The Summer Queen (10 page)

Ananke stood watching silently until the van was out of
sight. And then his eyes rolled up and back in his head, and he collapsed in a
billowing heap of robes. Kedalion crouched down beside him. glad for the excuse
to sit as he lifted the boy’s head.

“Is he all right?” Reede asked, looking more surprised than
concerned.

“No,” Kedalion said, the word sounding more irritable than
he had intended “But he will be. Are you’.’”

Reede wiped absently at his lacerated face, no! even
wincing. Kedalion winced Reede studied his reddened fingers in mild disgust, as
if it were paint staining them, and not his own blood. He wiped his hand on his
pants. “Sure.” A bark of mocking laughter burst out of him as he looked away
across the deserted square in the direction the van had taken. “Stupid
bastards.” he said.

“You just saved all our lives,” Kedalion murmured, well
aware that the Church Police were anything but stupid; and equally aware that
there couldn’t be more than half a dozen people on this entire planet who could
do what he had just seen Reede do to them. “You don’t have to be so goddamn
casual about it!” His voice was shaking now. He reached into the numerous
pockets of his coat, and found the one with the silver bottle still safely
inside it.

Reede looked at him, and shrugged. “Sorry,” he murmured. But
there was no comprehension in it.

“Goddammit,” Kedalion muttered again, still glaring at Reede
as he struggled to pull the bottle free. He unstoppered it and took a large
mouthful of the stiver liquid heedlessly. He gasped as it slid down his throat
with an almost sentient caress, bringing his shock-numbed body back to life
from the inside. “Gods,” he whispered, almost a prayer, “it’s like sex.”

“I like a man who knows what’s really important,” Reede said
sardonically. “If you think I was going to miss a chance to drink this, after
all that’s happened tonight, you’re crazy,” Kedalion snapped, beyond caring by
now whether Reede really was crazy. “Who the hell are you, anyway?” Not really
expecting an answer to the question this time, either.

“I work for Sab Emo Humbaba,” Reede said, picking his teeth.
“Therefore the police and I have a kind of symbiotic relationship.”

“A lot of people work for Humbaba,” Kedalion said. “I’ve
worked for him myself. But the Church Police don’t scatter like cats when I say
so.”

Reede sighed, and looked pained. “My full name is Reede
Kulleva Kullervo. I’m Humbaba’s brains. I head his research and development. If
anything happened to me ....”He shrugged meaningfully. “You know who the real
gods are, around here.”

The name sounded familiar, but Kedalion couldn’t place it.
He stared at Reede. trying to picture the tattooed lunatic in front of him at
work in a sterile lab somewhere, peacefully accessing restricted information,
datamodeling illegal chemicals inside a holofield. “No ...”he said, shaking his
head. “Bullshit. What are you really?”

Reede raised his eyebrows. “What does it really matter?” he
asked softly.

As long as he had the power. Kedalion looked back at Ananke,
still lying sprawled on the pavement, and took another swig from the silver
bottle.

Ananke opened his eyes and sucked in a loud gasp of panic. He
let it out again in a sigh as he realized where he was, and registered their
faces. Kedalion kneeled down and fed him a sip of liquor from the silver
bottle, watched his stupefaction turn into bliss, and grinned at him. Ananke
pushed himself up until he was sitting alone.

“You mean,” Kedalion turned back to Reede as the realization
suddenly struck him. “you could have done what you did here back in the club?
We didn’t have to run—none of this needed to happen, no chase, no desecrating a
temple, no scaring the shit out of the kid here—?” And me, but he didn’t say
it.

Reede shrugged. “Maybe. But in the chaos, who knows? ‘Accidents
happen,’ like they say around here.” His bloody grin crept back. “Besides, this
was more fun.”

“Speak for yourself,” Kedalion muttered. He looked away from
Reede’s molten gaze as he got stiffly to his feet.

“Well, let’s go,” Reede said, watching as he helped Ananke
up.

Kedalion hesitated, suddenly uncertain. “Thanks, but I think
we’ve got other—”

“Other plans? But you work for me now.” Reede folded his
arms, and the grin grew wider on his face.

Kedalion looked at him, and laughed once, remembering what
Reede had told the police. A joke. “I quit,” he said, and returned the grin.

Reede shook his head. “Too late. You drank my liquor. I
saved your life. You’re my man, Kedalion Niburu.”

