“On the ship—” He always spoke in a hushed voice, and the more so now. “We have security procedures. I understand them.”
“Do they teach you about self-defense?”
A slight shake of the bead.
“They just tell you about locks and accesses and fire procedures.”
A diffident nod.
“Well, that’s far better than nothing. Hear this: you must guard my belongings and things that I’ll use and places that I’ll come back to, with far more care than you use guarding me. I take care of myself, you see, and most of my enemies wouldn’t go for a head-on attack on me if there were an easier way, no, they’d go for something I’d use, or for an unlocked door. You understand what I’m talking about.”
“Yes, sera.”
“We’re docking in an hour or so. You could save confusion by getting a baggage cart up here. I really don’t think azi are going to be safe coming up here, not past Warrior out there. But it wouldn’t hurt you, not if you let it touch you and identify, you understand. No more than it would me. You have the nerve for it?”
He nodded.
“Jim, perhaps we may stay together a long time.”
He stood up, stopped. “Nineteen years,” he said. And when she gave him a puzzled frown: “I’m twenty-one,” he said, with the faintest quirk of a smile.
Azi humour. He would live to forty. A feeling came on her the like of which only the blues had stirred in many years. She recalled Us, and the gentle azi of her childhood: their dead faces returned with a shock; and the slaughter, and the burning . . . She flinched from it. “I value loyalty,” she said, turning away.
He was gone for a considerable time. She began to pace the room, realised that she was doing it and stopped, thought of going after him, hated to show her anxiety among betas.
At last the blue light winked in the overhead and she hurried to open the door, stood back to admit him and the cart.
“No trouble?” she asked him. Jim shook his head with a little touch of self-satisfaction and began at once putting the baggage on.
He finished, and settled, lacking anything else to do; she sat, watching their approach to station. Their berth was in sight; the station was by now a seemingly stationary sprawl extending off the screen on both sides, an amazing structure, as vast as rumour promised.
And ships, ships of remarkable design, linked to their berths—freighters, as bizarre in shape as they needed to be, never landing, only needing the capability to link to station umbilicals and grapples; the only standard of construction was the docking mechanism, the same dimensions from the tiniest personal craft to the most massive liner.
A ship was easing out as they came in, slowly, slowly, an aged freighter. The symbols it bore were unlike any sigil or company emblem in Ram’s memory; and then she realised it for the round Sol emblem. A thrill went through her.
An Outsider ship.
A visitor from beyond the Reach. It drifted like a dream image, passed them, vanished into the Jewel’s own shadow.
“Outsider,” she said aloud. “Jim, look, look—a third one at berth is the same design.”
Jim said nothing, but he regarded the image intently, with awe on his face.
“The Edge,” Raen said. “We’ve reached the Edge.”
v
Merek Eln’s hands trembled. He folded his arms and paced, and looked from time to time at Pam Kest.
“We’d better call in,” he said. “There’s time enough.”
“With a majat involved—’ she objected. “A majat! How long can the thing have been aboard.”
“It’s with her. Has to be.” He looked toward the door with an inward shudder, thinking of the majat stalking the corridors at liberty, half-sane from its dormancy. The Kontrin had at least calmed the creature: the emergency channel had said so, and thanked her, whether or not the Kontrin cared for anyone’s gratitude. But worse could go wrong than had. They had been long away from Istra, half a year removed from the situation there, long removed from the last message.
He stepped suddenly to the console.