“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 wine 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 ASPAK 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 . . . Beta was 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.