The Summer Queen

by Joan D. Vinge

  Moon saw the shadow of doubt that had clung to the other woman ever since the moment when they had begun their descent into the Pit. “Jerusha, are you afraid of me?” she murmured.

  Jerusha looked at her for a long moment; shook her head, finally. “I’m only afraid that Vhanu won’t rest until he knows how you did that.” She gestured toward the glowing well.

  Moon looked behind her, and away again, without answering.

  “What about the mers?” Jerusha asked. “Is the return of the city’s power all you brought back?”

  Moon hesitated. “No.… But it was all I had that I could use as leverage with Vhanu.”

  Jerusha frowned, and Moon saw her doubt deepen into frustration. “Then maybe we would have been better served if you’d driven a harder bargain,” she said. She gestured at the vial. “Reede Kullervo hardly seems worth what you’ve just paid for his life.”

  Moon felt a pressure growing in her chest. “It isn’t just his life—it’s Ariele’s. Reede Kullervo may be able to save my daughter.”

  Jerusha grimaced apologetically, and nodded.

  “And beyond that, he doesn’t deserve to die—and he doesn’t deserve to be used any longer, by anyone. I intend to see that he is not.” Moon turned away, starting back across the bridge toward the heart of the palace.

  Jerusha followed her wordlessly as they traveled back through the endless halls and chambers to the room where she had left Reede.

  Clavally and Danaquil Lu looked up as she entered, with Jerusha behind her. Merovy sat beside Clavally, her eyes closed, her head on her mother’s shoulder, while Clavally stroked her hair with soothing, rhythmic fingers.

  Moon went to Reede’s bedside. His eyes were closed too, and he did not acknowledge her presence when she spoke his name. “Reede,” she said again, afraid that this time he actually did not hear her. “I have the water of death.” Speaking its name left a bitterness in her mouth.

  His eyes opened; he looked up at her face, down at the vial she held in her hand.

  “Can you make more of this?” she asked, kneeling down beside him. “I’ll find laboratory space for you—”

  He shook his head. “Can’t.”

  “If you drink it—” She held it out to him, her heart beating too hard. “If you drink this, you’ll have the strength to make more.”

  His swollen hand twitched on the bedclothes, lifted—dropped. “No good,” he whispered. “Start from scratch, takes too long, two doses won’t buy enough time. Save it. Save it for Gundhalinu. If he makes it back he can help you … save her.” Ariele. He shut his eyes again, as if the sight of the vial was a kind of torture.

  “It’s not too late. There has to be a way to help you—” She put her hand on his arm.

  He swore, gasping; she jerked her hand away. “Cut my throat,” he said, his eyes filled with hatred.

  She pushed to her feet, holding the vial; hesitated. “How much do you love my daughter?” she asked softly, and saw his face tighten with pain. She looked down at the vial. Slowly, as if she were moving underwater, she lifted her free hand and broke its seal.

  “No!” Reede said. “Stop her—”

  “Moon!” Jerusha leaped forward, catching her arm. “By the Lady and all the gods, what are you doing?”

  Moon held her gaze, until Jerusha’s hand dropped away. “BZ said that the water of death is a failed form of the water of life. That means it uses a kind of smartmatter as its base—isn’t that right?” She looked toward Reede.

  “Yes, but…” He pushed himself up onto an elbow, swearing with the effort. “It’s defective. I didn’t have … the right control environment … or equipment, when I made it. There’s no way to fix it. I tried, and tried … I couldn’t find a way.”

  “The sibyl virus is also a form of smartmatter, isn’t it?” Moon asked. “All the existing forms are related.”

  He nodded, frowning.

  “BZ told me that you and he found a way together to reprogram the stardrive plasma when it was damaged … to ‘vaccinate’ it, he said, to alter its function.”

  “Yeah,” he murmured. “What’s the point?”

  “There is a perfectly functioning form of smartmatter in my body, and the sibyl mind acts through it. If I take the water of death, and go into Transfer, I will be the laboratory—the net can interact with the drug through me to alter its function.”

