Serpent's Reach

by C. J. Cherryh

  No such message would go, she decided, finishing her morning tea. Let them discover the extent of their problem. For herself—she had them; and they had yet to discover it…had a place whereon to stand, and, she thought to herself, a curiosity colder and more remote than all her enemies’ ambition: to comprehend this little hall of yam the while she pulled it apart.

  To know the betas and the azi and all the shadows the Kontrin cast on the walls of their confinement.

  Jim had finished his breakfast, and sat, hands on the table, staring between them at the empty plate. The azi invisibility mode. If he did not move, his calculation seemed to be, then she would cease to notice him and he could not possibly bother her. The amazing thing was that it so often worked. She had seen azi do such things all her life, that purposeful melting into the furnishings of a room, and she had never noticed, until she persisted in sitting at table with one, until she relied on one for company, and conversation, and more than that.

  It is something, she thought, to begin to see.

  She pushed back from the table without a word, seeking her own invisibility, and went off to the computer.

  The printout had grown very long during breakfast. She tore it off and scanned it, found overtures from some of the great agricultural co-operatives within ITAK—suggesting urgent and private consultations. Word had indeed spread. Some messages were from ITAK on the other continent, imaginatively called West: that was the Newport operation; simple courtesies, those. Another had come from ISPAK, inviting her up for what it called an urgent conference. A message from ITAK on East acknowledged with gratitude the one she had sent before breakfast and urged her to entertain a board meeting at some convenient time; the signature was one ser Dain, president, and of a sudden she smiled, recalling sera Dain and her husband…betas too; had their Family, and she reckoned well how the connections might run in ITAK. Small benefit, then, from corrupting Prosserty: Dain was the name to watch.

  And finally there was the one she had hoped for, a courteous greeting from ser Tallen of the trade mission, recalling the night’s summons and leaving a number where he might be reached: the address was that of a city guest house…considering Newhope, probably the only guest house.

  She keyed the same message to all but Tallen. NOTED. I AM PRESENTLY ARRANGING MY SCHEDULE. THANK YOU. R.S.M.-m.

  To Tallen: AT TWO, MY RESIDENCE, A BRIEF MEETING. RAEN A SUL.

  She cleared that with the police at the gate, lest there be misunderstandings; and reckoned that it would be relayed to ITAK proper.

  And a brief call to ITAK registry, bypassing automatic processes: Max and Merry were legally transferred, even offered as a company courtesy; she declined the latter, and paid the modest valuation of the contracts.

  Supply: she arranged that, through several local companies…ordered items from groceries to hardware in prodigious quantity, notwithstanding borderline shortages. Fruit, grain, and sugar were in unusual proportion on that list…distressing, to any curious ITAK agent who investigated.

  To the nine neighbours of Executive Circle 4, the same message, sent under the serpent-sigil of the Family: TO MY NEIGHBOURS: WITH EXTREME REGRET I MUST STATE THAT AN ATTEMPT ON MY LIFE MAKES NECESSARY CERTAIN DEFENSIVE MEASURES. THIS CIRCLE MAY BE SUBJECT TO HAZARDOUS VISITORS AND ACTIONS ON THE PART OF MY AGENTS MAY NECESSITATE SUDDEN INCURSIONS INTO NEIGHBOURING RESIDENCES. I REFUSE RESPONSIBILITY FOR LIVES AND PROPERTY UNDER THESE CIRCUMSTANCES. IF, HOWEVER, YOU WISH TO RELOCATE FOR THE DURATION OF MY STAY ON ISTRA, I SHALL BE HAPPY EITHER TO PURCHASE YOUR RESIDENCE OR TO RENT IT, WITH OR WITHOUT FURNISHINGS. I SHALL MEET ANY REASONABLE PRICE OR RENT WITHOUT ARGUMENT AND OFFER TO BEAR ALL EXPENSES OF TEMPORARY OR PERMANENT RELOCATION IN A COMPARABLE CIRCLE, PLUS 5,000 CREDITS GENERAL COMPENSATION FOR THE INCONVENIENCE. KONT’ RAEN A SUL HANT METH-MAREN, AT 47. POISE EXPECTED.

