The Summer Queen

by Joan D. Vinge

  Moon only shook her head again. “Get me … get us out, Jerusha. Out of here.”

  Jerusha nodded, helping Moon toward the ladder, and up. Moon caught the hands waiting for her up above, was pulled free from the reeking prison of the car. She stood inside a lamplit circle of familiar faces, the arms around her reaffirming her existence in the world to which she had finally found her way home.

  Clavally and Danaquil Lu supported her as Merovy brought her strong medicinal tea. She took it in her hands and drank it down, her eyes on the figures emerging now from the car’s glowing interior. Jerusha came first, reaching back to pull Reede up the final few feet of the ladder, half-dragging him out onto solid ground at the Pit’s rim. He collapsed as she let him go; she left him like a broken doll at the edge of the well. The others turned expectantly, looking past him. “Tammis?” Merovy called, her anticipation turning to concern as no one else appeared.

  “Merovy,” Moon said, her voice as thick as treacle in her throat. “He isn’t coming.”

  Merovy turned to look at her, looked toward the Pit again, with an expression that Moon felt in her bones. “Yes, he is,” she insisted, with mindless conviction. “He went with you. He’s coming—”

  “He’s not coming,” Moon whispered, feeling her own eyes brim. “He’s dead, Merovy.” Her hands closed over the heavy stuff of her sweater, twisting the sodden yam. “He’s dead.”

  Merovy’s face emptied; her hands pressed the gentle swell of her belly. “How—?” Her voice squeaked like an unoiled hinge.

  “I killed him.”

  Reede’s voice made them all turn. Moon saw him stagger to his feet, a man climbing out of his own grave to stand before them. She heard Merovy’s guttural cry of anguish. Jerusha looked back at him, staring.

  Merovy started forward, her face contorted with rage and loss; her mother caught her, holding her back. “Why?” she screamed.

  “It was an accident,” Moon said; the words lacerated her throat. “Tammis saved his life.”

  “Why? Who is he?” Merovy cried, and there was no answer that Moon or anyone could give her. “It isn’t fair, we have a child—”

  Her mother held her close, pinioning her struggles. “You have a child…” Clavally murmured, holding her tighter. “You have his child, my heart; take care of the child.…” hushing her as she began to sob. The sound of Merovy’s grief magnified in the vastness of the room until it seemed to Moon as if the entire world wept. Clavally and Danaquil Lu looked up at her over their daughter’s hidden face, in sudden, terrible understanding.

  Moon turned away, unable to face their compassion, afraid of breaking down. She looked toward the Pit. “I saved the world,” she murmured, with sudden bitterness, “but I lost my children.”

  She saw Reede move, out of the corner of her eye; saw him starting for the Pit’s rim. “Stop him!”

  Jerusha caught him in two strides, knocked him aside as he reached the edge and tried to fling himself over. She subdued him without effort, forced him away from the rim, back toward the people who stood in silent judgment of him.

  He fell to his knees. Her hands stayed on his shoulders, holding him there; but Moon could see that she needn’t have bothered. He glared at them, his face lurid with fresh blood, his eyes wells of despair. “You want to watch me die?” he spat. “Watch it happen then, damn you!”

  Moon moved toward him, feeling as if her own body had become the body of an old woman, stiff and slow and full of pain. She stopped, looking down at him. “Who are you?” she asked.

  He lifted his head; let it fall again, without speaking, when she had seen the impossible truth still in his eyes.

  “I don’t want you to die,” she said softly. She put her hands against his face as he tried to turn away, her touch as gentle as if she held snow. “I want to help you. Tell me how.”

  He shook his head slowly, wetting her hands with blood, staring up at her again in utter confusion. But he only said. “You can’t. I can’t.”

  “You said that the Police took all the water of death you had, when they arrested you?”

  “Yes,” he muttered wearily.

  She glanced at Jerusha. “Would they still have it?”

  Jerusha shrugged. “Maybe. But it’s not likely they’d hand it over to us.”

  “On humanitarian grounds—?”

