Serpent's Reach

by C. J. Cherryh

  A Macdonald Book

  First published in Great Britain in 1981 by

  Macdonald & Co (Publishers) Ltd

  London & Sydney

  Copyright © C. J. Cherryh 1980

  This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  ISBN 0 356 08515 5

  Photoset in Wales by

  Derek Doyle & Associates, Mold, Clwyd

  Printed and bound in Great Britain by

  REDWOOD BURN LIMITED

  Trowbridge, Wiltshire

  Macdonald & Co (Publishers) Ltd

  Holywell House

  Worship Street

  London EC2A 2EN

  CONTENTS

  PROLOGUE

  BOOK ONE

  BOOK TWO

  BOOK THREE

  BOOK FOUR

  BOOK FIVE

  BOOK SIX

  BOOK SEVEN

  BOOK EIGHT

  BOOK NINE

  BOOK TEN

  RULES FOR SEJ

  “HYDRI REACH: QUARANTINED. Approach permitted only along approved lanes. SEE. Istra.”

  —Nav. Man.

  “HYDRI REACH: CLASSIFIED: Apply XenBureau for Information.”

  —Encyclopaedia Xenologica

  “HYDRI STARS: quarantined region. For applicable regulations, consult Cor. Jur. Hum. XXXVII 91.2. Native species of alpha Hydri III include at least one sapient species, majat, first contacted by probe Celia in 2223. Successful contact with majat was not made until Delia probe followed in 2229, and majat space was eventually opened to very limited contact under terms of the Hydri Treaty of 2235, with a single designated trade point at the station of beta Hydri II, locally called Istra.

  “The entire region Is under internal regulation, assumed to be a majat-human co-operation, and It is thus excluded from Alliance law. Alliance citizens are cautioned that treaties do not extend to protection of Alliance citizens or property in violation of quarantined space, and that Alliance law prohibits the passage of any ship, or person, alien or human, from said zone of quarantine into Alliance space, with the exception of licensed commerce up to the permitted contact point at Istra, by carefully monitored lanes. The Alliance will use extreme force to prevent any such intrusion into or out of quarantine. For specific regulations of import and export, consult ATR 189.9 and supplements. The nature of the internal government is entirely a matter of speculation, but it is supposed on some evidence that the seat of government is alpha Hydri III, locally called Cerdin, and that this government has remained relatively stable during the several centuries of its establishment…

  “Majat are reported to have rejected emphatically all human contact except the trading company initially introduced by Delia probe. The Kontrin company is currently assumed to he the government of the human inhabitants. Population of the mission was originally augmented by importation of human ova, and external observation indicates that colonization has been effected on several worlds other than Cerdin and Istra within the quarantine zone.

  “Principal exports are: biocomp softwares, medical preparations, fibers, and the substance known as lifejewels, all of which are unique to the zone and of moat manufacture; principal imports are metals, luxury foodstuffs, construction machinery, electronics, art objects.”

  —XenBureau Eph. Xen. 2301

  “MAJAT: all information classified.”

  —XenBureau Eph. Xen. 2301

  “The fact is…we’ve become dependent. We can’t get the materials elsewhere. We can’t duplicate them.”

  —report, EconBureau, classified.

  “Advise you take whatever opportunities exist to establish onworld observation at Istra, even to clandestine operations. Accurate information is of utmost importance.”

  —classified document, AlSec

  BOOK ONE

  i

  If it was anywhere possible to be a child in the Family, it was possible at Kethiuy, on Cerdin. There were few visitors, no imminent hazards. The estate sat not so very far from the City and from Alpha’s old hall, but its hills and its unique occupation kept it isolated from most of Family politics. It had its lake and its fields, its garden of candletrees that rose like feathery spires among its fourteen domes; and round about its valley sat the hives, which sent their members to and from Kethiuy. All majat who would deal with Men dealt through Kethiuy, which fended one hive from another and kept peace, the peculiar talent of the Meth-marens, that sept and House of the Family which held the land. Fields extended in one direction, both human-owned and majat-owned; labs rambled off in the other; warehouses in yet a third, where azi, cloned men, gathered and tallied the wealth of hive trade and the products of the lab and the computers, which were the greatest part of that trade. Kethiuy was town as much as House; it was self-contained and tranquil, almost changeless in the terms of its owners, for Kontrin measured their lives in decades more than years, and the rare children licensed tore. place the dead had no doubt what they must be and what the order of the world was.

