She gazed at him steadily, broke contact after a moment. “You want her taken out”

“I give the best advice I have.”

“Why are you so apprehensive of this one subject? Personal grudge?”

“No. Surely your agent who watches your other agents would have turned up any personal bias in this.”

She laughed softly at the impertinence. The youngest Hald had been with her too long, too closely. She was not diverted. “But why then? What interference has she ever attempted in Family business? She’s never made an economic ripple; she only— travels, from time to time.”

“Is she your agent?” Tand asked, a question which had taken him live years to ask.

“No,” Moth said very softly. “But I protect her as if she were. She is, after a remote fashion. Why do you fear her so, Tand?”

“Because she’s atypical. And random. And a survivor. She ought to have grudges. She never exercises them…save once, but that was direct retaliation. She never pursues the old ones.”

“Ah.”

“Now she’s chosen a place where there’s potential for serious harm. There are Outsiders directly available; there are hives, and no one to watch her, only betas. Her going there has purpose.”

“Do you think so? She always seems to proceed by indirection.”

“I believe there is reason.”

“Perhaps there is. Yet in all these years, she’s never reached back to Cerdin.”

“It was a mistake to have let her live in the first place.”

“The Family has searched for cause against her ever since she left Cerdin. We’ve found none; she’s given none.”

“So she’s intelligent, and dangerous.”

Moth laughed again, and the laughter died and she sorted absently through the reports, shifting them into disorder. “How long do majat live?”

“Eighteen years for the average individual.” Tand seemed vaguely annoyed by this extraneity. “Longer for queens.”

“No. How long do majat live?”

“The hives are immortal.”

“That is the correct answer. How long is that?”

“They calculate—millions of years.”

“How long have we been watching them, Tand?”

The young man shifted his weight and his eyes went to the floor and the walls and elsewhere in his impatience. “About—six, seven hundred years.”

“How long would a cycle take—in the lifespan of an immortal organism?”

“What kind of cycle? Eldest, I’m afraid I don’t see what you’re aiming at.”

“Yea. We don’t, do we? We lose our memories with death. Individually. Our records record…only what we once perceived as important, at a given hour, under given circumstances. The Drones remember…everything.”

Tand shook his head. A sweat had broken out on his face. “I wish you would be clear, Eldest.”

“I wish I had a long enough record at hand. Don’t you see that things have changed? No, of course not. You’re only a third of a century old yourself. I’m only six hundred and a half. And what is that? What is that experience worth? The Pact used to keep the hives out of human affairs. Now reds and golds…mingle with us, even with betas. Hives are at war…on Cerdin, Meron, Andra, Kalind… On Kalind, it’s blues and greens against red. On Andra, and Cerdin, it’s blues and greens against red and gold. On Meron, it’s blues against reds and greens, and gold is in hiding.”

“And Istra—”

“One can’t predict, can one?”

“I don’t understand what you’re trying to say, Eldest.”

“Until you do—spread the word among the Houses that Moth still has her faculties. That killing me would be very unwise.”

“The matter,” Tand said tentatively, “the matter is Raen a Sul, Eldest.”

“Yes, it is isn’t it?” Moth shook her head. Blinked. At nigh seven hundred, the brain grew unreliable, too full of information. There were syntheses which verged on prophecy, cross-connections too full of subtle intervening data. Her hands shook uncontrollably with the effort of tracing down these interloping items. Self-analysis. Of all processes, that was hardest, to know why the data interconnected. Her eyes hurt. Her hands could not feel the papers they handled. She became aware that Tand had been speaking further.

“Go away,” she said abruptly.

He went.

She watched him go, without doubt now: her death was planned.

ii

The azi had settled finally, his world redefined. He slept as if the luxury of the upper deck staterooms were no novelty at all. Raen gathered herself up quietly, slipped past the safety web which shrouded the wide bed, and stretched, beginning now to think of departure, of the disposition of personal items scattered through the suite during the months of voyaging.

Now there was the azi…help or burden: she had not yet decided which. She had second thoughts of her mad venture, almost changed her mind even on this morning, as often of mornings she had had doubts.

She put it from her mind, refused to think of more than the present day; that was her solution to such thoughts, at least for the hour, at least to pass that tedious time of waiting and solitude. The voyage itself had promised to be unendurable; and it was done; there had even been moments of highest enjoyment, moments worth living, too rare to let finality turn them sour. She refused to let it happen—yawned and stretched in deliberate self-controlled luxury—went blindly to the console and keyed a double breakfast into the foodservice channel.

A red light blinked back at her at once, Security advisement. Her pulse jolted; she keyed three, which was the channel reserved for ship’s emergencies and notices.

MAJAT PASSENGER HAS AWAKENED. PLEASE VACATE VICINITY OF SECTOR #31.

On schedule—alarm to the ship, none to her. She punched in communications. “This is 512. I advise you take extraordinary care in emergency in 31. This is not a Worker. Please acknowledge.”

They did so. She cut them off, rubbed her eyes and sought the shower, her social duty fulfilled.

The touch of warm water and the smell of soap: some things even tile prospect of eternity could not diminish. Water slid over a body which bore only faint scars for all that was past, spare of flesh despite all her public self-indulgences. She endured heat enough to make her heart speed, generating a cloud of comfortable steam within the cabinet, combed her hair and punched the dry circulation into operation.

Dry, combed, composed, she hauled a sheet out of storage, wound into it and ventured the chill air of the outer rooms, back to the console with a new object in mind.

Jim’s papers were on the desk. She flicked through them, keyed in ship’s store with a few requests for display. Samples in simulacrum flashed onto the screen, accurate representation of his body-type with one and another suit. She indicated approval for several and put them on her account, selected a travelling case from the same source, along with an assortment of necessary personal items and a few of jewellery.

Doing so amused her. She anticipated his delight. But after the screens went dark and the only pleasant necessity of the morning had been cared for, she sat still on the bench and faced the prospect of Istra itself, of other things, in a sudden dark mood which had some origin in a morning headache.

Perhaps it was overmuch of drink the night before. She had certainly overindulged.

Perhaps it was the azi, who had a melancholy about him which touched strongly at her own.

She bestirred herself finally and dressed…plain, beige garments, close-fitting. And, which she had not done on the ship, she put on the sleeve-armour, which was simple ostentation. Light, jewel-toned chitin strung on the lightest of filaments, it ran from the living jewels of her right hand to her collar: the beauty of it pleased her, and the day wanted some ceremony, after such long voyaging.

She laughed bitterly, staring back at the replacement of her fortunes, who slept, still oblivious, and thought her all-powerful. Where it regarded a ship like Andra’s Jewel, this was surely so.