The Summer Queen

by Joan D. Vinge

  Vhanu sighed. “I know thou will do what is best,” he said; clearly not certain of it at all.

  “Yes.” Gundhalinu nodded, for once completely certain in his own response. “That I will do.”

  “Will thou come down to the Survey Hall with us this evening?” Vhanu nodded at Tilhonne and Sandrine, who were just emerging from the building behind them. “There is a general meeting, and some new recreational interactives have just arrived, I understand—” He put a hand on Gundhalinu’s shoulder in a placating gesture, trying to bridge the gap of their strained relations.

  Gundhalinu hesitated; shook his head, glancing down. “Not tonight, NR. I’m going directly home. I have reports to catch up on, and I intend to go to bed early.”

  “What, again? ‘Early to bed’ is becoming a habit with thee. And it seems to me that on the mornings after thou appear quite exhausted.…” He smiled suddenly, knowingly. “Are thou still seeing that woman thou met on Mask Night?”

  Gundhalinu felt himself flush, and knew that it was betraying him. “Well,” he murmured, “thou’ve found me out, I’m afraid, NR.” He smiled too, keeping his gaze averted, pushing his hands deeply into his pockets, which were empty.

  Vhanu chuckled. “Father of all my grandfathers!” he said. “She must be a spellbinder, to make a Chief Justice blush like a schoolboy.”

  Gundhalinu glanced away in relief as Inspector Kitaro came up beside them, carrying her helmet under her arm. “Sir. Justice Gundhalinu.” She saluted them, smiling. Her eyes stayed on Gundhalinu slightly longer than they needed to; he looked back at her, mildly surprised.

  “Coming to the Hall tonight, Kitaro?” Vhanu asked, as Tilhonne and Sandrine came up beside him.

  She glanced at him, and shook her head. “Not tonight, Commander. It’s been a long day. Thought maybe I’d get to bed early, sir.”

  Vhanu shrugged. “By all means, get some sleep, then.”

  She laughed, an oddly girlish sound. “Well, I didn’t say anything about sleeping.…” She tossed her head, her dark curls shining in the artificial light. She glanced at Gundhalinu again, and away, still smiling.

  Vhanu raised an eyebrow, made mildly uncomfortable by her Nontechnician frankness. He glanced between them, and an amused smile appeared on his face. “Have a good night then, both of you. Come, sadhanu, let’s not keep them from their evening’s plans.” He nodded to Sandrine and Tilhonne, and they started off down the alley in search of transportation.

  Gundhalinu murmured his own self-conscious good-night to Kitaro, vaguely nonplussed, and started away toward the alley’s entrance. She fell into step beside him, with seeming casualness. “See you to your door, sir?”

  He looked at her, his curiosity and surprise deepening, along with his annoyance. “No, thank you. It’s not much of a walk, and out of your way besides, I think. I don’t want to make you late—”

  “It’s not out of my way, sir,” she said, with mild insistence. “I have to stop at the market.” They passed Vhanu, Tilhonne, and Sandrine standing at the corner, waiting for the tram. Gundhalinu turned uphill, following the Street, and she went with him; he felt the eyes of the others follow them speculatively. “The Chief Inspector said she wanted to be certain there’s always someone covering your ass, sir,” Kitaro said, throwing a glance over her shoulder as she walked, with the pretense of looking into a shop window. “And people do like to talk.”

  “I see,” he murmured, finally beginning to understand. He studied storefronts and doorways on his own side of the Street. “I appreciate it, then. The gods forbid that the Chief Justice ever got caught bare-assed like a normal human being.” He looked back at her, with weary amusement.

  “Yes, sir,” she said.

  They went on up the Street together, making forgettable small talk about government business. If she had heard about the successful mer hunt, she did not bring it up. He did not ask her opinion. After all this time he knew almost nothing about her, except that she was a sibyl, and she was someone KR Aspundh had trusted. She was Nontechnician, and outside of the Survey Hall she did not mingle with the people he saw the most. He had no idea what she did off-duty, or what her interests were.

