There was a proposal put forward by the House of Ilit and the econbureau that this surplus be consumed by the modest ship-building industry of Pedra. It gathered support; it was very possible that it would pass. It would alleviate conditions that created discontent on several worlds.
Moth studied it, frowning—remembered to push a button, to summon the young man waiting—and sat leaning her mouth against her curled hand and staring moodishly at the persuasive statistics on the graphs. The Hald entered; she was still pursuing her train of thought, and let him stand, the while she read and gnawed at her finger.
At last she shifted the reports into three stacks and then into one, and put atop it a dry monograph entitled Breeding Patterns among the Hives.
“Commercial,” she chuckled again, to the listening walls, and looked up sharply at young Tand Hald. ‘Kill her, you would say too. I’ve heard that Hald point of view until my ears ache. You’re nothing if not consistent. Where’s Morn?”
Tand Hald shrugged, stared at her quite directly. “I’m sure I don’t know, Eldest.”
“Pol with him?”
“I’m sure I don’t know that either. Not when I left him.”
“Where did you part with them?”
“Meron.” He failed to flinch. The eyes remained steady. “Pol involved himself with amusements there. Morn went his own way; I went mine. No one controls them.”
She gazed at him steadily, broke contact after a moment. “You want her taken out”
“I give the best advice I have.”
“Why are you so apprehensive of this one subject? Personal grudge?”
“No. Surely your agent who watches your other agents would have turned up any personal bias in this.”
She laughed softly at the impertinence. The youngest Hald had been with her too long, too closely. She was not diverted. “But why then? What interference has she ever attempted in Family business? She’s never made an economic ripple; she only—travels, from time to time.”
“Is she your agent?” Tand asked, a question which had taken him live years to ask.
“No,” Moth said very softly. “But I protect her as if she were. She is, after a remote fashion. Why do you fear her so, Tand?”
“Because she’s atypical. And random. And a survivor. She ought to have grudges. She never exercises them . . . save once, but that was direct retaliation. She never pursues the old ones.”
“Ah.”
“Now she’s chosen a place where there’s potential for serious harm. There are Outsiders directly available; there are hives, and no one to watch her, only betas. Her going there has purpose.”
“Do you think so? She always seems to proceed by indirection.”
“I believe there is reason.”
“Perhaps there is. Yet in all these years, she’s never reached back to Cerdin.”
“It was a mistake to have let her live in the first place.”
“The Family has searched for cause against her ever since she left Cerdin. We’ve found none; she’s given none.”
“So she’s intelligent, and dangerous.”
Moth laughed again, and the laughter died and she sorted absently through the reports, shifting them into disorder. “How long do majat live?”
“Eighteen years for the average individual.” Tand seemed vaguely annoyed by this extraneity. “Longer for queens.”
“No. How long do majat live?”
“The hives are immortal.”
“That is the correct answer. How long is that?”
“They calculate—millions of years.”
“How long have we been watching them, Tand?”
The young man shifted his weight and his eyes went to the floor and the walls and elsewhere in his impatience. “About-six, seven hundred years.”
“How long would a cycle take—in the lifespan of an immortal organism?”
“What kind of cycle? Eldest, I’m afraid I don’t see what you’re aiming at.”
“Yea. We don’t, do we? We lose our memories with death. Individually. Our records record . . . only what we once perceived as important, at a given hour, under given circumstances. The Drones remember . . . everything.”
Tand shook his head. A sweat had broken out on his face. “I wish you would be clear, Eldest.”
“I wish I had a long enough record at hand. Don’t you see that things have changed? No, of course not. You’re only a third of a century old yourself. I’m only six hundred and a half. And what is that? What is that experience worth? The Pact used to keep the hives out of human affairs. Now reds and golds . . . mingle with us, even with betas. Hives are at war . . . on Cerdin, Meron, Andra, Kalind . . . On Kalind, it’s blues and greens against red. On Andra, and Cerdin, it’s blues and greens against red and gold. On Meron, it’s blues against reds and greens, and gold is in hiding.”