Serpent's Reach

by C. J. Cherryh

  “Meth-maren.”

  A Warrior invaded the doorway, and the domestic scrambled from the table over against the wall, throwing a dish to the floor in his panic. “Be still,” Jim said harshly, rising. “Your contract is here and the majat won’t hurt you.”

  And when it came farther, seeking taste and touch, he gave it. “Meth-maren azi,” it identified him. “Jimmm. This-unit seeks Meth-maren queen.”

  “She’s not here,” he told it, forcing himself to steadiness for the touch of the chelae, the second brush at his lips, between the great jaws. He shuddered in spite of himself, but the conviction that it would not, after all, harm him, made it bearable—more than that, for she was gone, and the majat at least were something connected with her. He touched Warrior as he had seen her do, and calmed it.

  “Need Meth-maren,” it insisted. “Need. Need. Urgent.”

  “I don’t know where she is,” he said. “She left. She said she would come back soon. I don’t know.”

  It rushed away, through the door to the garden, damaging the doorframe in its haste. Jim followed it past the demoralised house-azi, looked out into the ravaged back garden where a deepening pit delved into the earth, where the neighbour’s wall had been undermined. Guard-azi stood their posts faithfully, but as close to the azi quarters door as they might. He went out past the excavation, past the guards-sought Max, and having located him in the azi quarters, told him of Warrior’s request, not knowing what he ought to have answered.

  “We must stay here as we were told,” Max concluded, his squarish face grimly set, and there was in his eyes a hint of disapproval for the azi who suggested a violation of those instructions. Jim caught it and bit off an answer, turned and hesitated in the door, irresolution gnawing at him with a persistence that made his belly hurt. The hive wanted: Raen would have been disturbed at an urgent message from the hive. She needed to know.

  And he was charged simply to keep the house in order.

  That was not, now, what she needed. The look that had been in her eyes when she left him had been one of worry, anxiousness, he thought wretchedly, because she must leave him in charge, him who could not understand the half of what he ought.

  He looked back, shivering. “Max,” he said.

  The big guard-azi waited. “Orders?” Max asked, that being the way Raen had arranged things.

  “I’m going upstairs. You’re in charge down here.”

  “She said you were to work.”

  “She said I was to take care of things. I’m going upstairs. I have something to do for her. You’re in charge down here. That’s the order I’m giving you. I’m responsible. I’ll admit to it.”

  Max inclined his head, accepting, and Jim strode back the way he had come, across the devastation of the garden, past the domestic azi in the kitchen, who was mopping up the broken dish—past the comp centre, the screens of which flashed with messages which waited on Raen. The walls vibrated with song. Warriors hulked here and there in the dark places of the hall. A majat-azi scampered out of the farther doors, female, naked, bearing a blue light that glowed feebly in the shadow. She grinned and traded fingers across his shoulder as she passed, and he shuddered at the madness in that laughing face. A male followed, younger than left the pens to any other service, and the same wildness was in his eyes. A whole stream of them began to pour up from the basement with a Worker behind them, fluting orders for haste.

  He fled in horror, lest he be swept up with them by accident, herded with them into the dark pit outside. He ran the stairs, hurled himself into the bedroom, saw it safely vacant and locked the doors.

  It was a moment before he could unknot his clenched hands and arms and straighten. One part of him did not want to go farther…would rather seek the corner of the room and tuck up there and cease.

  Like the lower azi, when they reached the limit of their functions.

  Raen needed more than that. This tall, gaunt Kontrin had come, and talked with her, and she had been distressed: the strange born-man azi had distressed her further. He under-stood that there were connections he could not comprehend, that perhaps she was somewhere with him, who was of her kind—and that in hazardous things an azi of his training was useless.

  Keep the house in order.

  It was far from what she needed, but it was the limit of his function. He had seen betas, who could make up what to do: Kontrin, whose function he could not conceive, but who simply knew. He had seen the pens and knew himself.

