The Summer Queen

by Joan D. Vinge

  Everyone’s eyes were on him suddenly, staring. “The Smith?” Rimonne laughed. “There’s no such person. The Smith is a legend; he doesn’t exist.”

  “What if you’re wrong?” Reede said, staring back at him.

  Rimonne hesitated. His face pulled into a frown. “What kind of business would the Smith have with the Chief Justice of Tiamat—if the Smith existed?” He held his gun aimed more precisely at Reede’s chest.

  “It’s about the water of life,” Reede said steadily. “He needs what I know. I have to see him.”

  “That’s unfortunate, because he’s gone,” the lieutenant said. He smiled sourly. “And you’re under arrest.”

  “Gone? What do you mean he’s gone?” Reede said, feeling his mind stop functioning. Ilmarinen, you can’t abandon me again.

  “He was sent back to Kharemough, charged with treason. Police Commander Vhanu has declared martial law; he’s in charge now.”

  “No,” Reede said fiercely. “He can’t be, that goddamn son of a bitch—” He looked at the guns trained on his heart, as the full realization of what he had done to himself hit him. He turned suddenly, shoving Ananke aside as he pushed toward the doorway.

  Someone fired; the stunshock caught him full in the back, deadening his entire body. He drifted, helpless, as they hauled him ignominiously into the systems center again. They locked his hands together behind him; did the same to Ananke and Niburu. They searched him; he watched in numb despair, unable even to protest as they took the vial containing the water of death from his belt pouch.

  “He’s sick,” Niburu protested, as the marines confiscated the drug. “He needs that. It’s medicine, let him keep it.”

  The lieutenant shook his head. “That’s not what it looks like to me.” He glanced at the man holding the vial. “Send it down with them. Have the Police check it out.”

  Reede shut his eyes, unable to make any sound at all; feeling as if the frustration and rage inside his brain would explode his skull like shrapnel.

  The lieutenant pointed toward the access behind him. “Take them out. Contact the Police.” He looked back at Reede. “Too bad the Chief Justice can’t see you, Kullervo. But Commander Vhanu’s going to be overjoyed.”

  * * *

  By the time they reached dirtside his voluntary nervous system had come alive again, letting him stand and walk on his own feet as the marines turned them over, with the water of death, to the waiting squad of Blues.

  The Blues took them back through the umbilical tunnel that connected the starport to Carbuncle. Reede slumped in his seat, saying nothing, staring straight ahead into the blackness shot with light.

  They did not take the usual lift ride, up through the hollow core of one of the city’s pylons to an exit somewhere along the Street. Instead, the Blues forced them on into the twilit docks below the city, toward the main access ramp the Tiamatans used to get to and from their ships.

  “Why are we going this way?” Reede snapped, breaking his silence at last, irritable with tension and fear.

  One of the Blues glanced at him. “Lift’s not functioning,” he said.

  Reede looked at him in disbelief. He looked away again, already too aware of the crawling itch beneath his skin, the burn of his soles as the ground pressed against them, the separate exquisite pain of every cut and laceration on his battered body, as his nerve endings became hypersensitized. He tried not to think about how much longer their journey would take this way, how much more effort it would take, how much less time and strength he would have at the end of it.

  The Blues halted him at the foot of the ramp, as another cluster of patrolmen came toward them, carrying what looked like a corpse in a body bag.

  The sergeant in charge of his squad moved forward, his face tight. “Who is it?” he asked.

  “Not one of ours,” the woman leading the other detail said. “Some local.”

  The sergeant’s expression eased. “One of those Motherloving Summers fall overboard again?” His mouth turned up in a hopeful smile.

  She shook her head. “A Winter. One Kirard Set Wayaways. We’re turning him over to the city constables.”

  Reede stiffened. “What happened to him?” he demanded.

  The female Blue looked toward him, surprised. “The Queen’s justice,” she said sourly. “Guess he wasn’t much of a swimmer.”

  Reede felt his own face form a smile more like a rictus. “Out of his depth…” he murmured. His guards urged him forward again, and he began to climb.

