The Deep Beyond: Cuckoo's Egg / Serpent's Reach

by C. J. Cherryh

  She took a step backward, feeling a rush of blood to her face. She had no experience to deal with such a move, and the embarrassment became rage. “And who sent you out here, Skulking round the windows?”

  “We’re set to watch the aircraft, little Meth-maren. To be sure Meth-maren hospitality is what it should be.”

  She did not like the sound of that, and turned abruptly, seized the door handle, afraid for the instant that they would stop her; but they made no move to do so, and she delayed to glower resentment at them, determined to make it clear she was not being chased off her own doorstep. “I seem to have left my gun inside,” she said. “I usually carry it for pests.”

  Pol’s gaunt face went serious then, quite, quite sober.

  “Good evening, Meth-maren,” he said.

  She opened the door and went in, into the safe light, among her own kin.

  iii

  There was the drone of an engine toward dawn. Aircraft taking off, Raen thought, turning in her bed and burrowing into the pillows. The talk down in the dining hall had gone on and on, sometimes loudly enough to be heard outside the doors, generally not. The gathering in the hall outside had drifted off at last toward duties or pleasures: there was a certain lack of law in the House, younger men and lesser elders piqued by their exclusion, seeking to make clear their displeasure. A few became drunk. A few turned to bizarre amusements, and the azi maid who had bedded herself down in Raen’s room had fled here in panic.

  Lia had taken her in, Lia her own azi, a female nearing her fatal fortieth year. Raen blinked and looked at Lia, who had fallen asleep in a chair by the door, while the fugitive maid had curled up on a pallet in the corner . . . dear old Lia was upset by the commotion in the House, and had surely taken that uncomfortable post out of worry for her security.

  Love. That was Lia, whose ample arms had sheltered her all her fifteen years. Her mother was authority, was beauty, was affection and safety, but Lia was love, lab-bred for motherhood, sterile though azi were.

  And she could not slip past such a guard. She tried to rise and dress in silence enough, but Lia wakened and began to fuss over her, choosing her clothes with care, wakening the sleeping maid to draw a bath and make the bed, supervising every detail. Raen bore this, for impatient as she was to learn how things stood downstairs, she had infinite patience with Lia, who could be hurt by refusal. Lia was thirty-nine. There remained only this last year, before whatever defect was bred into her, killed her. Raen knew this with great regret, though she was not sure that Lia knew her own age. She would on no account make a day of Lia’s life unhappy; and on no account would she let Lia know the reason of her attitude.

  It’s part of growing up, her mother had told her. The price of immortality. Azi and betas come and go, the azi quickest of all. We all love them when we’re young. When one loses one’s nurse, one begins to learn what we are, and what they are; and that’s a valuable lesson, Raen. Learn to enjoy, and to say goodbye.

  Lia offered her the cloak of Color, and she decided it was proper to wear it; she fastened it and let Lia adjust it, then walked to the window, where the first light of dawn showed the landing.

  One aircraft still remained. It was not over.

  She went out into the corridor and down, past the council room where a few of her elder cousins and relations lounged disconsolately. They were not in the mood to brief a fifteen year old, be she heir-line or not; she sensed that and listened, heard voices still talking inside.

  She shook her head in disgust and walked on, thinking of breakfast, though she rarely ate that meal. Lessons, at least, were still suspended, but she would have traded a week of holidays to have Ruil and their friends out of Sul’s vicinity. She recalled the three Halds and wondered whether they were still occupying the porch.

  They were not. She stood on the porch with her hands on her hips and breathed deeply. The area was clear and the azi were heading out to fields as they did every morning. A golden light touched the candletrees and the hedges at this most beautiful hour, before alpha Hydri showed its true face and scorched the heavens.

  There was only the single aircraft befouling the landscape.

  And then she saw movement at the corner of the house.

  An azi, sunsuited at this hour.

  “What are you doing there?” she shouted at him. And then she saw shadows skittering in a living wave across the lawn, tall, stiltlike forms moving with eye-blurring speed.

  She whirled, face to face with an armed azi, and cried out.

