The Summer Queen (105 page)

“It isn’t that.” She shook her head. But what was it, then?
She pressed her mouth together. “Sparks is still my husband. It’s something we
have to work out on our own.” Realizing, as she said it, how the words excluded
him. She looked up at him again. “Tell me ... tell me that you understand.”

He grimaced, and nodded. He turned away abruptly, striding
back to his desk. He made a swift pass of his hands over the terminal’s touchboard.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

He looked up. “Deleting this conversation from the record.”

She started, realizing all at once that nothing which went
on in this room was private from the Hegemony, unless BZ chose to make it so;
remembering again, painfully, that this was no longer her ground, or safe
ground. She stood where she was, looking at him for a long moment. “I have to
be going.”

He nodded again. But she stood motionless for another span
of heartbeats, unable to make herself move toward the door. She turned away at
last, when he said nothing more, and went out without looking back.

Tammis made his way through the halls of Carbuncle’s city
medical center, more aware of the knot of tension in his chest than of anything
in his physical surroundings. He did not look anyone in the eye as he passed
them; glad that Merovy had shown him around the complex enough times that he
could find his way to her without having to ask directions.

Most of the staff moving past him through the halls were
still offworlders, strangers to him; just as virtually all of the mostly
unidentifiable medical equipment that he glimpsed everywhere was imported from
offworld. The offworlders seemed to have a horror of finding themselves
stranded here, so far from home, without the technology to save them from any
imaginable disease or emergency ... although, he thought sourly, it had not
hurt their consciences any to leave the people of Tiamat without it, whenever
they had left this world in the past, for all the long centuries.

At least his people would have permanent access to it now,
and from now on. He thought of his father-in-law’s bad back, and tried to be
grateful, for Danaquil Lu’s sake. And the new Chief Justice had established the
medtech training program that Merovy had joined. It was partly pragmatism, he
was sure—the hospital had been severely understaffed almost from the moment the
offworlders had returned.

But it had also seemed to be part of a genuine effort by the
Chief Justice to create goodwill. He wondered briefly, bleakly, if the Chief
Justice was doing it all only to please the Summer Queen ... if what Elco Teel
and the others said behind his back was true, that BZ Gundhalinu was his mother’s
former lover who had returned after so many years. If it was true that when he
looked into the Chief Justice’s dark, foreign face, he actually saw an echo of
his own face ....

His sister had stalked off furiously when he had mentioned
it to her, his mothei had murmured evasions, looking pale and distracted, when
he tried to ask her. He had not asked his father, because his father would
barely even look at him, since the incident at his wedding feast. Merovy had
said she saw no resemblance between his face and the Chief Justice’s ... but
she had looked away from him as she said it

Merovy. His eyes registered the halls of the medical complex
again; he made his way past the shining, ascetic form of some machine whose
function Merovy had explained to him once, but which he no longer remembered.
Merovy ... Suddenly nothing was on his mind but the reason he had come here: to
see Merovy, to ask her why—? Why he had come home last night to an empty house,
to a handwritten message on a page still damp with tears, which said she was
leaving him; that he could come and speak to her here today. No further
explanation, no other words. Although, sick at heart, he had known her leaving
needed no explanation.

Someone greeted him by name—an offworlder, one of the
technicians who were Merovy’s supervisors here at the hospital. “Your wife’s in
212.”

He murmured thanks, keeping his head down—sure that anyone
who got a look into his eyes would read his guilt and know exactly why he had
come here, why she had left him, why ...

He reached the lab where Merovy was working; saw her sitting
at a terminal, her thick brown hair trapped in a neat braid at her back. He saw
a data model flicker and change in the air before her, watched her control its
metamorphosis with deft skill and perfect concentration. Having seen her father’s
suffering through most of her childhood, and seeing how the offworlders’
medicine had ended it, she had wanted to have a place in the new medical technology
more than he ever remembered her wanting anything ... except, once upon a time,
him. “Merovy,” he said softly.

She turned in her seat, startled but not surprised. “I’m
glad you came,” she said, but the words were empty.

