“Sit down, Eldest,” said Eron.

The old man briefly pressed Moth’s hand, and Moth left her place and descended the steps toward the center where Raen stood. She had difficulty with her robes and the steps, and tottered as she walked. There was displeasure voiced, but no one moved to help or to stop her.

“Procedures,” Moth said over the speakers, when she had gained the floor and faced them. “There are procedures. You have not followed them.”

“I will tell you something,” said Eldest from his place above. He activated his microphone. “It’s a dangerous precedent, this destruction of a House, this…assumption of consent. I’ve lived since the fast ship came into the Reach, and I’ll tell you this: I saw early that men couldn’t live here without being corrupted.”

“Sit down,” someone shouted at him.

“The hives,” Eldest said, “had a wealth to be taken; but humanity and the hive-mind weren’t compatible. A probe came down on Cerdin; it came into red-hive possession, the crew held captive, such of them as survived. Celiaprobe. The hives gained knowledge. There was Delia, then, that got through. Back in human space there was talk about sterilising Cerdin before the plague could spread. But suddenly the hives changed their attitude. They wanted trade, wanted us, wanted—one ship, they said: one hive for humans, and the Reach set aside for themselves.”

There was sullen silence. Moth touched Raen’s sleeve, pressed her wrist with a soft-fleshed band. Someone else started to his feet, a Delt; Yls Ren-barant stopped him. The silence continued, deadly. Lian looked about him, uncertainly, and pursed his lips.

“We tricked them.” Lian’s voice, quavering, resumed. “We brought in human eggs and the equipment to handle them. Half a billion eggs, all ready to grow. And we set up where this building stands, and we set up our labs and we started breeding while our one ship made its trade runs and the others of us who had skill at communication developed agreements with the hives.” His voice grew stronger. “Now do you suppose, fellow Councillors, that the hives didn’t know by then what we were about? Of course they saw. But the human animal is a mystery to them, and we kept it that way. They saw a hive-structure. They saw an increasing number of young and a growing social order which well-agreed with their own pattern. We planned it that way. They still had no idea what a non-collective intelligence was, or what it could do. Just one large hive, this of ours, all one mind. They knew better, perhaps, in theory. But the pattern of their own thinking wouldn’t let them interpret what they saw.

“When they began to learn, we frightened them with our differences. Frightened them most with the concept of dying. They looked into our chemistry and understood the process, worked out a cure for old age. They had finally gained the dimmest notion, you see, of what our individuality is. The hives are millions of years old. Do you reckon why the majat were worried about our dying? Because among majat, there are only four persons…red, green, gold, and blue. Those are their units of individuality. These personshave worked out how to deal with each other over millions of years. They’re accustomed to stability, to memory, to eternity. How could they deal with a series of short-lived humans? So they cured death…for some of us, for those of us fortunate enough to be born Kontrin. The beta generations, the product of our cargo of eggs…they go on dying at the human rate, but we live forever. Economic ruin, if there were many of us. So even we Kontrin kill each other off from time to time. The majat used to find that shocking.

“But now things will change, won’t they? You’ve gotten red-hive Warriors to kill Kontrin; blue-hive has admitted a human. Things change. Now the majat have taken another vast leap of understanding. And one of the four entities which has lived on Cerdin for millions of years—is on the verge of extinction. Not beyond recall: majat have more respect for life than we do, after their fashion. But you persuaded them to kill an immortal intelligence, knowingly. Several of them. And one day you may live to see the reward of that. Thanks to majat science, some of you may live to see it.

“Seven hundred years we’ve thrived here and across the Reach. The lot of you have all you could possibly need. The betas take care of the labour and the trade; and the betas, the betas, dear friends, discovered the best thing of all, discovered what the hives really prize: they trade in humanity, altered humanity, gene-tampered humanity, humanity that can’t reproduce itself, that self-destructs at forty, for economic convenience. So even the betas don’t have to do physical labour; they just breed azi and balance supply and demand. And the barrier to the Outside holds firm, so that the whole Reach and all it produces is ours—including the betas and the azi. None of us tries the barrier.

“Ever been out that far, to the edge? I have. In seven hundred years a man has time to do everything of interest. Ugly worlds. Nothing like Cerdin. But we’ve established hives that far out, extensions of our four entities here…or whole new personalities. Has anyone ever asked them? We’ve entered into a strange new relationship with our alien hosts; we’ve become intimately involved in their reproductive process…indispensable to them. Without metals, majat could never have left Cerdin. They have no eyes to see the stars, just their own sun, their own sun-warmed earth. But we’ve changed that. Even majat don’t have to work much, not the way they used to seven hundred years ago. But they thrive. And their numbers increase. And back here at Alpha, this Council, this wise…expert Council…makes ultimate decisions about population levels, and how many of us can be born, and where; and how many betas; and where betas can be licensed to produce azi, and when ad levels have to be reduced. Humanity’s brain, are we not, doing for our kind what the queens do for the hives? And in that process, we’ve grown different, my young friends.

“I was here. I was here from the beginning, and I’ve watched the change. I’m from Outside. I remember. You…you’ve studied this in your tapes, you young ones of a century or so, you Council newcomers. I’m an old man and I’m delaying things. You think you know it all, having been born here, in the Reach, in a new age you think an old Outsider can’t understand. But I’m going to go on telling you, because you need to remember it. Because the majat will tell you that a hive that has lost its memory, that has…unMinded itself…is headed for extinction.

“Do you know that no ship from Outside has ever tried to reach Cerdin? Ever, since Delia?We’re quarantined. They’re all around us, Outside. Human space. These few little stars…are an island in a human sea. But you don’t see them trying to come in. Ever wonder why?

“They don’t want the majat my friends. They want what the majat produce, the chitin-jewels, the biotics, the softwares. Humans from Outside meet the betas and the azi at Istra station, and they will pay for those goods, pay whatever they must. They cost us little and Outsiders value them beyond price. But they don’t want the majat. They don’t want hives in their space.

“And above all, they don’t want us. Alpha Hydri, the Serpent’s Eye. Offlimits by treaty. And no one wants in. No one wants in.”

“Get to the point,” Eron said.

Slowly Lian turned, and stared at Eron. There was quiet, anticipation. And suddenly outcries erupted, people throwing themselves from seats. A bolt flew from Moth’s hand to Eron, and the man fell. Raen flung herself to the back wall, expecting more fire, eyes scanning wildly for weapons on the other side.

“When you practice assassination,” Lian said, while Moth held the weapon on Eron’s friend Yls, “recall that Moth and I are oldest.”

Yls died. Men and women screamed and tried to bolt their seats. Moth continued to fire. There were bodies everywhere, on the floor, draped over seats, over the rail, in the aisles. At last she stopped, and the half of the Council that remained alive huddled against the door.