“Warrior, you have reached Istra. Is this not the place for which blue-hive intended you?”
“Yesss.” It scuttled farther back from her, into the corner next the door. “Forbidden. Forbidden. Forbidden.”
She stayed where she was. Warriors were often laconic and disjointed in conversation, but this one seemed mortally confused. It crouched down, limbs tucked; and cornered, it might spring at the least advance. “Warrior,” she said, “I have helped you. If I were not aboard, this ship might have been-stopped. An accident might have happened to you-unit in your sleep. This was not the case. Before you were hatched, I was in blue-hive Cerdin, within the hive. You are Kalind blue, but is there no memory in Kalind, of Meth-marens? Before you left Cerdin, you knew us, Meth-maren-hive, hive-friends. There was a hill, a lake by a place called Kethiuy. We spoke-for all human hives.”
“Warrior,” it reminded her; it could not be expected to Remember. But the auditory pains were strained forward, and the mandibles worked rapidly. “Meth-maren hive. Meth-maren. Meth-maren. Kethiuy. Hive-friends. First-humans, Meth-marens. Yessss. Warrior-memory holds Meth-marens.”
“Yes,” she said. She held out her hands, offering touch, should it accept. There was no queen to advise Warrior., no Drones to Remember for it: she had it snared, almost, almost, and tried not to betray the anxiety in her. It had no means to know how other blues had eluded bar. It was going to Istra, as blues had attempted other worlds; but this one, this sending would get through. She saw to it, though blue-hive elsewhere had fleet her and met disaster, had voyaged and never wakened, or perished in ambush. This one lived, at the one world where she had a chance of protecting it.
As the one world where there was no one of the Family to stop her or forbid her access to the hives.
“Warrior. You were sent to Istra, True?”
“True.”
“Our purposes coincide, it may be. Tell me. Why have you come here? What message do you carry?”
It held its silence, thinking, perhaps. It was a new generation, this Warrior; eighteen years was the time of a new generation for its kind . . . all across the Reach, a new generation of blue-hive, quiet within its separate hills—blues withdrawn, while greens came to the labs managed by Thons, performed as always, abided by the Pact under Thon direction.
Until last year.
“Why have you come?” Raen asked.
It eased forward again, wary. The fix of her head was not toward her, but beyond. It turned the head then, rotating it on its circular joints. “Azi. Meth-maren azi.”
It wanted touch. Majat called it Grouping, the need to be emotionally sure of others. Jim remained where she had left him, red-dyed in the light. “My azi,” Raen confirmed, her heart beating rapidly. “Jim. Jim, come to me, slowly.”
He could break and run. She stood in Warrior’s way, and perhaps, only perhaps she could restrain Warrior from the kill if Jim set him off. But Jim left his corner and came, stopped at yet a little distance, as if suddenly paralysed. Warrior shifted forward, the matter of three strides that Raen could not match, and leaned over him.
Jim had simply shut his eyes in panic. Raen reached him, caught his arm, shocked him out of it. “Touch,” she told him. “You must touch it.” And when he did not move with propriety, reaching instead to the thorax, Raen took his right hand in hers, guided it between the jaws to Warrior’s offered scent-patches. The huge Warrior, only minimally sane, bent lower, jaws wide, touched false chelae to Jim’s lips, taking taste as well as scent. Jim’s face broke out in sweat: this too warrior tasted, sweeping it from his brow with the delicate bristles of the false chelae.
‘Trust it,” Raen whispered into his ear, yet gripping his arm. “Stand still, stand still; blues will never harm you once this Warrior has reported on Istra. It can’t recognise faces, but it knows the taste now. Maybe it can even distinguish you from your duplicates; I’d imagine it can.”
She let go. Warrior had perceptibly calmed. It touched at Jim, touched her.