“I’m from Kethiuy!” she shouted at the greyness which hazed her senses, the cold that numbed the pain and threatened her with losing. “Blue-hive! I’m Raen Meth-maren! Kethiuy!”
The black edges closed on her sight.
She thrust herself toward the next hedge, and heard rocks shift and rattle above her, stones which she had not stirred.
They were all about her, tall leathery shapes, hazy shadows, shimmering with jewels in the blinding sun.
“Go back,” one said, a baritone harmony of pipes. “Go back!”
She saw the dark opening in the earth, and held her bleeding side, flinging herself into a last, frantic effort. She could not feel her legs under her. There was no more heat nor cold, nor up nor down nor color. Her body hit stone. Her wounded hand slicked wetly across it and the gray itself went out.
ii
Workers tugged and arranged to satisfaction, careful not to further damage the fragile structure, delicate as new eggs. Worker palps busily gnawed away the ruined clothing, laved off the foul outsider smells and cleaned the spilled life fluids from body and limbs. Warriors still milled about the vestibule, disturbed by the invasion, seeking directions. Confusion reigned throughout the sector.
A Worker took the essence of the problem and circled its companions, squealed a short burst of orders to clear the traffic away, and scurried off. Worker was already in contact with Mother, after that subliminal fashion which pervaded the hive, but that kind of communication was not sufficient for details. There was need of direct report.
Other Workers delayed it briefly, chance encounters in the dark corridors. Human-in-hive, they scented, among other things of life-fluids and injury. Alarm spread. Warriors would be moving; Workers would be throwing up barricades, sealing tunnels. Worker kept travelling, original and most accurate carrier, and obsessed with urgency. Its personal alarm was chiefly distress for the untidiness, a vague sense of higher things out of control and therefore threatening the whole hive: chaos was already loosed and worse might follow.
Dim glow of fungi and the sweet scent of Mother pervaded the inmost balls, near the Chamber. Worker passed others, Egg-bearers—touched, smelled, conveyed the alarm which sent them hastening away. A Warrior shouldered past, bluff and hasty, returning from its own inquiry. Its message was of sense to Warriors. Worker rejected it, although it bore upon its own, and scurried on, forelimbs tucked, into the Presence.
Mother sat in a heaving mass of Drones and attendants. The smell was magnetic, delirious. Worker came to Her in ecstasy, opened its palps and offered taste and scent, receiving in tom.
Mother thought. The shifts of chemistry swirled dazzlingly through worker’s senses. She spoke at the same time, sound which occasionally ascended to the timbre of human names. Communication wove constantly between the two levels, intricate interplay of sound and taste.
Heal it, the decision came, complex with the chemicals necessary to the performance of this task. Feed it. This is of Kethiuy hive, the young queen Raen. Workers of blue-hive have encountered her before. l taste injury, abundant lifefluids. Warriors report red-hive intrusion in the Kethiuy area. Accept this intruder.
Queen. The scent touched off reactions in the chemistry of Worker, terrifying changes—communicated also to the Drones, who shifted uneasily and sought touch. The hive mind was one. Worker was one complex unit of it. Mother was a master-unit, the key, which made sense of all the gatherings. Others moved closer, compelled by the intimation of understandings, workers and Drones and Foragers and warriors, each sharing this intelligence and feeding into it in its own way.
Kethiuy. That was a Drone, who Remembered, which was a function of Drones. Images followed, of the land before and after the human hive called Kethiuy had been built . . . domes, one at first, and then others, and trees growing up among them. Blue-hive’s memory was as long as its members were brief: a billion years the memories went back, and the specific memory of Kethiuy saw the hills rise and the lake form and drain several times, and form again. Drone-memory extended even back into hives older than Kethiuy’s hills, into days of dimmer and dimmer intelligence; but these memories were not at issue: humans were brief upon the earth, only the last several hundreds of years. The hive sorted, comprehended, knew Sul-sept of Meth-maren hive and all its issue, its bitter rivalry with Ruil and Ruil’s allies. Human thought: intelligence served by peculiar senses, a few more than the hives possessed, a few less, and contained by single bodies. The concept still troubled the hive, the idea that individual death could extinguish an intelligence. it was still only dimly grasped. Mother in particular put it forward, the impending death of an irreplaceable intelligence.
Page: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141