“You asked me to.” He held out his hands, half shrug, half
placating gesture. “Why couldn’t we have done this at home?”

“Because you didn’t come home last night. I waited and
waited for you. Again “

“I had work to do—”

“Don’t he about it!” She rose from her seat, her face
flushed. “We’ve tried to talk about it there, too many times. It never does any
good.”

“Merovy ... I’m sorry.” He shook his head, looking down. “This
time it will be different, I swear to you.”

“You always say that! And it never changes.” Her eyes filled
with tears of anger, overflowed with tears of grief. “I’m not what you want, I’m
only what you need, to hide behind. But I know everyone laughs at me when I’m
not there, when you leave me behind—even to my face. Why do you want me to come
back? I’m not a boy—I’d be anything you want, but I can’t be that. I wish I
could change myself, if it would make you love me as much as I love you—”

“I don’t want you to change!” His hands tightened into fists
with the need to hold her—knowing that to touch her would be the worst thing he
could do.

“You don’t know what you want.” She turned away, crossing
the room to the storage cabinets along the walls. She queried one, and took
something out. She came back across the room, and held the thing out to him in
her hand—a sheet with what looked like medicine patches on it. “Here,” she
said, her voice strained. “Take this, and wear one patch every day for a week.
You have a venereal disease.”

He felt his face redden. He took the sheet from her with
numb fingers. “How do you know?” he whispered incredulously.

Her eyes turned cold and clear. “Because you gave it to me.”

He shut his eyes.

“If you ever really decide what you want, then we can talk
about it again. Not until then.” Her mouth quivered, but he saw the utter
conviction in her face, and knew that she would not change her mind.

He turned away, his throat choked with grief, and left the
room.

Moon Dawntreader stood alone, waiting, among the docks that
drifted like seaweed on the smooth surface of the sea below Carbuncle. She
looked down at the green-black water moving below the interstices of the pier,
the secret instability beneath her feet. Oil slicks and stranger, less
definable secretions made iridescent patterns on the impenetrable darkness
between the moored ships. She watched them shift and re-form, hypnotized by
their deliberate motion, by the familiar shouting and clangor, the smells of
the sea and ships that filled the dockyards, filling her with nostalgia.

She no longer felt the kind of yearning for the past that
had once made her ache to return to the places of her childhood; she no longer
had the sense that her life in the city was only a long dream. That other world
was gone now, not just because of the changing climate or shifting populations,
but because of the years themselves, the thousand thousand separate moments
that had settled over her memories like windblown sand. She could no longer
clearly see the girl she had once been, who could not have imagined a life
spent in a place such as this, when she didn’t feel the wind or the sun or the
rain for weeks at a time, and never thought of the Sea Mother, let alone believed
that She watched over every action, heard every prayer. In time it had all
faded, until the life she lived now had grown to seem natural.

She looked up, feeling Carbuncle’s presence above her, not reassuring
and protecting, but heavy and threatening, like a storm. Her restless gaze
searched the ramp leading down to the harbor, this time finding what she had
been searching for, the familiar form of Capella Goodventure. She suddenly
remembered standing here half a lifetime ago, the newly chosen Queen, needing
desperately to have time alone to make her peace with Sparks, and the sea ...
feeling Capella Good venture’s presence shadowing them, as the Goodventures
followed her everywhere, spying on her, judging her ....

But now it was Capella Goodventure she needed to see, privately,
intimately; just the two of them and the sea, in this public place that was
more private now than anywhere in the city above, even the palace. Her
bodyguards, who were always nearby since the offworlders’ return, stood a
respectful distance away, with their attention fixed intently on their
surroundings.

Capella Goodventure reached her side and nodded in acknowledgment.
There was respect, and, almost, warmth, in her gaze as their eyes met. “What is
it you need, Lady?” There was also curiosity, about why they were meeting here,
like this.

“It isn’t for me, but for the mere, that I need your help.
The Chief Justice has lifted the ban on hunting them.”

