The Summer Queen

by Joan D. Vinge

  We’d. His mouth quirked as he heard her include herself with the Tiamatans. Well, why shouldn’t she? She’d spent most of her life here. Newhaven, her homeworld, must be barely even a memory to her now. He studied his boot resting across his knee. “The Hegemony still has a heavy foot. I’m trying to keep them from setting it down in the wrong places too often. That’s why I asked you to come, actually. I wanted feedback from someone who knows Tiamat, but has a sense of the Hegemony’s perspective as well. Someone I know I can trust. I want to know what the mood in Carbuncle is; what sort of effect our presence is having, for better or worse. Anything I can do to make it better—”

  They had been here for nearly half a standard year, and the demands on his time and attention had been unending. But they had made unexpectedly good progress in reestablishing their base of operations, because so much of the technology they had left behind still remained intact—because unlike all the Summer Queens before her, Moon Dawntreader had not ordered everything dumped into the sea. All they had had to do on many of the surviving systems was replace the microprocessors that the Hegemony had destroyed by high-frequency signal transmission at the Departure.

  That had meant that more of the equipment they’d bought here with them could be spared to make their lives comfortable, more like what they had been used to back on Kharemough. That hadn’t hurt morale any among his staff and advisors. He was sure it had helped him push his arguments that the technological progress achieved in their absence should be allowed to continue: that besides creating good will, it made economic sense, that it pushed all their own plans ahead of schedule.

  “I’m engaged in a precarious balancing act here. It’s going to be vital to keep as much cooperation as I can going on both sides.” If it isn’t impossible.

  “So far it seems to be going all right,” Jerusha said. “Moon … the Queen, and most Tiamatans are reassured because you haven’t suppressed what they’ve done. But so far it’s been simple, because there aren’t that many offworlders here. Things are going to start getting more complicated as you open Tiamat up. When are you going to start permitting unregulated civilians back? When do the flood gates open on trade and contact—?”

  He wiped his hands on the sponge beside his plate. “Because we’re ahead of schedule, I plan to start letting a trickle in as early as next month. We’ll gradually expand the flow, to try to keep things stable. I want to keep underworld elements out for as long as possible; I don’t want Carbuncle to become what it was before—a convenient resort for the scum of the galaxy.”

  “That was Arienrhod’s doing, mostly,” Jerusha said. She leaned forward. “She let them hide under the wing of her ‘independent rule’ so we couldn’t get at them, because she enjoyed watching the Blues squirm. You won’t have that problem with the new Queen.”

  He nodded, swallowing down a glass of juice, startled by the sudden, pungently familiar flavor of a fruit he had not tasted in over a decade. “I know, thank the gods. But there are other ways of gaining influence and control, even when your influence isn’t welcomed with open arms … you know that as well as I do, and better than the Queen does.” Ways and means even Jerusha PalaThion had never dreamed of. He looked up again. “I want to minimize the kinds of culture shock we’re going to have when access to trade goods becomes easy, and real greed sets in—”

  “Are you talking about Tiamat, or everybody else?” Jerusha asked.

  “I’m talking about everybody—including the Tiamatans. That was the other reason I wanted to meet with you today. I wanted to ask you whether you’d consider becoming my Chief Inspector.”

  Jerusha straightened up, staring at him in disbelief. “Are you serious?” she murmured. She laughed abruptly. “Of course you are. You wouldn’t ask me that for the hell of it. But, why?”

  “Because of all the things we’ve just been talking about,” he said. “We go back a long way, you and I. We know where we stand with each other.” He smiled briefly. “You’ll never be afraid to give me a straight answer.… Too many of my people are unknown quantities to me, or not the ones I would have chosen to fill the positions they hold. I need people around me—at my back, if you will—that I can trust and rely on, in order to make this work.” In order to survive. “I need the kind of help only you can give me. This police force is inexperienced in dealing with Tiamatan society. I trust Vhanu, my Commander of Police, with my life; he’s worked with me for years. But he doesn’t know Tiamat yet.… And frankly, in some ways, he reminds me of me.” He smiled, ruefully; remembering his service on Tiamat, how long it had taken him to learn this world’s lessons.