  Then she settled back, shut her eyes and rested for a few moments…set herself forward then, having begun the sequences in her mind.

  Kontrin-codes. Kontrin had set up worldcomp and intercomp, and maintained both. There were beta accesses, in a hierarchy of authorisations; there were many more reserved to Kontrin, and some restricted to specific Houses, to those who worked directly with specific aspects of the central computers at Alpha—with the trade banks or the labs or the other separate agencies, which met in Council: the democracy of the Family, the secrecy that kept certain functions for certain Houses, making Council necessary. Meth-marens had had somewhat to do with establishing Alphacomp in the very beginning—in matters of abstract theory and majat logic, the mathematics of the partitioned hive-mind: translation capacity, biocomp, and the dull mechanics of warehousing and hive-trade; but Ilit had had the abstract interest in economics.

  Merely to enter worldcomp or even intercomp, and to touch information of beta’s private lives…any Kontrin could do that. Trade information was hardly more difficult, for any who knew the very simple codes: locations of foodstuffs, ships in port, licenses and applications for license. It was all very statistical and dull and few Kontrin without direct responsibility for a House’s affairs would bestir themselves to care what volume of grain went into a city.

  She did. Hal Ilit had realised, perhaps, the extent of her theft from him; perhaps this shame as much as the other had prompted him to turn on her. Certainly it was shame that had prompted hire to try to deal with her on his own, a man never experienced in violence.

  He had been in most regards, an excellent teacher.

  And the Eln-Kests, according to the statistics on record, had not been lying:

  There was a periodic clatter in the next room, the rattle of dishes. Jim was probably at the height of happiness, doing what his training prepared him to do. It irritated her. She ordinarily carried on some operations in her mind, and could not to her usual extent, whether through preoccupation or because of the extraneous noise: she posted them to the auxiliary screens and checked them visually.

  The rattle of dishes stopped. There was silence for a time. Then it began again, this time the moving of chairs and objects, a great deal of pacing about between.

  She threw down the stylus, swore, rose and stalked back to the main rooms. Jim was there, replacing a bit of sculpture on the reception hall table.

  “The noise,” she said, “is bothering me. I’m trying to work.”

  He waved a hand at the rooms about him, which were, she saw now, clean, dusted, well-ordered. Approve, his look asked, and killed all her anger. It was his whole reason for existence on the Jewel.

  It was his whole reason for existence anywhere.

  She let go her breath and shook her head.

  “I beg pardon,” he said, in that always-subdued voice.

  “Take a few hours off, will you?”

  “Yes, sera.”

  He made no move to go; he expected her to walk away, she realised, being the one with a place to go. She thought of him at breakfast, absolutely still, mental null…agony, she thought. It was what the Family had tried to do with her. She could not bear watching it.

  “I’ve a deepstudy unit upstairs,” she said. “You know how to use it?”

  “Yes, sera.”

  “If you can’t remember, I’m going to make a tape that says nothing but Raen. Come on. Come upstairs. I’ll see whether you know what you’re doing with it.”

  She led the way; he followed. In the bedroom she gestured at the closet where her baggage was stored, and he pulled the unit out, while she located the ’bin bottle in her cosmetics kit and shook out a single capsule.

  He set it up properly, although he seemed puzzled by some of the details of it: units varied. She watched him attach the several leads, and those were right. She gave him the pill, and he swallowed it without water.

  “Recreation,” she said, and sorted through the second, the brown case, that held the tapes. “You’re always free to use the unit. I wish you would, in fact. Any white tape is perfectly all right for you.” She looked at him, who sat waiting, looking at her, and reckone
d that no azi was capable of going beyond instructions: she had never known one to, not even Lia. Psych-set. They simply could not. “You don’t touch the black ones. Understood? If I hand you a black one, that’s one thing, but not on your own. You follow that?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  They were black ones that she chose, Kontrin-made. The longest was an artistic piece, participant-drama: a little cultural improvement would not be amiss, she thought. And the short one was Istra. She put them in the slot. “You know this machine, do you? You understand the hazards? Make sure the repeat-function never adds up to more than two hours”

  He nodded. His eyes were beginning to dilate with the drug. He was not ht for conversation—fumbled after the switch, in token of this. She pushed it for him.

