Beta dramas, trivial and depressing…worse, when one knew the deliberate psych-sets which had gone into training their lab-born ancestors: work to succeed, succeed to be idle, consume, consume, consume, consumption is status. It worked, economically: on it, the entire economy of the Reach thrived; but it made excruciatingly boring drama. She keyed in docking operations, and found more interest simply in watching the station spin nearer, the abstract shift of light and shadow across its planes.

She heard a sound from the other room. Jim was up and about. She listened for him to head for the bath again in distress, but he did not, and she decided that he had recovered. She heard a great deal of walking back and forth, the crumbling of plastics, and finally the click of a suitcase closing. She looked round the side of the chair and saw him, dressed in conservative street clothes, setting his case beside her several.

He could indeed have been beta, or even Kontrin: he was tall. But he was a little too fair; and there was the minute tattoo beneath the right eye.

“You look very fine, Jim.”

He glanced down, seeming embarrassed. “I thank you, sera.”

“Formalities are hardly appropriate in private.” She spun the chair about from the viewer and looked up at him. “You’re all right, then.”

He nodded. “I’m sorry,” he said almost inaudibly.

“You didn’t panic; you stood your ground. Sit down.”

He did so, on the bench against the wall, still slightly pale.

“Meth-maren,” she said, “is not a well-loved name among Kontrin. And sooner or later someone will make an attempt on my life.” She opened her right hand, palm down. “The chitin grafted there is blue-hive; blue-hive and the Meth-marens met a common misfortune two decades ago. Warrior and I have something in common, you see. And listen to me: I once had a few azi in my employ. Somehow a gate was left unlocked and red-hive majat got in. I sleep lightly. The azi didn’t. The room was no pretty sight, I may tell you. But an azi who would walk with me out there into the hall…might have been of some use to me that night.”

“On the ship—” He always spoke in a hushed voice, and the more so now. “We have security procedures. I understand them.”

“Do they teach you about self-defense?”

A slight shake of the bead.

“They just tell you about locks and accesses and fire procedures.”

A diffident nod.

“Well, that’s far better than nothing. Hear this: you must guard my belongings and things that I’ll use and places that I’ll come back to, with far more care than you use guarding me. I take care of myself, you see, and most of my enemies wouldn’t go for a head-on attack on me if there were an easier way; no, they’d go for something I’d use, or for an unlocked door. You understand what I’m talking about.”

“Yes, sera.”

“We’re docking in an hour or so. You could save confusion by getting a baggage cart up here. I really don’t think azi are going to be safe coming up here, not past Warrior out there. But it wouldn’t hurt you, not if you let it touch you and identify, you understand. No more than it would me. You have the nerve for it?”

He nodded.

“Jim, perhaps we may stay together a long time.”

He stood up, stopped. “Nineteen years,” he said. And when she gave him a puzzled frown: “I’m twenty-one,” he said, with the faintest quirk of a smile.

Azi humour. He would live to forty. A feeling came on her the like of which only the blues had stirred in many years. She recalled Us, and the gentle azi of her childhood: their dead faces returned with a shock; and the slaughter, and the burning… She flinched from it. “I value loyalty,” she said, turning away.

He was gone for a considerable time. She began to pace the room, realised that she was doing it and stopped, thought of going after him, hated to show her anxiety among betas.

At last the blue light winked in the overhead and she hurried to open the door, stood back to admit him and the cart.

“No trouble?” she asked him. Jim shook his head with a little touch of self-satisfaction and began at once putting the baggage on.

He finished, and settled, lacking anything else to do; she sat, watching their approach to station. Their berth was in sight; the station was by now a seemingly stationary sprawl extending off the screen on both sides, an amazing structure, as vast as rumour promised.

And ships, ships of remarkable design, linked to their berths—freighters, as bizarre in shape as they needed to be, never landing, only needing the capability to link to station umbilicals and grapples; the only standard of construction was the docking mechanism, the same dimensions from the tiniest personal craft to the most massive liner.

A ship was easing out as they came in, slowly, slowly, an aged freighter. The symbols it bore were unlike any sigil or company emblem in Raen’s memory; and then she realised it for the round Sol emblem. A thrill went through her.

An Outsider ship.

A visitor from beyond the Reach. It drifted like a dream image, passed them, vanished into the Jewel’sown shadow.

“Outsider,” she said aloud. “Jim, look, look—a third one at berth is the same design.”

Jim said nothing, but he regarded the image intently, with awe on his face.

“The Edge,” Raen said. “We’ve reached the Edge.”

v

Merek Eln’s hands trembled. He folded his arms and paced, and looked from time to time at Parn Kest.

“We’d better call in,” he said. “There’s time enough.”

“With a majat involved—” she objected. “A majat! How long can the thing have been aboard.”

“It’s with her. Has to be.” He looked toward the door with an inward shudder, thinking of the majat stalking the corridors at liberty, half-sane from its dormancy. The Kontrin had at least calmed the creature: the emergency channel had said so, and thanked her, whether or not the Kontrin cared for anyone’s gratitude. But worse could go wrong than had. They had been long away from Istra, half a year removed from the situation there, long removed from the last message.

He stepped suddenly to the console.

“Merek,” Parn said, rising, and caught his arm. Sweat stood on her face; it did on his. Her hand fell away. She said nothing. Their cover no longer served to protect them. There was no more guarantee of safety, even in coming home.

He sat down at the console and keyed in the communications channel. Communications was fully occupied with the flow of docking instructions; a message would have to go Priority, at high cost.

Communications wanted financial information beyond ordinary credit; it accepted a string of numbers and codes to bounce back through worldbank, and finally a chain of numbers which was the destination of the message, ITAK company representative on-station.

GO, it flashed.

Merek keyed response. NOTIFY MAIN OFFICE MERON MISSION INBOUND. URGENT ITAK ON STATION MEET US AT GATE WITH SECURITY. AWAIT REPLY WITH DEEP DISTRESS.

There was the necessary long delay.

“You shouldn’t have mentioned Meron,” Pare said at his shoulder. “You shouldn’t have. Not on a public channel.”

“Do you want to do this?”

“I wouldn’t have called.”

“And there wouldn’t have been anyone to meet us but maybe—maybe some of the office staff; and maybe things have changed on the station. I want our own security out there.”

He mopped at his face, recalling codes. DEEP: that was trouble; and DISTRESS at the end of any message meant majat. He dared not talk of Kontrin. One had no idea where their agents might be placed.

ITAK REPRESENTATIVE WILL BE AT GATE, the reply flashed back. DEEP DISTRESS UNDERSTOOD. OUR APOLOGIES.

It was the right code, neatly delivered. Merek bit at his lip and keyed receipt of the message.

ITAK took care of its people, if ITAK had the chance to move first. And if other messages had been sent, from the Kontrin or another agency, surely it was best to have broken cover and asked for help.