The Summer Queen

Snow Queen, Book 3

Joan D. Vinge

1991

ISBN: 0-5707-103-7157-1

Synopsis:

Volume 3 in the Snow Queen Cycle. The long-awaited sequel to
Vinge’s enormous
The Snow Queen
(1980), an interstellar tug-of-war
between the far-from-benevolent Hegemony and the backward-but-indispensable
planet Tiamat. It is now Summer on Tiamat; the Hegemony has withdrawn, leaving the
planet in the hands of the Snow Queen’s clone, Moon. Numerous—too numerous—subplots
get underway. Moon’s former lover, BZ Gundhalinu, will be sent to World’s End,
where a wrecked Old Empire ship has spilled semi-sentient stardrive plasma; if
Gundhalinu can control the plasma, faster-than-light travel will again be
possible, ending Tiamat’s periodic isolation. Elsewhere, Reede Kullervo, a researcher
with a rebuilt brain, addicted to his own supercharging designer drug, will be ordered
by the leader of the supercriminal Brotherhood to seek the immortality elixir
whose only source is Tiamat. Meanwhile, Moon struggles to control Tiamat’s rebellious
factions, knowing that the planet’s intelligent sea-dwelling mers’’ are the
source of the elixir, and that the ancient computer that links the galaxy’s
clairvoyant sibyls in an information network lies buried under Tiamat’s chief
city, Carbuncle; she dares not permit the Hegemony to control either the sibyl network
or the elixir. Pledged to forever end offworld exploitation and save the mers,
the Lady of Tiamat, also known as Moon Dawntreader, finds her job made difficult
by Summer tribes and the treacherous Winters.

Also by Joan D. Vinge

The Snow Queen

Heaven Chronicles

Catspaw

World’s End

Psion

Phoenix in the Ashes

Mad Max

Beyond Thunderdome
(film novelization)

To the Mother of Us All

To my mother

And to my children

I owe many thanks to many people for their help in making
this book a reality, after so long. In particular, I would like to thank Michall
Jeffers and John Warner, for bringing Hamlet’s Mill to my attention; Giorgio de
Santillana and Hertha von Dechend, authors of Hamlet’s Mill; Barbara Luedtke;
Jim Frenkel; Vernor Vinge; Brian Thomsen; the Clarion West class of ‘88; Deborah
Kahn Cunningham; Lolly Boyer; Steve and Julia Sabbagh; Merrilee Heifetz; and
Richard Plantagenet, King of England, who may be the most misunderstood man in
history.

The following names of characters and places are pronounced
as shown:

Ananke (Uh-NONkee)

Arienrhod (AIRY-en-rode)

Danaquil Lu (DAN-uh-keel LOO)

Gundhalinu (Gun-dahLEEnoo)

Jerusha PalaThion (Jer-OO-shuh PAL-uhTHY-un)

Kedalion Niburu (Keh-DAY-lee-un Nih-BUR-oo)

Kharemough (KAREuhmoff)

Kharemoughi (KAREuhMAWG-ee)

Kullervo (KulLAIRvoh)

Miroe Ngenet (MIR-row EngEN-it)

Mundilfoere (MUNdil-fair)

Sandhi (SAHNdee)

Tiamat (TEE-uhmaht)

Tuo Ne’el (TOO-oh NEEL)

Vhanu (VAHnoo)

                                                                  ‘Do

‘You know nothing? Do you see nothing? Do you remember

‘Nothing?’

I remember

Those are pearls that were his eyes.

‘Are you alive, or not? Is there nothing in your head?’

—T. S. Eliot

There’s someone in my head, but it’s not me.

—Pink Floyd

The mills of gods grind slowly, and the result is usually
pain.

—Georgio de Santillana and Hertha von Oechend

Do you dare

Disturb the universe?

In a minute there is time

For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

—T. S. Eliot

The hand released the bright ribbon of scarf, and it
fluttered down. A hundred eager voices made one voice as the cluster of young
girls exploded down the shining strand of beach.

Clavally Bluestone Summer sat watching on the cliff high
above, feeling the sea wind against her face, feeling it sweep back her long,
dark hair. Smiling, she closed her eyes and imagined that it was the wind of
motion, that she was running with the others down below. She had run when she
was a girl in races like this one, on so many islands across the Summer seas;
hoping to be the winner, to be the Sea Mother’s Chosen for the three days of
the clan festival, garlanded with necklaces of clattering polished shells, fed
the best and the sweetest of foods, given new clothes, honored by the elders,
flirted with by all the young men ....

Her smile turned wistful; she fingered the trefoil pendant
that gleamed in the sunlight against the laces of her loose homespun shirt. It
had been a long time since she had run in one of those races. She had been a
sibyl for nearly half her life now. How was it possible ... ? She opened her
eyes, filling them with the endless bluegreen of sea and sky, ever-changing and
yet ever constant; the mottled clouds, the shimmering ephemera of rainbows from
a distant squall. The Twins smiled down on their gathering today, warming her
shoulders with luxuriant heat. Spring was in the air, making her remember with
longing her body’s own springtime.

She glanced over her shoulder at the sound of footsteps. Her
smile widened as she saw her husband making his way up the path with a basket
of fish cakes and bread, a jug of beer in his other hand. She saw the gray-shot
brown of his braided hair, his own trefoil gleaming in the sunlight.