Kedalion went on staring, trying to read the other man’s
face; suddenly feeling cold in the pit of his stomach as he realized that Reede
was actually serious. “You need a runner—?” he asked, his voice getting away
from him for the second time tonight. “No. Not until I know what you really do,”
he said, with more courage than he felt.

“I told you what I really do.” Reede lifted a hand. “Ask
around. Access it, right now.” He shrugged, waiting.

Kedalion felt a strange electricity sing through him,
knowing as suddenly that there was no need to check it out. Everything Reede
had told him was completely true. “I don’t much like drugs ...”he said, somehow
able to keep looking Reede in the eye.

Reede glanced at the silver bottle still clutched in
Kedalion’s hand, and his mouth twitched. “Everything’s relative, isn’t it?”
KedaJion flushed. “But what I make and where it goes are not the point. I’m
looking for a ferryman. I need a personal crew.”

“Why us?” Kedalion said. “You don’t know me ... I don’t even
know him.” He gestured at Ananke.

“You’re a landsman—you’re from Samathe, so am I. Maybe I’m
sentimental. And I know your reputation. I’ve already checked you out. You’re
trustworthy, you have good judgment, and you deliver.”

“What happened to your last ferryman?”

“He quit.” Reede smiled faintly. “He couldn’t stand the boredom.”

Kedalion laughed in spite of himself. “What was this
tonight? My audition for the job?”

Reede grinned, and didn’t answer. “I need somebody I can
rely on .... Like your style. What do you charge for a run?”

“That depends ...” Kedalion named a sum that almost choked
him.

“I’ll double that on a regular basis, if you work out.”

Kedalion took a deep breath in disbelief. He hesitated, and
shook his head. “I’m flattered,” he said honestly. “But I don’t think I’m up to
it.” He glanced at Ananke, watching the mixed emotions that played across the
boy’s face while he looked at Reede. “Come on, kid.” He started away. Ananke
followed him like a sleepwalker, still looking back at Reede.

“Niburu,” Reede called, “You may find it exceptionally difficult
to get the kind of work you want from now on, if you turn me down.”

Kedalion stopped, looking back. His mouth tightened as he
saw the expression on Reede’s face. “We’ll see about that,” he said, not as
convincingly as he would have liked. He turned his back on Reede, and started
on again.

“Yes,” Reede said, to his retreating back. “I expect that we
will.”

Hegemonic Police Inspector BZ Gundhalinu entered his office
as he had done every day for almost five years, imitating the precise patterns
of the day before; like a robot, he would have thought, if he had allowed
himself to think about it, which he never did. He set a beaker of overbrewed
challo—the closest thing to a drug he ever permitted himself—down on the corner
of his desk/terminal, on the precise spot where the heat of past mugs had
dulled the dark cerralic sheen of its surface. He sat down in his chair,
turning it to face the view of Foursgate as he requested his morning briefing
from the desk. He always took the briefing on audio; it was the closest he came
to relaxing all day. The terminal’s irritating facsimile of his own voice began
a condensed recitation of the file contents. He marked with a murmured word the
things to be brought up in more detail, staring out the window at the city
shrouded in cold mist. The windowpane was completely dry, for once; but as he
watched the rain began again, random fingers tapping restlessly on the pane,
droplets running down its face randomly like tears. Damn the rain, he thought,
rubbing at his eyes. It was too much like snow.

“... The Chief Inspector requests your presence in his
office as soon as possible. , ..”

Gundhalinu stiffened. “Hold,” he said to the desk, and
turned back, to face the message lying on its screen. The Chief Inspector. He
stared at the inert forms of the graphics ... in his office. Gundhalinu’s hands
closed over the molded arms of his seat, anchoring his body in the present while
the room around him shimmered as if it were about to disappear, about to leave
him alone in the white wilderness .... He stood up, slowly, afraid that his
body would betray him; that his legs would refuse to carry him forward, or that
when he reached the door and stepped into the hall he would bolt and run. There
was only one reason the Chief Inspector could have for wanting to see him in person.
He looked down, checking the blue-gray length of his uniform for a speck of
dust, a line out of place. When he was certain that his appearance was
regulation, he went out of his office and through the Police complex to where
Chief Inspector Savanne waited for him.

