Serpent's Reach (30 page)

Tallen. They had got him, and all his folk. She found her heart able to beat stably again, and shouted orders as the truck backed out again. It almost clipped the hatch, missed. The azi driver bailed out while it was still moving and raced for the hatch, pelted aboard.

She hit the close-switch, and the lift jolted up, taking them up, while the ITAK police gazed at the diminishing view of them. Just at total dark, she hit the lights, and looked over the azi and the Warriors and the shaken prisoners.

“Ser Tallen,” she said, and nodded toward Tom Mundy, who had no joy to see his own people. Pity took her, for Mundy turned his face away as far as he could, and when she bade Tallen released to see to him, Mundy wanted only to turn away, a shaven ghost in grey.

“You’re going home.” she said to Tallen. She had no time for other things. She gave brief orders to an older azi, setting him in charge, and set herself in the personnel lift, rode it up to more immediate problems.

A nervous pointing of weapons welcomed her above; she waved them aside and looked past Merry to the watch crew, who huddled under the threat of guns, way from controls, in the small passenger compartment.

“Kontrin,” the officer-in-charge said, and rose: the azi let him. He was, she noted, ISPAK, not ITAK. “We’ve done everything requested.”

“Thank you. Come forward, ser, and run me some instrument checks; I suppose that you can do that, until the crew shows.”

The ISPAK beta wiped at his face and came with her, well-guarded, showed her the functioning of the board; it was exceedingly simple, lacking a number of convenient automations. Outside, there was the ministration of ground-service. That, she reflected, simply had to be trusted: one simply minimised the chances.

She settled into the nearest of the cushions, folded her arms and closed her eyes as the first touch of dawn began to show, for she was robbed of sleep this night, and she reckoned that this frightened beta would hardly risk anything with so many armed azi at her back.

Then crew arrived, with a flurry of distressed calls to the bridge; they were no more relaxed by the time they had negotiated the personnel lift, past the azi below and the Warriors with them, and into the upper level to the welcome of Merry’s armed squad.

“Just do your job,” Raen advised them. They settled in, speaking only in fragments and that when they must. “We’re not scheduled,” was the captain’s only protest. “We may not have a berth up there.”

“We’ll get one,” Raen said. She reached for the com switch herself, requested lift clearance, obtained it, priority. If traffic was in the way, it would be diverted or aborted. The shuttle’s engines were in function; it settled earthward as its stilts drew in, and engaged its moving-gear, trundled ponderously out toward the lifting area.

“Merry,” she asked of the passenger area. “All right back there?”

“Yes, sera.”

“Have Tallen up after lift. Strict security on the rest.”

They were entering position, wings extruding, gathering speed. Then wings locked, and they made their run. “Use the handholds,” she remembered to snap at the azi still standing, and they left the ground, under heart-dragging acceleration.

Pol, she thought in that vulnerable moment, Pol was on world, ship-based—could down a shuttle if he would, if she had guessed wrong; and there was ISPAK to contend with. She doubted then, whether she should not have gone back to ISPAK at once, taken it first, instead of delaying on-world.

But there was also blue-hive. Principally, there was blue-hive.

They passed the worst of lift, launched on an angled ascent that would carry them at last to intercept with station. The deck would slant for the duration. “Rest,” she bade the standing azi, lest they tire, “Half at a time. Sit down.” They settled, by their own way of choosing, but all kept weapons ready, and held to the safety grips, for the sensation of flight was new to them.

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
take
these 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.
His
reasons 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.

“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.

She spoke of the hives, ramblings of which they were even yet patient.

And suddenly she began to laugh, so that more than one hand in the hall felt after a weapon and her life hung on a thread; but her own two hands were in sight, and one had to wonder who her agents were and where they might be positioned.

“The hives, my friends, my cousins—the hives have come asking and offering now, have they? And the hive-masters divided on the question, and now they’re gone. I’m tired. I am tired, cousins. I see what you don’t see, what no one else is old enough to see, and no one cares to see.” She looked about, blinking in the glare of lights, and Ros Hald tensed, wondering about weapons. “Vote,” she said. “You’ve come here ready, have you not, already prepared, not waiting on me? Not waiting for long debate? You’ve been ready for years. So vote. I’m going to my chambers. Tell me which of you will share responsibility for the Family. I’ll accept your choice.”

There was a murmur, and silence; she looked about at them, perhaps surprised by that silence, that was a touch of awe. And in that silence, Moth turned off the microphone, and walked up the steps among them, slowly, on Tand’s arm, in profound stillness.

Ros Hald rose. So did Ren-barant, and Ilit, and Serat and Dessen and all the many, many others. For a moment, at the top of the stairs, Moth stopped, seeming to realise the gesture, and yet did not turn to see. She walked out, and the door closed. The standing heads of House and sept sank down again into seats. The silence continued a moment.

Next-eldest rose and declared the matter at hand, the nomination of one to stand by Moth, successor to Moth’s knowledge and position. The dictatorship which had become fact without acknowledgement under Lian’s last years, became acknowledged fact now, with Moth’s request for a legal heir.

Ren-barant rose to put forward the name of Ros Hald.

There was no name put in opposition. A few frowned, huddled together. Ros Hald marked there with his eyes, the next group that would try for power in the Family, the next that needed watching. Four Colours were not represented today; four Houses were in mourning. The opposition had no leaders.

“The vote,” next-eldest asked.