The Summer Queen

by Joan D. Vinge

  “I’m glad,” BZ said, and smiled.

  She looked up again. “BZ, I wanted to come sooner. I tried. They wouldn’t even let me see thee, until KR Aspundh intervened, somehow. He sends thou his highest regards, and regrets that he could not come with us. His health is poor right now, and he isn’t permitted to leave the surface. He said to tell thee that he is doing all he can to help thy cause, that he knows these charges are unjust.”

  “Tell him I’m grateful, and wish him a swift recovery.” BZ nodded and smiled. “My attorneys tell me that the Central Committee is trying to suppress what happened on Tiamat, calling it a matter of Hegemonic Security, in order to keep my side of it from the people. They can’t afford to let me have any kind of access to the public record. But Pernatte himself sent assurances that when my trial comes up there will be Hegemony-wide media coverage. He’s the head of the Secretariat, and he’s always been one of my strongest supporters.”

  Pandhara opened her mouth; closed it again, with an odd frown working the muscles of her face. “I don’t even know, myself, what happened on Tiamat, BZ. They would not even tell me what thou had been charged with.”

  He felt his own mouth tighten. “With treason. ‘Secretly working to undermine the Hegemony’s security.’”

  Pandhara looked stunned—exactly the way he had looked, when he had heard the full charges. “But that carries a sentence of life imprisonment, if thou’re found guilty.”

  Without reprieve. He nodded, glancing away. “At least I’ll still be alive; we’re civilized, after all.… And it’s not like I’ll be sent to the Cinder Camps. Wherever I am, I’ll be able to work to change their minds. They won’t send me anywhere too unpleasant,” he repeated, trying to reassure her. “They owe me that much.” He forced himself to smile, and shrug. “Let’s take it as it comes, Dhara. I haven’t even been tried yet. If I make my case well enough, I’ll be exonerated.”

  The stricken look did not leave her face; but she nodded, controlling herself with a visible effort. “How did it happen, BZ? Who brought the charges?”

  “It was Vhanu,” he said.

  “Vhanu?” She leaned forward in disbelief; the baby squeaked, and dropped his ball. She reached down to pick it up, and he knocked it out of her hands. She handed him a flutterstick, her eyes still on her husband. “But Vhanu was like a brother to … to thee.…” She broke off, biting her lip.

  “Yes,” BZ whispered. “Like a brother.” He shook his head. “From the day we arrived on Tiamat—long before that, really, but I didn’t want to believe it—we didn’t agree on anything about the way the Hegemony should be running things. I should have seen it coming … but I couldn’t afford to. The irony is that the real problem wasn’t even the one I thought I was going there to deal with. That was no problem at all, in the end. Instead it was the water of life.… Gods.” He leaned back in his chair, drained. “It can’t have been meant to happen like this.”

  “And what about the Queen?” Pandhara asked, her voice betraying only the slightest hesitation. “Was she involved in what happened?”

  He looked up, to see both regret and understanding fill her eyes. “Yes,” he said. “Our—relationship was the thing that turned the situation critical.” He looked down again, remembering the humiliation of his arrest, of being dragged from Moon’s bed in the middle of the night and taken away. He forced the memory out of his thoughts. “Dhara, I … I have two children on Tiamat, too. Moon was pregnant, when I left there before. I didn’t know it. They were grown, by the time I got back.” He looked at the child in her arms, beyond his reach, and was filled with a vast, aching emptiness. He sat very still, afraid that any motion would make him lose control. He could not afford to do that to her now, or to himself. He could not, he could not.…

  She was silent too, watching him watch their child. “I’m so sorry,” she murmured, at last.