  As they ascended the ramp he realized that something else was wrong with the city: it was growing darker instead of lighter as they climbed. Carbuncle had always been filled with light, day and night—he had never even thought about it, taking it for granted, like the automatic climate control of the city’s self-contained system. It had existed that way since before the Hegemony’s recorded time, a product, a relic, of the Old Empire. He had been told that Carbuncle ran on tidal power, that there were immense turbines in caves somewhere deep in the rock below the city. He had been told that it always ran perfectly, self-maintaining, self-perpetuating.

  But there was no such thing as perpetual motion. The city’s darkness, waiting above to swallow him, filled him with a strange emotion, that was as much urgency as it was fear. “What the hell happened?” he asked. But he knew what had happened; he knew, these signs were important, he had to act now. If he could only remember what he had to do—

  “The lights went out,” the Blue walking beside him said. “Everything went out. The city’s stopped working.”

  “Why?” Reede asked.

  “I don’t know.” The Blue shrugged, frowning.

  “How long ago?”

  “Two days,” the Blue said.

  “Three days,” Reede murmured. “Two gone…”

  “What?” The Blue stopped him.

  “I have to see the Summer Queen,” Reede said. “I have to see the Queen.”

  “You know something about this?” the Blue asked. His hand struck Reede’s shoulder, when Reede did not answer. “Do you—?”

  “He doesn’t know anything, for gods’ sakes,” another man said. “He’s trying to jerk us around. Get moving—” A hand caught Reede between the shoulder blades, propelling him forward.

  Reede went on without protest, stupefied by the seething mental energy that the darkened city had set loose inside his brain. Yes, he thought, looking left and right at the batteries of portable lights, at the flickering dance of candles being carried along the night-filled alleys of the Lower City, where mostly Summers lived. Yes. I’ve come home.… But he did not know why he thought it, and the thought only filled him with desolation.

  They went on, circling slowly, ever upward, the helmet lights of the Police surrounding him like glowflies, showing him the way ahead. The few other lights he saw passed them by like the motion of strange creatures in the black depths of the sea. Most of the citizens seemed to be staying at home, by choice or otherwise. The air felt stagnant to him, although the transparent storm shutters at the ends of every alleyway stood open now, letting Carbuncle’s human hive breathe on its own. His face ran with sweat; he could not wipe it away, with his hands locked behind him.

  They went on, through the Maze, although he had difficulty even recognizing it with so much of it in darkness. Even Persiponë’s Hell was closed down and dark. Behind him Kedalion swore, breathless from trying to keep up. He had not realized that he was slowing down too, until someone shoved him again from behind. He stumbled into Ananke, who was ahead of him now. Ananke lurched sideways, with a clumsiness Reede only recognized as intentional when Ananke collided with the Blue shadowing his own steps. The Blue went down with a grunt of surprise, in a sudden lightstorm of intersecting headlamp beams.

  “Reede, run—!” Ananke’s voice shouted, as Reede dodged groping arms and flailing legs. Reede broke away from their struggling bodies, looking back as he heard Ananke cry out in pain behind him. Run— He ran, with no choice but to
abandon them. He had to make it to Street’s End, to the palace— A random stunshot grazed his arm; he felt it go numb and tingling.

  He ran faster up the black, nearly empty street, knowing that he still had a third of the city to go, all of it uphill through the darkness. He wondered if the Blues were able to call for reinforcements. The darkness must be crawling with Police, out doing their job, harassing potential thieves and troublemakers. Thieves and troublemakers; gods—

  The way ahead was still a tunnel with no light at its end; but as he passed one more alley entrance, light flooded around him suddenly, and voices shouted at him to stop.

  He jerked to a halt; trapped in the sudden crisscross of beams like an insect, as dark figures swarmed around him.

  “We’ve got him! Commander!” someone called behind him, catching hold of the binders that still trapped his wrists. He jerked free, but there was nowhere left for him to go. He stood still, his exhausted body trembling, humiliating him. Someone stepped in front of him; he was blinded as another helmet light shone directly into his face. He swore, squinting; opened his eyes again as the light unexpectedly dimmed to a bearable level. Blinking his sight back, he tried to make out the face of Vhanu, BZ Gundhalinu’s right-hand man, the ass-kissing martinet Gundhalinu had stupidly made Commander of Police.

