The Summer Queen

by Joan D. Vinge

  She searched his face as he looked back at her. “Truly? I’ve been very careful: I haven’t touched the things that are timeless.” She gestured at the ornately carved mantel, which had been a part of the original house. He knew it was at least a millennium old. “I would never do that—”

  “I know,” he said. “I’ve seen everything else thou’ve done here. I trust thy judgment implicitly.”

  “But it is thy home—”

  “It’s thy home.” He put a hand on her shoulder. “Thou live in it; I’m only a visitor. The gods know, my father kept it like a museum; he never allowed a damn thing to change in this entire place, for as long as I could remember. And HK and SB ran it into the ground.…” His mouth twitched. “Make it thine. Dhara. It is thine.”

  She shook her head, putting her hands on her hips; her smile struggled with something that looked like exasperation. “Gods! Must thou always be so insufferably good-natured and kind?”

  He laughed. “Thou think so? Ask my programmers and crew chiefs, when they glitch on me or fall behind.… Ask Vhanu, when his staff double-schedules me with the High Command and half the Coordinating Committee—”

  “Well, all I know is, thou make me want to—”

  His remote began to beep. He looked down and swore, clapping his hand over the noise. He crossed the room in half a dozen strides, ordering the side-table terminal below his wife’s newly hung painting to take the call.

  Vhanu’s face materialized, looking urgent. “Goddammit, Vhanu,” Gundhalinu snapped. “It can wait—I said I’m off-line. No exceptions!”

  Vhanu’s imagine said evenly, “We’ve got the departure date, Commander. It’s been approved.”

  “Tiamat—?” Gundhalinu breathed.

  “Yes, Commander. I thought you’d want to hear that.” Vhanu hazarded a wary smile.

  Gundhalinu nodded. “Yes … thanks, NR.”

  “My regards to Gundhalinu-bhai. Have a good visit, BZ.” Vhanu cut contact, the table top went opaque. Gundhalinu stood a moment longer, gazing at the painting, at its cascading golds and shadow-greens, a distant haze of blue. He turned away at last, facing his wife.

  “Thou’re leaving,” she said. “For Tiamat. Soon.”

  “Yes,” he said.

  She looked down, folding her arms, hugging her chest. “Ah, well.” She looked up again, smiling at him. “Congratulations, BZ … I know what this must mean to thee, after thou’ve waited so many years; after all that thou’ve done to cause it to happen—”

  “I make thee want to—what?” he said.

  “What?” she repeated.

  “Thou started to say, that when I’m insufferably kind, I makes thee want to…?”

  “‘Rip thy clothes off,’” she said, expressionless. “Thou make me want to rip thy clothes off and make love to thee right here on the floor.” She turned on her heel and went out of the room.

  He stood motionless, staring after her, for a very long time.

  * * *

  Gundhalinu sat on the warm, solid wall of the western wing balcony, sipping a drink that seemed to be completely tasteless. He looked at it, looked at the pitcher on the low, random-edged table made from a slab of polished gnarlstone, and remembered that he had told the servo to bring him water. He sighed, and looked out across the dusk-blue valley again; feeling the wind ruffle his hair with a casual hand, listening to the screel of white-winged sikhas circling high in the air overhead. The western edge of the house sat closest to the rim of the pinnacle on which it had been built; from here his view was unobstructed, and he could actually see the ocean when the weather was clear. It was clear today, as it had been yesterday, so clear that he could count the offshore islands.

  He had called KR Aspundh and asked him to come to dinner, after he received the message from Vhanu. Aspundh would be arriving from somewhere across that sea very soon. It would be doubly good to see him now, considering the news. Because it would probably be the last time they would ever meet … and the last chance he would have to contact Moon, before he arrived on her doorstep with the sword of the Hegemony’s might hanging above him in Tiamat’s sky.

