The Summer Queen

by Joan D. Vinge

  “She loves me—”

  “Yes…” Jaakola murmured, “I believe she did. But then, she was a woman—weak, flawed, for all her brilliance. A foolish mistake, to fall in love with her victim … an inevitable mistake … a fatal mistake. She wouldn’t give you to me, even to save herself.”

  Reede felt his heart stop. “No. You said she wasn’t at the citadel—”

  “She wasn’t.” The Source’s shapeless bulk shifted. “I said she wasn’t there … but I didn’t say she was still alive.”

  “I don’t believe you.” Reede pushed the words out between bloodless lips. Sweat crawled down his cheek, but he couldn’t wipe it away.

  “Things changed, while you were away—as I said. Power shifted … to me. Destiny delivered her into my hands … and with her, you. I had waited a long time, for her, for you. She took a very long time to die … I saw to it personally.”

  “I don’t believe you,” Reede whispered again, shutting his eyes. “It isn’t true. Mundilfoere will come for me, she won’t let you hold me here.…”

  “You want Mundilfoere? More than your soul? More than life itself?”

  “Yes. Yes—” Reede said, grasping at futile hope like a drowning man; not caring what Jaakola wanted in return, willing to give him anything he asked for to make the unbearable untrue. “Anything you want. Anything—”

  “Then have her…” the Source whispered. “What’s left of her.”

  Reede felt something drop into his lap; something very small. He looked down, blind in the darkness, unable even to move his hands to touch it. He began to tremble helplessly.

  A thin beam of brilliant white light lanced out of the darkness in front of him, striking the crotch of his pants, illuminating what lay there. Reede blinked, dazzled by the brightness; forced himself to look down at it, dizzy and sick.

  A human thumb. The dried blood crusting it was almost the same darkness as the desiccated skin. And still circling the meaningless stub of flesh and bone was a ring of heavy silver, set with two soliis. The ring he had given to Mundilfoere before he left, a marriage troth.

  Reede screamed, a raw soul-deep cry of agony and loss, that went on and on, until at last he had no voice at all left to scream with. And that was when the single beam of light went out.

  When there was nothing left in the black silence but the sound of his sobbing, the Source’s laughter began.

  And when that was finished, the Source said, “I waited a long time for this, too, Reede. To hear you scream like that. You arrogant, strutting piece of garbage, calling yourself the Smith, wearing the genius of the ages in your brain and thinking it was your own. Acting as if you were our equal—believing it, when you were nothing but her creature. I only wish that she could have heard you scream … that you could have watched me take her apart.”

  Reede groaned, a mindless, animal noise of grief that echoed in the blackness.

  The Source made a low sound of satisfaction. “I knew there was nothing I could do to your body that would hurt you this much, and let you go on living. And you will go on living, Reede. You’re my creature now.… I have great plans for our symbiosis. You’ll breed the stardrive, I’ll control its spread, causing the Kharemoughis the most inconvenience possible and bringing the Brotherhood the most influence possible. And when the time is right, you will return with me to Tiamat, and give us the water of life—”

  “I’ll die first,” Reede whispered, his throat, his eyes as dry as dust. “I’ll kill myself.”

  “No … I don’t think so,” the Source murmured. “And you won’t break down and go insane either. Do you want to know why? Because already some part of your mind is telling you that if you go on living, you’ll find some way to pay me back.” He chuckled again, as if he could see every thought in his prisoner’s mind. “You’ll live a long time trying, Reede.… But cheer up. I’ll keep you in comfort. You will have everything you need, the best equipment, the best researchers money can buy, plenty of credit to spend as you like—as long as you produce. There’s only one thing you had from her that you won’t be getting from me … unless, of course, you really want to share my bed.”

  Reede’s head jerked up, as the Source’s obscene laughter ran its fingers over him. He spat, the only form of defiance left to him.

  The Source made a wet kissing sound, and laughed again. “I even know the one thing you needed more than her. I even have it waiting for you. I believe you call it the ‘water of death’…?”

  Reede stared, his burning eyes filled with darkness. Something that was not—could not be—relief caught in his chest.