  He was not even certain at what level she actually functioned within Survey, although it was obviously a far higher one than most of his companions suspected. She had brought him the data on Reede Kullervo; and she had helped him solve other, less crucial problems, so unobtrusively that he only realized now how often she seemed to be there when he needed a favor. But all that guaranteed nothing about her feelings on the mer question. He did not have the strength, tonight at least, to put her opinions to the test.

  Instead, he asked, “Any luck yet in arranging a meeting with our elusive friend, the Smith?” Thinking of Reede Kullervo, as he had not had time to do these past few weeks, he suddenly realized something else: Kullervo was Vanamoinen. And Vanomoinen had created the sibyl net … the net that was failing. It could not be a coincidence. It had to mean something. But only Kullervo could tell him what.

  Kitaro shook her head. “We’ve come this close—” she lifted her hand, “but the timing has never been right. It isn’t that he’s hard to find; it’s that he belongs to the Source. Jaakola’s got eyes sewn into Reede Kullervo’s pockets. Getting him out from under the Brotherhood’s surveillance long enough for you to talk meaningfully to him is almost impossible.”

  “Almost—?” he asked.

  She looked up at him, and smiled. “The difficult we do immediately. The impossible just takes a little longer.”

  He smiled too; his smile faded. “This meeting has to happen, Kitaro. It could be vital to us all.”

  “I understand,” she said.

  Wishing that was true, he walked on in silence.

  “Good night, Kitaro,” he said at last, as they reached his townhouse door. He hesitated uncomfortably, wondering whether she expected to be invited inside. The sky was dark beyond the alley’s end; he hadn’t realized it was so late.

  But she only pressed her fist to her chest in a salute, with a fleeting smile. “Have a good night yourself, Justice,” she said, and started back down the quiet alley.

  He watched her out of sight, before he stepped forward into the shadows and set his fingers to the identification key on his front door. The door opened silently, letting him into the sanctuary of his home. It closed again, as silently, behind him. He pulled open the seal on his uniform jacket, sighing.

  “BZ—?” She stepped out of the glow of a lamplit side room, into the darkened hall. He saw her limned with light, her hair silver, her face half in shadow, half visible.

  “Moon.” He felt the tightness that was half anticipation and half fear of disappointment release inside his chest. He started toward her. “I’m sorry I was late … the meeting ran over—”

  “There was a successful Hunt,” she said, still standing motionless.

  He stopped moving, because she made no move toward him. “Yes,” he said, his throat closing on the word. “They must have changed the scheduling code, I—”

  She turned away from him, shutting her eyes, pressing her forehead against the doorjamb, murmuring something that he could not hear. “… offworlder butchers—!” She raised her head again, glaring at him.

  “Damn it all!” he said, the explosion of anger inside him not directed at her—directed at nothing, everything, himself; because he was the Chief Justice, and he was as helpless, as powerless to stop what was happening as she was … and she was the Queen. “It’s impossible—it’s insane!”

  She reached out to him, this time crossing the space between them, and he saw the anguish and the helpless desire in her eyes as she opened her arms.

  He took her into his own arms, holding her close, feeling the rough homespun and wool of her clothing, the yielding warmth of her body, the softness of her skin. He kissed her hungry, demanding mouth, letting all the raging energy inside him transform into need. He had never imagined that he could feel anything wit
h such intensity—that such feeling existed. He let his desire burn, purifying him of duty, guilt, memory, until the entirety of spacetime telescoped down to this moment, this fragile refuge, this hiding place from destiny. “Oh, gods,” he whispered, “I want you right now—”

  Her body gave him his answer, with her warm soft mouth silencing his own as she urged him wordlessly toward the stairs that led up to his bedroom.

  TIAMAT: South Coast

  “Look at them all!” Ariele raised her hands, shielding her eyes against the mirroring glare of the wet sand. The beach ran for nearly a mile along the coast, between two points where the foothills waded out into the sea. It was a rare, perfect strip of fine sand, as soft beneath her bare feet as velvet cloth. And it was covered with a shifting mass of mers—not a single colony, but several at once, sharing the same territory, the same resting place on a sudden, incomprehensible journey. “What are they doing here like this? Where are they going?”

