Summerhill (28 page)

“Admiral would have done something very stupid, Royeyri knew. So, Royeyri had to step in, save the day. Ta-dah! And now here you are.”

Summerhill lifted his head back up and looked at Royeyri, whose beak-snout was curled up into a proud grin. “That doesn’t explain anything. I hope you realize that.”

“One thing at a time, lah. Genius thinking takes time to explain, no?”

“Genius thinking?” Summerhill withheld a snarl. “You call telling me to trust you and then selling me out to the Admiral ‘genius thinking?’”

Royeyri cackled, hopping from one clawed foot to the other as his beak snapped and his tongue clicked musically. “Lies and trickery, that’s what that was! See, Royeyri is clever, too. Clever like Summerhill, naughty dog, all escaped from his prison and dropping in unannounced!”

Summerhill tried to push himself to his feet, but he nearly pitched over, and instead fell back on his rump, pinning his own tail. It was then that he realized he was still naked, as he’d been inside the confinement tube on the
Achilles
. Embarrassment combined with his fatigue and frustration. “You keep saying things like you know me.” His voice had shifted into a whimper. “You’re acting like I should know more about you than I do, and it’s... it’s driving me crazy, okay? So can you please start making sense?”

The energetic mammal-bird went calm and still, a soft whine of his own escaping his warbling throat. “Summerhill really doesn’t remember Royeyri, does he? Oh, such a shame, lah! Back to the way things were before, yes. Sad, sad, lonely Summerhill, all alone.”

The Admiral and his ship were gone. The Consortium was gone. Nobody was threatening to vaporize him anymore, and so while Summerhill wasn’t sure he could trust Royeyri, the immediate danger was past, and that had to count for something.

“Tell me about my prison. Are you talking about the World of the Pale Gray Sky?”

Royeyri did a little hop and landed with both feet facing forward. “Yes, yes!” he chirped. “Empty skies, empty buildings! Vast, vast, neverending emptiness and just Summerhill in the middle. Summerhill
does
remember!”

Remembering that much was simple, and the churning fear in Summerhill’s gut told him he was remembering it all too clearly, the isolation and solitude, the oppressive loneliness
and the lack of meaning. “I remember being there. But I don’t remember how I got there. And I don’t remember you.”

Royeyri clicked his tongue. “Summerhill doesn’t remember,” he said, shaking his head, not in dismay so much as confusion, as if this was the first time he’d been presented with this simple concept. “Summerhill could never remember things before, either, lah.”

Summerhill shook his head. “So, wait,” he said, holding up a hand, trying to will a nascent headache away. “You used to know me. At some point before I can remember now. And even then, I didn’t remember anything about my past?”

The mammal-bird nodded his head. “Summerhill had problems remembering much of anything, lah. Very often, Royeyri would visit Summerhill as promised, and Summerhill would have forgotten all about Royeyri! So sad!” He gave his winglike arms a brisk flap. “Every day the same for poor Summerhill. So hard for Royeyri to explain that things change, not always the same.”

While Summerhill still had no clear memory of Royeyri, the time spent in the World of the Pale Gray Sky was becoming real again. He remembered back when he had no sense of the passage of time, no concept of one day ending and another beginning. “Having visitors should have been remarkable,” he said, as much to himself as to Royeyri. “I don’t recall ever having something exciting to look forward to.”

“Oh, sometimes Summerhill would be waiting, yes, all eager, tail wagging.” Royeyri let out a nasal chuckle, then turned to look out the window as a flicker of motion passed outside the window, but Summerhill hadn’t seen what it was. “But other times, Summerhill would be lost in his thoughts, again. Lost and trapped, too sad to open up, too sad to think or dream.”

Summerhill shut his eyes and tried to remember anything like this. The jagged outlines of the hole in his memory were there, but the miniscule fragments contained nothing of the World of the Pale Gray Sky, as far as he could see. No, if he’d forgotten Royeyri, he’d done it a long time ago. “When was this, anyway?”

“Not so long ago, lah,” Royeyri said. “No, not so long. Only decades, by this reckoning. Not sure how time passes for Summerhill.”

How long had it even been since he’d left the World of the Pale Gray Sky? A day or two aboard the
Nusquam
and inside the nevereef, months in the dying world of mountains and snow, plus however much time had passed during the gap in his memory. That span of time couldn’t account for all the things Summerhill knew. He was sure there had to be something else.

“I met myself,” he said, looking Royeyri right in the eye. “Do you ever remember seeing more than one of me on your visits? You said sometimes I’d seem sad, and other times I’d seem happier. On some visits, did I have gray eyes, and others blue eyes?”