  “Oh, yes, Reede … I know everything about you now. All your most intimate secrets. You miserable, self-destructive lunatic. You finally found something to do to yourself that frightened even you.… And I don’t blame you for being afraid. I had the water of death tested on one of my own people. The results were truly unspeakable, simply to witness. I cannot imagine what they must have been like to endure. And incurable—? Oh, you are brilliant.…” His voice dripped acid. “You forged your own chains—and now you’ve handed them to me. You’ll have the water of death, Reede; and as long as you are cooperative, you’ll have it on time. In fact—” the Source paused, and Reede could feel his smile, feel it like a blade slowly slitting his throat, “I expect you’ll be needing a fix soon. That is the real reason you were in such a hurry to get back to Humbaba’s, isn’t it? Because you’d run short, poor planning, and you were getting desperate. Not even Mundilfoere had that kind of hold on you.… You’ll find a maintenance dose waiting for you in your new lab. You’ll be permitted to make more, as long as you do your work.”

  Reede said nothing. He swallowed the hard lump of loathing in his throat and took a deep breath, inhaling until his lungs ached.

  “Any questions about your new existence?”

  Reede said nothing.

  “Any last requests?”

  “Go to hell,” Reede said, his voice breaking.

  “Didn’t you know—?” the Source murmured gently. “I’m already there, my pet. And so are you.” The dull-red glow that revealed nothing, worse than a lie, dropped suddenly, completely, out of Reede’s visible spectrum. The darkness around him was utter again, as it had been at the beginning.

  * * *

  Kedalion sighed and shifted position on the couch, glancing at his watch. The couch was not as comfortable as it had looked. He wondered if the perversity was intentional. Or maybe it was just him. This shouldn’t take long, Reede had said. Reede had been wrong.

  Ananke had actually fallen asleep again, curled up with the quoll against his belly. Kedalion envied him his exhaustion. He was tired enough to sleep anywhere, himself … except in the middle of an enemy citadel, surrounded by guards. The fact that nobody had been harmed—yet—filled him with relief, but not reassurance. He listened to water dripping like a dirge, somewhere in the garden below the window that might or might not be real: to the distant noises, both strange and familiar, that drifted down the corridors and into the space around him.

  The door that had swallowed Reede dematerialized again, abruptly, and someone came through it. The guards turned alert; Kedalion straightened, staring.

  At first his eyes refused to believe that it was actually Reede Kullervo they saw. The man who came back through that door wore Reede’s face; but the face was ashen-gray, with red-rimmed eyes that registered nothing at all. He moved like a stranger, crippled, broken.

  “Reede—?” Kedalion said, keeping his eyes on Kullervo as he reached out to shake Ananke awake. Ananke jerked upright, startled, as Reede stopped moving and turned to look at them. Nothing showed in his eyes except a kind of vacant disbelief. Kedalion was not entirely sure he even recognized them. One fist was clenched tight, as if he held something in it; Kedalion couldn’t see what. He had never believed before this moment how young Reede actually was: stripped of his manic arrogance Reede looked like a boy, terrified, terrifying in his vulnerability. Kedalion felt sick
to his stomach, wondering who or what had reduced a man like Reede to that, in so little time.

  The Newhavener who had brought them all here crossed the room to Reede’s side, showing his teeth in a grin as he assessed the obvious damage. “Give me your hand,” he said. An order, not a request. Reede obeyed it. The Newhavener’s hand closed around Reede’s wrist, spread his palm open like a flower. His other hand pressed something down on it, and Kedalion saw a sudden flash of light. A tremor ran through Reede’s body, but he made no other response. “Welcome aboard, Kullervo,” the Newhavener said, still grinning in cold satisfaction. He turned away from Reede, heading toward the place where Kedalion and Ananke sat waiting. He reached them at the same moment as the smell of burned flesh did. He put out his hand.

