“Go now,” she bade it. “Tell all you know to Mother. And tell Mother these azi and I are coming to blue-hive’s Hill, to the new human-hive nearest it. Let Warriors meet us there.”
“Know this place,” Warrior confirmed. “Strange azi.”
“Tell Mother these things. Go as quickly as you can.”
“Yess,” it agreed, bowed for taste, that for its kind was the essence of message. She gave it, that gesture very like a kiss, and the majat drew back. “Kethiuy-queen,” it said. And strangely: “Sug-ar-water.”
It fled then, quickly.
“Sera.” Merry came running up behind her; she turned, saw him, saw his partners sorting men from truck to truck.
“We have casualties?”
“Eight dead, no injured.”
She grimaced and shook her head. “Leave them,” she said, and walked back to supervise, put several men on watch, one to each point, for the headlights showed only grass about, and that not far. The glow was still bright over the hills.
The dead were laid out by the road, neatly: their only ceremony. Units organised themselves, all with dispatch.
“Sera!” a lookout hissed, pointed.
There were lights, blue, floating off across the grass.
“Hive-azi,” she exclaimed. “We’re near something. Hurry, Merry!”
Everyone ran; men flung themselves into one truck or the other, and Raen dived behind the wheel of her own, slammed the door, passed Merry in moving out: she had the map. The truck, relieved of half its weight, moved with a new freedom.
And suddenly there was the promised paving, where the depot road joined the Great South. Raen slammed on the brakes for the jolt, climbed onto it, spun the wheel over and took to it with a surge of hope.
Behind them, reflected in the mirrors, the fire reached the fields.
vi
The sound of hammering resounded through the halls of ITAK upstairs. Metal sheeting was going into place, barriers to the outside. The hammer-blows echoed even into the nether floors, the levels below. In the absence of air-conditioning and lights, the lower levels assumed a strange character, the luxury of upstairs furnishings crowded into what had been lower offices, fine liquor poured by the lighting of hand-torches.
Enis Dain lifted his glass, example to the others, his board members, their families, and the officials, whoever had been entitled to shelter here. There was still, from above, through the doors still open, the sound of hammering.
Some had fled for the port. Unwise. There was a Kontrin reported there, the Enemy that the Meth-maren had warned them would come. Likely they had met with him, to their sorrow. Dain drank; all drank, the board members, his daughter, who sat by Prosserty—a useless man, Prosserty, Dain had never liked him.
“It’s close in here,” Prosserty complained. Dain only stared at him, and, remembering the batteries, cut off the handtorch, leaving them only the one set atop the table. He began calculating how long a night it would be.
“About sixteen days of it,” he said. “About time for Council to get a message from the Meth-maren. We can last that long. They’ll do something. Until then, we last it out. We’ve comfort enough to do that.”
The hammering stopped upstairs.
“They’re through up there,” Hela Dain said. “They’ll be sealing us in now.”
Then glass splintered, far above.
And someone screamed.
The lights were out. 117-789-5457 sat tucked in the corner on her mat, mental null. The lights had been out what subjectively seemed long, and the temperature was up. Sounds reached her, but none were ordinary. She knew a little unease at this, wondering if food would come soon, and water, for water no longer came from the tap, and it always had, whatever cubicle she had occupied.
Always the lights had been above, and the air had been tolerable.
But now there was nothing.
Sounds. Sounds without meaning. The quick patter of soft feet. 117-789-5457 untucked and looked up. There was a strange glow in the blackness, blue lights, that wove and bobbed above, not on the catwalks, but on the very rims of the cells. Faces, blue-lighted; naked bodies; wild unkempt hair; these folk squatted on the rim of her own cell, stared down, grinning.
Hands beckoned. Eyes danced in the lights. “Come,” they said, voices overlapping. “Come. We help. Come, azi.”
She rose, for they reached hands to her, and one leaned down very far, helped by the others, caught her hands and drew her, by all their efforts, up.
117-789-5457 looked about her, balancing on the wall, held by strong, thin hands. Lights wove and bobbed everywhere. Laughter echoed in the silent place. Out of all the cells, azi were drawn.
“Take all azi, young, old, yess,” one laughed, and danced away. “Come, come, come, come.”
117-789-5457 followed, along the walls, for she had never refused an order. She smiled, for that seemed the way to please these who ordered her.
“There’s fire in the city,” the voice from downworld continued thinly, azi-calm, and Leo K14-756-4806 listened without looking, taking deeply to heart his instructions, which placed him in charge of station command. Morn depended on him. He listened, and did not waver, although he was distressed for what he heard.
Regarding his own men he could not telclass="underline" they kept their masks, that being Morn’s general instruction; and he could not read their reactions to the voice from the shuttle, that brought them ill news. But there was wavering certainly in the ranks of the captive betas, and of the guard-azi who belonged to the station, who stood under levelled rifles, along with the betas.
“We must restore power,” the head beta appealed to him. “The city must have it.”
“The fires are in every quarter,” the impartial voice continued. “We’ve had no contact with Morn since he entered the terminal. What shall we do, Leo?”
“Wait for orders,” Leo looked about the centre, at betas and station azi. No one moved. The betas did not dare and the station azi would not, lacking instruction.
“This is Moriah,” another azi voice broke in. “We’re getting nothing from city communications any longer. Everything’s in complete chaos.”
“Just stand by your posts,” Leo said. There was nothing else to say. He paced back across the command centre, arms folded, looked constantly at the betas, challenging them to advance any more ideas of their own.
They did not.
Warriors were back, great bodies shifting through all the rooms of the house, shrilling and booming signals that hurt the ears. Jim ventured the stairs to the turning, met some coming down and flung himself aside, for the Warriors were in haste, and had no inclination to speak. Pol’s oath erupted out of the blue-lit depths.
“They’re running,” the Kontrin said.
“Max,” Jim pleaded, at the edge of panic. “Max—”
Max came; all the azi followed, bringing Pol, scrambling up the stairs against the spiny flood of majat down them. Furniture crashed throughout the house, the press of too many bodies. The house boiled with them; the dark rooms hummed with distress and anger.
And the glow of fires shone through the back windows, distant ruddy smoke billowing up.
“They’re blind in fire,” Pol said. “Some betas have figured one way to fight them.”
“Windows,” Max said. “Stations.”
Azi moved, each rifleman to a window.
“Your blues are beaten,” Pol said above the hum of majat-voices. “I’d suggest we get out of here.”
Jim shook his head fiercely, strode up the hall to look out the open door, where dark shapes Scurried about. the front garden. “They’re not running, not all of them. They’re still going to hold this place.”
Max cast a look too, and at him. “I’d suggest we get out there, work ourselves into cover in the rocks. Harder to dislodge us that way.”
“I can’t say.” Jim swallowed heavily. “Do it. I don’t think walls can stop them.”