  He heard someone come out of the house, and turned where he sat. His breath caught as he saw Pandhara crossing the balcony, formally dressed for dinner. Suddenly he could not take his eyes off her; he felt as if he had never really looked at her before. Her hair was elaborately styled with carven combs and glittering pins; a loose, fluid robe of red moved around her as she walked, covering her conservatively from neck to foot, and yet clinging to her body everywhere, changing what it revealed from moment to moment.… He looked away, finally, before she reached his side; struggling against frustration and sudden arousal, wondering if she had done this to him deliberately. But he remembered her on the night they had met; remembered that she was simply a beautiful woman, with the sensibilities of an artist.

  It was only a joke, she had said to him, last night, when she had finally come back into the room, clean, neatly dressed in robe and slacks, and perfectly composed. She had only meant to make him laugh; it had happened at the wrong moment, she was dreadfully embarrassed.…

  He had assured her that he understood; but it had taken him nearly an hour to turn her back from an excruciatingly polite stranger into the quick-witted, laughing woman whose pungent humor and chameleon moods he had been looking forward to sharing for weeks. She had shown him her latest works-in-progress; they had played two games of chama instead of one.

  And then, as they sat together drinking lith on the west wing balcony, watching the shifting colors of the night, he had told her about Tiamat. She had not asked him to, but he had seen in her eyes her need to understand, and knew that he could not leave her without any explanation at all.

  And so he told her about the sheltered young Tech who had gone to Tiamat full of romance and arrogance, certain of his place in the universe, and its justification. He told her what Tiamat and its people had done to him, to teach him that pain and brutality and futility were his real fate. Death before dishonor. He had sworn the blood oath with his companions at school, never believing that he would ever come to such a place; that, held captive by nomad thieves, caged like an animal, he would take the sticky lid of a food can and slash his own wrists, praying to die.…

  But he had not died. And then his captors had given him Moon—another dazed hostage battered by fate, a hapless Summer girl caught up in the motion of a Game beyond her comprehension.… Or at least that was what he had believed, then. An illegal returnee who claimed the sibyl net itself had sent her back to Tiamat, on a kind of holy quest. He had thought she was slightly mad. Only afterward had he come to realize how much more she really was … after she had won their freedom, his grudging respect, his unwilling heart … after he had lied to and betrayed his own people to help her reach Carbuncle; after he had become her lover, and led her to the man she was desperate to save, the man she was actually married to … only after she had become the Summer Queen, and he had left Tiamat without her, without betraying her. Leaving forever, or so he had thought.

  Only then, trying to rebuild his own life and career, had he realized fully what he had only sensed about her before: that she was right about everything she claimed. And he had believed then that he had been nothing but a meaningless pawn in the Great Game he had not even known the rules of himself.

  “And that’s what drove me into World’s End.” He shook his head, gently touched the trefoil sign. “And suddenly I was no longer only a pawn. I was changing history.”

  His wife sat silently for a long while after he stopped speaking, her arms wrapped around her knees, staring up into the sky. At last she looked down at him, and shook her head slowly. “Thou are worthy of thy ancestors,” she murmured, and took his hand, lifting it to her forehead in a gesture of admiration.

  He pulled his hand from hers in sudden impatience, and said, “I haven’t told thee everything.”

  She raised her eyebrows. “Do thou think thy ancestors told
the world everything—every single, terrible part of the truth?”

  He looked at her.

  “‘History’ is merely what someone thinks happened, Gundhalinu-ken,” she said softly.

  He stared at her, while behind his eyes he remembered being Ilmarinen, in the beginning: Ilmarinen his ancestor, who had committed treason for the greater good, and set the Great Game in motion.… He sighed. “Why is it that the obvious things are always the most difficult to see?”

  Pandhara touched him again, hesitantly; her hand slid down his arm and fell away. “Because if it weren’t so, life might actually begin to make sense.” She met his gaze, glanced away again as if it were painful. But her voice was cool and dry as she said, “And we couldn’t have that, could we?”

  And somehow after that there had seemed to be nothing more to say; so he had bid her good night, and gone off to his room. Even though he had gotten to bed far later than he had intended, he slept as poorly as a man on the eve of execution.