  “Moon!” Danaquil Lu rose from his seat. “He said it’s not possible. You can’t know whether this will even work—”

  “Unless I try it,” she finished for him. She turned back to Reede. “Do you think your … the sibyl net’s AI can do that?”

  “Gods. I don’t know.…” He groaned faintly, falling back onto the bed as his strength gave out. “Maybe … maybe it could. But if you’re wrong,” his eyes found hers again, “this is how you’ll die.”

  She looked away from his face, at the innocuous silver metal vial, open now in her hand.

  Jerusha’s hand fell on her arm again. “By the Bastard Boatman, Moon—” Jerusha whispered. “Your son is dead, and Reede Kullervo is not going to take his place! He’s the man who addicted your daughter to a fatal drug! You can’t take a chance like this for a man like that. What if you both die?”

  “Then you will bury us at sea, I suppose,” Moon murmured.

  “What about the Hegemony, and the mers—?”

  “What about them?” she said, her voice raw. “For years, the sibyl net has made me give it what it wants, no matter what it cost me. It’s stolen half my life from me. And his too.” She looked at Reede, feeling the uncomprehending stares of the people around her. They had done everything for the sibyl mind that it had been humanly possible to do. “Now it’s time for it to give us something back, something we need. Or else it will get nothing from me ever again.” Lady, hear my prayer.… She felt a sense of impossible freedom and terrifying resolve, and she realized that the geas that had controlled her for so long had finally, truly, released her. She raised the vial to her lips and swallowed half its contents, so quickly that no one could stop her—not even herself. She pressed the vial with the remaining sample into Jerusha’s waiting hands. “Input—”

  She fell away down the hidden well inside her mind, the access into another dimension, where once she had seen only the blackness and utter silence the sibyls called the Nothing Place. But now that she knew how to listen, how to see, her vision revealed to her the corridor of light that bound her to Her, to the mated minds of the net’s creators, joined with Her own, the past and the future combined, the Dreaming Place. Lady, help us, she thought, prayed, demanded. For the love of Vanamoinen, give us back what is only our right. Give us back our lives. Heal me. Gazing backward through the golden filament that bound her to the sibyl mind, she saw her own body as a glittering network, each cell winking briefly as the multiplying water of death invaded and seized control of it, death imitating life.

  And what she saw, She saw … forced to look back through the eyes of Her timebound avatar at the fragile, fleeting lives of Her servants, Her nerve endings, Her tools, witnessing their pain with inescapably human vision. She saw Reede Kullervo: the expendable vessel who had carried the essence of Vanamoinen’s mind. The vessel meant to shatter, once Vanamoinen had completed the task he had returned to do; because for Vanamoinen’s mind to go on existing, sharing the same continuum with Her enemies, was a danger to Her.… And yet her human eyes bore witness to his human suffering, forcing Her to see that in Her desperate effort to survive and be healed. She had violated the reason for Her own existence. She had betrayed the servants whom She had been created to serve; in Her suffering She had wounded the very parts of Herself that had been called upon to heal Her wounds.

  But because they healed Her. She could see clearly at last: could see Reede/Vanamoinen’s desperate hunger to survive, to claim his own brief moment in time, now that his will had been set free. And She could see, in the timeless sea of Her own existence, that the survival or death of Reede/Va
namoinen had been/was/would be no more than a ripple-ring of randomness.…

  And She could see the fatal error spreading like poison through the body of Her avatar, as clearly as She could see the pitiless chains of Her own making that had driven Moon Dawntreader to an act of defiant self-destruction that was also a prayer. But She was no longer pitiless, or soulless, or blind. A vast compassion filled Her, and She knew that because She had been healed, She must heal their wounds, if She could.…

  And Moon saw that with her entrance into the hidden nexus, and her awareness as she had guided Her reprogramming, she had cast a reflection on Her soul, just as Vanamoinen and Ilmarinen had done in their original act of creation. She was not even certain now whether she looked back on her existence with her own mind, or the sibyl mind’s mirror image of it. But she knew that it did not matter. For this moment she was all things, she could grant her own wishes, anything that lay within Her power. If there was an answer to be found in the uncharted depths of Her knowledge, she would find it.