  Kedalion held up his own hand silently, his jaw clenched; knowing what came next. Most of Humbaba’s vassals had worn a brand—although Reede had not, and he had never marked either of his crew as property. Kedalion kept his eyes fixed on Reede, who stood staring at his own branded palm. He told himself fiercely that adoption by the enemy was the best thing that could have happened to them, when he considered the alternatives; kept telling himself that until the iron came down on his own exposed flesh. White-hot pain seared through his hand, went screaming up the nerves of his arm. He cried out, although he had sworn he would not; tried to jerk his hand free, but the Newhavener held it in a grip as inescapable as a vise until he was finished.

  He released it, and Kedalion pulled it back, cursing under his breath, dizzy with pain. He forced himself to look at the brand. There was an eye burned into his flesh, staring back at him. He swore again as he recognized the mark. He knew at last whose prisoners they were; and he knew the Source’s reputation. He looked away from the livid burn, at Reede again. He looked back as the Newhavener reached Ananke.

  Ananke held up his hand, held it steady in the air. His free hand knotted into a fist as the Newhavener spread his palm. He shut his eyes, and bit his lip. The brander came down on him; Kedalion grimaced as he saw the flash of light, saw Ananke shudder and the trickle of bright red that leaked down his lip and chin as the Newhavener let him go again. With his good hand, Kedalion fished a handkerchief out of his pocket, and passed it silently to Ananke. Ananke pressed it to his mouth, covering a crooked grin of desperate pride.

  The Newhavener watched them noncommittally, then stepped back, and jerked his head toward the lift. “Come on. I’ll show you your quarters.” Kedalion hesitated, looked toward Reede; suddenly more afraid for Reede than for himself or Ananke, if they were separated. But the Newhavener moved back to Reede, tried to take him by the arm as if he thought Kullervo was incapable of obeying on his own. “Come on, Reede.”

  Reede came alive as the Newhavener put a hand on him; caught the man’s wrist with his branded hand and pulled it free. The Newhavener stiffened; the anger drained out of his face as he looked into Reede’s stare and found no pain registering there.

  “Stay away from me,” Reede whispered, and for a moment Kedalion saw something he recognized in Reede’s expression; something deadly.

  The Newhavener backed off with a shrug. “No problem,” he muttered, and started toward the lift.

  They took another labyrinthine journey through the hive of the citadel. This time the Newhavener took some pains to point out what they were seeing. Kedalion tried to ignore his throbbing hand and concentrate on the view, to get a feel for what he was going to be calling home from now on, whether he liked it or not. But his attention kept flickering back to Reede’s vacant face, and every time it did he got queasy again.

  At last they reached their destination, deep in the heart of the laboratory complex. The complex covered fifteen stories, the entire south quadrant of the fortress, according to the Newhavener—who had finally told them his name, TerFauw—and it employed close to a thousand workers. By Kedalion’s estimate, that made it ten times the size of Humbaba’s labs. TerFauw took them up through the general living quarters, pointing out shops and eateries, but they didn’t stop until they got to an apartment which seemed to occupy an entire separate level of the complex.

  He took them through its rooms, pointing out things with a disinterest Kedalion found remarkable, considering the luxurious elegance of the surroundings. He supposed, a little enviously, that these were Reede’s new personal quarters. He tried again to make the relative gentleness of their treatment jibe with whatever had been done to Reede in the three hours that he had been missing. Reede regarded his surroundings with bleak indifference.

  “You’ve got access to your personal laboratories through that door, Kullervo—” TerFauw pointed. “Somebody’ll take you the rounds of the whole complex tomorrow. Master’s real eager for you to get to work.”

  Reede turned to look, showing real interest in something for the first time. The door was secured; Kedalion saw the familiar red outline glow of a Kharemoughi stasis lock. “Open it,” Reede said.

  TerFauw shook his head. “Can’t.”

  Reede turned back to him. “Cancel the fucking lock—”

  “Only the Master can do that,” TerFauw said. “I can’t. You can’t. He’ll open it when he decides he wants you to have what’s in there.… It’s not up to you, anymore, Kullervo, you understand me?”

  Reede glared at him; and then the sudden fury in his eyes turned to ashes, as if TerFauw had said something more than Kedalion had actually heard him say. TerFauw smiled; his twisted lip made a sneer of it. Reede turned his back on them, and went into the next room.