  Jerusha nodded, and he saw that she understood. “I’ve met with him several times,” she said. “I’ve seen the resemblance.”

  “Then you can see why you’d be invaluable, not only to the force, but to him.”

  She leaned back again in her seat. She was silent for a long moment. “Have you discussed this with him?”

  Gundhalinu nodded.

  “How does he feel about it?”

  “He’s against it,” he said, giving her the truth.

  “And how do you think the force is going to tolerate having a woman—a renegade, a traitor, no less—forced on them as Chief Inspector?”

  “Are you a renegade, or are you a retired Police Commander with years of invaluable foreign service experience?… Am I a failed suicide, or a Hero of the Hegemony? It all depends on what kind of spin you put on it, Jerusha.” He smiled slowly, and shrugged. She looked at him, mildly incredulous. “As far as your being female, Kharemoughis will give you less grief about that than your own people did. There are several women on the force, and I hope to recruit more, in time.”

  She looked down, biting her lip absently, considering.

  “You’ve never been someone who walked away from a challenge.” He pressed her, driven by the urgency of his need to have her support.

  “True enough,” she murmured, with some of the steel he remembered showing briefly in her grin, And he saw her eyes come alive as she thought about it. But she looked down again, shaking her head. “I can’t. Thank you for asking me, BZ. But I can’t do it.”

  “Why?” he asked, controlling the sudden frustration that made him want to shout it. “Why not?”

  “Because the Queen needs me. She depends on me.… For all the same reasons you want me working for you. I can’t be loyal to both of you. You can’t rely on someone with divided loyalties.”

  He leaned forward, his hands twined between his knees, tightening. “Work for me, Jerusha,” he spoke each word like a solemn pledge, “and you won’t have to have divided loyalties.”

  She stared at him for a long moment; while he realized, suddenly and gladly, that this was not simply something that he needed … it was something that she needed, too. “Gods…” she murmured. “Let me sleep on it, BZ. I can’t accept something like this without having time to think it through.”

  “Take whatever time you need.” He nodded, feeling the tension loosen in his shoulders. “Just tell me you won’t reject the idea out of hand.”

  “No,” she said, rising from her seat. “No, I won’t.”

  “Will you be speaking to—to the Queen?” He barely kept himself from calling her by name. He got up from his own seat.

  “I expect so.” She nodded, looking at him curiously.

  “Tell her for me that I’ve gotten my people to accept a temporary moratorium on the hunting of mers, while we conduct further studies. I don’t know how long it’ll hold. The Central Coordinating Committee back on Kharemough is giving me hell about this; tell her it’s the best I can do for now.”

  “She’ll be glad to hear it. I am, too. Thank you. I know the kind of pressure you mean—gods, it must be worse when there’s hardly any time-lag on interference from the home office. I know how much they want the water of life; I know how hard it is to stop them from getting what they want. I know … I tried it myself, once.”

  He grimaced. “I wish t
he Queen understood that. She’s been pushing hard for rapid change, and for a ban on the hunts at the same time, in every meeting we’ve had at the palace … too hard. I’ve tried to make her see that we have to take this a step at a time; Tiamat has to be lifted up to a certain level of technological competence before it can qualify for full equality among the Hegemony’s worlds. Change just for the hell of it will only leave everyone worse off then before. And the Hegemony doesn’t like something-for-nothing trade, any more than Tiamat does.”

  “She understands that,” Jerusha murmured. “But she also understands that the Hegemony came here thinking of her people as barbarians—and they aren’t. She’s willing to compromise, and meet the Hegemony halfway with her demands, if they’ll meet her there. She only wants to make sure the Hegemony understands that her viewpoint and theirs are not the same one. The Hedge has always had a ‘what’s mine is mine and what’s yours is negotiable’ attitude about this world.…”

  “I’m doing my damnedest,” he said, a little impatiently. “She’s got to watch her step. I wish she could just … If we could only—” He looked away abruptly. “Damn,” he whispered. Damn. Damn.