  She looked in through the open windows of the sibyl virus, which existed already in every cell of her body … knowing that in each of those already-altered cells lay a potential trap for the new invader, if she could only find the trigger. With vision that could simultaneously track every alteration in the activity of all of those cells as precisely as if she were threading a needle, she analyzed the schematic of the water of death, noting its similarities to the programmed structure of the real smartmatter; recording its minute, fatal structural flaws.

  With free access to the full spectrum of the Old Empire’s technological knowledge, and the processing power of a computer that spanned worlds, she searched for secrets hidden since the Fall; knowledge judged better forgotten by the individuals who had brought it to its highest form. Manipulating the interactions within her body, she tried key after key in the lock of the water of death. But each time, it defied her.

  She searched deeper and deeper into the heart of Her existence, into the workings of the technovirus that was Her very essence. Her own key to open the locked doors of the universe … into the uncharted depths of wisdom and unwisdom of her long-dead ancestors.…

  And at last she found it: the transformation process that would render the deadly invader of her body step by step harmlessly inert, to be swept away by the normal processes of her restored body functions. But her elation colored with grief, as in that same moment she saw that even a miracle had its price. And she had no choice but to pay it.… She sent the electrochemical sequence to the waiting interactive network, the flesh and blood computer, the living laboratory that was her body, waiting at the end of the bright strand which bound her to Her.…

  And as the sequence was completed, she felt herself called, as inexorably as before, as unwillingly, back into her own existence at the Transfer’s end. But she carried with her the echo of lightmusic, like a mother’s blessing, as her contact faded, rippling, and turned inside out.…

  “Moon.…” Voices surrounded her, too solid, too real, like the hands restraining her body, as the colors of an infinite spectrum became the colorless light of day. “Mother…” she whispered, “thank you, Mother.…” She was on her knees; she let herself fall forward, felt the soft, hand-tied fibers of the rug press her cheek.

  Something was still happening inside of her, the residue of changes at the molecular level as profound as those that had occurred when she had first been infected with the sibyl virus, and changed so irrevocably.…

  She pushed up again, dizzy and faint; found herself face to face with Merovy’s concerned, uncertain eyes.

  “Are you all right, Ama?” Merovy murmured, touching her shoulder gently, almost hesitantly.

  She nodded, sitting upright, rubbing her face, her eyes. “Ah, Lady…” she whispered, incapable of anything more, as realization followed realization, out of the realm of formless radiance and into the spectrum of coherent thought. Slowly she allowed herself the knowledge that she would live, that she had been spared, that she had answered her own prayers … more slowly she began to see what remained to be done; and to comprehend what the cost had been. She sat, strengthless and motionless, a moment longer, pulling her thoughts together enough for speech. “Merovy … bring your medical kit here.”

  Merovy brought the kit to her. Clavally and Danaquil Lu were behind her back, supporting her now. “Do you have a syringe?” Moon asked. “A large one, for drawing blood.” Merovy nodded. “I want you to draw some of my blood. Inject it into Reede’s vein. The water of death is dead.”

  Moon got to her feet, feeling giddy, feeling her own veins burn as if her blood were superheated. Clavally and Danaquil Lu rose with her, still supporting her. “Reede,” she said; saw his pain-filled eyes already on her, saw him afraid to hope.

  Merovy looked up from her medical supplies, “But—”

  “Moon,” Clavally said, “if you do that you’ll infect him with the sibyl virus.”

  Moon shook her head, turning to look at them. “It won’t happen,” she said faintly. “I’m not a sibyl anymore.”

  “Not a sibyl—” Danaquil Lu broke off.

  Clavally’s eyes widened. “But I thought that was impossible,” she murmured.

  “No,” Moon said, with tremulous laughter. “There is a place where everything is possible.” She moved to Reede’s bedside. Merovy followed her, and took blood from her arm. Moon watched it flow, deep red, with an odd detachment, almost disappointed that it did not show gleams of a strange light.

  Merovy turned to Reede, with the syringe in her hand; Moon saw her hand tremble slightly as she looked at him. Merovy glanced up again, her eyes reminding Moon that no one had been able to bring their son and husband back from the dead.

