Serpent's Reach (42 page)

And the hives refused contact.

There were human folk on Istra, farmers, who lived out across the wide plains, who told wild tales and traded occasional jewels and rolls of majat-silk.

Tallen had met with them, these sullen, furtive men, suspicious of any ship that called; and there was warning here, for there were no few ships resting derelict in Istran fields.

Sixty years the contact had lapsed: collapse, chaos, war…worlds breaking from the Alliance in panic, warships forcing them in again, all for the scarcity of certain goods and the widespread rumours of majat breakout.

It was told in Tallen’s family that men and majat had coexisted here, had walked together in city streets, had co-operated one with the other.

It was told somewhere in Alliance files that this was so.

He heard the sound nearer now, and walked warily, stopped at last as a glittering creature rose out of the rocks and brush.

A trembling came on him, a loss of will.
Natural,
he thought, recalling the tales his grandfather had told, who claimed to have stood close to them.
Humans react to them out of deep instinct. One has to overcome that
.

They see differently:
that too, from old Tallen, and from reports deep in the archives. He spread his hands wide from his sides, making clear to it that he had no weapons.

It came closer. He shut his eyes, for he quite lost big courage to look at it near at hand. He heard its loud breathing, felt the bristly touch of its forelimbs. A shadow fell on his closed eyes; something touched his mouth—he shuddered convulsively at that, and the touch and the shadow drew back.

“Stranger,” it said, a harmony of sounds that joined into a word.

“Friend,” he said, and opened his eyes.

It was still near, the moiré eyes shifted through the spectrum at each minute turn of the head. “Beta human?” it asked him.

A stirring ran through the hive. Raen lifted her head, read it in the voices, the shift of bodies, needing no vision in the dark.

Stranger-human,
the message came to her, and that pricked at curiosity, for betas would never come this far: they did their grain-trading far out on the riverside, where they brought their sick, such as majat could heal.

And the azi had gone long ago.

She missed them sorely. The hives did, likewise, mourning them in Drone-songs.

Merry had gone, neither first nor last, a sudden seizure of the heart. And she had wept for that, though Merry would hardly have understood it.
l am azi,
he had said once, refusing to be otherwise.
I would not want to outlive my time.
And so, one by one, the others had chosen.

It was strange, now, that a beta would have ventured into majat land, under the great Hill.

“Jim,” she said.

“I hear.” He found her hand, needing sight no more than she, as he was in other ways skilled with her skills.

Of all of them, Jim remained, a costly gift of Worker lives, and of his own will, more than Merry had had, who had wanted things his own way, in old patterns, in terms he understood.

For a long time she had cared for nothing beyond that, to know that there was one human to share the dark with her.

Now Warrior came, immortal as she, as he, in one of its many persons. “Outsider,” it said, troubled, perhaps, in the perception of changes. “Unit called
Tallen
.”

Tallen blinked in the twilight, watching them come…two, woman and man, robed in gauzy majat-silk. They wore it as if it were nothing, priceless though it was, as if their own will were cloak enough.

They stopped near to him, and Tallen shivered in their regard, that strange coolness and lack of fear. There was a mark on the man, beneath the eye and on the shoulder:
azi
. The old Tallen had reported such, but not such as he, whose gaze he could not bear. The mark on the woman was of jewels; of her kind too there were remembrances.

“Ab Tallen,” she said, strangely accented, “would be an old, old man.”

“Dead,” Tallen answered. “I’m his grandson. Your people remember him?”

Her eyes flickered, seemed possessive of secrets. She held out her right hand and he took it; hesitating at the strange warmth of the jewels that covered it.

“Raen Meth-maren,” she said. “Yes, there’s memory of him. Kind memory.”

“Your name is hers, that he mentioned.”

She smiled faintly, and questions of kinship went uninvited. She nodded to the man beside her. “Jim,” she said, and that was all.

Tallen took the other offered hand, regarded them both anxiously, for majat hovered about, escort, guards, soldiery—there was no knowing what.

“You delayed longer than you should,” she said.

“We had our years of trouble. I’m afraid there may have been landings here of a sort we’d not have allowed. Our apologies, for such intrusions.”

She shrugged. “Most have learned, have they not?”

That was truth, and chilling in her manner. “We’ve come here twice—peacefully, hunting some contact.”

“Now,” she said, “we’re pleased to answer you. Is it trade you want?”

He nodded, all his careful speeches destroyed, forgotten in that direct stare.

“I’m Meth-maren. Hive friend. Intermediary. I can arrange what you want.” She looked about her, and at him. “I speak and translate.”

“We need lab-goods, more than the jewels the farmers have been trading.”

“Then give us computers. You’ll get your lab products.”

“And some sort of licensing for regular trade.”

She nodded toward the plains, the beta-holds. “There are those who will deal with you as we arrange.”

“There’s no station any longer. It’s gone.”

“Crashed. We saw it, Jim and I. It fell into the sea, a long time ago. But stations can be rebuilt.”

“Come aboard my ship,” he invited her. “We’ll talk specifics.”

She shook her head, smiled faintly. “No, ser. Take your ship from the vicinity of the hive tonight, within the hour. Go to riverside. I’ll find you there with no trouble. But don’t linger near the hive.”

And she walked away, leaving him standing. The majat remained, and the man, who looked at him with remotely curious eyes and then walked away.

“All things end,” she said. “Does the Outside frighten you, Jim?”

“No,” he said. She thought it truth. Their minds were much alike.

“There’s
Moriah
.” She nodded in the direction of the port, where the only whole buildings in Newhope remained. “There’s the Reach or Outside. We’re human. There’s a time to remember that.”

He looked at her, saying nothing.

She linked her fingers in his, chitined hand in human one.

“It begins again,” she said.

Pieces: one pair six-sided dice; trio of four-sided wands: first wand face black, second blue with ship symbol; third white; fourth orange with star symbol.

Object: first player to accumulate 100 points wins. To start play: high roll of dice determines starting player. The Starting Player throws the wands, and play proceeds. To score: The. players roll dice for possession of the points represented by the wands. The casting of wands proceeds in alternation, one player and the next. The wand-thrower has the option of the first cast of dice; the dice then proceed in alternation during the Hand (this particular casting of the wands). High roll takes the wand or wands in contention, and points are recorded as follows. Value of wands: stars are 12 points each; ships are ten; white and white with black are 5 points for the white pair combined, but the black is played separately and with its own value; white assumes the value of any wand-of-colour, always the highest in the Hand…and assumes the value of black only if both other wands in the Hand are black; black cancels all points in the possession of whichever player “wins” the black wand, but cancellation of points is limited to the Game itself. Play always proceeds from ships to stars to black: that is, in a Hand, the dice must be rolled first for possession of the ships, then for the stars, and last of all for possession of the black. If a tie occurs in the roll of the dice, the dice are rolled again. If the wands come up doubled or tripled stars or ships or white, the winner of the first of the double or triple set automatically takes the others of that colour; for this purpose also, white matches the highest wand of the Hand. Should triple white show, the winner automatically takes Game. Should triple black show, the winner automatically loses Game.

Passing: In this matter rests the skill of the game, judging when to pass and when to risk play. A Hand containing a single black wand or any number of black wands may be declined by the thrower of wands, thus entirely voiding the Hand. the dice will not be rolled; the wands pass into the hand of the next player, who will cast again, with all privileges of the wand-thrower. Further, a player with the option to throw either wands or dice may voluntarily pass that option to the next player, who is not, however, obliged to accept: the player who has passed will receive the wands or dice again in alternation. The latter is a matter of courtesy and custom of the game: highest or decisive points are played last.