Heads nodded.
She went off to the center of the house, hunting comp, located it, a sorry little machine pasted with grocery notices and unexplained call-numbers. She keyed in, called the house in Newhope, the number she had arranged for emergency.
“Jim?” she called. And again: “Jim!”
There was no response.
Her hand began to shake on the board. She clenched it and leaned her mouth against it, considering in her desperation how far she could trust Itavvy or Dain or anyone else in ITAK. “Jim,” she said, pleading, and swore.
There was still no response. JIM, she keyed through, to leave a written message, STAND BY. EMERGENCY.
She put the next one through to Isan Tel’s estate, where a few managerial azi kept the fiction of a working estate, unsupervised azi and a horde of guard. STAND BY. EMERGENCY. EMERGENCY.
And a third one to the Labour Registry. EMERGENCY, TEL CONTRACT. PLEASE STAND BY.
None used her name. She dared not. She rose and took two of the men with her, walked out past Merry’s unit to the road, and up it to the place where they had left the Warriors. They were there, fretting and anxious. “All safe,” she told them. To each she gave two pieces of the dried fruit, which they greatly relished. “I need one-unit to stay with me, two for a message,” she said.
“Yess,” they agreed, speaking together.
“Just tell Mother what’s happened. Tell her I’m coming to Newhope, but I’m slow. I need help, blue-hive azi, weapons. Fast.”
There was an exchange of tones. “Good,” one said. “Go now?”
“Go,” she said; and two darted off with eye-blurring speed, lost at once in the night and the hedges. The other remained, shadowed her with slow-motion steps as she and her guards returned to the house.
“Merry,” she said, when she had come to his group, where they huddled on the porch, tired men with rifles braced on knees toward the azi barracks. Merry gathered himself up, haggard, the light from the door showing darkly on his wounded cheek, his blond hair plastered with sweat and dust. “One of the two of us,” she said hoarsely, “has to get the truck back after those men. You’ve land sense. Can you do it? Are you able to? I need you back; I rely on you too much.”
Pride shone in the azi’s eyes. “I’ll get back,” he said; she had never imagined such a look of intensity from stolid Merry. It approached passion. Such expression, she saw suddenly, rested not alone in his face, but in those of others. She did not understand it. It had something to do with the tapes, she thought, and yet it was no less real, and disturbed her.
“Truck ought to be in the equipment shed. Watch yourselves, walking around out here. We think we’ve accounted for everyone. I haven’t had time to check comp thoroughly.”
“I need three men.”
She nodded; Merry singled out his men and left for the side of the house. She stationed Warrior by the side of the porch by the other azi and left them so, limped up the steps and into the house, giving only a glance to the captive betas. Her legs shook under her, adrenaline drained away. She sank down and wiped her face with her hand.
“Get a water-container,” she told one of the azi. And to the beta, “ser, is there a key for that vehicle?”
“By the door.”
She looked and saw it hanging. “Take that to Merry,” she told the azi. “Take a bit of that dried fruit too. There’ll be at least some can appreciate it.”
The azi gathered up the items and left, came back again; distantly there was a moaning of an engine, that turned off where the road would be: Merry was on his way.
“True that the shuttle crashed?” the beta woman asked.
Raen nodded. “Broken limbs in plenty, sera. And dead. We had a hundred men aboard that ship.”
The betas’ faces reflected compassion for that.
“I’m sorry,” Raen said, “for breaking in. It’s necessary. your names, seri? I’d rate you compensation if it were safe. It’s not, at the moment.”
“Ny,” the man said, nodded at his wife. “Berden. My son and his wife. Grandchild. Kontrin, you can have anything, only so you leave us all right.”
“There’s majat,” the young man said. “We’ve got to have our defenses whole. Have to, Kontrin.”
“I’ve heard how that is. I’ve heard how the farms won’t give up their azi.”
“All the protection we have,” Ny said.
Raen looked at them, at the house, recalling the situation of buildings and the fields. “But you could rather well survive in such a place, could you not—producing your own food and power? And ITAK and ISPAK both know it. You don’t have to yield up your grain; and they know that too.”
“Need it,” Ny said. “We need the azi; azi’ve no desire at all to go back to the pens either. They’ve lived loose here, lived well, here. We don’t turn them back, no, Kontrin. We don’t.”
It was a bold speech for a beta. It did not offend her. “Indeed,” she said, “you’ve a secure and enviable land here. I’d a notion to destroy your comp at least; but you’re not ITAK folk nor ISPAK, are you? You have a map of the area?”
“Comp room,” Berden said. “Drawer under the machine.”
“I thank you,” she said quietly, rose on aching limbs and limped off to the cluttered little room.
The map was there. She sat down before the unit and studied it, found their location conveniently marked, a rough two hundred kilometres south of a major tributary of the River, nearly a thousand from Newhope.
She hesitated a moment, then coded in one of her several male personas, keyed in a purchase of passage; the program under that name was already get. One sped to the persona of Merek Sed and family, a matter of honour. One sped to the real person of one ser Tol Errin 1028D Upcoast, a worker in glass, with his family, with offer of an immediate commission on Meron, freighter-passage.
A mad gesture. A whim. Some things were worth saving.
It took an instant of time. She nerved herself again and keyed Newhope, again on emergency. “Jim!” she snapped, and gave instructions in case any other azi was in hearing, to answer her.
There was nothing. She broke connection quickly.
She sat then with her hand pressed against her mouth, staring at the board distressedly and trying to reckon now what to do.
She looked about her. There had gathered a quiet ring of surplus azi, exhausted, sitting on the floor and all about, young faces looking toward her with anxious eyes.
They all had Merry’s look.
iv
There were dreams, horrid dreams, and one of them was a shadow, tall and gaunt, leaning across the light.
It seized and shook, and Jim tore his arm free and cried out, clawing at the leads which were no longer there, trying to free himself of the nightmare. He had no strength. The grip closed on him and held him still, and for a time there was only his pulse for reality, a throbbing in his ears and a dull wash of rose across his eyes.
“Wait outside,” a voice said above him.
“Dying.” The tones were song, deep and sorrowful.
“Wait outside.” Harsher now. “Go.”
“Stranger,” the song mourned. “Stranger, stranger, green-hive.”
But it retreated, as far as the door. He could hear it clicking.
Hands caught his face between. “Azi,” the male voice said. “Azi, come back, come back, wake up. Quietly now. Was it suicide? Did she order you to this?”
The words made sense and then did not. Senses greyed out again, his whole body numb and heavy. Then there was sharp pain, and he came back, feeling it, but unable to reckon where the pain was centred.
“He’s coming out of it,” the voice said. “Stay back. Let him be.”
“Green-hive,” the other fretted, retreated again, muttering deep notes of distress. He turned his head, opened his mouth to cry to it for help.
“No.” A hand covered his mouth, hard. He struggled at that, vision clearing. He knew the face that leaned above him: not simply recognised, but knew—