Drones sang of memory, and the balance of the hive shifted toward Warrior-thoughts and shifted back again to Mother, as She wrenched it to Herself, fierceness greater than theirs, for it embraced eggs, survival.
BUILD, the command went out, and the Workers hastened in frenzy.
iii
They huddled, an exhausted group, in the shade of a hedge. Raen slipped fingers under her visor and wiped sweat from her eyes, withdrew them, adjusted the rim to a new place and grimaced it back to the old. The hood of her sun-suit was back, the gloves off, the sleeves unfastened to the elbow; toward evening as it was, still the heat lingered as the residue of a furnace. The suits that saved from burn, ventilated as they were by majat-silk insets, left the skin sticky with perspiration, clung with every movement. A dead azi’s rifle was on her knees, weight on sore muscles; she had food and a canteen from the emergency stores and would not drink, tormenting herself with the thought of it—supplies meant for ten, and a cluster of thirsty men about her: neither did others drink, being azi, and waiting. The wounded bore their wounds, and the insects, without a sound: it was only surprise could get an outcry from them, and there was none of that. They knew what the situation was. They were the lighter by two they had started with, the worst-wounded; the bearers had been glad, and she did not delude herself otherwise. In that day she had reconsidered her mercy, and gazed at two others as had, and at the grasslands endless about them, and she had almost turned the gun on them. Instead she had given them a sip of water, that compounded the idiocy, and the same to the bearers: for herself and the others there was only the chance to moisten mouths and spit it back, and no one defied instructions.
She was, however long ago, of Cerdin, and Cerdin’s sun was no kinder; she was, for the rest, accustomed to exercise, and most of these were not. She had Merry by her, poor Merry, his lips as cracked as hers felt, his face bruised as well as scraped; she trusted him more than the others, these babes new from the pens. Merry helped, used his wits; the others obeyed.
There was a stirring, a shrilling; they snatched rifles up nervously, but it was one Warrior, their own, that bore a white rag tied on a forelimb so that the azi could tell it. It ran low, scuttled up waving its palps and seeking scent.
“Here,” Raen said, turning her hand to it. It came, offered taste, the sweet fluids of its own body, and it was welcome. She touched the scent-patches, soothed it, for it had been moving hard, and air pulsed from the chambers so it had difficulty with human speech.
“Mennn. Humanasss. Human-hive.”
She gave a great breath of relief. Every face was turned toward it, faces suddenly touched with hope. She caressed the quivering palps. “Warrior, good, very good. Where are other Warriors?”
“Watching men.”
“Far?”
It quivered slowly. Not far, then. “We leave the wounded and five to help them,” she said. “We’ll come back for you injured when we’ve gotten transport. I say so. Understood?”
Heads inclined, all together.
“Come on,” she told Merry. “Choose those to stay and let’s move.”
Warrior moved ahead of their concealment, a black shape in the starlight. Likely Warrior was screaming orders; human ears could not pick it up. In a moment all three came back to the hedgerow, clicking with excitement.
“Guardss,” Warrior said, with two neat bows in the appropriate directions: majat vision in the cool of night could hardly miss a human.
“No majat?” Raen asked.
“Humanss. Human-hive.”
Fifty men were, in the last twos, grouping behind her. Lights showed ahead, floodlights about the fields, the farmyard. An azi barracks showed light from the windows; the farmhouse had the same, windows barred, proof against majat.
“Door’s nothing,” she said to Merry. “A burn will take it. Azi won’t fight if we can get the betas first.”
‘Take the guards out,” Merry said. “Three men each, no mistakes. I’ll take one.”