He stood on the muted floribunda carpet before the Chief Inspector’s
desk without a single memory of how he had gotten there. His body made the
correct salute perfectly, habitually, although he was certain his face was
betraying him with a look more guilty than a felon’s.

Savanne returned the salute but did not rise. He leaned back
in the flexible confines of his seat, studying Gundhalinu wordlessly.
Gundhalinu met his gaze with an effort of will. The Chief Inspector was not an
easy man to face, even on a viewscreen. And now the uncertainty he found in
Savanne’s gray eyes was harder to endure than the cold disapproval he had been
expecting.

“Sir—” Gundhalinu began, and bit off the flood of excuses
that filled his mouth. He glanced down the blue length of his uniform to his
shining boots, compulsively, finding no flaw. And yet his mind saw the truth,
the real, hidden flaw—saw a hypocrite, a traitor, wearing the clothes of an
honest man. He was certain that the Chief Inspector saw the same thing. Tiamat.
The word, the world, were suddenly all he could think of. Tiamat, Tiamat,
Tiamat ...

“Inspector,” Savanne said, and nodded in acknowledgment.
Gundhalinu felt his own lips press together more tightly, felt every muscle in
his face and body stiffen, bracing for an attack. But the Chief Inspector only
said, “I think we both realize that your work has not been up to standard in
recent months.” He came directly to the point, as usual.

Gundhalinu stood a little straighter, forcing himself to
meet Savanne’s gaze again. “Yes, sir,” he said.

Savanne let his fingertips drift over the touchboard of his
terminal, throwing random messages onto its screen, as he did sometimes when he
was distracted. Or maybe the messages weren’t random. Gundhalinu could not make
them out from where he stood. “You obviously served very competently on Tiamat,
to have risen to the rank of Inspector in so short a time. But that doesn’t
surprise me, since you were a Technician of the second rank ....” Savanne was
from Kharemough, like Gundhalinu, like most high officers on the force. He knew
the social codes of its rigid, technocratic class system, and all that they
implied.

Were. Gundhalinu swallowed the word like a lump of dry
bread. His hands moved behind his back; his fingers touched his scarred wrists.
He could protect his family from dishonor by staying away from Kharemough. But
he had never been able to forget his failure; because his people would never
forget it, and they were everywhere he went.

Savanne glanced up, frowning slightly at the surreptitious
movement. “Gundhalinu, I know you carry some unpleasant memory from your duty
on Tiamat ... I know you still bear the scars.” He looked down again, as if
even to mention it embarrassed him. “I don’t know why you haven’t had the scars
removed. But I don’t want you to think that I hold what you did against you—”

Or what I failed to do. Gundhalinu felt his face flush,
aware that his pale freckles were reddening visibly against the brown of his
skin. The very fact that Savanne mentioned the scars at all told him too much.
He said nothing.

“You’ve served here on Number Four for nearly five
standards, and for most of that time you’ve kept whatever is troubling you to
yourself. Perhaps too much to yourself ...”

Gundhalinu looked down. He knew that some of the other officers
felt he was aloof and unsociable—knew that they were right. But it hadn’t mattered,
because nothing had seemed to matter much to him since Tiamat. He felt the cold
of a long-ago winter seep back into his bones as he stood waiting. He tried to
remember a face ... a girl with hair the color of snow, and eyes like agate ...
tried not to remember.

“You’ve shown admirable self-discipline, until recently,” Savanne
said. “But after the Wendroe Brethren matter ... It was handled very badly, as
I’m sure I don’t have to tell you. The Governor-General complained to me personally
about it.”

Gundhalinu suppressed an involuntary grimace, as he suddenly
heard what lay between the words. The Police had to demonstrate the Hegemony’s
goodwill. His eyelids twitched with the need to let him stop seeing, but he
held Savanne’s gaze. “I understand, sir. It was my responsibility. My
accusations against the Brethren’s chamberlain were inexcusable.” Even though
they were true. Truth was always the first casualty in their relationship with
an onworld government.

Kharemough held the Hegemony together with a fragile net of
economic sanctions and self-interested manipulation, because without a
hyperlight stardrive anything more centralized was impossible. The eight worlds
of the Hegemony had little in common but their mutual access to the Black
Gates. They were technically autonomous, and Kharemough cultivated their
sufferance with hypocritically elaborate care. He knew all of that as well as
anyone; it was one more thing his service on Tiamat had taught him.