  BOOK TWO

  i

  Raen stumbled, skidded, came to a halt against a projecting rock. Pain shot through her side. The cloth clung there. The burn had broken open; moisture soaked her clothing. She felt of it and brought away reddened fingers, wiped a smear on the rock which had stopped her, fingers trembling. She kept climbing.

  She looked back from time to time, on the lowlands, the forest, the lake, on all the deceptive peace of Kethiuy’s valley, while her breath came short and balance nigh failed her on the rocks. They were all dead down there, all her kin: all, all dead— Ruil sept held Kethiuy for its own, and Sul-sept bodies were everywhere. Only her own was missing from the tally, and that from no act of wit, nothing of credit: burned, she had fallen, and the bushes by the porch had sheltered her.

  They were all dead, and she was dying.

  There was no relief from the sun up here; it burned in a sky white with heat, blistered exposed skin, threatened blindness despite her cloak that she had wrapped about her face. Stones burned her hands and heated the thin soles of her boots. Her eyes streamed tears, seared by the dryness and the glare. Her chance for shelter was long past, at the beginning of the climb. If Ruil sought her, they would find her. She left a trail for any ground search they might care to make, smeared on the rocks from her hands and her side. And from the air, Ruil might well manage heat-sensors for night tracking. There was no hope of shaking them if they wanted her.

  She kept running, climbing, all the same, because there was no going back, because it was less her Ruil cousins she feared than red-hive, the living wave that had poured over her into Kethiuy, spurred feet trampling her among the bushes, deadly jaws clashing. There were deaths and deaths, and she had seen them in plenty in recent hours, but those dealt by majat were cruelest, and majat trackers were those she most feared, swift beyond any hope of escape.

  A second fall; this time she sprawled full length, and from this impact she was slow in rising. Her hands shook now as in ague, and there was skin gone from her palms and her knees and elbows, cloth torn. Thirst and the blinding heat of the rocks were more painful than the abrasions, but even those miseries were devoured by the pain that stitched her side. She drew breath with difficulty, reaching for support to hold her on her feet.

  She was running again. She could not remember how, but she faced a climb, and her mind was forced to work again. She used hands as well as feet, and managed it, slowly, tottering on the brink, slipping, gaining another body’s length. There had been other refuges, the woods, the road toward the City. She had chosen wrong. Her mother, her uncles— they would have done otherwise, would have tried for the City. She had made a panic choice, the hills, hide-and-seek in the rocks, the high places, hard ground for their vehicles. But most of all the hills were blue-hive territory, old neighbors. Red-hive would not readily venture their borders, not for all Ruil’s urging.

  Panic choice. There was no help up here, nothing human, no way down, no way back. She knew what she had done to herself, and the tears that ran down her face were of rage as well as the heat.

  There was another gap in her memory, and then a bald hill swam in her sight. Here was the boundary, the point-past-which-not for any human. Majat trails ran through the gap, converging here. Raen caught her breath and felt her way along the rocks and down, into the shadows, set her feet on that well-worn track and looked about her, at tilted, tumbled
rocks, flinching from the white sky.

  Here was the refuge. No one would come here rashly; no one would likely take the trouble and the risk. It was a private place, for the private business of dying, and she knew it finally, that dying was what she had left to do. She had only to sit down and rest a while, while the blood kept leaking from her side and the sun baked her brain. Of pain there could be no more to endure. It had reached the top of the curve, and lessened even from standing still; there was only the need to wait. Her mother, eldest, her kinsmen and her azi . . . there was no grieving for them: their pain was done. Hers was not.

  Balance failed her. She moved to save herself, fearing the fall, and that move led to the next step and the next. Her vision went out for a moment, and panic and failing balance drove her stumbling and reaching for the rocks which she remembered ahead. She hit them hip-high, braced herself, recovered a blurred vision of daylight and kept moving downhill. It was a little death, that dark, that blindness; the real one was coming, deeper and larger, and already the heat of the sun seemed less. She fled it, fighting each dark space that sent her staggering and reeling from point to point.

