The Summer Queen

by Joan D. Vinge

  Gods. He considered the implications. “Was it an accident?”

  “No.” Her sightless eyes rose, finding his own this time with unnerving accuracy. “It wasn’t. Why do you ask, Justice Gundhalinu?”

  He sat down, slowly, in the seat next to hers. “Something very like it … happened to me,” he said, not really answering the question.

  “Then you are a sibyl too—?”

  “Yes,” he said, surprised, until he remembered that she had no way of seeing his trefoil, or his tattoo; surprised again to realize that no one had even thought to tell her that.

  “Did it terrify you when it happened?” she asked.

  “Yes,” he said again. “I thought I’d lost my mind.”

  She made a small, sympathetic noise, bowing her head.

  “Was it an offworlder who infected you?” he asked.

  She nodded. “I believe that it was. But he claimed he was a Summer.… I kept what had happened to me a secret, for years, because I was afraid of what would happen to me if I was discovered, and cast out of the city.”

  Gundhalinu pressed his mouth together, wondering what motivation a sibyl could possibly have had for knowingly infecting a blind woman with the virus, and then abandoning her, in a city where sibyls were hated and feared. “And so you never used the Transfer until M—the new Queen told you the truth?”

  “Yes, I did—”

  He looked up, surprised. “How…?”

  “There were people who would seek me out, sometimes, to ask me questions. I’m not sure how they found me. They were always offworlders, but they never betrayed my secret. I always knew them because they said that they were ‘strangers far from home,’ and by their handshake.”

  “Handshake—?” Gundhalinu stiffened. “Do you mean … like this?” He reached out, taking her hand, his fingers forming the hidden Survey sign against her palm.

  Her hand jerked from his grasp. “Yes! How did you know that?”

  “There is a secret order which works to change things for the better in the Hegemony, and in other parts of the Old Empire, as well.…”

  “And you belong to this group?”

  “Yes.”

  “And they work for the greater good—?”

  “Yes,” he said again, more uncertainly.

  “By infecting unsuspecting and unwilling people with the sibyl virus?”

  “No.” He grimaced. “There must have been an extraordinarily important reason for a sibyl to have done that to you.… I’m sorry,” he said, inadequately.

  “Is that what was done to you, too?” she asked, after a long silence.

  “No.” He took a deep breath, exhaled it in a sigh. “There was no reason at all for what happened to me.” And yet, if it hadn’t been done to him, he would never have learned the secret of Fire Lake, or brought back the stardrive.… Song was mad, had been driven insane by the virus. But her mother Hahn, who had asked him to find her, had been a member of Survey. Had she been at a much higher level than he ever suspected? Had there actually been a hidden pattern inside the seeming randomness of his fate, all of it destined to pull him back here to Tiamat? Gods—he could go crazy with suspicion, once he started to let himself think about the possibilities.… “It was a random act.”

  Her brow furrowed slightly, as if she heard doubt in his voice. But she only said, “I’m glad you told me this. I always wanted to believe that there was some meaning to what had happened to me. I only knew what the Summers claimed about their sibyls, and what the Winters claimed about the Summers, for so long. But still the offworlders would come to me. And sometimes I would be called away into Transfer from the other side; I was the only one, for years, who could answer questions about Carbuncle through the Transfer link. I always wanted to believe that what I had become mattered, somehow; that it was important.…”

  “It was,” Gundhalinu said. “More than you’ll ever know.” He glanced down, and up again at the eyes like darkened windows in her lined, patient face. “So you never saw the people who came to ask you questions?” He wondered if that had been intentional on Survey’s part.

  “Oh, I saw them—after a fashion. I wasn’t completely blind then—I had a vision sensor band from offworld. It gave me enough vision to ply my trade. I was a maskmaker; I made the mask of the Summer Queen, for the last Festival.”