  “I know, BZ,” Jerusha said, with sudden understanding in her eyes. “She wishes that too.” She smiled. “I suppose we all wish it.”

  He looked away; looked back at her finally. “There’s an old saying on Kharemough: ‘There are two tragedies in life. One is never getting your heart’s desire. The other is getting it.’”

  She laughed softly. “On Newhaven, when you curse someone, you say, ‘May you get everything you wish for; may you be noticed by people in high places; and may you live in interesting times.’”

  He felt himself smile, relieved to find that at least he had not lost his sense of the absurd. “Then there’s no hope for me, clearly.” He held out his hand to her. She shook it, gripping his wrist like a native. “Let me know what you decide. Give my regards to the Queen. And…” He broke off, seeing the faces of Moon’s children in his mind. “And to her family.”

  She nodded. “I will,” she said gravely. “I will, BZ.”

  He watched her go out of the office. His intercom began to buzz as soon as the door closed. He ignored it; listening to something else entirely.

  TIAMAT: Carbuncle

  “Jerusha, I’m glad you’re here—”

  Jerusha felt her face quirk as the Queen turned to smile at her with uplifted hands. She nodded, attempting a smile in return, as Moon gestured at the data-filled screen lying like a magic pool in the surface of the desk/terminal behind her. “I’ve been working on this all afternoon, and now suddenly it’s refusing all my commands. I told it I was the Queen, but it wasn’t impressed.” She laughed, half amused and half exasperated. “And all the help files are in Sandhi.”

  Jerusha leaned past her shoulder to study the screen. “I don’t remember enough written Sandhi to find my way to the bathroom, let alone pick a computer’s brains.” The written language was ideographic, and bore no resemblance to the spoken tongue. “I never did know it well.… Is your data safe?” Moon nodded. “Then just shut it down, and start it up again. It’s a nuisance, but it always works for me.”

  Moon looked mildly aghast, but she shrugged, and nodded. Jerusha watched her do it.

  “Ah. Better! Thank you.…” Moon swiveled her chair around, leaning back in her seat. “Was that simply your uncanny sense of timing, or is there something you wanted to talk about?” The look in her eyes suddenly made Jerusha wonder about the Queen’s own uncanny sense of things.

  “Well … yes, there’s something.” She sat down in the corner chair next to the desk, studying her hands—the lines, the thickening knuckles, the calluses that seemed to have become a part of her being after so many years.

  “How is it for you these days?” Moon asked softly. “Has it gotten any easier without Miroe, now that the Hegemony has come back? Or has that made it harder?”

  Jerusha looked up at her again, realizing that they had not had even a few moments to spend like this, a stolen space of private time to speak to each other as human beings, in weeks. “Both, I think,” she said.

  “Yes.” Moon’s eyes turned distant, as if her thoughts were blown smoke. “That’s about right.… Both.” She twisted a strand of pale hair between her fingers, absently knotting and unknotting it. “The Hegemony’s presence here has given everything double strength.” She glanced at the terminal, part of a system that had lain useless and inert through her entire reign, until now. She had been computer-literate in a meaningful way for only a few weeks, a fact that Jerusha still found almost unbelievable. “And double meanings…”

  Jerusha saw BZ Gundhalinu inside the words, like an image in a mirror. “You should talk to BZ, Moon,” she said.

  “I have,” Moon said. “I see him several times a week.…” Her gaze broke. “But not alone. I can’t, Jerusha.”

  “What do you expect he’d do?” Jerusha asked, raising her eyebrows.

  “It’s what I might do.” Moon’s face reddened. “When I watch him, whenever he speaks— Over the years I thought I’d become immune to those feelings … numb. That after all Sparks and I have—lost, of what we had, all I really hoped for from life anymore was to finally, someday, be left alone. Peace.” She shook her head. “I hardly knew BZ, Jerusha … all those years ago. And yet now, when I watch him I want him—” Her hands clenched. “I don’t understand this. I don’t even know if it’s him, or me. But I can’t trust myself.…” Her voice faded.

