Cards of Grief (16 page)

However, that day, without warning, I was sent up here, ostensibly to accompany the casket, which, as medical officer of the landing party, N’Jymnbo should have done. And I have been up here over twenty days, not being allowed to contact Linni. I’ve been given makework—translations of some tapes, chordings of grief songs. But no one will tell me what is happening on planetfall, sir. Even Dr. Z avoids me. I admit a certain amount of cultural contamination happened, but—as I tried to explain—there were circumstances.

Aaron,
circumstances
have changed. Greatly. This morning Dr. N’Jymnbo flew up with a present from the Queen.

A present, sir?

A seven-pound squalling present, Aaron. Blond, too, which is something never seen before on L’Lal’lor, though she has their golden eyes. Your twenty days labtime has been almost a full year down below, you know.

A girl
baby,
sir?

Yes, Aaron.

And what of Linni?

From what we understand, she believes the child was a boy and born dead. And as you know, if the Queen herself had not offered the child to us, we would have had to take her anyway. She is a living contamination there. Here she is simply a beautiful, healthy baby, a citizen of the Federation.

May I—may I see my child, sir?

See her? Aaron, if you are found guilty, as I fully expect you to be, you will have the job of raising her.

Thank you, sir.

Should I reread the charge, Captain Macdonald?

Do so, Lieutenant.

Aaron Spenser, the charge is Cultural Contamination as defined by the USS Code #27. The specification is that you willfully and unlawfully violated the Cultural Contact Contamination Act in regards to your relationship with an inhabitant or inhabitants of the planet Henderson’s IV, thus influencing
—
to the good or to the bad
—
all culture within their closed system forever.

Ladies and gentlemen, the vote is yours. In the case of a tie, I shall be forced to cast the deciding vote. Consider carefully.

Court Martial Inquiry dismissed.

We will meet back here in 0800 hours.

Sir, we have voted.

What say you to the charge, Yeoman Peterson?

Guilty, sir, with extenuating circumstances.

“Circumstances” is a word that seems to pop up with surprising regularity in these proceedings.

Begging your pardon, sir, but the proper form
—

Form, schmorm, as my great-grandmother used to say. Ladies and gentlemen, what recommendation for sentence?

Five years’ work aboard space lab, sir, including child-rearing. No further contact during that period with Henderson’s IV or any of its inhabitants.

Excuse me, sir. But
…

Is there something wrong with the form now, Lieutenant?

I just thought that you might like to add that, at the end of that time, the words
Court Martial Sentence
be deleted from Anthro First Class Spenser’s records. Because of the extenuating circumstances, sir. It’s permitted, sir, in Article 763 of the Court Martial Code.

Why, Lieutenant, a heart beats beneath that iron exterior.

It’s…um…regulation issue at the Academy, sir.

A joke, too. I’m beginning to like you, Lieutenant. And I would like to do that, add that. Use the proper numbers and article references.

Yes, sir.

Any last words before I dismiss us all, Aaron?

What about Linni, sir?

That, my boy, is up to her
—and her people. I suspect, though, that she will be forgiven if she is anywhere near the artist you say she is. Whether she, herself, will forgive—that is beyond my guessing.

Then, sir, I’d like to see my child.

Place
: Queen’s Throne Room

Time
: Queen’s Time 76, Thirteenth Matriarchy, labtime 2137.5
A.D.

Speaker
: Queen to Aaron Spenser

Permission
: Queen’s own

A
QUEEN DOES NOT
tell stories. She tells the truth. Even her lies are true. That is the prerogative of Royalty. So what I am about to tell you is, of course, true. What you choose to believe, seeing that you are neither a Royal nor of our world, is your own concern. But know this, man from the sky, I am the Queen and I speak true.

Only a Queen can bear Queens and since a Queen speaks the truth, whomever she designates as the father of her children is so. If you do not understand this about our world, you understand nothing.

We grieve for our dead and dying in a way that makes the passage beautiful and gives the grieven one immortality. So our greatest grievers, the ones who bring many mourners into the lines, who give us life after death, are the ones we cherish the most. We do many things for them, things that may appear not true but become true with the telling. If I choose to name Lina-Lania my child and you the father, it will be so. Oh, do not look so worried, A’ron. I am past such namings now. I am tired, burned away. There is little time left for me, now, so I would tell you—of all people—why. And is that not why you are here? To find out why. Why I did what I did to the Gray Wanderer, the greatest of all our grievers, and my favorite. Why I took her from you. Why I told her truths which she could not accept and yet, by accepting them as she was bound to do, betrayed you forever.

We are both older now, though you do not look as if more than a year or two has passed. And I, like all Queens, have not changed either. It is a strange mortality we women of the Royals have. We do not age until the day we die and then, in a moment, we turn into a dried-out husk, ashes inside, ready for the pylons. I saw my mother and my sisters transformed that way, in seconds their beauty gray dust over bones. It is why our people view our husks—to see for themselves that we are indeed dust.

I see by your face that you do not believe this. Believe it. A Queen has told you so.

But as old as we are, A’ron, the Gray Wanderer is older still. Fifty years have passed since you spoke to her last, and those fifty years have been etched like poems onto her face. Her hands are writ with the calligraphy of time. Those are her metaphors, not mine. She gives everything to me. I am her Queen.

It was prophesied that she would be the child to lead us, that she would be betrayed but would forgive the betrayal. And that is why I have chosen you, now, to learn the truth, or at least as much of the truth as a Queen will tell. Believe it or not. Believe what you will or what you can. You have my permission to write it down, though we know that only what is held in the mouth is true.

And you may tell all this to your own Queen, for I know that she never died but lives on despite her death, which makes her a greater Queen than I, an inheritor of a stranger immortality. I know this because, like all Queens, I have my spies. And some of them are liars and some of them are not. But I know that this thing is true, for she did not dry up as a Queen must, but died and lived in her glass box.