  Moon looked away.

  “Lady…” Reede whispered. “It’s true—?” He lifted a hand, reaching out to her.

  “Yes.” Her fists tightened at her side, as something grieving inside her balked at taking his hand. But she reached out, folding her fingers gently around the swollen flesh of his own. She held his arm steady as Merovy, taking a deep breath to steady herself, injected the blood serum into the lurid track of a vein dying by poison.

  Reede stiffened, making a sound that made her shudder. He murmured something in a language she did not know, as the needle came out of his arm. And then his body went slack; his grip loosened, his fingers slid from her grasp.

  Moon glanced at Merovy, watched her check for a pulse. “He’s still alive, Ama…” Merovy murmured. She laughed once, a chirrup, half of relief, half of bitter irony.

  Moon took Reede’s limp, dangling arm, settled it gently at his side on the bed. She turned away; swayed suddenly, as reaction struck her. She took a step forward. Jerusha’s waiting arms caught her as she fell, and that was the last she remembered.

  BIG BLUE: Syllagong, Men’s Camp #7

  “You look too cheerful,” Bluekiller said, as Gundhalinu emerged from his creaking hovel, dragging his equipment pack after him.

  Gundhalinu climbed stiffly to his feet, bracing himself against the full impact of the wind, shielding his eyes from the swirl of ash and cinders, the blinding brilliance of the setting sun. This workshift he barely noticed the bite of the cold air, the sting of grit against his skin. He could feel himself smiling, unable to stop it. “I had a good dream last night,” he said. He still thought of the time he slept, habitually, as “night,” although in fact it was this world’s day: during most of it the sun was eclipsing behind Big Blue, making their days as black as pitch and freezing cold. They worked at night, in the endless twilight of Big Blue’s reflected planetshine. The only time they saw real daylight was for a few brief minutes at sunrise and sunset. He looked toward the sun, as a vision of golden light enfolded him, and her voice, whispering, Sleep, my beloved … soon.… “A good dream,” he murmured.

  “Musta been,” Bluekiller muttered, scratching his beard. As the days passed Gundhalinu had grown used to the other man’s distorted speech, until now he u
nderstood it without much trouble. “Otherwise I think you lost your mind, Treason. Only a shufflebrain smiles when it’s workshift here. Or when it’s not.…” He shrugged. “Good dreams are maybe good omens. Maybe we find a fresh harvest today.”

  Gundhalinu sighed, pulling on his pack. “Nice thought,” he said, stuffing a ration biscuit into his mouth. Usually he was the first one up, ready and waiting, wanting to avoid Bluekiller’s volatile temper, or Piracy’s unfavorable notice. But today he had slept late, warmed and eased by the dream’s hallucinogenic reality, for once not wanting workshift to come and end the cold, interminable hours that passed for his time of rest.

  He chewed and swallowed while Bluekiller watched impassively. It could have been a cake of pressed sawdust he was eating, from the flavor and consistency; but it kept him alive, and so he assumed it was nutritious. He washed it down with a gulp of water from his canteen. Most days the act of eating only left him feeling hungrier, just as waking from a dream left him feeling emptier. “Let’s go.”

  Bluekiller picked up the rope of their sledge and yanked it into motion, as Gundhalinu shoved it from behind. The sledge’s runners made a high whining, an endless protest, as they moved out through camp toward the lifeless plain. Gundhalinu glanced at Piracy’s hovel as they passed, as he did every workshift; seeing the dead plant that sat beside its door, a withered seedling in a container filled with ash. Piracy had smuggled the seeds in from a trip to the perimeter fort; had tried to make them grow. They had sprouted, like hope … and like hope they had withered and died. There was not enough light to support photosynthesis. The only things that survived here were the bacteria and parasites within a living human body.

  “You dream about your woman?” Bluekiller asked, just when Gundhalinu had begun to think he was not going to. Gundhalinu seldom spoke unless spoken to; still half afraid, after what had been done to him when he arrived, that even Bluekiller might suddenly turn on him and break his neck over some casual remark.