  There was delay enough for him to compose himself. He settled back, folded his arms across his belly, eyes glassy. Then the machine began to activate, and it was as if every nerve in his body were severed: the whole body went limp. It was time to leave; the machine was a nuisance without the drug, and she never liked to look at someone undergoing the process—it was not a particularly pretty sight, mouth slack, muscles occasionally twitching to suggestion. She double-checked the timer to be sure: there was a retreat function, that could be turned to suicide—dehydration, a slow death as pleasant or as terrible as the tape in question; it was not engaged, and she turned her back on him and left, closed the door on the unit and its human appendage.

  Every tape she had had since she was fifteen was in that box, and some she had recovered in duplicate for sentiment’s sake. If he knew them all, she thought wistfully, he might be me. And then she laughed, to think of things that were not in the tapes, the ugly things, the bitter things.

  The laugh died. She leaned against the rail of the stairs and reckoned another thing, that she should not have meddled at all, that she should ravel at other knots that had importance, and let this one alone.

  No more than the hives, she thought, and went downstairs.

  iii

  Ab Tallen brought a different pair with him…an older woman named Mara Chung and a middle-aged man named Ben Orrin. Warrior was nervous with their presence: what Warrior could not touch made it entirely nervous, and the police had liked Warrior no better, having the duty of escorting the Outsiders to the safety of the house.

  Max served drinks: Jim was still upstairs, and Raen was content with that, for Max managed well enough, playing house-azi. She sipped at hers and watched the Outsiders’ eyes, what things drew them, what things seemed of interest.

  Max himself was, it seemed. Ser Orrin was injudicious enough to stare at him directly, glanced abruptly at some point on the glass he held when he realised it.

  Raen smiled, caught Max’s eyes and with a flick of hers, dismissed him to neutrality somewhere behind her. She looked at her guests. “Seri,” she murmured, with a gesture of the glass. “Your welcome. Your profound welcome. Be at ease. I plan no traps. I know what you’ve been doing on Istra. It’s of no moment to me. Probably others of the Family find it temporarily convenient. A measure which has prevented difficulties here. How could the Reach complain of that?”

  “If you would be clear, Kont’ Raen—what interests you do serve, forgive me—we might be on firmer footing.”

  “Ser Tallen, I am not being subtle at the moment. I am here. I don’t choose to see anything of the transactions you’ve made with Istra. Pursuing that would be of no profit to me, and a great deal of inconvenience. Some interests in the Family would be pleased with what you’re doing; others would be outraged; Council would debate it and the outcome would be uncertain, but perhaps unfavourable. Myself, I don’t care. The hives are fed. That’s a great benefit. Azi aren’t starved. That’s another. It makes Istra liveable, and I’m living on Istra. Plain?”

  There was long silence. Tallen took a drink and stared at her, long and directly. “Do you represent someone?”

  “I’m Meth-maren. Some used to call us hive-masters; it’s a term we’ve always disliked, but it’s descriptive. That’s what I represent, though some dispute it.”

  “You control the majat?”

  She shook her head. “No one—controls the majat. Anyone who tells you he does…lies. I’m an intermediary. An interpreter.”

  “‘Though some dispute it,’ you said.”

  “There are factions in the Family, seri, as aforesaid. You might hear others disputing everything I say. You’ll have to make up your own mind, weighing your own risks. I’ve called you here, for one thing, simply to lay all things out in open question, so that you don’t have to ask ITAK questions that are much easier to ask of me directly. You had to wonder how much secrecy you needed use with certain items of trade; you could have wasted a great deal of energy attempting to conceal a fact which is of no importance to me. I consider it courtesy to tell you.”

  “Your manners are very direct, Kont’ Raen. And yet you don’t say a word of why you’ve come.”

  “No, ser. I don’t intend to.” She lowered her eyes and took a drink, diminishing the harshness of that refusal, glanced up again. “I confess to a lively curiosity about you—about the Outside. How many worlds are there?”

