In the egg-chamber, frightened Workers, sensing vague alarm, began building a seal for the shafts. Theirs was the only activity. Mother lowered Her head and reached out for the reporting Warrior yet again; and Warrior, knowing fear of Mother for the first time in its existence, locked a second time into Mother’s chemistry, suffering the reactions of Her body as the messages swirled through Her fluids.
Others crowded close, seeking understanding.
They could not interpret fully. Each understood after its own kind.
There was impression of a flow of chemistry which had begun many cycles ago, a tiny taste of Cerdin, homeworld. The Mind Remembered. There had been a small hill. The memory went back before there were humans, salt-tasting, quick-perishing; before the little lake had filled; before the hill itself had stood. There were ages, and depths. The Mind reeled in ecstasy, the reinforcement of this ancient memory. There were partings, queens born of eggs ship-sent, hives hurled out to the unseen stars, over distances the Mind comprehended only when majat eyes beheld a new heat source in the heavens, different in pattern and timing and intensity, only when majat calculations reckoned angles and distances and an impression of complexities beyond the comprehension of the Mind, mysticism alien to majat processes.
Vastness, and dark, and cold.
Where the Mind was not.
Death.
At last the Mind had something by which to comprehend death, and finitude of worlds, and time before and after itself. It staggered in such comprehensions, and embraced abstracts.
Finite time, as humans measured it, suddenly acquired meaning.
The Mind understood.
Kalind-mind. There was dazzling taste of it, which had tasted of Andra, and of Meron, which had tasted of Cerdin, a wave starting at Cerdin and rippling outward: violence, and enmity. Destruction. Cerdin. Destruction.
The motion in the hive utterly ceased. Even the egg-tenders froze, paralysed in the enormity of the vision.
Growth since. Growth, denying death.
Mind reached outward, where there was no contact, for the distances were too far, and synthesis was impossible. There was only the longing, a stirring in the chemistries of the hive.
“Hazard,” a Warrior complained, having tasted Kontrin presence, and the slaughter of blues, the murders of messengers.
It could comprehend nothing more; but the hive closed the more tightly.
“She—” Mother began, interpreting across the barriers of type, which was queen-function, while chemistries meshed on other levels, “she is Meth-maren hive. She isthe hive. She is Kethiuy. Her Workers are late-come, gathered from strange hives. Azi. She tastes of danger, yess. Great hazard, but not hostile to blues. She preserved us the messenger of Kalind. She was on Meron, and Andra; her taste is in those memories. She was withinthe Hill on Cerdin. She has patterned with Warriors, against majat, against humans. Istra reds…taste of hate of her. Cerdin-taste runs in red-memory, taste of humans and death of blues. Great slaughter. Yess. But the entity Raen Meth-maren is blue-hive Kontrin. She has been part of the Mind of Cerdin.”
“Queen-threat,” a Warrior ventured.
The Drones sang otherwise, Remembering. The Mother of Cerdin blue-hive lived in Kalind blue’s message. There was a song that was Kethiuy, and death, abundant death, the beginning of changes, premature.
“Meth-maren,” Mother recalled, feeding into the Mind. “First-human. Hive-friend.”
Then the message possessed Her, and She poured into the Drones a deep and abiding anger. The Mind reached. Its parts were far-flung, scattered across the invisible gulfs of stars, of time, which had never been of significance. The space existed. Time existed. There was no synthesis possible.
The Drones moved, laved Mother with their palps, increasingly disturbed. They rotated leftward, and Mother also moved, drawing from Warriors and Foragers far-ranging on the surface—orienting to the rising sun, not alpha, but beta Hydri, beholding this in the darkness of the Hill.
The Drones searched Memory, rotated farther, seeking resolution. Full circle they came, locked again on the Istran sun. Workers reoriented; Warriors moved.
The circling began again, slow and ponderous. Seldom did Mother move at all. Now twice more the entire hive shifted prime direction, and settled.
A Warrior felt Mother’s summons and sought touch. It lacked into Mother’s chemistry and quivered its entire length, in the strength of the message it felt. It turned and ran, breaking froth the Dance.
A Worker approached, received taste, and likewise fled, frantically contacting others as it went.
The Dance fragmented. Workers and Warriors scattered in a frenzy in all directions.
The Drones continued to sing, a broken song, and dissonant. Mother produced no egg. A strange fluid poured from Her mandibles, and the Workers gathered it and passed to the egg-tenders, who sang together in consternation.
ii
The house-comp’s memory held a flood of messages: those from the Dain-Prossertys, who had lost no time; anxious inquiries from the ITAK board in general; from ISPAK, a courteous erecting and regrets that she had not stayed in the station: from the police, a requested list of casualties and next of kin; from forward ITAK businesses, offers of services and gifts.
Raen dealt with some of them: a formal message of condolences to the next-of-kin, with authorisation for funeral expenses and the sum of ten thousand credits to each bereaved, to be handled through ITAK; to the board, general salutations; to the Dain-Prossertys a suggestion that any particular license they desired might be favourably considered, and suggesting discretion in the matter.
She ordered printout of further messages and ignored what might be incoming for the time, choosing a leisurely breakfast with Jim, the while Max and Merry ate in the azi quarters, and Warrior enjoyed a liquid delicacy in the garden—barely visible, Warrior’s post, a shady nook amongst the rocks and spiky plants, a surprise for any intruders.
A little time she reckoned she might spend in resting; but postponing meetings with ITAK had hazard, for these folk might act irrationally if they grew too nervous.
There was also the chance that elements of the Family had agents here: more than possible, even that there could have been someone to precede her. In the Jewel’sslow voyage there was time for that.
She toyed with the idea of sending Council a salutation from Istra, after two decades of silence and obedience. The hubris of it struck her humour.
But Moth needed no straws added to the weight under which she already tottered. Raen found it not in her present interest to add anything to the instabilities, to aggravate the little tremors which were beginning to ran through the Reach. Kontrin could act against her on Istra; but they would not like to, would shudder at the idea of pursuing a feud in the witness of betas, and very much more so here at the window on Outside. No, she thought, there would be for her only the delicate matter of assassination…and Moth, as every would act on the side of inaction, entropy personified.
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.