  Jerusha laughed humorlessly. “To save the life of a criminal you’re sheltering from the Hegemony? Under the circumstances, I’d say it’s bloody unlikely.”

  Moon moved away from Reede’s side. “Send a messenger to Vhanu, Jerusha. Tell him that if he wants the lights on in this city again, he’ll send the drug to me, no questions asked.”

  Jerusha stared at her. “I thought you had nothing to do with the city’s power going out.”

  “I didn’t,” Moon said.

  “But now you can bring it back?”

  Moon glanced away, into the dark reaches of the Hall of the Winds. “Yes,” she said.

  Jerusha stared at her. “I’ll send someone right away,” she murmured, “Lady.” She bowed, and went quickly from the hall.

  Moon turned back, to face Merovy and her parents, still waiting like mourners at a funeral. “Clavally, Dana, will you help me get Reede to a bed? I want him made as comfortable as possible.” They nodded, with doubt as plain on their faces as anguish, and their hands still on their daughter’s quivering shoulders. “Merovy,” Moon said quietly, “you have medical training. Will you see what you can do to help him? He’s in considerable pain.”

  Merovy blinked; the white, dumbstruck emptiness of her face slowly regained a suffusion of color, and for a moment Moon thought it was fresh anger, and refusal. But Merovy turned, forcing herself to look at Reede, and her expression wavered. “Yes,” she said finally, almost inaudibly, her eyes downcast. She came forward with her parents; still looking down, her hand pressing her stomach.

  Reede lifted his head, watching them warily as they approached. But he allowed himself to be half-led, half-carried up the curving flight of stairs, and back into the palace.

  Moon made certain that he was settled into a bed, used a cool cloth to wipe vomit and blood from his face with her own hands. She watched Merovy tend him as best she could with what medical supplies they had. Merovy’s face eased, her movements grew calm and sure as she worked, as contact with his flesh forced her to acknowledge his humanity.

  Reede lay with his eyes closed, breathing shallowly, as though he were unconscious. But Moon knew from the rigidness of his muscles, the stark whiteness of his clenched fists, that he was only trying to ignore their presence, their unasked-for intrusion into his suffering.

  At last, satisfied that she had done everything for him that she could, she left him in their care and went back through the dimly lit palace halls, down through the throne room and back to the Hall of the Winds. She stepped out onto the bridge above the Pit, feeling its siren light call up to her. She felt only a distant echo now of the many-colored splendor she remembered in her mind, but still it made her senses sing with yearning. The Lady …

  She breathed in the smell of the sea that rose up the well to fill the air here; a constant reminder of the presence of an unseen power, one that she had believed in profoundly in her island youth. Then there had been a goddess incarnate in the waters of the sea, who spoke through the lips of every sibyl, granting the special gift of Her wisdom only to the Summers, Her chosen people.

  That belief had been destroyed by her head-on collision with the ways of the offworlders, their far vaster and more sophisticated web of knowledge and deception. She had learned what she believed was the real truth about the sibyl net, and lost her innocence in the same moment. There had been no Lady any longer, except as the empty source of curses, through all the years since; only the ache of loss, whenever she had needed the strength of belief.

  But now at last she had seen the greater truth hidden within the lesser one of the offworlders’ cynical self-deception. The intelligence that
guided the sibyl net was not a supernatural force, but it was something more than human—other than human, although affected by human needs and desires. It was itself partly created of minds like her own, and it lay at the heart of Survey, influencing the fate of countless beings on countless worlds she would never even hear the names of.

  And the two separate but uniquely joined peoples of this world were its chosen ones in a way that was both natural and profound. She had not been insane, she had not been deluded, obsessed with power, driven by ambition—she had not been Arienrhod. She had been right. And all that she had believed had, in some way, been true after all.

