The Summer Queen

by Joan D. Vinge

  Reede glanced away at Niburu and Ananke, slightly unnerved. “How long did it take you?”

  Gundhalinu shook his head. “I really don’t know. After a while, even time didn’t make sense anymore.”

  Reede said nothing, unable to think of a response.

  “How can we be sure of how long we stay, then?” Niburu asked, half frowning. “What if we stay too long, and your security people … give us a hard time?” Reede suspected that was the least of the fears behind the question.

  Gundhalinu shook his head. “It won’t be a problem this time,” he said.

  “Because you can talk to the Lake?” Reede said.

  Gundhalinu looked back at him steadily. “Yes,” he said. “Because I can talk to the Lake.”

  Reede felt the sudden joint stares of Niburu and Ananke pulling at him, asking him anxious questions, dunning him with silent protest. “You’re saying we’ll be perfectly safe, then?” he asked, for them.

  “No.” Gundhalinu smiled ruefully. “No one is perfectly safe, Kullervo-eshkrad. At least, not in this universe.”

  Reede looked at him sharply; grinned, as suddenly. “I wouldn’t have it any other way,” he said. He ignored the mixed expressions that were his response.

  The last of their equipment was loaded on board, and they chose their seats in the rover’s womblike interior. Gundhalinu took the copilot’s seat beside Niburu, up front where he would have the fullest view possible of the terrain they were about to pass over. Reede sat diagonally behind him, next to Ananke, relegating the two troopers to the windowless cargo area. Gundhalinu had said the trip should take only a few hours. If everything went all right. Reede couldn’t keep his own mind from adding that unspoken caveat. He looked out the side port, leaned forward impatiently, peering ahead between the seats for a view through the windshield as he listened with an earbug to Perimeter Control’s field clearance sequence.

  At last he felt them begin to rise; freed from the suffocating confinement of civilized authority, heading into the wilderness, the unknown, the uncontrollable—chaos made visible. He felt a weight fall away from him, felt as if he were rising himself, uncoiling, being reborn.… Ananke glanced at him sidelong, his eyes full of doubt. Reede took a deep breath, and withdrew into his thoughts.

  He looked out and down, seeing the bloated gray-green flora of the jungle that lay below like an unwholesome carpet. They followed the sullen yellow ribbon of a river he did not know the name of, like hunters tracking the glistening slime spoor of a whillp.… He realized that the only images which came to mind to describe what he saw were vaguely repulsive ones; tried to think of images that were not morbid, and failed. He wondered whether there was something about the physical appearance of this place that a human brain instinctively found repulsive, or whether he was just letting himself be sucked into the mood of the others around him.

  “How many trips have you made into World’s End, Commander Gundhalinu?” Niburu asked, probably trying to keep his own mind off the view.

  “This is my sixth,” Gundhalinu murmured, his words barely audible. Something that looked like a refinery flashed by below them, in a sudden, unexpected clearing. Reede felt his shoulders tighten; he relaxed as the obscene overabundance of plant life filled his view again.

  “That’s the last sign of human habitation we’ll see,” Gundhalinu said, almost sounding as if he was glad himself to put it behind him.

  Reede looked ahead, past Gundhalinu’s shoulder, seeing something new in the distance. Up ahead the forest ended, like the shore of the sea, on the lower reaches of a mountain range. The mountains seemed almost dreamlike, silvered by the humid haze of the rainforests. He kept watching them, sure that the image he thought he saw would dissipate at the next eyeblink into cloudforms, mirage.

  But it did not. The sun rose higher in the sky, burning away the mists, illuminating the interior of the rover and the silent, pensive faces around him; and moment by moment the shimmering unreality in the distance became more real, became a forbidding barrier, a warning.

  As they rose to meet them, the mountains resolved into gigantic piles of rubble, as if some deranged giant had heaped up boulders the size of houses in a futile effort to turn back invaders. “You actually went overland through this terrain?” Reede asked at last, leaning forward again to get Gundhalinu’s attention; driven to ask the question by the strength of his disbelief.

  “Yes,” Gundhalinu said. “Every bloody millimeter of it.”

