Serpent's Reach (37 page)

“Kontrin,” it moaned, when he held up his fist. “Green-hive.”

“Held. Morn a Ren hant Hald.”

Palps swept forward. “Hhhhald. Friend. Giffftss.”

The tone of that chilled the flesh. But one took allies where one could, when family faded. “I’ll settle with the Meth-maren for you. I need to locate her base. Her-hive. Understand?”

“Yes. Understand.” It shifted forward, and the azi flinched, torn between terror and duty. It extended a forelimb, touched at his chest, and he suffered it, concealing his loathing, reckoning he might have to accept worse than this. “Red-hive knows Meth-maren hive, yes. Blues guard. This-unit will call othersss, many, many, many Warriors, reds, golds, greens, all move. Come kill, yess.”

“Yes,” he confirmed—did not touch it; that risk was one he did not choose to run, and the Warrior did not offer.

Others moved, to a shrilling command only partially in human hearing. They gathered, out of all the recesses of the terminal, a living sea of chitinous bodies.

“Tunnels,” the Warrior said. “Tunnels for beta-machines. Ssubwayss.”

The house stirred and hummed with activity. One could hear it, even in the upper floors, the stir of many feet, the singing of majat voices. Jim sat still in the semi-dark beneath the dome, on the bed, hands loose over his crossed legs, watching the Kontrin who slumped angrily in the chair opposite. They were at a silence, and Jim found that profound relief, for Pol Hald reasoned well, and wounded accurately when he wanted to.

The power was gone, had been for hours; he believed now that it would not return.

There’s no more comp,
Pol had advised him.
Nothing. If you’d listened earlier, something might have been done. Something still might. Listen to me
.

Jim gave no answers. He could not argue with such a fluency: he could only steadfastly refuse. Max, downstairs, gave him the means to refuse. Warrior, standing faithfully outside, was a guard against which even Pol Hald’s reasoning could not prevail.

Newhope’s dead,
Pol had said.
There’s nothing here for her. Only trouble. He’s here. Morn’s here. He’ll be coming, and she’ll know that
.

He could not listen to such logic. It made sense.

Below, the majat swarmed and stirred and tugged at foundations.

And in the dome above, the stars began to show in a darkening sky, the majat song to swell louder.

“Does it never stop?” Pol demanded.

Jim shook his head. “Rarely.”

Pol hurled himself suddenly to his feet. Jim rose, alarmed. “Relax,” Pol said. “I’m tired of sitting.”

“Sit down,” Jim said, received of Pol a cold and sarcastic look. There was a certain incongruity in the situation.

And abruptly the song fragmented to a shrilling note.

Outside, Warrior dived for the stairs, scuttled away. “Come back!” Jim shouted at it, and jerked from his pocket the gun which he had for his protection, an azi against a Kontrin. Pol saw it, raised both hands and turned his face aside, miming peace.

Jim held the gun in both hands to steady it. “Max!” he shouted, panic hammering in him.

“Please,” Pol said fervently. “I’d not be shot by mistake.”

Steps tramped up the stairs, not human ones, but spurred feet which caught on the carpet fiber, with the hollow gasp of majat breathing. Warrior loomed up in the doorway again.

“Many, many,” it announced. “Trouble.”

Jim did not take his eyes off Pol-motioned nervously with the gun, indicated the chair. Pol subsided, his gaunt face anxious.

“Where’s Max?” Jim asked of Warrior.

“Down. All down in outside. Warrior-azi, yess. Much danger. Reds, golds, greens are grouping. Blues are here, Jim-unit. Kill this green, take taste to Mother, yesss.”

Pol looked for once sober, his hands held in plain sight. “Argue with it, azi.”

“Stay still!” Jim tried to control his breathing, tried to reason. “I hold this place,” he said. “No, Warrior. This is Raen’s. She’ll understand it when she comes.”

“Queen.” Warrior seemed to accept that logic. “Where? Where is Meth-maren queen, Jim?”

“I don’t know.”

Warrior clicked to itself, edged forward. “Mother wants. Mother sends Warriors out, seek, seek, find. I guard. This-chamber is no good, too high. Come, this-unit guides, down, down, where safety is, good places, deep.”

“No,” Pol advised softly, alarm in his voice.

“I trust Warrior more. Up, ser. Up. We’re going downstairs.”

