“Why?”
“Two questions in sequence. Delightful. You’re recovering your balance.”
“Sera?”
“Raen.” She struck him lightly with her fist, an excess of hope. “My name is Raen; call me Raen. You can manage that. You were entirely wasted on the Jewel. Handling of arms: everything that pair downstairs can do; and anything else, anything else. You can learn it. You’re not incapable of learning. Go back to sleep.”
He did not, but lay to this side and that, and finally settled again when she rested her head against his shoulder.
Security.
That, she reckoned, was somewhat mutual.
BOOK SIX
i
The Mother of Istra blue took taste, and heaved herself back, mandibles working. Drones soothed Her, singing in their high voices. She ceased, for a moment, to produce new lives.
“Other-hive.” She breathed, and the walls of the Chamber vibrated with the low sound. “Blue-hive. Blue-hive Kontrin. Meth-maren of Cerdin. Kethiuy.”
The Drones moved closer, touched. She bowed and offered taste to the foremost, and it to the next, while She gave to a third. Like the motion of wind through grass it passed, and the song grew in its wake. An impulse extraordinarily powerful went out from them; and all through the Hill, activity slowed. Workers and Warriors turned wherever they were, oriented themselves to the Chamber.
In the egg-chamber, frightened Workers, sensing vague alarm, began building a seal for the shafts. Theirs was the only activity. Mother lowered Her head and reached out for the reporting Warrior yet again; and Warrior, knowing fear of Mother for the first time in its existence, locked a second time into Mother’s chemistry, suffering the reactions of Her body as the messages swirled through Her fluids.
Others crowded close, seeking understanding.
They could not interpret fully. Each understood after its own kind.
There was impression of a flow of chemistry which had begun many cycles ago, a tiny taste of Cerdin, homeworld. The Mind Remembered. There had been a small hill. The memory went back before there were humans, salt-tasting, quick-perishing; before the little lake had filled; before the hill itself had stood. There were ages, and depths. The Mind reeled in ecstasy, the reinforcement of this ancient memory. There were partings, queens born of eggs ship-sent, hives hurled out to the unseen stars, over distances the Mind comprehended only when majat eyes beheld a new heat source in the heavens, different in pattern and timing and intensity, only when majat calculations reckoned angles and distances and an impression of complexities beyond the comprehension of the Mind, mysticism alien to majat processes.
Vastness, and dark, and cold.
Where the Mind was not.
Death.
At last the Mind had something by which to comprehend death, and finitude of worlds, and time before and after itself. It staggered in such comprehensions, and embraced abstracts.
Finite time, as humans measured it, suddenly acquired meaning.
The Mind understood.
Kalind-mind. There was dazzling taste of it, which had tasted of Andra, and of Meron, which had tasted of Cerdin, a wave starting at Cerdin and rippling outward: violence, and enmity. Destruction. Cerdin. Destruction.
The motion in the hive utterly ceased. Even the egg-tenders froze, paralysed in the enormity of the vision.
Growth since. Growth, denying death.
Mind reached outward, where there was no contact, for the distances were too far, and synthesis was impossible. There was only the longing, a stirring in the chemistries ®f the hive.
“Hazard,” a Warrior complained, having tasted Kontrin presence, and the slaughter of blues, the murders of messengers.
It could comprehend nothing more; but the hive closed the more tightly.
“She—” Mother began, interpreting across the barriers of type, which was queen-function, while chemistries meshed on other levels, “she is Meth-maren hive. She is the hive. She is Kethiuy. Her Workers are late-come, gathered from strange hives. Azi. She tastes of danger, yess. Great hazard, but not hostile to blues. She preserved us the messenger of Kalind. She was on Meron, and Andra; her taste is in those memories. She was within the Hill on Cerdin. She has patterned with Warriors, against majat, against humans. Istra reds . . . taste of hate of her. Cerdin-taste runs in red-memory, taste of humans and death of blues. Great slaughter. Yess. But the entity Raen Meth-maren is blue-hive Kontrin. She has been part of the Mind of Cerdin.”