  Dimly he realised that if Raen were lost, he would be terminated: someone had told him that they did not pass on their azi; but he failed to take alarm at that. He thought should that happen, he would simply sit down and wait for termination, out of interest in other things, without further use. There was an unfamiliar tightness in his throat that had bided there most of the day, a tenseness that would not go away.

  Be calm, old tapes echoed in his mind. Calm is always good. When you cannot be calm, you are useless. A useless azi is nothing. Turn of all disturbance. Instruction will come. You are blameless if you are calm and waiting for instruction.

  Next came the punishment, if he let the emotion well up, the inbuilt nausea. He was shaking, torn between the tightness in his throat and the sickness which heaved at his stomach, and knew that if he let the one go, the other would follow. He had no time for this. He fought down the hysteria with a simple exercise of self-distraction, refusing to think in the direction of his feelings. Calm, calm, calm is good. Good is happy. Happy is useful. Good azi are always useful.

  He busied himself at once, taking the deepstudy unit out of the closet, opening the case with the tapes. Calm, calm, calm, he insisted to himself, for his hand shook as he deliberately chose the tapes with the black cases, the forbidden ones. The disobedience increased the pain in his stomach. For her, he kept telling himself; and, Good azi are always useful, playing one tape against the other. If he had what was in her tapes he would know what she knew; if he knew what she knew, he would understand what to do.

  He propped up a divider from the case, contrived a way to brace the stack which he made in the play-slot, for they were far more than the machine was designed to hold. Focus the mind, concentrate only on the physical action: that was the means to keep calm in crisis. Never mind where the action was tending; it was only necessary to do, until all was done.

  He prepared the machine. He prepared the chair, throwing over it a blanket for padding; last of all he prepared himself, stripped completely, smoothed the blanket so that there would be not the least wrinkle to crease his skin during the long collapse, and found the pill bottle where he had left it last, in the bath. He sat down then, with the pill clenched in his teeth, attached the leads. Last of all he drew the edges of the blanket over himself and swallowed the pill, waiting for the numbness to begin.

  I shall change, he thought, and panic rose in him, for he had always liked the individual he was, and this was self-murder.

  He felt the haziness begin, bade himself goodbye, and threw the switch—composed his arms loosely to his sides and leaned back, waiting.

  The machine cycled in.

  He was not unconscious; he was hyperconscious, but not of things around him—gripped and shaken by the alienness that poured in.

  Attitudes. Information. Contradictions. The minds of immortals, the creators of the Reach. He absorbed until body began to scream out distantly to mind that there was hazard, and went on absorbing.

  He could not want to stop, save in the small pauses where instruction ceased. Then he would try to scream for help. But he was not truly conscious, and body would not respond at all. The stream began again, and volition ceased.

  ii

  “Meth-maren,” Mother intoned, distraught. “Find, find this queen.” Workers soothed Her; Drones sang their dismay. There was/had been impression of separation, the hive-consciousness that had been established for a time stretched thin, soaring as in flight.

  Then disaster.

  Workers laboured
, frantically. The hive reached out and sought Meth-maren hive, one with it. Workers died in the stress, jaws worn away, bodies exhausted, and the husks were caught up and carried away as the work boiled forward. Azi fell beneath their burdens and drank and rested and staggered back to their work, to die there.

  There was in the hive the frightened taste of a green scout, who had fallen to Warriors. Disorientation was in its hive also, the memory of Meth-marens of ages past, before the sun had risen at such an angle and the world had changed colours.

  And it in turn had tasted the minds of golds, who tasted of reds, whose fierceness now had a taint of hesitancy, less push and more of fear.

  “Kill,” the Warrior portion of blue-Mind urged. “Restore health. Kill the unhealthy.”

  Drones sang of memory, and the balance of the hive shifted toward Warrior-thoughts and shifted back again to Mother, as She wrenched it to Herself, fierceness greater than theirs, for it embraced eggs, survival.

