It won’t make any difference.”

Pol cursed him, and Warrior stirred in the doorway.

“Green-hive,” Warrior moaned.

“That is another reason,” Jim said. “We simply wait for her. Maybe she’ll tell me then that I was wrong.”

“She’s never going to have the chance.”

Jim shrugged, tucked his feet up, cross-legged on the bed. “How shall we pass the time, ser? I am passably skilled at Sej.”

The queasiness of docking upset the child. Wes Itavvy hugged her against him, looked at his wife, mute, full of things he should have said. They held Meris between them, clasping her hands, saying nothing. The shuttle made this run nearly empty: they three, a family of five from Upcoast, whose faces were no less worried. The port had been a-bristle with police. ID’s were checked, and Itavvy had endured that in terror, expecting at any moment there would be someone who knew his face, who could detect the false numbers, the lies behind the precious tickets.

They had gone through. They had taken almost nothing in baggage, in their haste. There was disaster at their backs. It was palpable, throughout the city, through the subways, where armoured police patrolled, with rifles levelled, in shops closed, in newslines censored, broadcasts cancelled.

They had made it through. Station let them dock. The procedure completed itself and the crew unsealed the hatches.

“Come on,” he said, feeling his pocket for the authorisations. There was a freighter…the tickets advised so…it was the best place to go now, no lingering on station. They carried their own baggage off, jostling the Upcoast family in their haste.

Police.

And not police. Armoured men with a serpent for an emblem, levelling rifles at them.

“Papers,” one said.

Itavvy produced them. For a brief, agonising moment he thought that they would then be waved on; but the man kept them, checked those likewise of the Upcoast group.

“Both for the
Phoenix
,” he said into his com-unit.

“Faces check?” a voice came back.

“No likeness.”

Itavvy reached, to have the papers. The faceless man held them, and the others, motioned at them with the rifle. “Waiting room,” he said.

“We’ll miss our boarding,” a youth from Upcoast protested.

“Nothing’s leaving,” the armoured man said.

Azi
, Itavvy realised in indignation. No Kontrin, but an azi force was holding them. He opened his mouth to protest: the rifles gestured, and he closed it. Meris started to cry; his wife gathered her up, and he took the burden from her, went after the Upcoasters into the designated waiting area.

DOCK 6, BERTH 9, he could see on the signs outside the clear doors as they were ushered through. Berth 11 was their ship, safety.

From here, past azi guns, there was no reaching it. He looked at the Upcoasters, at his wife, hugged Meris to him. A guard deposited their baggage inside the door and unmasked to search through it, disarranging one and proceeding to the next, putting nothing back.

“Nothing,” the azi reported, and Morn scowled, folded his arms.

“No more flights,” he said, looking at the ISPAK president. “Nothing moves out, no more come up.”

“Kont’ Morn,” the beta breathed, appalled.

He cared little for that. He had no trust at all for ITAK, and believed in ISPAK’s loyalty only while guns were on them and in the command centre.

And from Pol there was yet no word. Pol was down in Newhope; that much was certain; his ship pulsed out a steady flow of status information, but there were only azi aboard.

The Meth-maren had weapons enough at her disposal if she had linked into ITAK. She had still the resources of the Family with which to buy beta loyalties. And to take those privileges needed Council.

Except by one procedure.

“She’s dead,” Morn said suddenly, bewildering the beta. “I’ll enter in the banks that the Meth-maren’s dead. And ISPAK will witness it. Then it’ll be true, by the law—do you agree, ser?”

“Yes, Kont’ Morn,” the man said; as it had been yes, Kont’ Pol, and Kont’ Raen before that.

“All Kontrin and a world’s corporations are sufficient witness.” He glared at the beta to see the reaction to this, and the beta simply looked frightened. He motioned to the console. “Get ITAK in link. Use your persuasion.”

The man sat down and keyed a message through, the while Morn leaned above him, one hand on his chair, one on the panel’s rim; and often the man’s hands trembled over a letter, but he made no errors. ITAK protested; NO CHOICE, the ISPAK beta returned. It was untidy; it fed into intercomp, to be examined and made permanent record. Morn scowled and let it. The records were only as dangerous as Council chose to regard them, and Council—was as Council went. Risks had to be taken.

ITAK complied, under threat, registering protest.
Brave little betas
, Morn thought, with respect for the Meth-maren’s hold on them. It amused him. He watched the ISPAK beta trembling with psych-set guilt and that amused him the more. “Move over,” he said, thrust the man out of the way, glared until the man moved far away, by the door. Then he set his own fingers to the keys, with both ITAK and ISPAK signatories, coded in his own number…and Pol’s: for that he had gained long ago, committed it to memory: he had taken that precaution, as he tolerated nothing near him he could not control—save Pol. All a world’s Kontrin and the corporations: the latter, K-codes could forge; but only on Istra did it come down to so small a body of the Family.

Worldcomp accepted it; it leaped to intercomp. Morn smiled, which he did rarely.