  This morning they had gone to Serakande Center, where the Art and Science Museum was featuring a show of her works. He had worn nondescript civilian clothes, and few people had looked at him twice. Pandhara had been the center of attention; he had enjoyed the luxury of standing unmolested in someone else’s shadow, watching the world interact with her, observing her grace and intelligence, the way her pleasure made her shine, the way it drew them to her.

  Afterward he had taken her to his favorite restaurant; the owner had brought them a bottle of imported Lilander, from her private stock. Later they had discussed art and politics in the comfortable darkness of a back-street tea shop, sitting with a handful of Pandhara’s old friends. They were all creatives, Nontechs who sat smoking spicesticks and making no concession to her new highborn status, or even to his. They had called him “sibyl,” and he had known that, coming from them, it was honor enough.

  And now the sun was going down on the last day he would ever spend on his homeworld; and as faint music drifted out through the open doors, he sat gazing up at the wife he would never see again, feeling as though he had never really seen her before. “Thou look beautiful tonight,” he said, with difficulty, as she lifted her hand to him in greeting. He touched it with his own, feeling the warmth as their palms met, his eyes never leaving her face as the words brought out her smile. “I am grateful to thee, for today.” He looked away at last, toward the sea. “I’ll carry it with me for a lifetime, after I’m gone.”

  “As will I,” she said, turning her own gaze to the sea. “BZ … last night I thought a great deal about all the things thou told me. And about things thou said thou had not told me—”

  He looked back at her.

  “Some of the things,” she said carefully, “I think were there all along, between the words. But—”

  “But thou need to know the rest.”

  She nodded.

  “I—” He pressed his mouth together. “Ask me. I’ll tell thee everything I can.” Realizing that what he did with the rest of his life could very well affect her, even half a galaxy away.

  She rested her hands on the stone-capped top of the wall; he saw the fingers tighten. “When thou asked me to marry thee, thou said thou did not want a—a marriage in fact, but only in name. Was it because of this woman on Tiamat, the one who became Queen?… Are thou still so much in love with her, after so long? Is that why thou’re going back?”

  “Yes,” he whispered, looking down.

  She leaned against the wall, her eyes still on him, her face uncertain. “Thou said that she had a husband?”

  “Yes.”

  “That thou had only one night with her?”

  “I only slept with her once. But it was more than that—”

  “I know. I…” She glanced away, lifting her chin. “But thou haven’t seen her since. It must have been—”

  “Twelve years. More than eighteen, for her.” He looked up again. “How do I know she still wants me? I can’t know, for certain. But Fire Lake showed me glimpses of my future … it showed me her. And—” He took a deep breath. “I’ve spoken with her, since I left Tiamat.”

  She stared at him, incredulous. “How? No one can even send a message—”

  “She’s a sibyl, and so am I. It’s possible … and that’s all I can tell you. I shouldn’t even say that much.” He glanced down. “I’ve communicated with her several times since I left. She knows what’s about to happen. She’s afraid of it. And she has every right to be. The Hegemony wants only one thing from Tiamat—the water of life. The Summers consider it a sacrilege to kill the mers, and the mers have been hunted close to extinction as it is. There is even evidence in the sibyl net that the mers may be sentient.…”

  “What?” she said, in disbelief. “But that means—”

  “Genocide.” He nodded. “If it is true, we’ve been committing genocide for centuries.”

  “Have thou told anyone about this?”

  He laughed bitterly. “I tried. No one on the Central Coordinating Committee wants to hear it. Pernatte made it very clear to me that further argument, or any public protest, could ruin my career.…” He shook his head. “If the Queen resists new hunting, which she will, that will give the Hedge the excuse it needs to trample them into the mud, the way it’s done for a millennium. That’s why I had to become Chief Justice. I have half a chance now to keep control of the legal system, to draw the line between government and exploitation.”

  “Are thou so sure that will happen, without thee?”

  He nodded, tight-lipped. “The signs are all there. Everything I hear. No one’s talking marriage upstairs, they’re all talking rape. The pols want easy profit, the Blues want an excuse to flex their new weapons technology, and everybody wants more power. The time lags were all that kept them from doing anything about building a new Empire, until now. Exploiting Tiamat is a perfect first step.”