  BUILD, the command went out, and the Workers hastened in frenzy.

  iii

  They huddled, an exhausted group, in the shade of a hedge. Raen slipped fingers under her visor and wiped sweat from her eyes, withdrew them, adjusted the rim to a new place and grimaced it back to the old. The hood of her sunsuit was back, the gloves off, the sleeves unfastened to the elbow; toward evening as it was, still the heat lingered as the residue of a furnace. The suits that saved from burn, ventilated as they were by majat-silk insets, left the skin sticky with perspiration, clung with every movement. A dead azi’s rifle was on her knees, weight on sore muscles; she had food and a canteen from the emergency stores and would not drink, tormenting herself with the thought of it—supplies meant for ten, and a cluster of thirsty men about her: neither did others drink, being azi, and waiting. The wounded bore their wounds, and the insects, without a sound: it was only surprise could get an outcry from them, and there was none of that. They knew what the situation was. They were the lighter by two they had started with, the worst-wounded; the bearers had been glad, and she did not delude herself otherwise. In that day she had reconsidered her mercy, and gazed at two others as had, and at the grasslands endless about them, and she had almost turned the gun on them. Instead she had given them a sip of water, that compounded the idiocy, and the same to the bearers: for herself and the others there was only the chance to moisten mouths and spit it back, and no one defied instructions.

  She was, however long ago, of Cerdin, and Cerdin’s sun was no kinder; she was, for the rest, accustomed to exercise, and most of these were not. She had Merry by her, poor Merry, his lips as cracked as hers felt, his face bruised as well as scraped; she trusted him more than the others, these babes new from the pens. Merry helped, used his wits; the others obeyed.

  There was a stirring, a shrilling; they snatched rifles up nervously, but it was one Warrior, their own, that bore a white rag tied on a forelimb so that the azi could tell it. It ran low, scuttled up waving its palps and seeking scent.

  “Here,” Raen said, turning her hand to it. It came, offered taste, the sweet fluids of its own body, and it was welcome. She touched the scent-patches, soothed it, for it had been moving hard, and air pulsed from the chambers so it had difficulty with human speech.

  “Mennn. Humanasss. Human-hive.”

  She gave a great breath of relief. Every face was turned toward it, faces suddenly touched with hope. She caressed the quivering palps. “Warrior, good, very good. Where are other Warriors?”

  “Watching men.”

  “Far?”

  It quivered slowly. Not far, then. “We leave the wounded and five to help them,” she said. “We’ll come back for you injured when we’ve gotten transport. I say so. Understood?”

  Heads inclined, all together.

  “Come on,” she told Merry. “Choose those to stay and let’s move.”

  Warrior moved ahead of their concealment, a black shape in the starlight. Likely Warrior was screaming orders; human ears could not pick it up. In a moment all three came back to the hedgerow, clicking with excitement.

  “Guardss,” Warrior said, with two neat bows in the appropriate directions: majat vision in the cool of night could hardly miss a human.

  “No majat?” Raen asked.

  “Humanss. Human-hive.”

  Fifty men were, in the last twos, grouping behind her. Lights showed ahead, floodlights about the fields, the farmyard. An azi barracks showed light from the windows; the farmhouse had the same, windows barred, proof against majat.

  “Door’s nothing,” she said to Merry. “A burn will take it. Azi won’t fight if we can get the betas first.”

  “Take the guards out,” Merry said. “Three men each, no mistakes. I’ll take one.”

  She shook her head: “Stay by me at the door. I’ll get it, ten men with me take the house, twenty round the side door. You get down by that porch and take any charge starts out the door of the barracks.”

  “Understood,” Merry said, and orders passed, quick and terse, by unit.

  “No firing unless fired on,” Raen said, and took the nearest Warrior by the forelimb. “Warrior: you three stay here. Guard this-place until I call.”

  “Warrior-function: come,” it lamented.

  “I order, Meth-maren, hive-friend. Necessary.”

  “Yess,” it sighed.

  “I go first,” she said, to the distress of Merry and the others, but they said no word of objection. She stood up, gripped her rifle by its body, and started out into the road, dejected, limping. Her eyes, her head still downcast, flicked nervously from one to the other of the guardposts she knew were there, in the hedges.