Officially dead, so far as Istra was concerned; universally dead in the eight to sixteen days it would take for the message to reach homeworld and fan out again in intercomp. She could not use her codes or her credit: they were wiped.

He pushed back from the console, rose, turned to the azi who waited. “Get the shuttle ready,” he said. “My own.”

One left. He turned to the ISPAK beta.

And suddenly the comp screens began to flash with alarm.

He was at the panel in an instant, keyed through a query.

No answer returned to him. He sat down and plied the keys, obtained only idiocy. Panic flashed into him. With all the speed he could manage he K-coded intercomp out-of link, separating it from the deadness that was Istra.

The cold reached his stomach. Worldbank was wiped. All records, all finance,
null
.

The Meth-maren’s death notice.

It was keyed to that, and he had done it.

“Kill the power!” he shouted, rounding on the ISPAK beta. “Kill all the power on Istra. Dead, you understand me?”

There was silence. Nothing of the sort had ever been done before, the threat never carried out, the withdrawal of station power from a world.

“Yes, Kontrin,” the beta stammered hoarsely. “But how long, how long are we talking about?”

“Until you hear from me to restore it. Shut it down.” He turned to the board, keyed a message to his ship, ordering more azi to the command centre. “I’m going down,” he said to the azi present, to Leo, who was chief of them. The azi looked troubled at that, no more. “There’s no more time to spend with this. You know procedures.”

Leo nodded. Twenty years Leo had been in his service, the last five as senior. Efficiency and intelligence. There was no beta would get past him, no one who would get near controls. Azi lined the room, thirty of them, armed and armoured, impersonal as the majat, and that resemblance was no chance. Beta psych-set was terrified by it. There was no one of them about to make a move under those guns.

He looked about him, saw the screens which monitored the collectors, saw the incredible sight of vanes turning, all at the same time, averting into shadow.

“
We
must have power,” the ISPAK beta objected.

“Without dispute,” he said. The beta looked abjectly grateful.

Morn ignored him and, gathering two of the azi to accompany him, left the centre.

There was a Kontrin ship onworld, Pol’s; and Pol remained silent, leaving only azi to report.

It was the first law, in the Family, to trust no one.

Figures rippled across the comp screen. Raen saw the sudden dissolution of information and sprang back from it with a curse.

Dead. They had gotten to that, then, to pull her privileges.

And all Kontrin onworld had to agree to it.

Pol
, she thought.
You bastard!

She swore volubly and kept working, fed in the Newhope call number. “Jim,” she said. “Jim. Any staff, punch five and answer.”

There was no answer.

JIM, she sent, BEWARE POL HALD.

She suddenly found chaos in the machine, nonsense, and finally only house-functions.

“Power’s down in the main banks,” she said, turning to look at one of the older azi, who attended her shadow wise, armed, wherever she went in the house. She cut the unit off and walked back into the doorway of the living room, where the Ny-Berdens and their family remained with the house-azi. “Worldcomp’s undone,” she said, and at their blankly incredulous stares: “Power’s going to go soon, I’d imagine. Very soon. You’ve some collectors here. Is that enough to keep your house running?”

They only stared.

“I hope for your sakes that such is the case,” she said, looking about her at the smallish rooms, the hand-done touches, the rough and unstylish furnishings. She turned again and raised her voice to them. “You understand, don’t you? Istra’s been cut off. Power will be cut. Worldcomp’s been dissolved—wiped. No records, no communications, nothing exists any longer.”

The ser and sera gathered their son and daughter-in-law and grandchild close about them and continued to stare at her.
Your doing
, their eyes said. She did not argue with them. It was so. Her azi sat still, waiting. The azi belonging to the estate sat outside, ranged in orderly rows in the shade of the azi-quarters, under the guns of her own. There had been need to feed them, to give them at least a little relief from the confinement. Silence prevailed everywhere about the house and grounds.

“Is your local power,” Raen asked yet again, “enough for you?”

“If nothing’s damaged,” ser Ny answered at last, and faintly.

“Confound it, I’m not proposing to harm you. I’d not do that. We’ll leave you your cells and your farm machinery. I’m worried about your survival. You understand that?”

They seemed perhaps a little reassured. The child whimpered. The young mother hugged and soothed her.

“Thank you,” ser Ny said tautly.

An azi came up beside her, offered a cup of juice, bowed
. Blast, what triggered that impulse?
she wondered, concerned for the azi’s stability, for she had not ordered it. She sipped it gratefully all the same. The air-conditioning might not last, not unless the farm collectors could carry it. More than likely it would have to be sacrificed for the farm’s more essential machinery, the pumps to irrigate, refrigeration for stored goods.

Distantly there was the sound of an engine.

“Sera!” an azi shouted from the porch. “The truck’s back!”

Everyone started to his feet, save the Ny-Berdens and their family: the azi guarding them did not let the guns turn aside. The truck groaned and rumbled its way to the porch. Raen put on her sun visor and took her rifle in hand, walked out to meet it.