The lift had activated: she saw the indication on the board, and left her cushion, negotiated her way back to it.
Tallen. An armed azi escorted the man, and waited while he caught the handhold and exited the lift…no pleasant sensation, the personnel lift during flight, and the man was old—not as Kontrin aged, Raen thought sorrowfully, but as betas did. It was sad to understand.
“Apologies, ser,” she welcomed him. “Are your folk all right?”
“Our rooms raided, ourselves handled as we were—”
“Apologies,” she said in a cold voice. “But no regrets. You’re off Istra. You’re alive. Be grateful, ser.”
“What’s going on?”
“There are very private affairs of the Reach involved here, ser Outsider.” She gestured him into the corner by the passenger compartment, where they could stand more comfortably, and waited until he had braced himself. “Listen to me: you were not well-advised to have cut off my warning. You’ve Mundy back; you’ve information, for. what it’s worth. But you’ve killed the others. You understand that. It’s too late for them. Listen to me now, and save something. Your spies have not been effective, have they?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You do, ser. You do. And the only protection you have is myself, ser. The betas surely can’t offer you any, whatever their assurances to the contrary.”
“Betas.”
“Betas. Beta generation. The children of the labs, ser. The plastic civilisation.”
“The eggs.” Comprehension came to his eyes. “The children of the eggs.”
“They’re set up to obey. We’ve conditioned them to that. Do you understand the pattern you see now? Your spies haven’t helped you. You’ve dropped them into the vast dark, ser, and they’re gone, swallowed up in the Reach.”
“These—” he looked about him at the guards. “These creatures—”
“Don’t,” she said, offended. “Don’t misname them. The azi are quite as human as the betas, ser. And unlike the betas, they’re quite aware they’re programmed. They’ve no illusion, but they deserve respect.”
“And you go on creating them. You’ve pushed a world to the breaking point. Why?”
“I think you suspect, ser Tallen; and yet you go on feeding them. No more. No more.”
“Be clear, Kont’ Raen.”
“You’ve understood. You’ve been gathering all the majat goods we and the betas can sell you, swallowing them up, shipping them out. Warehousing them—against a time of shortage, if you’ve been wise, taking what you could get while you could get it. But to do that, you’ve been doing the worst thing you could have done. You’ve been feeding the force that means to expand out of the Reach. And worse, ser, much worse—you’ve been feeding the hives. This generation for industrialisation, the next for the real move. And you’ve fed it.”
He turned a shade yet paler than he had been. “What do you propose, Kont’ Raen?”
“Shut down. Shut down trade for a few years. Now. The Reach can’t support these numbers. The movement will collapse under its own weight”
“What’s your profit in telling us?”
“Call it internal politics.”
“It’s mad. How do we know what authority you have to do this?”
She lifted a hand toward the azi. “You see it. I could have handled this otherwise. I could have pulled licenses. But that wouldn’t have told you why. I am telling you now. I mean what I say, ser: that your continued trade is supplying a force that will try to break out of the Reach. That a few years of deprivation will destroy that hope and make a point to them. We’re not without our vulnerabilities. Yours is the need for what we alone supply. But you’ve been oversupplied in these last few years. You can survive a time of shut-down. I assure you, you can’t come in and takethese things: trying to take them would destroy the source of them…or worse things…” She looked directly into his eyes. “You would stand where we do, and be what we are.”
“How can I carry a report to my authorities based on one person’s word? There’s another of your people in Istra. We’ve heard. This could be an attempt to prevent our contacting—”
“Ah, he’d tell you differently, perhaps. Or perhaps he’d shrug and say do as pleased you. Hisreasons you’d not understand at all.”
“You play games with us. Or maybe you have other motives.”
“Invade us. Come in with your ships. Fire on betas and innocent azi, break through to Cerdin and take all that we have. Then where will you be? The hives won’t deal with minds-that-die; no, they’ll lead you in directions you don’t anticipate. I give you a hive-master’s advice, ser, that I’ve withheld from others. Is it not so, that your desperation is because you need us? Your technology relies on what we produce? And do we not serve well? You’re safe, because we know well what we do. Now a hive-master says: stop, wait, danger, and you take it for deception.”
“Get my agents out.”
She shook her head. “It’s too late. I’ve given you warning. A decade or two, ser. An azi generation. A time of silence. Believe me now. We’ll get you to your ships. A chance to run, to get out of here with what lives I can give you.”
He stared at her. The ship was already coming into release from Istra’s gravity, and there was a feeling of instability. She beckoned him toward the lift.
“Believe me,” she said. “It’s the only gift I can give. And whatever you do, you’d best get down to your people, ser Tallen. They’ll wonder. They’ll need your advice. See it’s the right advice. My men will let you free, and you’ll do what you please on that dock.”
Tallen gave her a hard and long look, and sought the lift; the guard went with him.
Raen hand-over-handed her way back to the cushion, scanned instruments, looked at the crew. “Put us next the Outsider ships. If we need to clear a berth, we’ll do that”
The captain nodded, and she settled, arms folded, with station communications beginning to hurl frantic questions at them.
vii
“It’s settled,” the Ren-barant said.
The Hald looked about him in the swirl of brightly clad heads of septs and Houses, and at the Thel, the Delt, the Hit and others of the inner circle. Here were the key votes, the heads of various factions. They went armed into Council, remembering Moth, remembering another day. Ros Hald felt more than a touch of fear.
“I don’t trust the old woman,” the Ilit said. “I won’t feel easy until this is past.” His eyes darted left and right, his voice lowered. “This could as easily be a way to identify us, eliminate the opposition. We could go the way the others did, even yet.”
“No,” Ros Hald said fiercely. “No. Easiest of all if she gives over the keys we need. She’ll do that. She’s buying living time and she knows it.”
“When she knows other things too,” said the Delt.
Hald thought of that, as he had thought of it a hundred times, and saw no other course. The others were filing into the Council chamber. He nodded to his companions and went.
The seats were filled, one by one, with nervous men and women, heirs of the last purge.
Doubtless there were many weapons concealed now, within robes of Colour of House and sept.
But when Moth entered, and all those present rose in respect—even the Hald and his faction rose, because respect cost nothing—she had Tand for her support and seemed incredibly frail. Before now, she had doddered somewhat; now she had difficulty even lifting her head to speak before Council.
“I don’t trust this,” the Ren-barant whispered, fell silent at the press of the Hald’s hand.
“I have come to a difficult decision,” Moth began, and rambled on about the weight of empire and the changes in the Council, which had cast more and more weight on First Seat, which had made of her the dictator she avowed she would not be, that none of them had meant to be.
Her voice faltered and faded often. The Council listened with rare patience, though none of this was at all surprising, for Tand and rumour had spread her intent throughout the Family, even into factions which would not have been powerful enough to have their own spies. There could not be a representative present that did not know the meaning of this meeting.