  “I remember it,” he said; remembering it like a dream. Moon had come to him where he lay, delirious with fever in a hospital bed. She had carried the mask of Summer in her arms, to let him know that she had won.… He blinked the present back into focus. “You lost your vision when we deactivated all the tech equipment we were leaving behind at the Departure, then.”

  She nodded.

  “I’ll make it a point to see that you receive new vision sensors as soon as possible.”

  “Thank you,” she murmured, surprised.

  He nodded in turn; realized that she couldn’t see the gesture. He touched her hand, making a certain sign with his fingers.

  She smiled; her own hand closed over his as he would have withdrawn it. “May I touch your face?” she asked.

  Comprehension overtook his surprise, and he lifted his hand, guiding her fingers until they touched his cheek.

  * * *

  Moon watched the two figures sitting side by side in the room beyond the hidden window. She saw Fate’s fingers trace the face-map of the man who sat perfectly still beneath her touch, sensing a portrait of him for her mind with her artist’s hands.

  Moon closed her own hands, when they would have begun to tell her the feel of his skin, the gentle, insistent touch of his mouth against her palm, her lips.… She began to turn away, feeling her face flush; angry at her body’s tingling betrayal, the arousal that played like silver music through her nerves—at the fact that she had come here to stand, behind this one-way window in this hidden hall, waiting, watching for the first glimpse of that face.…

  This was one of Arienrhod’s secrets, hidden from the room beyond behind what appeared to be an imported mural. Arienrhod had had observation points all through the palace, so that she could watch anyone she chose, whenever she wanted to. That had been one of her tricks, to hide like this, living a lie, betraying herself and whatever unsuspecting person she observed.

  But—She turned back again, unable to help herself. She needed to see him, she needed this time.… She could not keep her public mask of calm indifference perfectly in place, unless she first took this secret moment alone to gaze at him. He had come early to this meeting, not waiting for any of his own people; arriving even before any of hers should have been here. He had come early; she was sure that he had done it for one reason, and that it was not Fate Ravenglass he had been looking for.…

  Three other people entered the room—all members of her Council. Fate and BZ turned away, and she could no longer see his face. She pressed her hand against the window, wondering how long it would be before she no longer felt this piercing urgency, this desperate need for even the sight of him. She had never expected to feel this way; not after so many years. But when she had seen him again—and realized that she had seen his face every day through the long years of their separation, in the face of her son … his son …

  She bit her lips. Had that been the reason he had been in her thoughts so often, for so long? Or had it really been the memory of the one night they had spent together? Perhaps it was only because she could never resolve them that her feelings for him obsessed her so, now that he had come back. For the sake of her marriage, her children, her world’s future … herself, she must not weaken; must never meet with him unless they were not alone, until she was certain that she could control her emotions completely.…

  She turned away from the window, the spell broken as more people, offworlders now, arrived for the meeting in the room beyond. She started back toward the hidden doorway; stopped suddenly, as her husband blocked her path. “Sparks—”

  His gaze flicked past her, to what lay beyond the windows; lingere
d there, for an endless moment, before it came back to her face. She felt her face redden under his stare; unable to speak, to answer the accusation in his eyes, because there was no possible excuse she could make for what she had been doing here, when the truth was so obvious.

  “Why bother with this?” he said, in disgust. “Have him for a lover, if after twenty years you still find him so irresistible.”

  “I don’t want him—”

  “Then what do you want? You don’t seem to want me.” His hand struck his chest, hard. “For twenty years I’ve been trying to win you back, your love, your respect; running after you, begging you for every touch, every bit of proof that you still cared. And all the time you just kept getting further and further away from me.…” He shook his head. “All that time, you were still in love with a memory. I always suspected it. But I could live with it, as long as that was all he was—” His hand jerked at the window. “I can’t live with this. Seeing him. Seeing how you look at him … Seeing the truth: Even Ariele and Tammis aren’t mine. They’re his!”

