“What’s your name?” she asked.
“Jim,” he said. It was the one choice of his life, the one thing he had personally decided, out of a range of names which belonged to azi. Only azi used it, and a few of the crew. He was vastly disturbed at his loss of anonymity.
“What stakes?” she asked, gathering up the wands.
He stared at her. He had nothing, being property of the line, but his name and his existence.
She looked down and rolled the wands between her hands, the one glittering with chitin, and infinite power. “It will be a long voyage. I shall be bored. Suppose that we make wager not on one game, but on the tally of games.” She laid the wands down under her right hand. “If you win, I’ll buy you free of Andra Lines and give you ten thousand credits for every game you’ve won. Ten rounds an evening, as many evenings as there are in my voyage. But you must win the series to collect: it’s only on the total of games, our wager.”
He blinked, the sweat running into his eyes. Freedom and wealth: he could live out his life unthreatened, even in idleness. It was a prize beyond calculation, and not the sort of luck any azi had. He swallowed hard and reckoned what kind of wager he might have to return.
“But if I win,” she continued, “I shall buy your contract for myself.” She smiled suddenly, a bleak and dead smile. “Play to win, Jim.”
She offered him first cast. He took up the wands. The azi in the salon settled silently, watching.
He lost the first evening, four to six.
ii
A small, tense company gathered in the stateroom of the ISPAK Corporation executive. There were other such gatherings, private parties. The salon was still under occupation on this third evening. No one ventured there any longer save during the day. There remained available of course the lower deck lounge, where the second-class passengers gathered; but they were not willing to descend to that society, not under the circumstances. Their collective pride had suffered enough.
“Maybe she’s going to Andra,” someone suggested. “A short trip…perhaps some bizarre humour…”
The Andran executive looked distressed at that idea. Kontrin never travelled commercial; they engaged ships of their own, a class of luxury unimaginable to the society of Andra’s Jewel,and separate. Impatience, near destination…even the possibility of assassins and the need to get offworld by the first available ship: the surmise made sense. But Andran affairs did not want a Kontrin feud: there was trouble enough without that. This one…this Kontrin, did things no Kontrin had ever done, and might do others as unpredictable. Worse, the name Raen a Sul stirred at some vague memory, seldom as names were ever exchanged between Kontrin and men… Men… Betawas not a term men used of themselves.
This one had been on Andra, and might be returning. Majat were where they ought not to be, and suddenly Kontrin were among them. Until lately it had been possible to ignore Kontrin doings entirely; a man could live years and not so much as see one; and now one came into their midst.
“There’s a rumour—” someone else said, and cleared her throat, “there’s a rumour there’s a majat aboard.”
Another swore, and there was a moment’s silence, nervous glances. It was possible. Majat travelled, rarely, but they travelled. If it were so, it would be somewhere isolate, sinking into dormancy for the duration of the flight. Majat parted from the hive became disoriented, dangerous: this one would have awakened long enough to have performed its mission, whatever it was, and to secure passage home—function assigned it by the hive. So long, it might remain sane, having clear purpose and a goal in sight. Thereafter, it must sleep, awakening only in proximity to its hive.
There were horror tales of majat awakening prematurely on a ship; and majat horror tales were current on Andra, on Kalind, on Meron, unreasoning actions, killings of humans. But the commercial lines could no more refuse a majat than they could have refused the Kontrin. It was a question of ownership, of the origins of power in the Reach, and some questions it was not good to raise.
Silence rested heavily on the gathering, which sat uncomfortably on thinly padded furniture in an anteroom designed for smaller companies. Ice rattled in glasses. The executive cleared his throat.
“Kontrin don’t travel alone,” he said. “There are always bodyguards. Where are they?”
“Maybe they’re…some of us,” a Kalinder suggested. “I’d be careful what I said.”
No one moved. No one looked at anyone else. No Kontrin had ever done such a thing as this one had done: they feared assassination obsessively, guarding the immortality which distinguished their class as surely as did the chitin-patterns. That was another cause by which men found it difficult to accept the presence of a Kontrin, for her lifespan was to theirs far longer than theirs was to that of the azi they created. Men were likewise designated for mortality, as surely as the Kontrin had engineered themselves otherwise, and kept that gift from others. It was the calculated economy of the Reach. Only the owners continued. Men were to the Kontrin…a renewable resource.
Someone proposed more drinks, They played loud music and talked in whispers, only to those they knew well, and eventually this party too died.
There were other gatherings in days after, in small number, by twos and by threes. Some stayed entirely in their staterooms, fearing the nameless threat of meetings in the corridors, unnerved by what was happening on worlds throughout the Reach. If there was a majat aboard, no one wanted to find it.
The game continued in the salon. Jim’s luck improved. He was winning, thirty-seven to thirty-three. The other azi’s eyes followed the fall of the wands and the dice as if their own fortunes were hazarded there.
The next evening the balance tilted again, forty to forty.
iii
Andra’s Jeweljumped and made slow progress to Andra station. Ten grateful first-class passengers disembarked and the Kontrin did not. The majority of lower-deck passengers left; more arrived, short-termers, for Jim, and three first-class, bound for Meron. The game in the salon stood at eighty-four and eighty-six.
The Jewelcrept outward in real-space, for Jim; again for Sitan and the barrenness of Orthan’s moons; made jump, for glittering Meron. Such passengers who remained, initiates of the original company, were dismayed that the Kontrin did not leave at Meron: there had even been wagers on it. The occupation of the salon continued uninterrupted.
The score stood at two hundred forty-two to two hundred forty-eight.
“Do you want to retire?” Kont’ Raen asked when the game stood even. “I’ve had my enjoyment of this. I give you the chance.”
Jim shook big head. He had fought his way this far. Hope existed in him; he had never held much hope, until now.
Kont’ Raen laughed and won tine next hand.
“You should have taken it,” an azi said to Jim that night. “Kontrin don’t sell their azi when they’re done with them. They terminate them, whatever their age. It’s their law.”
Jim shrugged. He had heard so already. Everyone had had, to tell him so. He worked the dice in his clenched hand. and sat down on the matting of the azi quarters. He cast them again and again obsessively, trying the combinations as if some magic could change them. He no longer had duties on the ship. The Kontrin had marked his fatigue and bought him free of duties. He was no longer subject to ration: if he wanted more than his meals, he did not have to rely on tips to buy that extra He seldom chose to go beyond ration, all the same, gave once or twice when he had been far ahead and his appetite improved. He cast the dice now, against some vague superstition formed of these empty days. He played himself, to test his run of luck.