  “Don’t,” he whispered, shaking his head. “The—the worst part of it was—” he forced himself to go on speaking, clearly and evenly, “that I would have had to make the same choices, even if I hadn’t still been in love with her. It was true, I was needed there. I had to go back, I had to do what I did. I wasn’t crazy, I wasn’t wrong. Tiamat is far more important to the Hegemony than anyone knows, and the mers are more vital.… And yet it came to this.” It was his love for Moon that had driven him to return to Tiamat. It was only their passion for each other that had revealed the truth of his purpose there to him. And yet, the only mistake he could see that he had made was to love her, to consummate that love. It was flouting the restrictions of his position, and the sensibilities of his people, that had made him vulnerable and brought him down, leaving Moon there alone to bear the inescapable geas that had been laid upon them both. “Damn it, I’m ready for this trial! Maybe that’s why I’m back here, to challenge everyone’s perceptions about the situation, to tell the truth—”

  “BZ,” Pandhara said, in sudden anguish, “there isn’t going to be a trial.”

  “What?” he said.

  “They’re not going to give thee a trial, they won’t let thee be heard.”

  “No, they will, Dhara. I’ve been assured—”

  “They’re lying to thee!” she said. “KR told me that the Secretariat is passing judgment on thee itself.”

  “That’s impossible—”

  “Everyone has been lying to thee, even Pernatte, even thy own attorneys.” She turned, looking back over her shoulder, as the doors on both sides of the room burst open, and uniformed guards came in. “They were watching!” she blurted. “They lied about everything!”

  He pushed to his feet. “Go to Aspundh! Tell him no one knows the real truth but Moon. He has to contact her—” The guards reached him first, dragged him back away from the barrier.

  “BZ!” she cried, but suddenly he couldn’t hear her voice anymore; the guards reached her, seizing her by the arms. She pulled away as they tried to force her toward the door. The baby began to wail, soundlessly; she stopped resisting, and let them lead her out, still looking back.

  “Tell him—!” BZ shouted. The guards forced him through the doorway; the door closed behind him, and that was the last he saw of her.

  TIAMAT: Carbuncle

  First light seeped into the restless underworld below Carbuncle, limning the black-on-gray silhouettes of rigging and hoists, decks and docks, painting the human forms silently waiting there with a sullen glow. The sky brightened with every heartbeat as Moon watched it. A road of molten light formed on the surface of the sea, leading out from the place where she stood on the final length of pier, toward the shimmering disk of the emerging sun. “Now is the time,” she said, with the cold wind of dawn blowing through her soul. “Bring him forward.”

  Jerusha PalaThion and the squad of constables led Kirard Set Wayaways through the taut silence of the small crowd of witnesses, to stand before her. Below the pier a boat waited, with two more constables aboard, both Summers. “Kirard Set Wayaways,” Moon said, meeting the empty terror in his eyes without remorse, “you stand before us accused of acts of violence and betrayal, both witnessed and suspected, against your own people. I do not have the power to judge you—” her voice cut him like wire, “for I am not the true Lady, but only a vessel for Her Will. Therefore, I commend you to the Sea’s judgment, under the traditional laws of our people.”

  “You’re insane!” Kirard Set snarled. “Your rituals have nothing to do with me. I’m a Winter, you can’t do this to me—”

  “Tell that to Arienrhod,” Moon said softly, feeling as if she would strangle on the words, “when you see her—”

  She looked away, hearing a murmur of noise ripple through the crowd behind her. Jerusha touched her arm, pointing.

  A squad of Hegemonic Police was making its way toward them through the maze of docks and moorings. She saw their leader raise a hand, stopping his men a short distance away.

  “Thank the gods—” Kirard Set mumbled. “I knew they’d come. I knew they wouldn’t
let you do this to me, you insane bitch— Help!” he shouted. “Help me! They’re trying to drown me! Stop them!”

  Moon saw weapons show among the constables, all of them Summers, at Jerusha’s signal.

  The officer left his squad and came toward them, his hands peaceably at his sides. “Lady.” He nodded respectfully in Moon’s direction, before turning to Jerusha. “Good morning, uh, Commander PalaThion.” He saluted, as if in apology for stumbling over her new rank.

  She returned the salute, with a faint smile of acknowledgement. “Good morning, Lieutenant Devu. What’s a patrol doing down here on the docks, at this early hour? Not standard procedure, is it?”