  “It must have been a hell of a trip,” Reede murmured with grudging admiration.

  “Yes,” Gundhalinu said softly. “That’s exactly what it was.” He fell silent again, gazing down at the gray, jumbled ruins of the mountains. “I was the mechanic. I kept the rover running, through that, through everything.” He laughed once. “I began to feel like a miracle worker. But World’s End teaches you humility—”

  Reede sat back, trying to imagine Gundhalinu flat on his back under the guts of a broken-down rover, trying to make it function under conditions like those. He looked out the window again, feeling a sudden eagerness that was almost hunger as he wondered what he would see next, watching the tortured land slip by below.

  Beyond the mountains he found the real heart of World’s End: an oblate wilderness of stone and sand; mudflats baked by ceaseless heat into pavements of tile; gleaming beds of unexploited mineral deposits. He would not have believed that anything could live here, but he saw clumps of grotesque, stunted plant life scattered across the surface of the ground like excrement. More mountain peaks rose in the seemingly unreachable distance, wreathed in artificial clouds of volcanic smoke.

  There was no flight plan in the rover’s memory bank. Gundhalinu spoke to Niburu in occasional monotones, altering their course; navigating by sight, or maybe by some arcane sixth sense. He had claimed that any instruments were suspect here, and besides World’s End never even looked the same way twice. The warping of the electromagnetic spectrum and the fabric of spacetime caused by the stardrive plasma’s compulsive malfunctioning spread out from Fire Lake for hundreds of kilometers on every side. The rational part of Reede’s mind accepted the parameters controlling such phenomena in the abstract; another, more primitive part of his brain trembled with terror and awe before the prospect of witnessing its reality.

  “What really made you come out here?” he asked, still finding it difficult even to imagine a Kharemoughi highborn doing anything by choice that would require hardship, sacrifice, or manual labor. He knew Gundhalinu had been a Blue before he had discovered the secret of Fire Lake; but becoming a career officer in the Hegemonic Police was hardly an impulsive act. It was considered an honorable profession, even by Techs; it appealed to their sense of order. Being an independent prospector in a broken-down wreck of a rover was about as far from rational as you could get. “Did you already have an idea about what the Lake was?”

  “No,” Gundhalinu said, not meeting Reede’s gaze. “I had no idea what I’d find. I only wanted to find my brothers. I felt it was … my duty to my family to find them, if you understand. A matter of honor.”

  Reede listened in surprise to the stilted reserve of the words, and wondered what Gundhalinu wasn’t telling him; what he wouldn’t let himself say. He recognized that sudden closing off of communication, that invisible, unbreachable wall of silence. He had used it himself every time Gundhalinu had tried to get close to him. He hadn’t cared whether colliding with it had bruised Gundhalinu’s ego. The less they felt about each other the better, under the circumstances. He was surprised—and surprised at his anger—at being on the receiving end of a rebuff. “What about the people you traveled with?” he asked, pressing the conversation because he was annoyed. “Who were they? What did they want out of World’s End?”

  “There were two other men.” Gundhalinu glanced at him, and away again, resigned. “Ang was an ex-Company man, a geologist. He’d quit to go out on his own. He thought he knew where a strike was. He thought World’s End would give hi
m what he wanted.… Spadrin was an offworlder, a criminal; probably in trouble with his own kind, looking for a stake. He thought World’s End would give him what he wanted, too.… That’s what we all thought.”

  “Did they get what they wanted?” Reede pushed.

  “They both died.”

  Niburu looked at Gundhalinu, and out at World’s End again, his face white.

  Reede sat back, inside a silence that was suddenly as bitter as the taste of alkali. He watched endless flats of alkali and gypsum pass beneath them like fields of snow. He forced himself to imagine traversing that terrain day after day, in the blistering heat and the nightmarish uncertainty.… He glanced at Niburu, couldn’t see his expression now, hidden by the seat back; glanced at Ananke, who sat gazing into space, into some private reverie that could have been either bright or dark. Trooper Saroon dozed on the floor with his back against the wall, oblivious with exhaustion. The sergeant met Reede’s glance with a sullen stare that didn’t have the imagination to look worried. Reede looked away again, and watched the wasteland pass.