  But it was a woman’s face he saw—middle-aged, cinnamon-skinned; Newhavenese, not even Kharemoughi. The Chief Inspector … PalaThion, that was her name. But they’d called her Commander. He peered at her, seeing that she was not wearing a Police uniform; realizing that the people surrounding her, and him, were all Tiamatan—the local constabulary, not the Blues. “Huh—” he said, half in confusion and half in disbelief. And then, like a mindless recording, he said, “I have to see the Queen.”

  PalaThion’s eyes narrowed as she looked at his face, until she was almost frowning. “Who are you?”

  “Reede Kullervo. I need to see the Queen.”

  “Yes—” she whispered, but for a moment she wasn’t seeing him. “Thank you, gods!” she murmured. Uncertainty filled him as she looked at him again, at his pinioned hands. She turned away as the sound of running feet closed with them, and more lights joined their pool of illumination.

  “You got him?” a voice demanded. He saw blue uniforms gathering in the light of the constables’ lanterns; recognized the voice of the sergeant who had been in charge of him.

  “Don’t let them take me back,” he muttered, holding PalaThion’s gaze. “Don’t.”

  She nodded, a barely perceptible movement of her head, before she stepped past him to face the Blues. Reede turned, squinting again as their lights picked him out inside the ring of constables. “This man is in our custody now. We have a prior claim on him.”

  “He’s an offworlder,” the sergeant said. “He’s under our jurisdiction.”

  “What’s he charged with?”

  The sergeant hesitated. “He says he’s the Smith.”

  “Do you have any proof of it?”

  The Blue glanced at his men, back at her. “No. Not until we run an ID check on him. What does the Queen want him for?”

  “He kidnapped the Queen’s daughter,” PalaThion said, her voice deadly. “He’s in our custody, and he stays with us. If Vhanu wants him, let Vhanu come to the palace, and discuss it with the Queen. Although I don’t expect he’ll get much cooperation, as long as we’re under martial law.”

  The sergeant’s face twisted; Reede watched him assessing the situation, the fact that the Tiamatans outnumbered his own men. He must have left part of his patrol behind with Niburu and Ananke. Finally he jerked his head. “Keep him, then. And tell the Queen if she wants to talk about an end to martial law, she’d damn well better turn the lights back on!” He gestured at the others; they followed him away down the Street.

  “Did the Queen really shut down the city?” Reede asked, when they had gone.

  PalaThion shook her head. “But Vhanu’s ready to blame it on her. Are you really the Smith?”

  Reede looked away. “I thought you worked for Vhanu,” he said, ignoring the question. “I thought you were Chief Inspector.”

  She shook her head again. “I worked for Gundhalinu. But he’s gone.”

  “I know,” Reede murmured. “I know.” He felt a sudden wave of nausea hit him, and realized that he was shivering again, as if it were cold. It was not cold. “Shit!” He jerked his head. “Take me to the Queen, damn it, I don’t have much time!”

  “Ease off, boy,” she said, putting a restraining hand on his pinioned arm. “We’ll get you there soon enough.”

  He glared at her; pulled away from her grasp and started on up the hill at a jog trot, forcing them to follow.

  At last they reached Street’s End, the plaza before the palace entrance. Its white alabaster expanse was ringed with lanterns. PalaThion took the lead now, speaking to the guards who stood as they always did near the heavy doors. The doors opened to let them pass, and Reede entered the Summer Queen’s palace for the first time. He followed PalaThion down a long, echoing corridor, his eyes disturbed by the dance of light around him, the glimpses of painted pastoral scenes—green hills, water and sky, illuminated by the restless motion of lantern beams.

  Up ahead the hall finally ended, opening out into a vast, high chamber. The air smelled suddenly, surprisingly, of the sea. Far above him were more windows like the storm walls at the end of every alley along the Street. But these were shut, unlike all the rest. Beyond the windows the night sky burned with the light of a million stars.