  Raen amused herself, clipping leaves from the dayvine with short, neat shots; the wind blew and made it more difficult, and she gauged her fire meticulously, needle-beamed She was fifteen; she had carried the little gun clipped to her belt since she had turned twelve. Being Kontrin, and potentially immortal, she had still come into this world because a certain close kinsman had died of carelessness; she wished her own replacement to be long in coming. She was a skilled marksman; one of the amusements available to her was gambling, and she currently had a bet with a third cousin involving the target range.

  Marksmanship, gambling, running the hedges into the field to watch the azi at work, or back again in Kethiuy, sunk it the oblivion of deepstudy or studying the lab comps until she could make the machines yield her up communication with the alien majat…such things filled her days, one very like the other. She did not play; there were years ahead for that, when the prospect of immortality began to pall and the years needed amusements to speed them past. Her present business was to learn, to gather skills that would protect that long life. The elaborate pleasures with which her elders amused themselves were not yet for her, although she looked on such with a stirring of interest. She sat on her hillside and picked an extraordinary succession of leaves off the waving vine with quick, fine shots, and reckoned that she would put in her required time at the comp board and be through by dinner, leaving the evening free for boating on Kethiuy’s lake…too hot during the day: the water cast back the white-hot sky with such glare one could not even look on it unvisored; but by night what lived in it came up from the bottom, and boats skimmed the black surface like firebugs, trolling for the fish that offered rare treat for Kethiuy’s tables. Other valleys had game, and even domestic herds, but no creature but man stayed in Kethiuy, between the hives. None could.

  Raen a Sul hant Meth-maren. She was a long-boned and rangy fifteen, having likely all her height. Ilit blood mixed with Meth-maren had contributed that length of limb; and Meth-maren blood, her aquiline features. She bore a pattern on her right hand, chitinous and glittering, living in her flesh: her identity, her pledge to the hives, such as all Kontrin bore. This sign a majat could read, whose eyes could read nothing of human features. Betas went unmarked. Azi bore a tiny tattoo. The Kontrin brand was in living jewels, and she bore it for the distinction it was.

  The tendril fell last, burned through. She clipped the gun to her belt and smoothly rose, pulled up the hood of her sunsuit and adjusted the visor to protect her eyes before leaving the shade. S
he took the long way, at the fringe of the woods, being in no particular haste: it was cooler and less steep, and nothing awaited her but studies.

  A droning intruded on her attention. She looked about, and up. Aircraft passing were not unusual: Kethiuy lake was a convenient marker for anyone sight-navigating to the northern estates.

  But these were low, two of them, and coming in.

  Visitors. Her spirits soared. No comp this afternoon. She veered from the lab-ward course and strode off down the slope with its rocks and thread-bushes, tacking from one to the other point of the steep face with reckless abandon, reckoning of entertainments and a general cancellation of lessons.

  Something skittered back in the hedge. She came to an instant halt and set her hand on her pistol: no fear of beasts, but of men, of anything that would skulk and hide.

  Majat.

  She picked out the shadowed form in the slatted leaves, perplexed to find it there. It was motionless in its guard-stance, half again as tall as she; faceted eyes flickered with the slightest of turns of its head. Almost she called to it, reckoning it some Worker strayed from the labs down below: sometimes their eyes betrayed them and, muddled with lab-chemicals, they lost their direction. But it should not have strayed this far.

  The head turned farther, squaring to her: no Worker…she saw that clearly. The jaws were massive, the head armoured.