Come then, sit by me with your back against this black cushion, which my favorites have used for so many years. See, it is embroidered with the great red creature your own Queen favored. I have placed it close to me always, that her immortality may touch my own. The Gray Wanderer often lay there, occupying that same place, her back where your back now rests. She occupied it—but we never touched. Touching would have been a violation of her vows, and how could she, then, grieve for me when I die?

And now she lives in a cave far up in the hills and thinks I know not where she stays. She can see the palace from that hill, but I can see the hill from the twin towers, so what is there between us but air?

She will not talk to me, she says, because I tryst with men from the sky. She says their
love
is cold and barren and a lie. But I know better and I know, too, that when it is time she will come and grieve for me because she has never revoked her vows. She is a griever. She is the Queen’s Own Griever.

What cave? Where?

Do not rush away, seeking her. Not yet, A’ron. What you find in that cave is not what you expect. Listen to my story first. Trust the truth of it and then I will give you leave to go.

We will sit here, just the two of us, until the fingers of the shadow world reach into ours and the tale is done.

I like this time, the cusp of day, when the world sits between light and dark. It makes me remember. Queens have long memories, A’ron, and I like to indulge mine.

Do you not fear my anger?

Time does not hone anger, A’ron. It blunts it. What you have is not anger but a long sorrow. A grief. We are a people who understand grief. I am not afraid of you. Are you afraid of me?

I do not understand.

Your Linni is changed beyond loving. She is now an old, old woman. But you and I have aged little. Once you ran from my bed in fear, now you will run from hers. I have no interest in you now. Though your face is still such a pretty one, it is too broad between the eyes for my liking. I prefer my boys simpler and fifty years—or five—is a long time to set a preference.

So you know about the time changes.

A Queen knows everything. I know past and present and future. I see so clearly I see the shadows. Do you know that I am called Queen of Shadows?

I have heard it.

And why do you think I am so called?

Perhaps because you sit in a darkening room like an old lace-foot spinning shadow webs of deceit.

Not, that would be too poetic. Grievers think that way. I am not a metaphor, I am a Queen. But of course this room that I keep dark feeds the rumors and keeps the name alive. Still, that is not why I am so called.

Some say it is because I am the last of the Queens. Barren. My womb empty as a cave on the hill. My children only passing shades. And my brothers and nephews sow weakly. Even their girl children age. They are not Royal.

So it is true that I rule in a time of shadows. As we are shadowed by the great ships that brought you here to change all our lives.

We did not try to change your lives. We have tried to be most careful of that.

You are here, A’ron. That very fact brings changes. So my people become their own shadows under the tutors from the stars.

But that is still not why I am called Queen of Shadows. It is because of the story I told, the untruth that I made true to hold on to the one I loved above all others, the Gray Wanderer. She believed me, knowing all the while that what I told her was untrue. I did it because she was so dear to me, without searching out what would serve our world best. And that lie come true has condemned our world. I know that there is no saving us. We are changed beyond all recognition. I am the shadow Queen in truth, like the mad Queen of the tale after whom I am named. She who so desired a reflection of herself—for that is what grievers are, you know: pools that reflect. Once I thought they reflected clearly, but it is not so. The old mad Queen desired her own image, forsaking the one she
should
have desired, and so gave away her kingdom’s treasure. Oh, that is a story I could tell.

Give me your hand now. My touch will no longer sear it. You see, you
are
beginning to age, sky-farer. Is my hand so? One of your own, the tall hard one called Hop’nor. He told me that it is believed by some of your world that the lines of our hands could be read as one reads a map, the goings and comings traced so. But when I asked him to read mine he could not, for my hands have no lines on them at all. See? That is because a Queen writes her own history and that history can be read only by the Queen herself.

Tell me of Linni and the cave.

You who have so much time cannot bear to lengthen it. Very well, then, listen. It is—and is not—by way of a confession.

When you excused yourself from my bed with the unkindest of excuses, I knew it to be a lie. But no one lies to a Queen. So the paradox began, the unraveling of the skein that binds up this world.

I had you followed. What Queen does not have such shadows at her command? I knew that you went into the rooms of B’oremos, where you and he lay, drinking wine. He was still young, with the taste of his boyhood friends still fresh and a passion for the odd, the different, the prodigy, as he was himself odd, different, a prodigy. I did not want him to have what I did not. So I summoned him to me, out of anger, out of jealousy, out of desire. And he came, afire with Lumin-laced wine, hard and eager and full of seed. I thought certainly I would reap a child. But in the morning, when the Lumin wore off and he knew me, he told me there were kernels in three cups: one for him, one for you, and then he smiled and said that there had been one for the Gray Wanderer, too. He had no shame of the act. His shame was that he had not been there to complete it. I could have struck him, but I did not, for I realized that if I had no girl children, he would make a fine King, devious and truthful at one and the same time. So I called him my heir over all others. But I sent him from me at that moment as a lesson in Queenship, telling him there was one more thing he had to do before his night’s work was over.

“And that is?” he dared to ask.

“Go to the silver tower on the plain and tell them that their A’ron has abused my friendship and violated my person and that I will send him away or kill him.”

His face was angry, stunned, but I was the Queen. So he went to the ship and Hop’nor came down the stairs and believed all that he was told.

B’oremos returned and asked me what would befall now.

I said that you would be sent away with your dead Queen to be punished or not by your own people. And he listened and believed and it was so.

What did you tell Linni?

I told her that what she thought she had done was all a dream sent by the Lumin and not true. That her vows had not been violated. I told her that your dreams had driven you away. That men from the skies were full of deceit and honeyed words, but they did not know the difference between what is true and what is a lie.