Her smile faded as she watched him struggle up the steep
hill. The stiffness in his joints was getting worse every year—too many years
spent in drafty stone rooms, or making cold, wet crossings from island to
island for weeks at a time. Danaquil Lu was a Winter; he had not been bred to
the hard life of a Summer, and his body rebelled against it. But he rarely
spoke any word of complaint or regret, because he belonged here, where he was
free to live his life as a sibyl ... and because his heart belonged to her.

The weather was warming; the Summer Star was brightening in
their sky, Summer had come into its own. Perhaps the warmer days would ease his
pain. Her smile came back as she saw his eyes, bright and bluegreen like the
sea, smiling up at her.

He sat down with the basket of food, trying not to grimace.
She put an arm around his shoulders, massaging his back gently as she pointed
down at the beach. “Look, it’s almost over!” Another shout rose from the
watchers below as the runners reached the finish line drawn in the wet sand.
They watched a young girl with a bright flag of yellow hair sprint across the
line first, watched her being embraced and garlanded and borne away.

“It was a good race, Dana,” she said, hearing the memories
in her voice.

Danaquil Lu sighed, nodding; but somehow the gesture felt to
her as if he had shaken his head. “We’re young for such a short time,” he
murmured, “and we’re old for such a long time.”

She turned to look at him. “Come now,” she said, too cheerfully,
because she had been feeling the same way. “How can you say that on a day like
this?” and she kissed him, to make certain he didn’t try to answer.

He laughed in surprise. They ate together, enjoying the day
and each other’s company, an hour of solitude stolen from the questions of the
festival-goers in the village below.

They came down the hill again at last. A clan gathering was
always a joyful time—a time for being reunited with relatives and friends from
all across the scattered islands of Summer; for remembering the Sea Mother,
giving the Lady the tribute She deserved. This was the annual gathering of the
Goodventures, one of the largest clans in the islands. They had been the
religious leaders of Summer before the last Change—the clan of the previous Summer
Queens—and they still held great influence.

Down by the stone wall of the quay the winner of the
footrace, a laughing, freckled girl of no more than fourteen, was tossing the
ritual offerings of worshipers and supplicants into the restless green water.
Out in the bay, several mers from the colony that shared this island’s shores
looked on, a sure sign of the Sea’s blessing. Clavally watched the girl’s face,
the sunlight radiant in her hair, and felt a sudden, unexpected surge of
longing.

She had made a choice when she became a sibyl. It was a
hard, restless life, traveling from island to island, speaking the Lady’s
wisdom to those who needed her, seeking out and training the ones who would
follow after her, to guide a new generation of Summers. They said that it was “death
to kill a sibyl, death to love a sibyl, death to be a sibyl.” ... Few if any
men who were not sibyls themselves would dare to be a husband to one.

But even after she had met Danaquil Lu, she had gone on taking
childbane, because it was too hard a life to inflict on a child, and she had no
close relatives to help her raise one. And Danaquil Lu, with his bent back and
aching joints, needed more and more of her care. She squeezed his hand tightly,
and told her restless body to be quiet. Soon enough her childbearing time would
be past, and the questions in her heart would be answered once and for all.

“A question, sibyl—?” A boy came up to them hesitantly, his
brown braids flopping against his sleeveless linen tunic. His eyes chose
Danaquil Lu to ask his question of; she guessed it was probably a question
about girls.

“Ask, and I will answer.” Danaquil Lu spoke the ritual response,
smiling kindly.

Clavally let go of his hand with a farewell glance, granting
the blushing boy privacy. She moved on through the crowd, half-hearing Danaquil
Lu’s voice behind her murmur “Input ...” as he fell into the Transfer, and the
boy’s mumbled question.

“Sibyl?” A middle-aged, gray-haired Goodventure woman came
up beside her, and Clavally stopped, expecting another question. But before her
response could form, the woman said, “Are you going to Carbuncle?”

Clavally looked at her blankly. “To Carbuncle? Why?” she
asked.

“Haven’t you heard?” The woman looked annoyingly smug. “The
new Summer Queen. She has asked all the sibyls of Summer to make a pilgrimage
to the City in the North. She claims it is the Lady’s will.”

Clavally shook her head, expressing her disbelief as much as
her ignorance. Carbuncle was the only real city on the entire planet, located
far to the north, among the Winter clans. Its name meant both “jewel” and “fester.”
Tied to the offworlders’ starport, it swarmed with their wonders and their
corruption during the one-hundredandfifty-year cycles with the offworld
Hegemony controlled Tiamat. During that time the Snow Queen reigned, the Winters
claimed the city and all the lands around it for their own—and sibyls were
forbidden in Carbuncle. The offworlders despised them, [he Winters hated and
feared them. Danaquil Lu had been born in the city, but he had been exiled when
he became a sibyl.

But now the Change had come again. The Black Gate that the
offworlders used to reach Tiamat had closed; the offworlders had gone away, and
taken their technology with them. Even now the seas were warming. Gradually
they would become too hot for the klee the Summers herded and for many of the
fish they netted at sea. The mers, the Sea Mother’s other children, were
migrating north, and the Summers were preparing for their own migration as
well. Their ways would become this world’s ways again, as the Winters relearned
the old rules of survival and harmony with the Sea, and the Summer Queens
showed them the human face of the Lady’s wisdom.

“But why would the Summer Queen—or the Lady—want sibyls in
the city,” Ciavally asked, “and not among the people, helping them to find the
way to their new lives?”