  Thorns ripped her arm and her clothing. She recoiled and fought past the edge of the obstacle, blinked her eyes clear. She knew the meaning of the hedge, knew that here was the place she must stop, must. Her frightened body kept moving with its own logic, heedless of dangers; her mind observed from a distance, carried along helplessly, confused . . . and suddenly, in grim rage, found a focus.

  The pact of Family had failed; it was murdered, with her mother, Grandfather, her kin . . . slaughtered by Ruil and Hald.

  There was an older Pact, that which was grafted into the very flesh of her wounded hand, chitinous and part of her, living jewels.

  She was Kontrin, of the Family which ruled the Hydri stars, which had won of majat the rights of settlement and trade, the serpent-emblemed Family, which lived where other humans would not; she was Meth-maren, hive-friend.

  A great many fears diminished in her. There was a place to go, a thing to do, a means to make Ruil suffer.

  Her mother smiled grimly in her mind, encouraging her: Revenge is next only to winning. Raen’s mouth set in a rictus between gasp and grin, seeking air, a little more life, and someone else’s death.

  The blacknesses came more frequently now, and she hurled herself from rock to rock, tumbling from one winding turn to the next, fending off thorns with her chitin-shielded right hand . . . majat barriers, these ancient hedges.

  “I’m from Kethiuy!” she shouted at the grayness which hazed her senses, the cold that numbed the pain and threatened her with losing. “Blue-hive! I’m Raen Meth-maren! Kethiuy!”

  The black edges closed on her sight.

  She thrust herself toward the next hedge, and heard rocks shift and rattle above her, stones which she had not stirred.

  They were all about her, tall leathery shapes, hazy shadows, shimmering with jewels in the blinding sun.

  “Go back,” one said, a baritone harmony of pipes. “Go back!”

  She saw the dark opening in the earth, and held her bleeding side, flinging herself into a last, frantic effort. She could not feel her legs under her. There was no more heat nor cold, nor up nor down nor color. Her body hit stone. Her wounded hand slicked wetly across it and the gray itself went out.

  ii

  Workers tugged and arranged to satisfaction, careful not to further damage the fragile structure, delicate as new eggs. Worker palps busily gnawed away the ruined clothing, laved off the foul outsider smells and cleaned the spilled life fluids from body and limbs. Warriors still milled about the vestibule, disturbed by the invasion, seeking directions. Confusion reigned throughout the sector.

  A Worker took the essence of the problem and circled its companions, squealed a short burst of orders to clear the trafficway, and scurried off. Worker was already in contact with Mother, after that subliminal fashion which pervaded the hive, but that kind of communication was not sufficient for details. There was need of direct report.

  Other Workers delayed it briefly, chance encounters in the dark corridors. Human-in-hive, they scented, among other things of life-fluids and injury. Alarm spread. Warriors would be moving; Workers would be throwing up barricades, sealing tunnels. Worker kept travelling, original and most accurate carrier, and obsessed with urgency. Its personal alarm was chiefly distress for the untidiness, a vague sense of higher things out of control and therefore threatening the whole hive: chaos was already loosed and worse might follow.

  Dim glow of fungi and the sweet scent of Mother pervaded the inmost halls, near the Chamber. Worker passed others, Egg-bearers— touched, smelled, conveyed the alarm which sent them hastening away. A Warrior shouldered past, bluff and hasty, returning from its own inquiry. Its message was of sense to Warriors. Worker rejected it, although it bore upon its own, and scurried on, forelimbs tucked, into the Presence.

  Mother sat in a heaving mass of Drones and attendants. The smell was magnetic, delirious. Worker came to Her in ecstasy, opened its palps and offered taste and scent, receiving in turn.

  Mother thought. The shifts of chemistry swirled dazzlingly through Worker’s senses. She spoke at the same time, sound which occasionally ascended to the timbre of human names. Communication wove constantly between the two levels, intricate interplay of sound and taste.

  Heal it, the decision came, complex with the chemicals necessary to the performance of this task. Feed it. This is of Kethiuy hive, the young queen Raen. Workers of blue-hive have encountered her before. I taste injury, abundant life-fluids. Warriors report red-hive intrusion in the Kethiuy area. Accept this intruder.