  He turned away from her, and she felt her face convulse with pain. “That’s not true. They’ve always been your children! I’ve always been your wife. I love you—”

  He turned back, his eyes burning. “Do you think I’m blind? Stupid? They’re not my children! And you’re not my wife—not in any way that means anything.” His anger turned to ashes. “I can’t take it. Do whatever you want … just don’t lie to me about it anymore.” He turned and left her without a backward glance.

  She stood alone, unable to move, as if she had been turned to stone, until she could no longer hear his footsteps.

  She moved again at last, taking in a long, tremulous breath. She looked away from the empty corridor toward the hidden window; saw the faces beyond it looking toward her as if they could see her. She realized that the sound of arguing voices had carried into the meeting hall. But they were already turning away again, their expressions uncertain. She wondered how much they had actually heard.

  She clenched her fists until her hands spasmed; released them again, her fingers white and cold, as she made her way back out of the hidden space. She entered the large chamber beyond, where a dozen people waited for her now, waiting to begin a meeting that would shape the future of her world. She saw BZ’s eyes on her; resisted meeting them. She wondered how she would get through this next hour, this next day; where she would find the strength she needed to be the Queen, and not a woman. In her mind she pictured the mask of the Summer Queen that Fate Ravenglass had placed on her head one fateful day, half a lifetime ago. She built an image of its serenity and calm, superimposing them on her own features as she walked toward the expectant representatives of the old and new.

  TIAMAT: Carbuncle

  “Oh, Tor, this is off the scale! I can’t believe it—” Ariele Dawntreader draped her sinuous, slender form across the transparent table surface, looking down into the depths below her. She clattered as she moved, wearing a bodystocking covered with tiny, glittering silver plates. “Is this exactly what your club was like before the Change—?” Around her, the voices of her friends made a song of delight. It was opening night at Starhiker’s, the first offworlder-style gaming club to open, or reopen, in the Maze.

  Tor had bought up the remnants of club technology wherever she could find it, used or abused, buried in storage around the city; had everything refitted and all their burned-out entrails repaired with suddenly available microprocessor replacement parts. With the Queen’s blessing, she had gotten in ahead of all the offworlder entrepreneurs who had been clamoring at the palace gates, and down in Blue Alley, petitioning the onworld and offworld governments for permission to start filling half-empty buildings of the Maze with stores and places of entertainment. The new Chief Justice had kept a chokehold on the influx of offworlders and their technotoys, the changes that her own people awaited with what seemed to be equal parts eagerness and dread. So far, tradespeople and technicians were given heavy preference over those in less functional occupations.

  Ariele felt only the eagerness and awe, not understanding why anyone, including her mother, could feel any other way about the dazzling possibilities of their changing city. She had lived all her life with a hunger for these wonders, never realizing until they actually began to appear what it was she had been hungry for.

  “Glad you like it, sweeting.” Tor reached across the tabletop, patted her cheek fondly with a jewel-gloved hand. “Enjoy yourself, it’s on the house tonight for you and your friends. But this is only a pale imitation of what my old place was like. The difference is that it’s my place, this time.… Wait till the technology really begins to flow—this place will turn your eyeballs inside out. The Maze … gods, I never thought I’d live to see it come alive again!” She shook her head, her gray-shot hair scintillating, netted in silver.

  Ariele looked at her, feeling another kind of wonder; feeling as if she had never really seen Tor Starhiker before, although she had known her forever … that she was seeing Tor now in her element, where she had always belonged. She hoped she would have that kind of light in her own eyes when, after some inconceivable length of time, she was as old as Tor was now.

  “Ye gods, Ariele—” Tor straightened suddenly, peering back at her as she passed a round of drinks and gaming pieces into the waiting hands of her friends. “What happened to your hair—?”

  “I got it cut like the offworlders.” Ariele shook her head, feeling the giddy lightness of the motion, as if a weight had been lifted from her soul, along with the weight of her waist-length hair, which she had left on the floor of an offworlder’s shop only this afternoon. What was left was bare inches long, and stood out all over her head like cat’s fur. Elco Teel had dared her to do it; but once she had gone ahead, none of the others had dared not to follow her lead. Most of the crowd of bobbing heads behind her sported newly shorn hair, one cut more bizarre than the next. “Don’t you love it—?”

