The Summer Queen

by Joan D. Vinge

  TIAMAT: Carbuncle

  Sparks Dawntreader made his way through the gaming hell called Persiponë’s, following Kirard Set Wayaways with his usual sense of walking backward through time. There had been a Persiponë’s Hell in Carbuncle before the Departure, run by the Source; and he had had business with the Source then, as he did now. Sometimes it seemed to him as if he had begun to live his life in reverse, as if tomorrow had become yesterday, and his memories had turned back into reality, while reality faded further and further into a dream.

  But no— He couldn’t let himself start seeing it that way. He reached up, feeling the faint outline of the pendant he wore beneath his shirt; wore always, as he had once worn the medallion that had belonged to his offworlder father. It had a shape strikingly similar to the symbol above the entrance of the Survey Hall that BZ Gundhalinu frequented, farther up the Street—except that this one had a solii at its heart, one of the most valuable gemstones in existence.

  The resemblance was not a coincidence. He had learned that fact, along with many other things, since he had become a member of the Brotherhood—and of Survey. Gundhalinu had caused the local Survey Hall to induct Tiamatan members; he had been one of the first of its new members, along with Kirard Set. Those things had changed his life forever.

  Once he had understood the existence of the Great Game, and had become one of its players, he had felt his perception of the universe and his place in it expand a thousandfold. He sensed the entropy going on at all levels, the endless struggle between Order and Chaos—and how easily Chaos could overcome Order with a single touch, no matter how the stars in their courses and human beings in the course of their lives struggled to maintain their bearing. Chaos had constantly driven a random finger into the motion of his own life, destabilizing him at every turn. Now, at last, he had stopped struggling against entropy’s flow, and had chosen to embrace it. At last he saw clearly, even in the darkness.

  They entered a darkened hallway at the back of the club; the garish noise of the club’s nightlife faded as if they had passed through some kind of field, which maybe they had, although he had sensed nothing beyond the sudden chill of anticipation he always felt when he reached this point.

  They took the lift at the end of the hall—a box so amorphous that it could have been an empty closet, and probably passed for one. There was a sense of motion after the door/wall sealed; upward, he thought, though he could never be sure, even of whether it was the same motion, or for the same length of time, from one visit to the next. It could all have been random—which suited.

  The featureless wall/door in front of him opened, revealing a meeting room. It was not the one he had always seen before, large enough to contain a gathering of two dozen or more members of the Brotherhood. This room was smaller, although it was otherwise almost identical, with walls whose colors shifted in a slow, almost hallucinogenic way. He looked away from them uneasily, focusing on the lone man who sat waiting at the table.

  “Good day to you, Reede Kullervo,” Kirard Set said.

  Kullervo laughed once, as if Kirard Set had said something incredibly stupid. He looked away from them in disgust, his knuckles drumming on the tabletop with a hard, insistent rhythm. “You’re late,” he muttered, to the wall.

  Sparks wondered whether he was speaking to them. They were not late; although this was not the Brotherhood meeting he had been expecting. His resentment of Kullervo’s attitude tightened another notch. He had disliked Reede Kullervo from their first meeting; Kullervo was by turns sullen and hostile, and always arrogantly superior. And more than that, Sparks had the uneasy feeling that he was not simply moody, but actually crazy. Kullervo appeared to be nothing more than one of the Source’s brands; he was the last person Sparks would have thought to find included in this unexpected intimacy. “What happened to everyone else?” he asked.

  “There was a change in plans,” a voice said, seeming to come at him out of the walls. The Source. The sound of that voice made his flesh crawl, even without the physical manifestation of it, which was beginning now across the room. He watched darkness begin to gather at the head of the table, impossibly, out of nothing. The shadow deepened until there was a formless but undeniable presence among them. Sparks told himself that it was only a projection, a hologram. But he knew the reality behind it existed, here somewhere.… He forced himself to sit down with Kirard Set and Reede at the table.