  “Stop!” someone shouted at her.

  She did so, looked fecklessly in that direction, with no move of her rifle. “Accident,” she said. “Aircraft went down—” and pointed back. The azi came from their concealment, both of them, naive that they were. “I need help,” she said. “I need to call help.”

  One of them determined. to walk with her. The other stayed. She limped on toward the house, toward the door, studying the lay of the place, the situation of windows; the barracks was at her back, the porch before.

  And the azi with her went up the steps ahead of her, rang at the door, pressed the housecomp button. “Ser?”

  Someone passed a window to the door.

  “Ser, there’s a woman here—”

  “Istra shuttle went down,” She cried past him. “Survivors. I need to call for help.”

  The door unlocked, opened. A greying beta stood in it. She slipped inside, leaned against the wall, whipped the rifle up.

  “Don’t touch the switch, ser. Don’t move.”

  The beta froze, mouth open. The guard-azi did likewise, and in that instant a rush of men pelted across the yard. The guard whirled, found targets, fired in confusion, and the rush that hit the door threw him over, swept the beta against the wall, ringing him with weapons. Her azi kept going, and elsewhere in the house were shots and outcries. “No killing!” she shouted. “Secure the house! Go, I’ve got him.” She held her rifle on the man, and the azi swept after their comrades.

  It was a matter of moments then, the frightened family herded together into their own living room, the azi servants, one injured, along with them.

  Merry held the front porch. The first shot into the azi barracks had convinced the others. Her men regrouped, meditating that problem.

  “Ser,” Raen said to the householder, “protect your azi. Call them out unarmed. No one will be hurt.”

  He did so, standing on the porch with enough rifles about to assure he made no errors. In the house, the family waited, holding to one another, the wife and a young couple that was likely related in some way, with an infant. The baby cried, and they tried to hush it.

  And fearfully the farm’s azi came out as they were told; she bade Merry and some of the men search the barracks and the azi themselves for weapons.

  But most of all was water, food. She gave them permission as quickl
y as she could, and they drank their fill—brought her a cup, which she received gratefully, and a grimy fistful of dried fruit. She chewed at it and kept the rifle slung hip-level, pocketed some, drank at the water. The householder was allowed to rejoin his family on the chairs in the living room. “Ser,” Raen said, “apologies. I told the truth: we’ve injured among us. I need food, water, transport, and your silence. You’re in the midst of a Kontrin matter—Kont’ Raen, seri, with profound apologies. We’ll not damage anything if we can help it.”

  A cluster of beta faces stared back at her, grey with terror, whether for their attack or for what she told them, she was not sure.

  “Take what you want,” the man said.

  The baby started crying. Raen gave the child a glance and the woman gathered it to her; the injured azi touched it and tried to soothe it. Raen took a deep breath for patience and looked at the lot of them. “You’ve a truck here, some sort of transport?”

  Heads nodded.

  She went off to the center of the house, hunting comp, located it, a sorry little machine pasted with grocery notices and unexplained call-numbers. She keyed in, called the house in Newhope, the number she had arranged for emergency.

  “Jim?” she called. And again: “Jim!”

  There was no response.

  Her hand began to shake on the board. She clenched it and leaned her mouth against it, considering in her desperation how far she could trust Itavvy or Dain or anyone else in ITAK. “Jim,” she said, pleading, and swore.

  There was still no response. JIM, she keyed through, to leave a written message, STAND BY. EMERGENCY.

  She put the next one through to Isan Tel’s estate, where a few managerial azi kept the fiction of a working estate, unsupervised azi and a horde of guard. STAND BY. EMERGENCY. EMERGENCY.

  And a third one to the Labour Registry. EMERGENCY, TEL CONTRACT. PLEASE STAND BY.

  None used her name. She dared not. She rose and took two of the men with her, walked out past Merry’s unit to the road, and up it to the place where they had left the Warriors. They were there, fretting and anxious. “All safe,” she told them. To each she gave two pieces of the dried fruit, which they greatly relished. “I need one-unit to stay with me, two for a message,” she said.