  Reede looked down again, seeing another cluster of lights across the chamber. Someone was waiting there. “It’s the Queen,” PalaThion murmured.

  But between the Queen and where he stood, there was something else … a strand of darkness arcing across a well of eerily glowing green light. Reede moved past PalaThion, starting toward it with a sense of premonition, a sudden urgency.

  “Kullervo!” PalaThion called sharply, catching hold of his arm. “Wait a minute, that’s the Pit. You can’t cross this room in the dark; there’s no floor.”

  “It isn’t dark,” Reede murmured.

  “It’s pitch black,” she said. “What are you talking about?”

  “Let me go.” He jerked against her hold, starting forward again. “I see perfectly. I have to go there…”

  She released him, wordlessly; he saw the look in her eyes. She doesn’t see it. He felt his skin prickle with sudden terror, felt his entrails knot up inside him. But he went on, alone, drawn toward the glow like an insect, helplessly, instinctively. He reached the spot where the railless span bridged the Pit, and stopped again. Now, here, at last, all his questions would be answered.… He had finally come to the place where he had been meant to be.

  He held his breath as compulsion locked his muscles and forced him to step out onto the bridge, over the well of bottomless light. He was dimly aware that PalaThion had followed him, but was keeping her distance. He took another step, trembling with awe and fear, feeling the green light reach up to caress him like a lover, engulfing his senses in the most beautiful music, the sensation of silk and velvet, the smell of the ocean wind.… “No,” he whispered, like a child, as he went on into the light, “no, I don’t want to, I’m afraid…” as his consciousness dissolved into the sea of sensation and compulsion. He sank to his knees at the center of the bridge, as he sank deeper and deeper under its spell.…

  Vanamoinen. It reverberated in his brain, a demand, an affirmation. Yes.… He was Vanamoinen, not the other, the receptacle of flesh and blood, the stranger who huddled on the span now in pathetic human misery. He remembered … how he had chosen this world, created this city, an ornate, incomprehensible jewel that would haunt humankind for generations after he was gone. They would preserve and protect it, because it was unique, never guessing that it existed to be the pin in the map, marking the secret place where lay his real gift to future generations: the databanks that preserved all that he could gather of human knowledge—t
he nexus of the sibyl mind, the mirror of his soul.

  But not his soul alone—Ilmarinen’s. It would never have existed, he could never have realized his dream … he would never have had those dreams, if it had not been for Ilmarinen, whom he loved. Whose calm rationality and understanding of human weakness amazed him, whose dark eyes were deeper than infinity, whose sudden, unexpected smile had come to mean more to him than a hundred honors, a thousand empty gestures of praise from the corporeal gods of the Interface. Ilmarinen, who had been the other half of him, of his genius; whose soul was joined with his forever in the design and programming of the sibyl system. The system born of their mutual vision and sacrifice had survived the generations since their deaths, doing good, spreading knowledge freely; the symbol of all they had been to each other, all they had believed in. Ilmarinen … he called. Ilmarinen—?

  But Ilmarinen was dead, laid to rest millennia ago, as he thought he himself had been. He should not be here now, like this, awakened from his centuries of peace, brought back to life as a total stranger in this strange and terrifying existence.

  Except … He remembered it now, remembered everything that had been denied to him for so long: He remembered that he had willed this himself. After Ilmarinen’s death, he had made the arrangements, had recorded his brainscan and hidden it in a secret place remembered only by the sibyl mind, in case the net should ever need him in some future time.

  And now that time had come. He had been called back to life, and he did not need anyone to tell him what had happened. There had been no crucial errors in the system’s design or programming; there had been no mistakes in the genetic design when they had played god and created the mers. Their only failure had been in underestimating human greed. Giving human beings indefinitely extended lives had never been their desire, or their point. But someone had taken notice of the mers’ longevity, someone had unlocked their secret, and the Hunts had begun.

  And because, over the centuries, they had slaughtered the mers, the sibyl mind was failing. Now it had called him back, to save it if he could. If he could …