  “There was a situation,” the Source’s corroded voice went on, expressionlessly. “The meeting was postponed. But the Brotherhood wished to hear about your progress in your various activities, and so I am here to receive your comments. Sparks Dawntreader—”

  Sparks pulled his attention away from Kullervo, from watching the sudden, feral hatred in the other man’s gaze as he watched the darkness take form. A trickle of sweat ran down Kullervo’s cheek; his mouth quirked as the drop passed it.

  Sparks nodded, trying not to focus as he faced the darkness.

  “How is your exquisite wife, the Queen? And have you had any success in your attempts to convince her that she would stand to profit from extending her protection to certain of our interests, and opening this port to a…” the voice smiled, “wider spectrum of trade, as her mother did?”

  Sparks shook his head. “Not much,” he said.

  The Source made a disgusted noise. “So your wife is still besotted by her ex-lover, the new Chief Justice—?”

  Sparks felt his mouth thin; feeling Kirard Set’s eyes on him, and Kullervo’s. “The Queen, my wife,” he said, “is getting everything she needs from the Hegemony.” He twisted the tight line of his lips into a smile. “So, unlike Arienrhod, she really doesn’t need either one of us.” He shrugged. Kullervo snorted with amusement; Kirard Set’s mouth inched upward in grudging respect.

  “How unfortunate.” The darkness at the end of the table seemed to transform in a way he could not define. “Well, in the real world there are always several answers to any given question.… Kirard Set Wayaways—how is your charming family?”

  Sparks shifted in his seat as the Source’s indefinable attention moved away from him.

  “My son is lusting after Ariele Dawntreader, as usual. My wife is lusting after anything that can make her feel younger. This week it’s a cosmetic surgeon, I believe.”

  “And what progress has been made in spreading the idea of the return of Winter to power at the Assembly’s visit?”

  “Good progress,” Kirard Set murmured, with a faintly superior smile. “Most Winters are for it. Even the Summers are so infected with an itch for progress that they might accept a transfer of power, if the Queen keeps the balance of trade skewed by refusing to allow exploitation of the water of life … as long as the Change is brought about in the traditional way. Which suits our purpose admirably—”

  “What do you mean, ‘the traditional way’?” Sparks demanded, leaning forward.

  “By drowning the Queen, of course,” Kirard Set said.

  Sparks froze, staring in disbelief, one part of his brain perversely aware of how absurd the expression on his face must be. “You motherlorn bastard. You sit here and tell me to my face you’ve been plotting to sacrifice my wife at the Festival, like it’s a matter of changing your tailor? Do your plans include drowning me too, like Arienrhod’s did—?” He pushed halfway out of his seat.

  “Ye gods,” Kirard Set said, wincing and putting up his hands. “As hotheaded as ever, after all these years. Sit down, Sparks, and let me explain.”

  “There is no real danger of the Queen being sacrificed … or, more pragmatically, yourself, Dawntreader,” the Source said coldly. “That is not the point of this exercise. You must learn to stop taking everything at face value, if you are ever to rise within our circles. You will never see the opportunities here, any more than you see them in your own life, if you assume everything is exactly what it appears to be.”

  Sparks settled back into his seat, managing somehow to keep the betraying rush of blood from reddening his
face. “Forgive me,” he murmured. “Enlighten me.”

  “This is about the Queen, yes; but it is more about your rival, BZ Gundhalinu. He is in love with your wife—and only he has the power to override her wishes in the matter of releasing the water of life. We want him in the position of being forced to choose which is more important—protecting her, or protecting the mers. Either choice will cause him considerable difficulty and grief.… If he is caught in the bind between sacrificing the Queen, and violating her obsessive protection of the mers, which do you think he will choose?”

  Sparks was silent for a long moment. “I think he’ll choose to let the mers die.… But that’s exactly what the Golden Mean wants him to do anyway. Then they’ll control the water of life, not the Brotherhood. What do we get out of that?”