Pol made a gesture of exasperation and rose, and this sudden lack of seriousness in him, Jim watched with the greatest apprehension. Pol sauntered out, past him, and Warrior led them downstairs, Jim last and with the gun at Pol’s back.

The center of the house, windowless, was plunged in darkness, blue lights bobbing and flaring on the walls and making strange shadows of their bearers. Majat-azi skipped about them, touching them, Pol as well. The Kontrin cursed them from him, and they laughed and scampered off, taking the light with them.

Other azi remained, in the blackness. “Jim,” Max’s voice said. “They urged us to come in. Was it right to do? I thought maybe we shouldn’t, but they pushed us and kept pushing.”

“You did right,” Jim said, although in his mind was the horrible possibility of being swept up with the majat-azi, herded deep below. “The Hald is with us. Watch him.”

“Tape-fed obstinance,” Pol’s voice came, outraged, for they laid hands on him. “If you would listen—”

“I won’t.”

“At least check comp.”

Jim hesitated. It ceased to be an attempt to unsettle him, began to seem plain advice. He felt his way aside, into the comp centre, shuddered as a majat-azi brushed his shoulder. He caught a slim female arm. “Stay, come,” he asked of her, for the light’s sake, and took her with him, into the face of the dead machinery, the dark screens.

But paper had fed out, printout, in the machine’s dying.

He was stricken, suddenly, with the realisation Pol had been urging him to what he should have done. He drew the majat-azi to the machine, tore off the print and laid it on the counter. “Light,” he said, “light,” and she lent it, leaning on his shoulder with her arm about him. He ignored her and ran through the messages as rapidly as he could read the dim print in azi-light. Most were of no meaning to him; he had known so. Pol might understand, and he knew that Pol would urge him to show them to him: but he dared not, would not. It was useless; the key to these was not in the tapes he had stolen.

JIM, one said plainly. STAND BY. EMERGENCY.

It was not signed. But only one who knew his name could have used a comp board.

Sent before her trouble, perhaps; the possibility hit his stomach like a blow, that she had needed him, and he had been upstairs, unhearing.

“Stay!” he begged of the azi, who had tired of what she did not understand. He caught at her wrist and held her light still upon the paper, ran his eye over the other messages.

JIM, the last said, BEWARE POL HALD.

He thought to check the time of transmission; it was not on this one, but on the one before…an ITAK message… One in the night and one in the morning.

He looked up, at a commotion in the doorway, where dancing azi-lights cast Pol Hald and Max and others into a flickering blue visibility.

Alive,
his heart beat in him.
Alive, alive, alive.

And they had let Pol in.

“Is it from her?” Pol asked.
“Is it from her?”

“Max, get him down to the basement.”

Pol resisted; there were azi enough to hold him, though they had trouble moving him. “Please;” Jim said sharply, rolling up the precious message, and the struggle ceased. He felt the insistent hands of the majat-azi touching him, wanting something of him. He ignored her, for she was mad. “Please go,” he asked of the Kontrin. “Her orders, yes. This house is still hers.”

Pol went then, led by the guard-azi. Jim stood still in the dark, conscious of others who remained, majat shapes. All through the house bodies moved, and round about it, a never-ceasing stream.

“Warrior,” Jim asked, “Warrior? Raen’s alive. She sent a message through the comp before it died. Do you understand?”

“Yess.” A shadow scuttled forward. “Kethiuy-queen. Where?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know that But she’ll come.” He looked about him at the shapes in the dark, that flowed steadily toward the front doors. “Where are they going?”

“Tunnels,” Warrior answered. “Human-hive tunnels. Reds are moving to attack; golds, greens, all move, seek here, seek Kethiuy-queen. We fight in tunnels.”

“They’re coming up the subway,” Jim breathed.

“Yes. From port. Kontrin leads, green-hive: we taste this presence in reds. This-hive and blue-hive now touch; tunnel is finished. All come. Fight.” It sucked air, reached for him, touched nervously and uncertainly he sought to calm it, but Warrior would have none of it. It clicked its jaws and moved on, joining the dark stream of others that flowed toward the doors.

Azi went, majat-azi, bearing blue lights in one hand and weapons in the other, naked and wild. Warriors hastened them on. Jim tried to pass them, almost gathered up in their number, but that he ducked and went the other way, down the hall and down the stairs.

Blue azi-lights were there, hanging from majat fibre, and a draft breathed out of an earth-rimmed pit, the floor much trampled with muddy feet. Max and the other azi were there in a recess by the stairs. and Pol Hald among them.