  “No, Commander,” he said, giving Moon, and the crowd surrounding her, a slightly uncertain glance. “Commander Vhanu ordered us to hunt mers. We’re about to board our ship and do that.” He gestured behind him at the waiting Blues. Moon realized that they were carrying different equipment than she had ever seen on them before; realized suddenly what the equipment was intended for. She saw Jerusha stiffen; felt her own body go rigid. “But first, Ma’am, maybe you’d explain to me what’s happening here? You know that under the rules of martial law assemblies of more than ten people are restricted.” He jerked his head at the crowd. “What are you doing to this citizen?”

  “It’s a trial,” Jerusha said. “He’s being tried on charges including kidnapping and drug dealing.”

  Devu frowned. “Here? Now?” he said, “Like this?”

  “According to the laws of Summer, Lieutenant,” Moon said. “He is going to be judged by the Sea.”

  “They’re going to drown me!” Kirard Set shouted. “Help me—”

  “You’re going to drown him?” Devu asked, his frown deepening.

  “He will be taken out into the open sea, until the shoreline is no longer visible,” Moon said evenly, “and left there to swim ashore. Whether he drowns or not depends on him. The Sea Mother will judge him. That has been the law of our people, for centuries.”

  “It’s obscene!” Kirard Set said. “You can’t let them do this to me—you’re a Kharemoughi, a civilized man, for gods’ sakes!”

  “And I am the autonomous ruler of my people.” Moon lifted her head. “He is one of us, and he has broken our laws, not yours, Lieutenant.”

  “What’s his name?” Devu asked, glancing at Jerusha.

  “Kirard Set Wayaways Winter,” Jerusha said, shifting her weight from foot to foot, with her stun rifle cradled casually in the crook of her arm. “A Tiamatan native.”

  “Wayaways?” The lieutenant rubbed his chin. “Hm,” he said, and nodded, with an odd, random smile. “Not our jurisdiction.” He began to turn away.

  “Stay if you want to,” Moon said. “Watch our system of laws in action. Watch how the Sea deals with those people who offend Her sense of justice—”

  Lieutenant Devu looked abruptly uncomfortable again. “Some other time, perhaps. We have to get going.”

  “Give the Commander my greetings,” she said, fixing him with a stare. He bowed, nodded to Jerusha, and was gone, walking rapidly.

  “No—!” Kirard Set wailed, but he did not look back.

  Moon waited, watching the offworlders until they disappeared into the geometry of masts and machinery. Finally she turned back to Kirard Set, who stood silent now, glowering at her. “The Mother of Us All is waiting,” she said. She nodded toward the ladder behind him, that led down to the boat riding at low tide beside the floating pier.

  “I’ll be back—” he said, with defiance and desperation.

  “If the Sea wills it,” Moon answered steadily. “But if you live, don’t return to the city. She may forgive you, but I never will.”

  He turned away from her, his face livid with impotent rage; he glanced out into the crowd, as if he were searching for someone. Whoever it was, he did not find them. He turned back again, and moved slowly to where the ladder waited; went slowly down it. “The hell with all of you,” he said, before his face disappeared.

  Moon moved to stand at the rail as the small boat with its Summer crew and Winter prisoner unfurled its crab-claw sail and started outward along the golden road. “Arienrhod!” Kirard Set screamed suddenly, looking back at her with eyes like coals, and she did not know what he meant by it.

  As she watched the boat grow smaller in the distance, she realized that someone else had come to stand beside her at the rail. She turned her head, wondering whether Danaquil Lu Wayaways had decided at the last moment to attend, and witness his cousin’s ordeal. But it was Tirady Graymount, Kirard Set’s wife, who stood beside her, and their son Elco Teel. Moon realized that she had not seen them in the crowd before this moment, either. The woman’s face was pale and hollow-eyed—with anguish, Moon thought. But her mouth, as if it had a life of its own, was smiling. She held an empty liquor bottle in her clenched fist; her other arm was around her son, holding on to him possessively as she watched her husband sail out toward the horizon. She raised her fist with the empty bottle in it suddenly; hurled the bottle with all her strength out into the sea. “I hope you drown!” she shouted.