Royeyri hummed and turned his head almost completely sideways. “Not sure, lah. Royeyri never saw Summerhill physically, see. Not completely.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“Syorii go places.” Royeyri held his arms up, and his feather-fur ruffled as he gestured to the room around him. “Not with matter, but with self, you see?”

Summerhill’s ears went back. “I don’t, no. Sorry.”

If Royeyri was offended, he just laughed it off. “Summerhill understood before. But Summerhill seems to forget things, lah.”

The dog’s ears flattened out to either side and his tail, already motionless, drooped lower. “Syorii is the name for your people? I heard the Admiral call you that, too.”

“Yes, yes. Many Syorii with the humans. Kay-Pee Hegemony, very powerful, needs Syorii as navigators, see.”

Summerhill thought about what he’d seen aboard the ships of the Admiral’s fleet, and the technology they possessed. “They
need
you as navigators? Why’s that?”

“Like Royeyri said, Syorii go places, see through space and time. Syorii see obstacles and accidents before they happen. Human computers, only see things at speed of light. Not fast enough, tut tut. So, Syorii navigate. Humans get to traverse space, and Syorii get to go with them in body instead of just mind.”

“You can go places with your mind? Does your mind actually leave your body?”

Royeyri tilted his hand from side to side. “Go places, see places; hard to distinguish. Other places are hard to get to. Requires great concentration and spiritual purity.”

“But you have this ability. And you can go to other worlds, like the World of the Pale Gray Sky?”

Royeyri nodded. “Some places are scary and dangerous. Some places are wonderful and exciting. And some places are sad and lonely.” With that, he offered a sympathetic smile to Summerhill.

Summerhill chewed one of his claws in thought. “But you have some ability to teleport your bodies, too, right? I mean, otherwise, how did we get here?”

“Teleport? Syorii have no ability to—” Royeyri paused, his beak freezing in mid-sentence as his eyes went glassy with confusion. Then, he lifted up a limb as if in triumphant salute to himself and broke out into a very avian cackle. “Oh! Oh, ho, ho, Royeyri sees, he does!” He did a little jig, hopping back and forth from one foot to the other. “Summerhill only sees a blip and a flash and then—bing!—here with Royeyri again.”

A sinking feeling started to form in Summerhill’s belly. His ears stayed flat, and his words shook with trepidation as he spoke. “No, it wasn’t like that at all, actually. I felt like I was going to be stuck and trapped forever.” Not entirely unlike the World of the Pale Gray Sky, really. “Why, what did you do?”

“Royeyri used cunning and ingenuity and patience, lah.” The Syorii knocked himself on the side of the head with his knuckles. “Admiral was on-edge, scared, unsure.
Mistrusting.
” He seemed to delight in saying that last word. “Summerhill, strange creature, naughty dog, obvious threat. Summerhill had to be stopped! So, Royeyri stopped him.” The bird-creature’s wrist turned in a circle again.

Summerhill’s throat had gone tight. “Stopped how? I don’t—”

“Stopped everything!” Royeyri chirped, again showing some pride in what he’d done. “Stasis. Shut down Summerhill’s mind, Summerhill’s body, made it all come to a halt. No more threat, no more problem.”

“Stasis?” Summerhill’s heart was racing. His mind was scrambling with panic, the edges of his perceptions already bristling with nervousness at something his conscious mind was still piecing together. “You had me frozen? For how long?”

“Not long. Made sure that Summerhill was in good health, first. But ah, tut, tut. Of course, Summerhill would be unchanged. Royeyri, very skilled, very clever.”

There was more movement outside one of the windows. This time, Summerhill clearly saw the form of some kind of spacefaring vessel pass by. Against a backdrop of pinpoint stars, however, there was no way to gauge how large or how far away it was. “Well, I’m guessing we’re not still in the fleet, since they were dead in the water. Unless they got things up and running again.”

Royeyri chuckled and nodded. “Oh, yes. Took many hours, but ships fixed. Very, very large repair bill after returning to base! Oho, top brass, very upset, lah.”

“So we already made it back to base, then?” That sounded better than floating helplessly through space, but Summerhill was still worried. “What about the Consortium? Does the Admiral have any leads on where they took Katherine?”

“Admiral Choi?” Royeyri tilted his head to one side, and then the other, looking as though he didn’t comprehend what he was being asked. “Oh, Admiral Choi is dead, lah.”

The indistinct anxiety Summerhill had been feeling congealed into full-on fear and dread. “Dead?” he squeaked. “Was it the Consortium? Did they kill him for—”

“Oh, no, no,” Royeyri interrupted, waving both arms. “Consortium did not kill Admiral Choi. Admiral Choi was killed by—how did humans say it?” He clucked his tongue and shifted his weight back and forth, wobbling as he thought. “Ah, yes, yes! ‘Inexorable march of time!’ Inexorable march of time killed Admiral Choi.”