Pol rose to his feet, looking up at him on the stairs. Azi surrounded him with weapons. “There’s nothing,” Pol said, “so dangerous as one who thinks he knows what he’s doing. If you had checked comp while it was still alive—when I told you to—you could have contacted her and been of some use.”

That was true, and it struck home. “Yes,” he admitted freely.

“Still,” Pol said, “I could help her.”

He shook his head. “No, ser. I won’t listen.” He sank down where he stood, on the steps. At the bottom a majat-azi huddled, a wretched thing, female, whose hands were torn and bleeding and whose tangled hair and naked body were equally muddied. It was uncommon: never had he seen one so undone. The azi’s sides heaved. She seemed ill. Perhaps her termination was on her, for she was not young.

“See to her,” he told one of the guard-azi. The man tried; others slid, and the woman would take a little water, but sank down again.

And suddenly it occurred to him that it was much quieter than it had been, the house silent; that of all the Workers which had laboured hereabouts—not one remained.

The tunnel breathed at them, a breath neither warm nor cold, but damp. And from deep within it, came a humming that was very far and strange.

“Max,” Jim said hoarsely. “They’ve gone for the subways of the city. A red force is coming this way.”

Pol sank down with a shake of his head and a deep-voiced curse.

Jim tucked his arms about his knees and wished to go to that null place that had always been there, that he saw some of the guard-azi attain, waiting orders. He could not find it now. Tape-thoughts ran and cycled endlessly, questions open and without neat answers.

He stared at Max and at the Kontrin, at the Kontrin most of all, for in those dark and angry eyes was a mutual understanding. It became quieter finally, that glance, as if some recognition passed between them.

“If you’ve her mind-set,” Pol said, “use it. We’re sitting in the most dangerous place in the city.”

He looked into the dark and answered out of that mindset, consciously. “The hive,” he said, “is safety.”

Pol’s retort was short and bitter.

Itavvy rose and walked to the door, walked back again and looked at his wife Velin as the infant squirmed and fretted in her arms, taxing her strength. One of the Upcoast women offered a diversion, an attempt to distract the child from her tears. Meris screamed in exhausted misery…hunger. The azi outside the glass, with their guns, their faceless sameness, maintained their watch.

“I’ll ask again,” Itavvy said.

“Don’t,” Velin pleaded.

“They don’t have anger. It isn’t in them. There are ways to reason past them. I’ve dealt—” He stopped, remembered his identity as Merck Sod, who knew little of azi, swallowed convulsively.

“Let me.” The gangling young Upcoaster who had spent his time in the corner, sketch-pad on his knee, left his work lying and went to the door, rapped on it.

The azi ignored it. The young artist pushed the door open; rifles immediately lowered at him. “The child’s sick,” the youth said. “She needs milk. Food. Something.”

The azi stood with their guns aimed at him…confused, Itavvy thought, in an access of tension. Presented with crisis. Well-done.

“If you’d call the kitchens,” the artist said, “someone would bring food up.”

Meris kept crying. The azi hesitated. unnerved, swung the rifle in that direction. Itavvy’s heart jumped.

Azi can’t understand
, he realised.
No children. No tears
.

He edged between, facing the rifle. “Please,” he said to the masked face. “She’ll be quiet if she’s fed.”

The azi moved, lifted the rifle, closed the door forcefully. Itavvy shut his eyes, swallowed hard at nausea. The young artist turned, seta hand on his shoulder.

“Sit down,” the youth said. “Sit down, ser. Try to quiet her.”

He did so. Meris exhausted herself, fell whimpering into sleep. Velin lifted bruised eyes and held her fast.

Then, finally, an azi in ISPAK uniform brought a tray to the door, handed it in, under guard.

Drink, sandwiches, dried fruit. Meris fretted and ceased, given the comfort of a full belly. Itavvy sat and ate because it was something to do.

The identity of Merek Sed would collapse. They were being detained because someone was running checks. Perhaps it had already been proven false. They would die.

Meris too. The azi had no feeling of difference.

He dropped his head into his hands and wept.

The truck laboured, ground up the slope from the riverbed, picking up dry road in the headlights. Raen threw it to idle at the crest, let what men had gotten off climb on again, the truck pinking on its suspension as it accepted its burden. She read the fuel gauge and the odometer, cast a look at Merry, who opened the door to look out on his side. “They’re all aboard,” he said.