  “In the short term, until we achieve our own independent supply, it gives us simple availability. As long as the drug is actually being made, we have ways of getting our share. In the long run, the benefits of forcing this choice on the Chief Justice and the Queen are many, and not all of them are necessarily obvious to someone like yourself. For your own part, as a loyal Brother, be satisfied with the knowledge that this will cause no pain to you, and considerable pain to the man who is trying to steal your wife.”

  “And even your children,” Kirard Set murmured, raising an eyebrow. “How are Ariele and Tammis bearing up under all this?”

  Sparks looked at him, cold-eyed. “I told you before, I don’t have any children,” he said. “So you’d know that better than I would.”

  Kirard Set grimaced, in what Sparks supposed was meant as apology. “Well, I suppose Kullervo knows more about Ariele’s intimate emotions than any of us, these days. How would you describe her, Kullervo?”

  Sparks turned to look at Kullervo, feeling disbelief hit him in the chest as he imagined his daughter—not his daughter, but—his daughter in the arms of that walking deathwish.

  Kullervo froze, caught by their mutual stare in the act of biting his knuckle. He lowered his hands to the tabletop, knotting his fingers together. Sparks saw the livid marks his teeth had left on his own flesh. “Did you ever have intestinal parasites, Wayaways?” he said, looking at his hands.

  “No,” Kirard Set answered, nonplussed.

  “Too bad,” Kullervo said.

  “Yes…” the Source murmured, “do tell us about your relationship with Ariele, Reede. You’ve been with her almost every night, for some time now. This is a first, since Mundilfoere.…” His voice trailed, and Sparks saw Kullervo stop breathing. “Does she remind you of your lost love—?” The words were dark with insinuation, and threat. “Is she perhaps responsible for your failure to produce the blood sample you require for your research?”

  “No.” Kullervo’s face went gray, as if he were suddenly in such terrible pain that he could not even cry out. He took a deep breath. “I told you what happened,” he said thickly. “I fell. I lost my weapon.… Ariele Dawntreader knows a lot about the mers. She spends a lot of time with them. I’ve been stringing her along because I want what she knows. She’s not my type.” He looked up again suddenly, almost defiantly, at the waiting darkness. “I’ve never even touched her.” He glanced briefly at Sparks, and away again.

  “So you’ve only been collecting her data, that’s all?” the Source repeated, with heavy amusement.

  “Yes,” Kullervo said.

  “Yes—?” the Source chided gently.

  Kullervo’s mouth tightened. “Master.” He looked down again. Somehow on his lips the Source’s chosen form of address sounded more like a curse than a lackey’s obeisance.

  “Dawntreader—” the Source said suddenly; Sparks looked toward the darkness. “I understand that you have produced something else which my man Kullervo would find interesting.”

  Sparks felt his own mouth tighten. “What do you mean?”

  “You also have a large accumulation of data about the mers, having studied them for years since your retirement, I understand.”

  “My retirement?” Sparks repeated slowly.

  “From being Starbuck for Arienrhod. From killing them,” the Source said. “Is that true?”

  Sparks felt anger corrode him like acid, wondering why he had been brought to this meeting, unless it was to see how much abuse he could take. His paranoia began to spread, cancerous; until suddenly he remembered what the Source had said to him: that he would never succeed, here, until he learned to see beyond the obvious. Maybe they were testing him: his loyalty, his ability to restrain his mercurial temper, his potential. He gazed at the hypnotic flow of color on the wall across the room until he was under control again. “It’s true,” he said steadily. “I suppose you could call it a love-hate relationship.” He looked at Kullervo. “What’s your interest in the mers, Kullervo?” he asked, keeping his voice neutral, forcing himself to take nothing for granted, even the unlikely possibility that Kullervo had a brain.

  Kullervo’s restless hands had begun to tremble visibly, even though he held them prisoner on the tabletop. The heavy ring set with soliis that he wore on his thumb rattled suddenly, loudly on the hard surface, and he pulled his hands into his lap, hiding them from view. “It’s a love-hate relationship,” he muttered.