  Silky rested beside her on the beach, the merling’s body pressing against her leg just enough to make pleasant contact without making her stumble. They had tracked the colony by the tracer the merling wore like an earring, which Jerusha and Miroe had given her when she was tiny; she had led them to this unexpected rendezvous on the beach. Silky had greeted them eagerly, obviously delighted to see them. She seemed content, now, in their company; but something indefinable about the way she held herself told Ariele that she was not.

  “They’re heading north,” Reede said, pushing back the hood of his parka. “All of them. I don’t know why, but they are.” He wore a parka while she wore only a thin shirt and pants, and had rolled-up her sleeves and pantslegs; he dressed as if it were the middle of Winter whenever he left the city, no matter how hot the day was. He looked at the merling beside her; smiled almost involuntarily as he began a series of questioning clicks and trills.

  Silky cocked her head, and then suddenly lunged forward, butting him in the stomach. He sat down with a grunt of surprise in the sand. He began to laugh; climbed to his feet again, rubbing his bruised pride. “Damn. I guess that wasn’t the question.”

  Ariele looked at him in mild amazement. She had never heard him laugh like that, easily and freely; it struck her how rarely she heard him laugh at all. “Your pitch was off,” she said. He shrugged, extending his hand to her in invitation.

  She repeated the run of sounds, watching Silky warily. The mer moved her head in a rhythmic series of nods, and answered with a run of tonal mer speech. Ariele frowned, repeating the sounds in her mind, breaking them down into comprehensible fragments. “‘A presence’…” she translated slowly, “‘and a need’…”

  “‘It’s there,’” Reede murmured. He laughed again, suddenly. “‘Because it’s there’—?”

  She grinned and punched him in the shoulder. “You—” She broke off as Silky interrupted her with another, unexpected run of trilling. “That was mersong,” she said, looking back at Reede; seeing the recognition in his eyes. “Do you think it’s about that … that there’s some kind of gathering, where they share songs—?”

  “Yeah,” he said, crouching down, face to face with the mer. “That may be it … it feels right to me.” Silky nuzzled him with her lips in a brief apology, and he buried his face in the warm, dense fur of her neck. She allowed him the intimacy, snuffling his hair in unspoken affection.

  Ariele smiled, knowing that she would have been jealous, except that she knew, herself, how helpless she was to resist Reede Kullervo. He sat back in the sand, locking his arms around his knees, watching the mers in motion on the sand, his face rapt. She wished again that he would come with her into the sea, dive with them, swim with them. The sea was their world, and never to be with them there was to miss the true, profound beauty of their existence. But he always refused her, brusquely, without explanation. She supposed it was his ordeal trapped among the rocks that made him so afraid.

  “How far do you think they’re going? Is this the gathering place?” She looked away along the beach again.

  He shook his head. “They’re going to Carbuncle.”

  “Carbuncle?” she repeated, looking down at him. “Why?”

  His face clouded over. “I don’t know.” He picked up a handful of sand, let it slip through his fingers. “I don’t know.…”

  “Lady’s Tits, Reede!” she said, exasperated. She brushed irritably at the springflies buzzing around her ear. “How do you know those things? Why do you know them? You pick them out of the air like a radio, and then you’re right! I can’t stand you—”

  “Liar,” he said. The man who loved the mers, who seemed completely real only outside the city, surprised her with a sudden grin. His arms reached out, catching her by the knees to pull her down, laughing, into the sand beside him. “You can’t live without me, you told me so.”

  He tried to kiss her; she pushed him away suddenly, squinting out to sea. “Wait. Wait a minute. Give me your lenses, Reede.” She pulled them off his head, pushed them down onto her own face. She climbed to her feet again, searching the horizon.

  “What is it?” He got up, beside her.

  “Something’s out there—” She scrambled up the outcrop of rock beside them, stood high above him, looking out to sea, ordering the lenses to full enhancement. “Ships! It’s the Hunt—can you see them? They’re coming this way.” She went cold in the pit of her stomach.

