“It is very dangerous;” Mother said. “Intervention violates the Pact. It adds confusions. And you have no translation computers. Without precise instruction, Warriors and humans cannot co-operate.”

“I can showthem. They can work that way. I can guide them. Some know Kethiuy, don’t they? They’ve been there. And the others can follow them.”

Mother hesitated. Again the head rotated slightly. “You are tight, young queen, but I suspect you are right for the wrong reasons. All, all Warriors know Kethiuy. We do not fully understand how your thoughts proceed. But you can serve as nexus. Yes. Possible. Great risk, but possible.”

“I can’t yet. A few days, a few days, and then I’ll be able to try. I’ll need a gun, azi, Warriors. Then we can take Kethiuy back. Kethiuy’s azi will join the fight when they have orders. Revenge, Mother! And blue-hive can come and go is Kethiuy when they please.”

There was again long thought. Air sucked in, gusted out, sucked in again, and the songs of the attendants rose and fell, “I breed Warriors,” She said. “This aspect of the hive is needful in these circumstances.” While She spoke, She produced several eggs more. “I cannot breed azi. The azi will be irrevocable losses. There can be only one attempt on Kethiuy. Blue-hive has deceived red-hive concerning your presence here. Your death was reported. Warriors went out unMinded in this cause. But Warriors who go with you into Kethiuy cannot go unMinded; they could not then remember their mission or focus properly. There are reds full-circle of Kethiuy. Once you meet them and once blue-hive Warriors have fallen, you cannot retreat here. Taste will betray your existence here to red-hive and they will come here very quickly, for we have admitted a human to the inner hive, and there is strong sentiment against this practice. Therefore we will be fighting both here and there, which will require all our Warriors engaged at once. If we lose many Warriors in this action, we will face further attack from red-hive and others without sufficient time for new to hatch. Tell me, Kethiuy. queen, is this the best action? Perhaps you could find Drones and re-establish elsewhere with better prospect. You could produce Warriors of your own, young queen. You could buy azi. You could make a new hive.”

Raen looked up into the great moiré-patterned eyes, in which she existed only as a pattern of warmth. “Red-hive is breeding Warriors too, won’t that be so? If they’ve been expecting to attack Kethiuy, then they’ll have been breeding toward it for a long time. Years. What when they come farther than they have? You need Kethiuy in Sul-sept control. If you wait…if you wait, you won’t have time to breed enough Warriors, and red-hive—” She caught her breath, for she suddenly sensed what key to use, the essentially honest character of the blues. “Red-hive killed humans, killed Meth-marens, against the Pact. Ruil may have led them to it, but red-hive did it, they chose to do it. Do you want them for neighbours forever, Mother? And your Warriors—do they know the ways into Kethiuy that they can’t see? I do. I can get them inside, now. I can get Warriors inside. It doesn’t matter how many reds are guarding the doors if blues once get in. And I know I can get you that far.”

There was silence.

“Yes,” Mother said finally. “ Yes.”

A haze flooded over Raen’s eyes, blurring greenish radiance and majat shadows, and the glitter of the Drones. She thought that she would fall, and she must not, must not show weakness before Mother, throwing all she had won in doubt. She touched the chelae, drew back, not knowing what rituals the majat observed with Her. None hindered her going. None seemed offended. She sought the tunnel out of the Chamber. The fungus-glow was like the retinal memory of light, and in this direction lay the dark, circles, holes in the light, into which she entered, losing suddenly all use of her eyes. The air hummed with Worker songs, the deeper songs of Warriors and the high voices of the Drones. She met bristly touches in the dark.

Workers swarmed and circled her, guided, caressed, sought her lips, to know her mind, though human chemistry was chaos to them. Perhaps the scent of Mother lingered. She did not flinch, but touched them in turn, delirious with triumph. They were the substance of her dreams and her nightmares, the majat, the power under-earth, native here where men were newcomers. She had touched the Mother who had lived under the hill since before she was born, and Mother had permitted it. She was Kontrin, of the Family, and the pattern grafted to her right hand was the power of the hives, which Kethiuy had always understood, more than all others of the Family—hive-friends. She laughed, bewildering the Workers, even while her senses began to fail.

v

Chairs moved; the group settled. A female azi, engineered for functions which had nothing to do with household labour, passed round the long table setting out drinks and beaming dutifully at each.

Eron Thel patted her leg, whispered a dismissal—she was his, as was the summer house in the Altrin highlands—and ignored her familiar charms as she left, although more than one of the men regarded her retreat. He was pleased by this, pleased by the obvious attention of the others to their surroundings. The objects which decorated the meeting room were unique, gathered from worlds even outside the Reach, and met with gratifying admiration…nothing of awe; the envy of kinsmen in the Family was difficult to rouse, but they looked, and approved.

Awe: that was for what entered the room now, the majat Warrior who took up guard by the door. That was power. Yls Ren-barant, Del Hald, certain others…they were accustomed to the near presence of majat; so was Tel a Ruil, well accustomed—but familiarity did not remove the dread of such a creature, the sense that with it, invisible, were count less others, the awareness of the hive.

“Are you sure of the majat?” the Hold asked. “It remembers, even if it can’t understand.”

“It carries messages only to its hive,” Eron said, “and its hive has some necessary part in this meeting, cousin, a very central part, as it happens.” He beckoned to it, gave a low whistle, and it came, sank down beside the table, towering among them, incapable of the chairs. It was a living recorder; it received messages; it contained one. “Red-hive,” Eron explained, “is standing guard at a number of critical posts, on these grounds and elsewhere. Incorruptible guards. Far better than ordinary security. Their desires are…not in rivalry with ours. Quite the contrary.” He opened the plastic-bound agenda before him, and the others anxiously did the same, They were a mixed group, his own comrades, and soma of the older representatives, selected ones…thankful to have been exempted from the general purge…grateful—Eron laughed inwardly, while gazing solemnly at the page before him—to have been admitted to this private meeting, the place of power where Council decisions were to be prearranged. He folded both hands on the agenda, smiled and leaned forward with a confidential warmth: it was a skill of his, to persuade. He practised it consciously, foreknowing agreement. He was handsome, with the inbred good looks of all the Kontrin; he looked thirty: the real answer was two centuries above that, and that was true of most present, save a few of the Halds. He had grace, a matter most Kontrin neglected, content with power; he knew the use of it, and by it moved others. He was spokesman for the inner circle, for Hald and Ren-barant and Ruil Meth-maren. He meant to be more than that.

“Item one: widening the access permitted by the Pact. There has been too severe a restriction between ourselves and the hives.” He reached, horrifying some of the older representatives, and laid a hand on the Warrior’s thorax. It suffered this placidly, in waiting pose. “We have learned things earlier generations didn’t know. The old restrictions have served their purpose. They were protective; they prevented misunderstandings. But—both majat and humans have adjusted to close contact. New realities are upon us. New co-operations are possible. Red-hive in particular has been responsive to this feeling. They are interested in much closer co-operation. So are golds, through their medium.”