Workers swarmed and circled her, guided, caressed, sought her lips, to know’ her mind, though human chemistry was chaos to them. Perhaps the scent of Mother lingered. She did not flinch, but touched them in turn, delirious with triumph. They were the substance of her dreams and her nightmares, the majat, the power under-earth, native here where men were newcomers. She had touched the Mother who had lived under the hill since before she was born, and Mother had permitted it. She was Kontrin, of the Family, and the pattern grafted to her right hand was the power of the hives, which Kethiuy had always understood, more than all others of the Family—hive-friends. She laughed, bewildering the Workers, even while her senses began to fail.
v
Chairs moved; the group settled. A female azi, engineered for functions which had nothing to do with household labour, passed round the long table setting out drinks and beaming dutifully at each.
Eron Thel patted her leg, whispered a dismissal—she was his, as was the summer house in the Altrin highlands—and ignored her familiar charms as she left, although more than one of the men regarded her retreat. He was pleased by this, pleased by the obvious attention of the others to their surroundings. The objects which decorated the meeting room were unique, gathered from worlds even outside the Reach, and met with gratifying admiration . . . nothing of awe; the envy of kinsmen in the Family was difficult to rouse, but they looked, and approved.
Awe: that was for what entered the room now, the majat Warrior who took up guard by the door. That was power. Yls Ren-barant, Del Hald, certain others . . . they were accustomed to the near presence of majat; so was Tel a Ruil, well accustomed—but familiarity did not remove the dread of such a creature, the sense that with it, invisible, were count less others, the awareness of the hive.
“Are you sure of the majat?” the Hold asked. “It remembers, even if it can’t understand.”
“It carries messages only to its hive,” Eron said, “and its hive has some necessary part in this meeting, cousin, a very central part, as it happens.” He beckoned to it, gave a low whistle, and it came, sank down beside the table, towering among them, incapable of the chairs. It was a living recorder; it received messages; it contained one. “Red-hive,” Eron explained, “is standing guard at a number of critical posts, on these grounds and elsewhere. Incorruptible guards. Far better than ordinary security. Their desires are . . . not in rivalry with ours. Quite the contrary.” He opened the plastic-bound agenda before him, and the others anxiously did the same, They were a mixed group, his own comrades, and soma of the older representatives, selected ones . . . thankful to have been exempted from the general purge . . . grateful—Eron laughed inwardly, while gazing solemnly at the page before him—to have been admitted to this private meeting, the place of power where Council decisions were to be prearranged. He folded both hands on the agenda, smiled and leaned forward with a confidential warmth: it was a skill of his, to persuade. He practised it consciously, foreknowing agreement. He was handsome, with the inbred good looks of all the Kontrin; he looked thirty: the real answer was two centuries above that, and that was true of most present, save a few of the Halds. He had grace, a matter most Kontrin neglected, content with power; he knew the use of it, and by it moved others. He was spokesman for the inner circle, for Hald and Ren-barant and Ruil Meth-maren. He meant to be more than that.
“Item one: widening the access permitted by the Pact. There has been too severe a restriction between ourselves and the hives.” He reached, horrifying some of the older representatives, and laid a hand on the Warrior’s thorax. It suffered this placidly, in waiting pose. “We have learned things earlier generations didn’t know. The old restrictions have served their purpose. They were protective; they prevented misunderstandings. But—both majat and humans have adjusted to close contact. New realities are upon us. New co-operations are possible. Red-hive in particular has been responsive to this feeling. They are interested in much closer co-operation. So are golds, through their medium.”