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 Jewel jumped and made slow proms 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 Jewel crept 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.
He could not have quit, the game unfinished, could not go back to the others, to being one of them, and exist without knowing what he had given up. He would always think that he might have been free and rich. That would always torment him. The Kontrin had sensed this, and therefore she had laughed. Even he could understand the irony.