“Wait, so he just
died
?” This wasn’t making any sense. “How? When?”

Royeyri counted with jerking motions of his fingers that were too fast for Summerhill to keep up with it. “Twenty-three months ago? Yes, that sounds right.”

“Royeyri, that’s almost two years!” Summerhill could barely hear himself think as his rushing pulse pounded in his ears. “You kept me in stasis for two years?”

“What? No! No, no, no,” Royeyri assured him. “Thirty-six years.”

“
Thirty-six?
” Summerhill’s jaw hung open after he blurted that out.

Royeyri looked unfazed by this announcement of his, and he only shrank back a little bit at the dog’s shocked outburst. “Thirty-six,” he confirmed. “Not long.”

Summerhill’s claws dug so hard into the fabric of his seat that they punctured holes through it, and the canine had to hold on tight to keep from reeling forward. “Not long?” he barked. “What happened that it took you over three decades to get me out of there?” Oh, this was no good. This was no good at all. How long did humans live? Was Katherine even still alive?

“Three decades, long for humans, lah, not so long for Syorii or for Summerhill,” Royeyri said with a dismissive wave of his wing-arm. “Scientists took a lot of time studying Summerhill. Kept trying, kept poking and prodding, never learned anything useful. Couldn’t make sense of interdimensional matter structure, had no way to detect vital signs because vital signs had been paused.” He hopped up and landed daintily on his toes. “And they never suspected that Royeyri had been behind it all, because Royeyri is a genius!”

“Thirty-six years,” Summerhill muttered. He was having trouble coming to terms with the reality of it. “They studied me in stasis for over thirty years?”

Royeyri nodded. “Studied and learned nothing. Eventually decided to transfer Summerhill from Rigil Kent headquarters to science station at Eta Vulpeculae. And who gets put in charge of transfer but Royeyri himself! So, now, Summerhill is woken back up, escape complete!”

“Yeah, complete after thirty-six years!” Summerhill clutched the sides of his head in his hands and rocked back and forth atop his chair. “You said that was a long time for humans. How long do humans live?”

“Hard to say, hard to say,” Royeyri said. “Sometimes fifty years, sometimes a hundred.” He paused for a moment, for the first time showing some sort of empathy for Summerhill as regarded what he was saying. “Summerhill is worried about a human? Not Admiral Choi, tut.”

Thirty-six years. Given the life expectancy Royeyri had cited, that meant that Katherine would have been waiting half a lifetime for Summerhill to come back for her. Hell, she’d almost forgotten about him after just five years, last time.

And this all assumed she was still alive at all, which, given the way the Consortium seemed to treat her, was a dubious prospect.

Royeyri seemed to put some of the pieces together on his own. “Ah, Katherine,” he said, closing his eyes for a few seconds. “Yes, the human from another time, taken by Consortium on the day Royeyri re-met Summerhill. Royeyri remembers her.”

Summerhill slumped. His head was hurting, and his stomach gnawed at itself. “She’s gone, now. I came back to help her and I couldn’t. They took her and I didn’t have a chance to save her.”

“Ah.” Royeyri tucked his head closer to his chest and crossed one foot over in front of the opposite leg. “Yes, thirty-six years, probably too late, in that case.”

With his palms pressed in against his temples, Summerhill sighed. “It’s not your fault. You didn’t do it on purpose.” He rubbed away his headache as best he could, then looked back up. “Thanks for getting me away from the Admiral and his fleet, Royeyri. I’m guessing from the sound of things that you haven’t run into the Consortium at all since then?”

Royeyri shook his head. “Just the one time, lah,” he confirmed. “Syorii know things, many things, that humans don’t. Know of species, cultures, civilizations that humans have never encountered, but Consortium was new. Once and only. Probably for best. Very dangerous. More dangerous than Summerhill.”

A halfhearted smile appeared on Summerhill’s face. “Well, at least I don’t have to worry about anything thinking I’m a threat anymore.” But what did he have to worry about anymore? Katherine was gone, and Royeyri didn’t actually know that much about Summerhill’s past after all. Now it was pretty much just him, turned loose upon this new universe, having escaped the brief danger that had crossed his path.

Maybe Shoön had given him his new beginning after all: a clean slate, a fresh start, a world of possibilities without baggage or responsibilities. If he wanted to, he could remake himself completely; other than Royeyri, nobody knew who or what he was, and nobody expected anything of him. There had been some bumps, sure, but those were over, and now he was faced with nothing but pure opportunity.