  “You’re too modest, Reede,” the Source said. “My man Kullervo is a bioengineering genius … he is the one you have heard called the Smith. He knows more about smartmatter than anyone living … including himself.” He chuckled sourly. “He is applying his—unique mind to the problem of synthesizing the water of life, just as he did with the stardrive plasma. Without his help, BZ Gundhalinu would never have succeeded in reprogramming it.”

  Sparks stared at Kullervo; Kirard Set stared with equal disbelief, beside him. He almost laughed, sure that it must all be a bizarre joke, and unable to imagine what the point of it was.

  “Isn’t that right, Reede?” the Source urged gently.

  Reede straightened up in his seat, raising his head in what could have been pride, or defiance, as he faced down their stares. His trembling hand rose to his ear, making the crystals of the elaborate jewelry he wore ring sweetly, incongrously, in the sudden silence of the room. “Yes,” he whispered.

  For a moment Sparks had the unnerving feeling that a total stranger looked out at him through Kullervo’s eyes. In that moment Sparks felt his incredulity turn to belief, and a dark, bottomless terror filled him, the way the Source filled his vision, seeming all at once to inhabit the entire room. “I’ll get the data together for you as soon as possible,” he said, to the prisoner inside Kullervo’s eyes. “I don’t know how much use it will be, but it’s yours.”

  Kullervo nodded, abruptly; he looked down and away, with a muscle twitching in his jaw.

  “Don’t belittle your own achievements, Dawntreader,” the Source murmured. “You have quite a remarkable mind. You’ve been wasting your life here, among these illiterates on this backwater world. But finally you are among people who appreciate your gifts. Your years of work and study will be put to profitable use at last.… Why don’t you go now, and see that it happens.”

  Sparks looked back at the darkness in surprise. “Then the meeting is over?” he asked, trying to make the Source’s unexpected praise and his equally unexpected dismissal form a coherent whole.

  “It is,” the Source said, in a tone of voice that made him sorry he had asked, “as far as you are concerned.” Sparks looked down. “There are certain Brotherhood matters which do not concern you, which require the attention of Wayaways and my man Reede. You have fulfilled your part in the process, Dawntreader. Rest assured.”

  Sparks pushed to his feet, avoiding the eyes of the other men in the room. He nodded, and left the table. The lift doors opened, as if they had been waiting for him.

  * * *

  “Reede…” the Source’s voice said, as Sparks Dawntreader disappeared into the lift.

  Reede pulled his gaze back unwillingly, a part of his mind caught in a daydream of changing places with the
man being sent away. His eyes glanced off of Wayaways, registering the satisfaction on the Tiamatan’s face as he watched Dawntreader banished while he stayed behind; sitting here as if he knew everything, as if he knew anything. He had been a member of the Brotherhood for years during the Snow Queen’s reign, but he still had no idea what kind of mire he was sinking into. Reede met Wayaways’s stare, watched its smirking arrogance falter as it collided with his own unshakable despair.

  Reede turned to face the darkness again, forcing his eyes to see the vague suggestion of a humanoid form within it, and not to look away. “What?” he said, his voice rough. He knew that the Source was actually here on Tiamat now; that whatever was on the other side of that projection saw him clearly, saw him sweating and hurting, the telltale signs of deterioration because he had been kept waiting too long for the water of death. He didn’t know whether this delay in his scheduled dose was meant as punishment or persuasion; he only knew that it was intentional. And that at last he was about to know why.

  “Ariele Dawntreader,” the Source murmured.

  “What—?” Reede said again, uncomprehendingly.

  “I know that nothing more … intimate has occurred between you and the Queen’s daughter than simple conversation. But she wants more than conversation. She wants you, Reede.”

  Reede froze. “So what?” he muttered. “It keeps her talking about the mers.”

  “What she knows about the mers is useless, for your purposes. You know that as well as I do. Why do you keep seeing her?”

  “It’s not useless,” he said stubbornly. “I need all the data I can get.”

  “You need a blood sample! She saved your life … and she stopped you from getting the one thing you really need to develop a replication of the technoviral. She has been a hindrance, not a help, in your work: she’s actually made you wonder if you have a conscience, hasn’t she?”