  “That’s the most unbelievable thing I’ve heard you say in nearly twenty years.” Jerusha shook her own head. “You owe it to him to see him alone. You have to talk, about the children.” Moon’s face pinched with denial. “You think he doesn’t know? He knows.…”

  Moon looked back at her suddenly. “You’ve talked to him, haven’t you?”

  Jerusha nodded.

  “How is he…?”

  “Up to his ass in bureaucracy. But I don’t think he regrets it. Yet.”

  “What were you talking to him about?” Moon’s expression changed abruptly. “Jerusha, are you thinking of leaving Tiamat?”

  “No.” Jerusha almost laughed, the question was so far from what was in her mind. “No.… He asked to see me.” She took a deep breath. “He offered me a job, Moon. Chief Inspector.”

  Moon stared at her in silent speculation. “You’d be working for the Hegemony, then—?”

  Again. Jerusha heard the real question she was being asked, had been expecting. When she had worked for the Hegemony before, she had been the enemy of this world, although she had not seen it that way. “I’d be working for BZ,” she answered.

  “What about your position as my Chief of Constables?”

  “If I accepted the Chief Inspectorship, there would be several people I’d trust to take over my position. I’ll make sure it’s taken care of.”

  “Have you made your decision, then?”

  Jerusha almost shook her head. She hesitated, realizing that she had. “I think I can do more good there,” she said slowly, “for all of us. I know both sides. BZ needs people behind him who have that kind of experience.… He needs someone to watch his back.”

  “And who’ll watch my back, then?” Moon murmured, a little sadly.

  “BZ will.” Jerusha smiled. “We both will.” She looked down at her hands again, and stopped smiling. “Moon, ever since Miroe’s death, I’ve felt as if my life has been sinking into a rut, deeper and deeper. Everything I am, and have, and do, isn’t enough.… I think I need this. I need the challenge, the headaches, the confrontations, the problems—I need a good heavy jolt of culture shock to get my life started again.” She glanced away at the terminal, still waiting behind the Queen like an unblinking eye. “And after nearly twenty years, I still miss the action.”

  Moon nodded, with her lips pressed together. Jerusha saw understanding in her eyes; and depths of disappointment and loss.

  “Only the surface of it will be
different,” she said; not certain who she was really trying to reassure. “We’re all on the same side, working toward the same goals. We always will be.”

  Moon turned to look at the desk/terminal’s deceptively warm, bright eye. “The only thing that ever really remains the same,” she said, “is change.”

  TIAMAT: Carbuncle

  “You’re early, Justice Gundhalinu,” the blind woman said.

  Gundhalinu stopped just inside the shellform doorway of the palace meeting hall, nonplussed. Fate Ravenglass, the blind woman who was the head of the Sibyl College, sat alone at the large circular table in the center of the room. Her shuttered gaze was fixed on him, on his general presence, not meeting his eyes. There was no one else present to have told her he was the one who had come into the room. “How did you know it was me?” he asked, curious, as he started toward her.

  “You have a very distinctive walk,” she said, smiling, and did not elaborate.

  “Oh.” He smiled wryly, hoping she could hear the smile in his voice. He stopped in front of her, not sitting down, folding his arms as he leaned against the high, hard back of a chair. “You seem to have come early, too, Fate Ravenglass.” He did not know where to look when he looked at her face; he was not used to speaking to someone who was sightless. It made him self-conscious.

  She nodded. “So I did. Tor dropped me off before she went to a business association meeting.” She cocked her head. “But you didn’t come here early, and alone, because you expected to meet me,” she said, with an odd gentleness.

  “No,” he murmured, glancing away, at the empty room with its several empty doorways. “Tell me,” he said, changing the subject, “how did you come to be a sibyl, in the heart of Carbuncle, all those years ago? And how did you keep it hidden?”

  “Someone infected me on Mask Night, during a Festival, many years ago.” Her fingers moved restlessly over the tabletop beside her.