Capella Goodventure’s mouth thinned. “I knew it would come
to that. He is nothing but an offworlder, for all his pretenses.”

Moon bit her tongue against the need to explain, to justify,
to argue against prejudices that had risen too easily in her own mind as she
had made her way through the streets of the city today. She had come to respect
Capella Goodventure, even to appreciate her. But the woman was unyielding in
her beliefs, and her distrust of the offworlders was as complete as her
conviction that they were not a government but an infestation. Looking into
that face, with its lines of hard and pitiless judgment, she was suddenly
afraid that if things continued, someday she would find her own face reflected
there. And so she made no attempt to argue, but only said, “I don’t have the power
to stop them. But I intend to impede them, in every way possible.”

Capella Goodventure’s eyes came alive. “What do you want us
to do?”

“I want you to spread the word among the Summers—to ask
their help, when they’re out on the sea, to mark the presence of offworlders
hunting for the mers, and do anything in their power to disrupt the hunt,
without endangering themselves. You can interfere with the Hegemony’s ships and
equipment, or better, disperse mer colonies when hunters are approaching.” They
had never been able to make the mers understand the threat of an attack by hunters.
The mers seemed incapable of comprehending the brutal unpredictability of human
nature.

“Of course,” Capella Goodventure said. “But it will be hard.
The offworlders have their technology—” The word grated like a curse. “It will
be hard to get around them.”

“I know.” Moon nodded. “I’ll get you equipment of your own
that can show you their locations and interfere with their tracking devices. I
can get sonics that will panic the mers and drive them into the sea, to force
them to save themselves. I don’t like the idea of that either—” she insisted,
as Capella Goodventure frowned. “But I’d rather use the offworlders’ equipment
against mem than see the mers slaughtered. Wouldn’t you?”

Capella Goodventure pulled irritably at the heavy cloth of
her scarf. “I don’t like anything to do with the offworlders’ technology, as
you well know,” she said. “Learning how to use their equipment, even if it is
to use it against them, goes against everything I believe to be right.”

Moon tensed at the other woman’s threat of refusal. But
Capella Goodventure shrugged, her hands knotting deep in the pockets of her
loose trousers. “But for the mers—only for them, this has nothing to do with
you, and don’t you take credit for forcing me—I accept your offer. Equipment
will go on the ships and be used for the purpose intended, to defy its masters
and protect the Sea’s Children, if that is the Lady’s will. And I am sure She
will let us know whether it is Her will, or not ....” She leaned over the rail
and spat three times, reverently, into the water listening below. It was only
then that Moon realized Capella Goodventure was speaking not to her, but to the
Sea Mother Herself.

“Thank you, Capella Goodventure.” Moon smiled, satisfied. “The
Lady is well-pleased with your dedication.” Not sure, herself, which one of
them she spoke for, or of, she offered her own prayer of resolution and
dedication to the nameless, lifeless thing they both served.

“Damn it, boss, you’re late—”

Reede jerked to a stop at the entrance to Starhiker’s as he
was unexpectedly accosted by Niburu. “So what?” he said. He had almost not come
at all, knowing that Ariele Dawntreader would be here, waiting for him, with
that look in her eyes. He had come anyway, finally, telling himself that it was
only to break off this lie of a relationship. He had to make sure that she
stayed away from him from now on—absolutely sure. It had gotten them noticed,
gotten him in trouble, made him vulnerable ... and her. He couldn’t afford
that, couldn’t afford to let anybody get close to him ever, while he wore the
Source’s brand.

He told himself again that she was only a habit he had
gotten into. Just because she loved the mers, and talked of growing up with the
sea as if it were the most natural, beautiful thing in the world ... just
because she belonged to this world, and this strange city, that seemed to touch
some part of his shattered soul with exquisite, inexplicable dejavu ... that
was no reason to think he felt anything real about her. Just because when he
talked of those things with her he knew peace, and a sense of his own humanity;
just because she looked at him with longing, as if he were really a man, whole
and sane .... Habits were made to be broken.