  She could not see its emblems, to what hive it belonged, and human eyes could not see its colour. It hunched down, an assemblage of projecting points and leathery limbs, in the latticed play of sun and shade…a Warrior, and not to be approached. Sometimes Warriors came, to look down on Kethiuy for whatever their blind eyes could perceive, and then departed, keeping their own secrets. She wished she could see the badges: it might be any of the four hives, while it was only gentle blues and greens who dealt with Kethiuy—the trade of reds and golds channelled through greens. A red or gold was enormously dangerous.

  Nor was it alone. Others rose up, slowly, slowly, three, four. Fear knotted in her belly—which was irrational, she insisted to herself: in all Kethiuy’s history, no majat had harmed any within the valley.

  “You’re on Kethiuy land,” she said, lifting the hand that identified her to their eyes. “Go back. Go back.”

  It stared a moment, then backed: badgeless, she saw in her amazement. It lowered its body in token of agreement; she hoped that was its intent. She stood her ground, alert for any shift, any diversion. Her heart was pounding. Never in the labs had she been alone with them, and the sight of this huge Warrior and its fellows moving to her order was incredible to her.

  “Hive-master,” it hissed, and sidled off through the brush with sudden and blinding speed. Its companions joined it in retreat.

  Hive-master. The bitterness penetrated even majat voice. Hive-friends, the majat in the labs were always wont to say, touching with delicacy, bowing with seeming sincerity.

  Down the hill a beating of engines announced a landing; Raen still waited, scanning the hedges all about before she started away. Never turn your back on one; she had heard it all her life, even from those who worked closest with the hives: majat moved too quickly, and a scratch even from a Worker was dangerous.

  She edged backward, judged it finally safe to look away and to start to run…but she looked now and again over her shoulder.

  And the aircraft were on the ground, the circular washes of air flattening the grasses near the gates, next the lakeshore.

  A bell rang, advising all the House that strangers had come. Raen cast a last look back, funding the majat had fled entirely, and jogged along toward the landing spot.

  The colours on the aircraft were red striped with green, which were the colours of the House of Then, friends of Sul-sept of the Meth-marens. Men and women were disembarking as the engines died down; the gates were open and Meth-marens were coming out to meet the visitors, most without sunsuits, so abrupt was this arrival and so welcome were any of Thon.

  The cloaks on the foremost were Thon; and there was the white and yellow of Yalt among them, likewise welcome. But then from the aircraft came visitors in the red-circled black of Hald; and Meth-maren blue, with black border, not Sul-sept white.

  Ruil-sept of the Meth-marens, with Hald beside them. Raen stopped dead. So did others. The welcome lost all its warmth. Save under friendly Thon colours, neither Ruil nor Hald would have dared set foot here.

  But after some delay, her kinsmen stepped aside and let them pass the gates. The aircraft disgorged more, Thon and Yalt, but there were now no welcomes at all; and something else they produced—a score of azi, sunsuited and visored and anonymous.

  Armed azi. Raen stared at them in disbelief, nervously skirting round the area of the landing; she sought the gates with several backward glances, angry to the depth of her small experience of Ruil, the Meth-marens’ left-hand line. Ruil had come for trouble; and the guard-azi were Ruil’s arrogant show, she was sure of it. Then would have no reason.

  She put on a certain arrogance as she walked in the gates. Sul-sept azi closed them securely after her, leaving the intruder-azi outside in the heat. She wished sunstroke on them, and sullenly made her way into the House, the whole day spoiled.

  ii

  It was a lasting strangeness to see Ruil-sept’s black among the white-bordered Sul cloaks—and as much so to see Hald red-and-black; and incredible to find them admitted to the dining hall, where House councils and dinners took place simultaneously.

  Raen sat next her mother and found security in her—Morel, her mother, who had gotten her of an Ilit who himself was bloodkin to Thon; she wondered if any of these present were distant relatives. If it were so, her mother, who would know, said nothing, and deepstudy had given her no clues.