  Tor raised her eyebrows, and then nodded, smiling. “I think it’s perfect. Your mother will hate it.”

  Ariele grinned. “I hope so,” she said, feeling her own smile pinch. “At least I don’t look like her anymore.” She shook her head again, pushing back off the table surface, taking a drink with her. She sipped it, pleased and a little surprised to find that Tor had actually given her a drink with alcohol in it. “Thanks, Tor.”

  Tor lifted her hand in good-natured dismissal, moving away from the table, which suddenly came alive with a hologramic vision of an alien city.

  Ariele’s gasp of astonishment was lost in the murmurs of amazement around her. She stood between Elco Teel and Tilby Atwater, watching as eager offworlders materialized out of the crowd, elbowing her friends aside, flocking to the display to try their hand at a new game which was probably long since an old game to them.

  She watched, trying to get a feel for the way it was done, murmuring observations, gasping and pointing with the others; all of them, all the while, still trying not to look as though they had never seen anything like it before. Music filled the air around her with loud, insistent rhythms, the imported heartbeat of some other world. They moved on after a time, drifting from one table to another, sipping their drinks, surreptitiously staring at the astonishing varieties of humanity who filled the space around them—all shapes and sizes, with hair that came in every conceivable style and texture, with colors of eyes and skin that she would have laughed at the very idea of, a year ago. She loved the sight of them, the sense of diversity that they symbolized, the living proof of life’s endless possibilities.

  “Gods.” Tilby’s sister Sulark spoke the offworlder oath self-consciously behind her. “How does anyone ever get enough points even to call it a truce? These games are impossible.… Even the offworlders can’t win.” She pointed as a red-faced player turned and stalked away from the jumbled ruins of a world shimmering in front of them.

  “That one can,” Ariele murmured, nudging Tilby with her shoulder. She had been watc
hing the man two tables away, who was doing something that seemed completely incomprehensible to her, but doing it brilliantly, from the awed cries and laughter that surrounded him. The crowd followed his every move, as she had done, ever since she glanced his way. “Look at him, Tilby, oh Lady’s Tits, I’d like to see the rest of that one, wouldn’t you—?” He was fair enough to pass for Tiamatan; but she was sure he was an offworlder, by the bizarre swirls of decoration that spiraled up his bare arms to his shoulders. She could barely take her eyes from the burning beauty of his face, the intent, perfectly controlled dance of his hands inside the showers of phantom gold that rained down on him, even to take in what she could glimpse of his body through the shifting crowd.

  “Mmm,” Tilby said, ruffling her hair with a hand. “I sure would.”

  “But I saw him first,” Ariele said peremptorily, pulling Tilby back when she would have started forward.

  Tilby pouted, and Eloc Teel said, “You’re depraved, Ariele—how can you want to do that one? Look at his skin. Do you think he was born mottled like that, or does he have some kind of disease?”

  “It’s tattooing,” she said, impatiently superior. “You know that. Like a sibyl—”

  “Hardly.” He made a face.

  Ariele lifted her middle finger, let it droop, significantly, in front of his face.

  “Do you suppose he’s tattooed all over—?” Tilby asked, with wide eyes.

  “Let’s find out.” Ariele pushed between them, making her way on across the crowded floor. But as she reached the gaming table where the offworlder was playing, she saw him withdraw his hands from the golden hallucination, saw it beginning to fade from the air. She squeezed in beside him before he could back away through the crowd, edging aside a youth with night-black skin and hair, and a man whose head barely topped the height of the table. She saw startled surprise on both their faces, and utter boredom in the piercingly blue eyes of the player himself. Intentionally she brushed up against him, letting the curve of her body slide along his hip as her hand grasped his arm. “Teach me,” she murmured, to his face.