  Queen. The scent touched off reactions in the chemistry of Worker, terrifying changes— communicated also to the Drones, who shifted uneasily and sought touch. The hive-mind was one. Worker was one complex unit of it. Mother was a master-unit, the key, which made sense of all the gatherings. Others moved closer, compelled by the intimation of understandings, Workers and Drones and Foragers and Warriors, each sharing this intelligence and feeding into it in its own way.

  Kethiuy. That was a Drone, who Remembered, which was a function of Drones. Images followed, of the land before and after the human hive called Kethiuy had been built . . . domes, one at first, and then others, and trees growing up among them. Blue-hive’s memory was as long as its members were brief: a billion years the memories went back, and the specific memory of Kethiuy saw the hills rise and the lake form and drain several times, and form again. Drone-memory extended even back into hives older than Kethiuy’s hills, into days of dimmer and dimmer intelligence; but these memories were not at issue: humans were brief upon the earth, only the last several hundreds of years. The hive sorted, comprehended, knew Sul-sept of Meth-maren hive and all its issue, its bitter rivalry with Ruil and Ruil’s allies. Human thought: intelligence served by peculiar senses, a few more than the hives possessed, a few less, and contained by single bodies. The concept still troubled the hive, the idea that individual death could extinguish an intelligence. It was still only dimly grasped. Mother in particular put it forward, the impending death of an irreplaceable intelligence.

  Queen, Worker insisted, perturbed.

  Dying, another Worker added, with an implication of untidiness.

  No rival, Mother reassured the hive, but distress persisted strongly in her taste, permeating all consciousness. We perceive that red-hive is massing in the vicinity of Kethiuy; golds are stirring; and now there is a human injured, perhaps others as well. We have not enough information. Red-hive is involved where red-hive does not belong. Red-hive has a taste of hostilities, of strange contacts, human contacts. The Pact is at issue. Feed Kethiuy’s young queen. Heal her. She is no threat to me. She is important to the hive. She contains information. She is an intelligence and contains memory. Tend. Heal.

  Worker departed, one part of the Mind, bent on action. Oth
ers raced off on their own missions, impelled by their own understandings of what Mother had said, reactions peculiar to their own chemistries and functions.

  Then the Mind did a very difficult thing, and lied to itself.

  Mother directed certain three Warriors, who rushed from the Chamber and from the hive and out into the heat of the day. Beyond the thorn-hedges, beyond the safe boundary of the hills, they stopped, and began purposely to alter their internal chemistry, breaking down all the orderly complex of their knowledge, past and present.

  The hive lost them, for they were then mad.

  They died, wandering inevitably into red-hive ambush in the valley, and red-hive could only believe the lie which it read in the chemistry of the slaughtered blues, that blue-hive had tasted the death of the young queen of Kethiuy hive, that no such survivor existed.

  iii

  “What is this?” Lian muttered, looking about him at the Council, the many-Colored representatives who settled into place beneath the serpent emblem of the Kontrin. Suddenly there were new faces, new arrangements of seating. His blurred vision sought friends, sought old allies. The eldest Hald was gone; a younger man sat in his place. There was of the blue of Meth-maren . . . the black-bordered cloak of a Ruil; of several of the oldest septs and Houses . . . no sign, or younger strangers wearing their Colors. Lian, Eldest of the Family and first in Council, looked about him, hands trembling; and, having almost risen— he sank down again.

  He began to count, and took reckoning what manner of change had come on the Family in these chaotic days. Some of the House eldests looked at him across the room, glances carrying question and appeal: he had always opened the sessions . . . seven hundred years in the Council of Humans on Cerdin, the assembly of the twenty-seven Houses of the Family.

  “Uncle,” said Terent of Welz-Kaen. “Eldest?”

  Lian turned his face away, hating the cowardice which must now be the better part of common sense. Assassins had been planted. A purge had been carried out with extreme efficiency, not at one point, but at many. One had no idea where matters stood now, or what the count of votes would be on a challenge. There was something new shaped or shaping, dangerous to all who stood too tall in the Family. One did well now to wait and hear others’ decisions.