  TerFauw turned back to Kedalion and Ananke. Kedalion held his breath, wondering what kind of hellhole TerFauw had in mind to drop them down; sure that they were not going to rate the kind of consideration someone like Reede did. “You two are staying here with him, until we figure out what to do with you.”

  Kedalion nodded wordlessly, surprised and relieved.

  “I’m putting it on you both to watch him till he settles in. He’s still a little out of phase right now.” The sneer pulled TerFauw’s lips up again.

  Kedalion glanced at the doorway to the next room, thinking the man had a gift for understatement.

  “See that he doesn’t do anything to himself.” TerFauw met Kedalion’s questioning stare. “Anything that happens to him, happens to you. Both of you.” He bent his head at Ananke. “I make myself clear?”

  “Perfectly,” Kedalion muttered. He was suddenly, painfully aware of the throbbing burn on his palm.

  TerFauw went out, leaving them alone. Ananke put the quoll on the floor, one-handed, and headed for the bathroom. The quoll snuffled the deep green carpet, decided that it wasn’t edible, and began to wander across the floor. It scuttled under a table as Reede came silently back into the room.

  Reede’s gaze went straight to the locked laboratory door. The seals were still red. He raked the room with his eyes, as if he was reassuring himself that they were finally alone. He sat down on a couch covered with brilliant, flame-patterned cloth, looking like a refugee, saying nothing. Staring at the door. One fist was still clenched over something.

  Ananke came back into the room, carrying a can of skingraft in his good hand. “I found this, Kedalion—” he said, and tossed it out.

  Kedalion caught it, awkwardly, shook his head as he looked at it. “You put some on already?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Wash it off, or you won’t have a scar. The whole point of it is that they want you marked. Unless you want to go through that again—”

  Ananke looked sick, and shook his head. He started away down the hall toward the bathroom. “You did good,” Kedalion said. Ananke glanced back, and smiled feebly. Kedalion followed him; he took a leak while Ananke gingerly rubbed the bandage off his hand, keeping his eyes averted. Kedalion checked through the supplies in the well-stocked medical cabinet, wondering morbidly if someone had put them there as a precautionary measure, in case Reede tried something drastic. He pushed the thought out of his mind, and took out a tube of ointment. “Her
e,” he said to Ananke. “This’ll kill the pain.”

  Ananke smeared some of it across his palm, wincing; handed the tube back to Kedalion. Kedalion took it with him into the other room, where Reede still sat staring at the door. Kedalion spread ointment on his own palm in full view of Reede, sighed as the pain went out like a smothered fire. Then he approached Reede, offering him the ointment at arm’s length. “Boss—?”

  Reede looked up at him, down again at his own blistered palm. He closed his fingers over the burn deliberately, and tightened them into a fist. “No,” he whispered.

  Kedalion moved away from him, swallowing. “Come on,” he said quietly to Ananke. “Let’s eat.” He went into the kitchen, where they could be private enough to talk and still see Reede. Ananke sat on the counter, looking out the doorway, while Kedalion queried the food systems and put in an order.

  “What happened, Kedalion?” Ananke said at last. “Gods, I’ve never seen him like that. What do you think they did to him—?” He touched his own bitten lip, and flinched.

  Kedalion shook his head. “I don’t know,” he murmured, feeling fear knot up his stomach again. “I don’t think I want to. But TerFauw’s right … we’ve got to watch him like cats.”

  “He needs more than that,” Ananke said, meeting his eyes.

  Kedalion nodded, feeling a frown settle between his brows. “I know,” he muttered. “I know that. But, damn it, I don’t know what to do—” He grimaced, filled with a sense of helplessness as he admitted the truth … admitted to himself how much he wanted to help the human shadow huddled on the couch in the next room. The sight of Reede’s suffering and vulnerability had gotten to him, in a way Reede’s anger and moods never had. It made him feel responsible. He hated the feeling. But he realized, suddenly, that he didn’t hate the man. He rubbed his aching eyes, remembering again just how tired he was, how long it had been since he’d had any sleep. He turned back as platters of food appeared on the shelf above him.