  Elco Teel put his arm around her shoulders, turning her away from the rail again. There was no expression at all on his face, as he led her back through the crowd.

  Moon watched them go, feeling neither surprise nor compassion. She saw the astonishment on some of the faces around her; saw Jerusha shake her head. Standing alone, she looked out to sea again, watching the boat grow smaller. On its stern she could still read the name she had painted there with her own hand: Ariele. Behind her the crowd began to separate and drift away. She did not leave the rail until she had watched the boat out of sight.

  * * *

  Moon took her place at the head of the meeting table in what had once been yet another of the palace’s echoing, unused chambers. When she first came to live in the palace had reminded her of the countless ornaments it held: a jeweled shell, empty and without purpose. She had been afraid of it, frightened by its immensity and the power of all it represented—Arienrhod’s past, a kind of desire that seemed completely alien to her, yet which must exist somewhere inside her, too.

  But the secret sentience that had compelled her to succeed its Queen had compelled her to remain here, within reach. In time she had come to accept the palace and all it held as simply a part of the greater pattern of her life. The palace itself was neither good nor evil, no more a matter of her choice or lack of choice than anything else, in a world that had seemed more and more random and beyond her control.

  And as more time passed, adversity had freed her to see everything she looked at in new ways. The offworlders had forced her to house the Sibyl College within the palace’s walls, and the College had filled the rattling emptiness of its chambers with activity and purpose.

  Now, when she looked around her at the beauty of the sculpted detail along the ancient ceiling line, the newly painted murals, even the graceful forms of the aging, imported furniture, she saw the artistry of the human minds and hands that had created them. They had become a symbol of the potential that existed in her, around her, within the women and men—Summers, Winters, and offworlders—who had helped her to build the future that she had been driven to seek. She realized that seeing longtime friends and trusted companions against the setting of this place had become one of the few things in her life that brought her pleasure.

  And now, she thought, as the image of the Ariele disappearing into the sunrise overlaid her vision, they were her only hope. She glanced down at the recorder in front of her and the pile of printout data that she had had laboriously hand-copied, after Vhanu had shut down her computer system. She looked up again, at Tammis beside her, his eyes filled with concern—seeing in his eyes three lives: his own, his father’s, the life of the unborn child that Merovy carried. By right there should have been nothing but joy in her as she looked at him, seeing the future and the past; but she could not feel anything, not even grief. A clear, impenetrable wall seemed to rise between h
er and all emotion, allowing her to see what remained that was right and good in her life, but not to take any comfort in it.

  She looked on around the circle, seeing the intent, worried faces of Clavally and Danaquil Lu, Fate Ravenglass with her vision sensor like a shining crown, the two dozen other sibyls who were waiting expectantly. She could not tell them everything; but she knew that at least she could trust them to give her the data she needed without a full explanation.

  She called the recorder on, and the eerie chorale of the mersong filled the air. She watched their expressions change: the peace, pleasure, surprise and incomprehension that overtook them as they listened.

  And then she told them all she could, explaining the part they must play to complete the fragmented mathematical sequences hidden inside the songs. She passed them the copies of the data she had collected from Sparks’s files—thinking of him suddenly and painfully, thinking about the strangeness of the parallel lives they had come to lead. She described his work to the assembled sibyls, wondering as she spoke what would come of the journey he had taken alone; whether he would bring their daughter back from the place the Ondineans called the Land of Death, or be lost there forever with her. There were few questions from the people listening around her; none that she could not answer.

  With a few final words about urgency and secrecy, she left them to their work. She made her way back through the halls into the upper levels of the palace; offices, libraries, studies passed in a pale blur of exhaustion. She had not slept at all last night, lying rigid and alone in her bed through the interminable hours before the ritual at dawn. Now that she had done all she could, about everything over which she had any control, the last of the momentum that her fury had given her had spent itself.