  Time passed too; how much, he wasn’t sure. It didn’t seem to matter, here when time as he knew it was a meaningless concept. Dreamtime, he thought, feeling oddly as if he were dreaming. No one spoke again, as the dream took hold of them all. At last Gundhalinu roused himself, his muscles tensing as he peered ahead. “There,” he said.

  Reede looked out through the hazed windshield, his own body tightening. He sucked in his breath as he saw it, suddenly; the unnatural glow on the horizon, the first fingernail of light, the promise. So soon. His hands closed, holding on to an emotion that was not elation, or fear, or wonder, but contained parts of them all.

  The Lake seemed to come to them, more than they came to the Lake, expanding below them like the surface of the sun: a blinding, shimmering vision of light.

  “Shall I set us down along the shoreline there, Commander Gundhalinu?” Niburu asked, his voice sounding dry and uncertain. Reede wondered if it was the hours gone without speaking, or simply awe that made him sound like that.

  “Yes,” Gundhalinu said, pointing to his left. “There’s a canyon mouth over there; I see some green. If there’s water, it will make a good campsite.”

  Reede wondered about the consequences of drinking the water in a place like this; realized with something that was almost disappointment that if Gundhalinu would drink it, it must be perfectly safe.

  Niburu brought them down, down, with infinite care into the steep-walled crack in the scarp that bordered the Lake. He followed it inward until he found a stretch of even ground wide enough for their camp, just beyond sight of the Lake’s hellshine. The rover settled onto the desiccated earth with a dim crunching sound.

  Niburu unsealed the hatch, and a wave of heat rolled into the rover’s cab: the wasteland’s hot, alien breath touching their faces, their flesh. For a long moment no one moved, as if none of them had the guts to be the first to step outside. Reede looked at Gundhalinu, saw him staring out at the parched canyon walls with his head bent slightly, as if he were … listening. There was nothing at all to hear, as far as Reede could tell. Just as he was about to say something, Gundhalinu pushed up out of his seat and left the vehicle. Reede followed him, the others trailing them one by one.

  Reede squinted in the glare, flipping down the visor of his helmet. It was hotter here than back in the jungle; but at least it was dry. He turned in the direction of Fire Lake, but it was hidden from his view by a curve of the canyon. He looked down at his feet, felt heat seeping in through his insulated boot-soles from the pale, inert gravel of the canyon’s floor; looked up the walls of rock-hard, lithified clay to its rim. Rising like incongruous umbrellas against the glaring ceramic sky he found a stand of giant tree-ferns, their trunks the color of iron, the startling green of their feathery leaves softened by a coat of dust. He wondered at their perversity, growing up there on the plateau when down here in the dying wash was the last of the water, a scattering of shallow, green-rimmed pools set in protected pockets like footprints along the canyon bottom … as though Time had come striding down this wash, on its way to somewhere else, leaving everything here frozen in limbo until their arrival had violated an ancient peace.

  Someone swore loudly behind him. Reede swung around, abruptly aware of time again, and that he was not standing here alone; that the others were already in more or less efficient motion around him, following Gundhalinu’s orders. He watched them setting up camp, in the act of protecting themselves and their equipment from the brutal heat—the only thing they could reliably protect themselves from, here. He turned back, irritated, mostly at himself; gave sharp orders to Niburu and Ananke. He reminded himself that Gundhalinu had seen this landscape, or ones just as strange, half a dozen times; and even if he hadn’t, he was compulsive enough not to let the alienness of it distract him from getting the job done.

  Reeds wiped a hand across his sweating face, trying to ignore the song of his own blood inside his ears. “Gundhalinu,” he called. Gundhalinu turned to look at him, and came back to his side. “Is this place safe? What about flash floods—” He gestured at the stagnant, standing pools, the high, narrow walls of the wash, their image overlain by a memory that wouldn’t take form but scraped the back of his eyes with a razor’s edge.

  Gundhalinu shook his head. “It won’t happen while we’re here.”