  “Above fifty around the human stars.”

  “Fifty…and non-human? Have you found other such?”

  Tallen’s eyes broke contact, and disappointed her, even, it seemed, with regret to do so. “A restricted matter, Kont’ Raen.”

  She inclined her head, turned the glass in her hand, let the melting ice continue spinning, frowned—thinking on Outside, and on the ship at station, Outbound.

  “We are concerned,” Tallen said, “that the Reach remain stable.”

  “I do not doubt” She regarded him and his companions, male and female. “I doubt that I can answer your questions either.”

  “Do you invite them?” And when she shrugged: “Who governs? Who decides policies? Do majat or humans dominate here?”

  “Moth governs; the Council decides; majat and humans are separate by nature.”

  “Yet you interpret.”

  “I interpret.”

  “And remain separate?”

  “That, ser,” she answered, having lost her self-possession for the second time, “remains a question.” She frowned. “But there remains one more matter, seri, for which I asked you here. And I shall ask it and hope for the plain truth: among the bargains that you have made with concerns inside the Reach—is there any breach of quarantine? You’re not—providing exit for any citizens of the Reach? You’ve not agreed to do so in future?”

  They were disturbed by this, as they might be.

  “No,” Tallen said.

  “Again, my personal position is one of complete disregard. No. Not complete. I would,” she said with a shrug and a smile, “be personally interested. I would be very interested to see what’s over the Edge. But this is not the case. There is no exit.”

  “None. It would not be tolerated, Kont’ Raen, much as it is regrettable.”

  “I am satisfied, then. That was the one item which troubled me. You’ve answered me. I think that I believe you. All our business for my part is done. Perhaps a social meeting when there’s leisure for it.”

  “It would be a pleasure, Kont’ Raen.”

  She inclined her head, set her glass aside, giving them the excuse to do the same.

  There were formalities, shaking of hands, parting courtesies: she went personally to the door and made sure that Warrior did not approach them as they entered their car and closed the doors.

  “Max,” she said, “see to the gate out there. Make sure our security is intact.”

  He was over-zealous; he went without more than his sunvisor, and she frowned over it, for Istra’s sun was no kinder than Cerdin’s. New azi. Anxious and over-anxious to please. It was worse in its way than dealing with housecomp.

  The car reached the gate and exited; Max saw to the closing and walked back, Warrior gliding along at a little distance, keeping a critica
l majat eye on all that passed.

  Max entered, sought more instruction. “Just protect yourself when you go out, after this,” she said peevishly, and dismissed him. She was depressed by the encounter, had hoped otherwise, and logically could not say why.

  She closed and sealed the door, blinking somewhat from the change of light, from the portico to the inner hall—looked up, for Jim was on the stairs, watching her.

  He looked yet a little abstracted; deepstudy did that to one. And he had been upstairs longer than the tape had run…asleep, perhaps. It was a common reaction.

  “You didn’t repeat it, did you?” she asked, thinking of Max’s excessive zeal, concerned for that.

  “I listened aloud for several times.”

  “You were supposed to enjoy it.”

  “I thought I was supposed to learn it.” He shrugged from the stare she gave him for that, glanced down briefly, a flinching. “Is there something I can do now?”

  She shook her head, and went back to her work.

  The supplies arrived: Jim went out with Max and Merry to fend off Warrior while they were unloaded; it evidently was managed without incident, for she heard nothing of it. Six of the neighbours called, advising that they were indeed seeking shelter elsewhere; three were silent, and calls to them raised no human answer, only housecomp. There were several more calls from various sources, including ITAK and ISPAK.

  For the most part there was no sound in the house at all, not a stirring from Jim, wherever he was and whatever he did to pass the time. He appeared at last, prepared supper, shared it with her in silence and vanished again. She would have spoken with him at dinner, but she was preoccupied with the recollection of her work with the comp net, and with the hazard of dipping as she did into intercomp; it was nothing to touch lightly, a taut-strung web which could radiate alarms if jostled too severely. She did not need abstract discussion with an azi to unhinge her thought.