  Grandfather headed the table…more than grandfather, but that was shortest, eldest of Meth-marens, the Meth-maren, who was grey-haired and bent with the decades that he had lived, five hundred passes of Cerdin about its suns eldest of all Sul-sept, of Ruil too, so that they had to respect him. Raen regarded him with awe, seldom now as he came out of his seclusion in west-wing, rarely to venture into domestic concerns, more often to Council down at Alpha, where he wielded the power of a considerable bloc of votes. Meth-marens, unlike other Houses whose members were scattered from world to world across the Reach, stayed close to home, to Kethiuy. Of the twenty-seven Houses and fifty-eight septs within those Houses that composed the Family, Meth-maren Sul was the only one whose duties rarely took him elsewhere, away from Cerdin and the hives. The Family’s post was here, between the hives and Men, while Meth-maren Ruil hovered about the area of Alpha and guested where they could, Houseless since the split.

  Hald remembered that day, that Meth-maren and Meth-maren had fought. Hald had bled for it, sheltering Red assassins; and it was a powerful persuasion that brought Halds and both septs of Meth-maren again under the same roof.

  It had taken all the influence of Thon and Yalt together to persuade Grandfather to accept this gathering, Halds and the divided Meth-marens at the same dinner table, carefully separated by Thong and Yalts. It needed a certain bravado on the part of Halds and Ruils to eat and drink what Sul gave them.

  Raen herself felt her stomach unsettled, and she declined when the serving-azi brought the neat elaborate dish “Coffee,” she said, and the azi Mev whispered the order at once to one of his fellows: it arrived instantly, for she was eldest’s great-granddaughter’s daughter in direct descent, and there was in the House a hierarchy of inheritance. She was to a certain extent pampered, and to another, burdened, for the sake of that birthright It mandated her presence at table tonight in the fast place, and made it necessary to mix with her elders, most of whom had resentment for the fact. She tried to bear herself with her mother’s studied disdain for the proceedings, but there was a Ruil across the table, cousin Bron, and she avoided his eyes when possible: they were hot and insolent.

  “We hope for a reconciliation,” the Thon elder was saying, at the other end of the tabl
e. He had risen, to begin what he had come to say. “Meth-maren, will you let Ruil speak here? Or would you prefer intermediaries still?”

  “You’re going to say,” Grandfather intoned in his reedy voice, “that we should take in this left-hand branch of ours. It diverged of its own accord. It’s not welcome in Kethiuy. It’s trouble to us, and the hives avoid it. Ruil-sept alienated them, and that wasn’t our doing. This is hive territory. Those who can’t live under those terms can’t live here.”

  “Our talents,” said Tel Ruil Meth-maren, “lie with other hives, the ones Sul can’t manage.”

  “Reds and golds.” Grandfather’s chin wobbled with his anger. “You deceive yourself, Tel a Ruil. They’ve no love of humankind, least of all of Ruil. I know you’ve had red contacts. It’s rumoured. I know what you’re up to and why you’ve gone to the trouble of drawing non and Yalt into this. Your plans to build on Kethiuy take are unacceptable.”

  “You’re head of House,” Tel said. He had an unfortunate voice, nasal and whining. “You ought to be impartial to sept, eldest. But you carry on feuds from before any of the rest of us were born. Maybe Sul sept feels some jealousy—that Ruil can handle the two hives Sul can’t touch. They’ve come to us, not we to them. They preferred us. Thon saw; non will witness it. All within the pact. Red-hive has promised us its co-operation if we can secure that holding near its lands, on the lake. We’ve come asking, eldest. That’s all. Asking.”

  “We support the request,” the Thon said.

  “Yalt agrees,” said the other eldest. “It’s good sense, Meth-maren, to end this quarrel, and to get some good out of it.”

  “And does Hald ask the same?”

  There was silence. Raen sat still, her heart pounding.

  The Hald eldest rose. “We have a certain involvement here, Meth-maren. The old feud has gone on beyond its usefulness. If it’s settled now, then we have to be involved, or the Meth-marens will have peace and we’ll have none. We’re walling to forget the past. Understand that.”