  She looked down, unafraid, into the green light; and looking down, felt her mind recoil like a spring as she remembered her son … remembered suddenly what price she had paid to be Her chosen one, to serve the needs of the true Lady. A tremor shook her. She went on across the bridge, moving now by the strength of her own will, her own need and urgency, no longer controlled by any compulsion. She did not stop until she reached the other side. And there she stood alone, in the empty silence beyond the Pit’s rim, with the heels of her hands pressed into her eyes until the only light she saw was a burning brilliance of phosphenes.

  At last she raised her head, picking up her lantern, hearing the hollow echo of footsteps coming toward her. She saw another light appear ahead; saw Jerusha leading Vhanu himself into the Hall.

  She wiped her face hastily, lowered her hands to her sides. She read the unease that Vhanu could not entirely disguise at being in the palace without any escort; saw it turn to surprise as he found her waiting here for him, equally alone.

  “Lady.” Jerusha bowed. “The Commander has what you asked for.”

  “I am surprised to see that you brought it yourself, Commander,” Moon said, raising her eyebrows, hearing the coldness in her voice answer the coldness of his eyes.

  He made a brief bow in return. “Your offer was—sufficiently unusual, Lady, that I wanted to know for myself what lay behind it. And see for myself that you could keep your part of the bargain.”

  “I, for my part, never make promises I do not intend to honor,” she said. She felt Jerusha glance at her.

  Vhanu moved forward slowly, flanking her, until he stood beside her at the rim of the Pit. He stayed within the glow of her light but beyond her easy reach. Slowly again, he removed a small, silver-metal vial from his clothing. “I have what you want.” He held it out—suspended over the edge of the well. “Now tell me why you want it.”

  Moon’s breath caught; she saw the faint gleam of satisfaction come into his eyes. His glance took in her drab native clothing with a flicker of disgust. She realized that she had forgotten even to change, that she still wore what she had worn into the Pit, that her clothes were wet and stained and reeking of Reede’s sickness.

  She felt her sudden fear catalyze into anger at the touch of his eyes. “What I want to do with it is not your concern, Commander,” she said.

  “Your constables took a prisoner away from my Police yesterday: the man this drug belongs to. What you intend to do with it—and him—very much concerns me.”

  Moon took a deep breath. “He is an addict. So is my daughter. They need that drug to stay alive.”

  He glanced at the vial. “There isn’t that much of it.” He looked back at her without compassion, and her brief impulse to ask him for help in synthesizing it died unspoken.

  “That is my problem to solve, Commander,” she said, perversely glad that he had given her a reason not to beg him. “Your problem is getting the city’s power back. I can do that for you, if you give me what I want.”

  He arched his neck in an odd, craning gesture, as if he were trying to look behind her words somehow, and see if they were true. “What about the Smith?” he asked warily.

  “Who?” she said, before she could realize who he meant. “You mean Reede Kullervo.”

  He nodded, half frowning. “I want him back.”

  “He addicted my daughter. He caused my husband’s death,” she said flatly. “He—he drowned my son. He’s mine to deal with.” She felt Jerusha’s eyes on her again, their uncertainty unchanged.

  Vhanu’s frown deepened, but this time a fleeting, reluctant comprehension showed in his gaze. Finally he lowered the hand that held the vial out over the Pit. “I want him back,” he said, “and I want him back alive. He’s too important to us—” He broke off. “His apprehension is important to the Hegemony.” To Survey. She felt the hidden reach, the relentless hold of the secret order he served more faithfully than he served his government. She saw Reede, who had been the pawn of the Brotherhood, becoming the pawn of the Golden Mean; knew they must want possession of him, want to exploit his brilliant, stolen mind, as much as their rivals had.

  “You can keep him until the tribunal arrives, Lady.” Vhanu’s expression altered subtly. “Punish him in whatever way you choose. Just see that he lives.…” Barbarian, his eyes said, filled with contempt. “Will that satisfy you?” He held the vial out again, toward her this time, but still beyond her reach. “Bearing in mind that we could come and take him any time we wanted to, if we chose. So far I have tried to respect your sovereignty to the extent you allow me to—since I expect to be named the new Chief Justice soon.” His mouth imitated a smile.