  Reede swore. “Are they coming after us?” he demanded. “Or after the mers?” She felt him climb up to where she stood; unable to take her eyes away from the sight framed inside the lenses. “Yes,” she said faintly.

  He took the goggles from her as he reached her side, slipping them back onto his own head. “Anything flying out there—?” She squinted into the sun, shielding her eyes with her hands. “No. They only use ships. The hovercraft look too alien; sometimes they make the mers uneasy.” She could see them clearly without the lenses’ enhancement, now that she knew. A mer’s singsong demand reached her; she looked down, the motion giving her vertigo, to see Silky peering up at her in curiosity from below. “Reede—” She caught his arm, shaking him. “They’re coming! What are we going to do?”

  He looked around at her, pushing the goggles up again. “We’re going to get the hell out of here. If they catch us trespassing we’ll be in shit up to our necks.”

  “They can’t do anything to us,” she said, startled and angry. “My mother is the Queen.”

  “Mine isn’t,” Reede said. “They’ll kick my ass off the planet.”

  “But you work for my mother. She’ll—”

  “Don’t argue, damn it!” He took hold of her arm, urging her to climb down.

  She jerked free. “Reede, they’ll kill Silky!” Even though the hunting had begun again, the mers continued to live as if they had nothing in this world to fear. Reede had told her that it was because their lives were so long: they felt no urgency, and so they had no fear of death, no desire to compete, no need for the kind of material culture that humans were driven to create as a lasting monument to their fleeting existence. They lacked even the vocabulary to warn each other about the kind of mortal danger they were in now. “Lady’s Eyes,” she cried, “they’ll kill them all!”

  Reede looked away along the beach. His mouth pulled back in a grimace. “Shit,” he said, “shit!” clenching his hands. “Come on, then, help me!” He clambered back down the rocks; she followed him, skinning her exposed flesh raw. He reached into his equipment pack, pulled something out and began to program it.

  “What—?” she gasped.

  “A sonic. It’ll panic them into the sea. It’s what the hunters use, but it’ll save them if we use it first. Except it’s not enough to affect this many of them—” He pitched it with all his strength out into the mass of bodies. Mers began to stir and shrill in complaint.

  “Silky!” Ariele called out, called to the merling again with trills a mother would use to call its child. She ran toward Silky, waving her arms, grimacing, trying to sprea
d her own growing panic any way she could. Behind her Reede shouted out something in the mer speech that she couldn’t make out. Silky jerked up short, staring at them. She turned, suddenly, and floundered away down the beach toward the water. Reede went on shouting, running at the mers, his sudden erratic behavior driving them reluctantly into the waves.

  Ariele looked up again, as more brindle bodies disappeared into the sea. “Something’s happening—” She pointed at the horizon, trying to make out a clear image. Reede pulled his goggles down, and stopped short to watch. He laughed once, in triumphant relief. “The Lady heard your prayers,” he muttered, peeling the glasses off. He pushed them at her. “The Summers have come.”

  She grabbed the lenses, watched through them with her blood singing as the handful of Summer fishing boats intersected the course of the larger offworlder fleet. They were still too far away for her to see the action clearly, but she knew about Capella Goodventure’s holy war, knew that her mother’s support lay behind it, making it possible. She felt a sudden pride and purpose, as if she were looking through her mother’s eyes; and she realized all at once that there was something they shared, something far more important than any superficial physical resemblance.

  Reede jogged her arm, silently demanding the goggles back. She gave them to him, with a crow of delight. “They’ll stop it,” she said. “They’ve done it before. My mother protects them from the offworlders—”

  Reede swore, suddenly and viciously. “No! No, damn it—!”

  “What? What?” she cried, straining to see.

  “Those Blue fuckers! They rammed a boat. They’re boarding her.… Gods, that’s another one. It’s breached—”

  “No! Lady and all the gods—” Ariele turned, looking away along the beach again in desperation. She crouched down, picking up stones until her arms were loaded. She ran toward the uncomprehending mers, hurling rocks at them, shouting.

  “Ariele!” Reede called. “Get back to the flyer! Come on!” He started after her.