  “You mean it’s the dry season…?” Reede’s voice faded before he finished the sentence, as he saw the expression on Gundhalinu’s face.

  “Yes, of course,” Gundhalinu murmured, “it’s the dry season.” He looked away, calling out directions to Hundet.

  Reede started back to the rover and went to work, suddenly wanting it all to be over, to be finished with his real work here as rapidly as possible.

  By the time they had fully set up camp the setting sun had all but disappeared behind the canyon wall, giving them some respite from the pitiless heat. Reede found himself still stunned by it, each time he left the access to one of the bubble domes, even though he was no stranger to hot weather. At least the shielded microenvironments they had set up inside the domes would protect their equipment—and incidentally themselves—from as much of Fire Lake’s disruptive electromagnetic fluctuation as possible.

  Reede exited the dome that held his personal living quarters, certain at last that his own equipment was reasonably functional, and his personal belongings were completely secure. He had spent the entire afternoon checking and rechecking them, running experiments. He wanted to rest; but he could not keep his thoughts off Mundilfoere. Her mystery, her heat, her power over him were as all-consuming, as inescapable as World’s End … and he was exiled in this bizarre wilderness, unable to return to her until he had fulfilled the quest she had set for him. And he realized now that the quest was going to be harder to complete than he had ever imagined … for all the wrong reasons. The knowledge fed his need for her, fed his doubt and sense of isolation, until he could not close his eyes.

  “Niburu!” he shouted. Niburu appeared in the arched doorway of the tent that he shared with Ananke, facing Reede’s. Reede stared at him, realizing that he needed to have a reason for calling the other man out here, besides simply to prove that he still existed. “What’s for dinner?” If anyone could make the rudimentary rations he had seen unstowed from the rover palatable, Niburu could. And at least this was one ungracious request Niburu actually wouldn’t resent.

  Niburu shrugged. “Shit surprise, probably.” He grinned. “I’ll see what I can do.” He started away toward the supply dome.

  “Niburu.”

  Niburu hesitated, looking back at him with sudden wariness.

  “Good job today.” Reede nodded toward the rover, fingering his ear cuff self-consciously.

  Niburu smiled uncertainly, and went on again. Reede watched as Hundet intercepted his course, imagined the conversation he read into their gestures, as Niburu justified his right to freely access their communal food supply. The two governmen
t troopers had taken the rover as their sleeping quarters—for security reasons, he supposed, so that they controlled the communications equipment and the only way of escaping from this hellhole. It amused him to realize that their institutionalized paranoia was perfectly justified. It was also damned inconvenient to his plans; but he told himself that it was only an inconvenience, no more.…

  Hundet let Niburu pass, finally; momentarily satisfied by another round of petty humiliation. Reede had watched him all afternoon, bullying Saroon, harassing Niburu and Ananke. He did his own work with a sullen disinterest, glaring at Gundhalinu and at Reede.

  Reede looked away, wondering where Gundhalinu was. Ananke came around the back of the dome with the quoll draped across his shoulders like a fur piece; started violently as he almost walked headlong into Reede.

  “Where were you?” Reede said, more abruptly than he meant to.

  “Just … looking.” Ananke shrugged, looking guilty now. “I wanted to see Fire Lake.…” His eyes broke away from Reede’s gaze and focused on his feet, which were scuffing gravel. “Did you need me for something, bo—Dr. Kullervo?”

  “No.” Reede tried to make his own expression more pleasant; every time he looked hard at Ananke, the kid wilted like a plant. Dressed in a loose shirt and baggy shorts, with his hair tied back in a ponytail, he looked almost fragile, in spite of the athlete’s muscles that showed along his bare arms and legs. Ananke couldn’t be more than three or four years younger than he was himself; but sometimes Reede felt as if the difference between their ages was measured in centuries. “Gundhalinu said not to get too far from camp. It’s … dangerous.” He hadn’t tried to explain; World’s End’s reputation was enough.

  “Yes, Doctor, I know.” Ananke nodded earnestly, patting the quoll. The quoll burbled contentment, apparently undisturbed by anything as long as it was attached to its owner. “Commander Gundhalinu went with me; he said it was all right.”