  “But with the stardrive, the Hegemony will become a meaningful political and economic unit anyway.” Pandhara gestured with her wine glass, glancing up at the sky. “Even a marginal world like Tiamat will become a valuable resource; there simply aren’t that many habitable planets. Without the Old Empire’s starmap data to show us other inhabited systems, it could take generations to find even one world we aren’t already in contact with.”

  He nodded, pushing restlessly to his feet. “I know that. I make that point at every opportunity, upstairs. But it may take years before the Hegemony’s leaders see the big picture clearly. By then it will be too late for the mers, and maybe for the humans on Tiamat as well.”

  “Does Moon know that thou’re returning?”

  “Yes.”

  “How does she feel about that?”

  “I think … it makes her afraid, too.”

  “And thou—?”

  He looked back at her for a long moment without speaking; turned away, averting his eyes to the view of the land falling into shadow, the distant, gleaming sea. “I’m afraid,” he murmured at last, “that I don’t want to give this up, Dhara. I’m afraid that, after all I’ve gone through to reach this point, I don’t want to go back to Tiamat.”

  He felt her come softly up behind him where he stood, felt her arms slip beneath his and circle his chest, holding him; felt her warmth against his back, her hair gently brushing his neck as she rested her head on his shoulder. She said nothing more, did nothing more, only held him.

  Slowly, uncertainly, he lifted his own hands to cover hers. “I could stand here like this, looking out at this view, for the rest of my life,” he whispered, “and be perfectly happy.…” Thinking that he could run for the World Parliament, and be elected: work to redirect the fate of this world, his own world, instead of one whose people would probably only hate and resent him for it. “Right here, right now, I have everything that I ever dreamed of having—more. I feel respected, honored…” He moved inside the circle of her arms, turning until he faced her. “Even … loved?”

  Her arms tightened around him, as his o
wn arms closed her in.

  “Sathra, bhan, your guest is coming in—”

  Gundhalinu jerked guiltily as the estates manager stepped onto the balcony with a brief bow, found him embracing his wife, and hastily departed. Gundhalinu took a deep breath, realizing that he had every right to be found embracing her; realized that somehow he was no longer touching her at all.

  The compassion in her eyes as she took his arm to go in and greet KR Aspundh was, for the moment until she looked away again, more painful than the sorrow that lay below it.

  Aspundh looked at them both a little oddly, when they greeted him like a pair of mourners; but he made pleasant, innocuous conversation as they waited for dinner, and gradually Gundhalinu felt the tension leaving the air, letting go of his body. They all drank a great deal of lith, and somewhere in the middle of the main course Pandhara began to tell off-color jokes, which Aspundh unexpectedly found hilarious. Gundhalinu watched Aspundh laugh, in silent astonishment, too preoccupied to find anything amusing himself except the sight of the old man’s obvious pleasure.

  “Delightful, PHN—” Aspundh gasped, still short of breath. “And my compliments to your chef, my dear.” He lifted his glass to her, and washed down the last of the spicy, unfamiliar stew with another swallow of lith. “Best meal I’ve had in years.”

  “Thank you—” she said, and pressed her hand to her mouth, giggling as though it reminded her of another joke. “Did thou enjoy it, BZ—?”

  He nodded, feeling mildly out-of-focus. He had hardly been aware of eating at all, but his bowl was almost empty. “Excellent,” he murmured. “What is it?” He ate another mouthful.

  “Grisha,” she said, beaming. “My mother’s recipe.”

  “Grisha—?” He swallowed convulsively, and began to cough. “You mean we’re eating rat meat?”

  “BZ! How dare thou suggest it.” She looked at him in disbelief. “We are not eating rat meat. Don’t be such a bloody snob.” But she began to giggle again, helplessly. “Thou’ve never eaten grisha.…”

  “My father used to make it all the time,” Aspundh said. “I loved it.”