  She folded her arms, clutching her elbows with her hands until the pressure was greater than that of the anger inside her. “I would be ungrateful to refuse your offer, since you show such consideration of our traditions,” she said, her voice toneless. “I will keep him, until there is a new Chief Justice. And then—” She shrugged.

  A fleeting unease touched him. He shook it off. “Restore the city’s power, Lady. Then you get this.” He gestured with the vial.

  She hesitated, seeing how close he stood to the rim of the Pit. She shook her head. “Give it to me first.” She held out her hand, saw him stiffen with refusal. “Give it to me. Or you get nothing.” Her hand fisted.

  His own hand tightened around the vial; his eyes were as black as obsidian. She held his gaze, unmoving, unyielding.

  He looked toward the Pit. After an endless moment he looked back at her, and nodded. But his expression held something more unexpected, and more disturbing, than simple capitulation. “All right, then,” he murmured. “But I want to watch; I want to see you do it.”

  She nodded slowly, surprised and uncertain. She held out her hand again, and he put the vial into it. She closed her hand and turned her back on him, stepping out onto the bridge. She moved without hesitation now, with no space left inside her for grief or doubt. Turning back to face him, suspended above what to him was darkness but to her was light, she saw his skepticism and barely concealed scorn … his dark, obsessive fascination. She closed her eyes, murmuring, “Input.” And although the only request was spoken inside her own silence, she felt the sibyl mind stir in answer, as she had left it waiting to do. For a moment she glimpsed infinity rolling like an endless sea.…

  She fell back into the present, swaying, catching her breath. She looked down, into the Pit; saw far below in the darkness a rising pattern of light—real light, not the secret radiance that she had moved through. The swell of energy spiraled upward like a licking flame, bringing the machinery alive, until it reached the rim and overflowed, filling the dark hall with incandescent light.

  She moved forward toward the illuminated faces, the motionless forms of the two people waiting in the sudden, unnatural day before her. “I have kept my part of the bargain, Commander Vhanu.”

  He backed away as she approached, staring at her, his pupils still dilated even though he was looking into the light. A tremor ran through him. She read disbelief in his eyes now, and fear. How? they asked. How—? She did not answer him, holding his gaze as steadily as if she could actually have told him the answer.

  He shook himself out of his gaping trance; looked at the vial still in her keeping. He forced all expression from his voice, but there was an electric tension in his movements,
a drawn tightness to his face, as he murmured, “And I have kept mine.”

  She tightened her fist over the vial, feeling an electric ripple of triumph.

  “By the way,” he said, his voice strained, “I have been told that the mers are being sighted again, in the waters around the city. Nothing else has changed. If the power goes out this time, I’ll know who to blame. And tell your people to keep out of our way, or they will suffer the consequences. Lady—” He bowed stiffly again, gave a brusque nod to Jerusha, and went quickly from the Hall.

  Moon bit her lips, looking down at the vial in her hands. She raised her head, called out to his retreating back. “It will come back on you threefold!”

  He spun around to stare at her, and she saw his expression clearly before he went on his way.

  Jerusha watched him go, making no effort to see him out. She turned back to Moon, her eyes troubled. “How?” she said. “You said you had nothing to do with the power outage.”

  “That was true,” Moon murmured, still seeing Vhanu’s haunted face inside her mind’s eye.

  “But you brought it back.”

  She shrugged, drained of strength and thought; searching for a way to explain honestly without telling the truth.

  “Was that what you did when you went down into the Pit?”

  “Yes,” she said gratefully, and let it go.

  “Moon.…” Jerusha hesitated. “What else happened down there? You were gone for hours. Tammis … was it an accident? Or did Kullervo—?”

  Moon shook her head. “No. Not Kullervo. Tammis … Tammis stood in the way of fate. It was his goodness that killed him, Jerusha.” And Miroe’s memory. But she did not say that. “I can’t … I can’t talk about it. Mother of us All—” Her hand tightened around the vial, trembling. “I can’t.”

  Jerusha held herself tautly, as if she were uncertain of what move to make, afraid to make the wrong one … afraid.