The Summer Queen (108 page)

“I’m afraid I broke the law,” she said simply. “But that was
long ago ... what I did is no longer illegal, under the terms of our new
relationship with the Hegemony. And I am most grateful to you for your wisdom
in changing the old, oppressive system. It was an unjust law ... there were
many of them in those days. Isn’t that true, Justice?” She looked suddenly at
Gundhalinu, as if she had felt his eyes on her.

He smiled, his own smile as guarded as the one he saw on her
face now. “True justice is what we hope to establish in our relations with your
people this time, Lady,” he said softly. He glanced at Vhanu’s face, seeing
barely controlled annoyance, and at Sparks Dawntreader. Dawntreader looked at
him with a cold speculation that was not the expression he had been expecting
to see; one that triggered an unpleasant reaction in his gut.

Dawntreader looked away again, staring out at the landing
grids, at the recently arrived ships of the Assembly in the docking bay beyond
the windows, with a kind of fierce hunger. Gundhalinu wondered whether he was
really wishing that he could fly away, disappear, leave this world and all its
sorrows. Or maybe he was only wishing the Hegemony would disappear, instead
....

He heard a sudden stirring in the crowd across the room: The
Prime Minister and the Assembly members were making their entrance at last. For
half a second, he knew exactly the emotion Dawntreader had been feeling.

“Well, the Living Museum of Ancient History has arrived,” Jerusha
PalaThion said dryly, and quite clearly.

“PalaThion!” Vhanu snapped, his indignation not simply for
appearance’s sake. But Gundhalinu felt his own sudden paralysis disappear. A
faint trace of smile pulled up the corners of his mouth as he looked at his
Chief Inspector. He gave her an imperceptible nod; a thank-you. Moon smiled
openly, behind Vhanu’s back. Sparks turned away from the windows, all his
attention suddenly on the doorway. Gundhalinu remembered that Dawntreader was
the son of one of the Assembly members, fathered during the same Mask Night
when Arienrhod had had herself cloned.

Gundhalinu started forward, a signal to the people around
him to follow, knowing that the Assembly members would expect that courtesy as
their due. Even though they had functioned as nothing but figureheads through
virtually all of Hegemonic history—and had just become even more of an
anachronism, as the stardrive transformed the nature of the Eight Worlds’ real
power structure—still they remained the living symbol of the Hegemony’s influence.
He understood Vhanu’s reflexive anger at Jerusha’s casual remark, even though
he had long ago ceased to feel the kind of pride and reverence that the sight
of Assembly had once inspired m him.

Because the Assembly members were little more than actors
living a perpetual role, their arrival anywhere was generally an excuse for
holidays and celebration, for remembering what was good about Kharemough’s
dominance as first among equals in the Hegemony .... He hoped suddenly, with
all his heart, that it would be that way tonight.

The crowd of expectant offworlders and influential Tiamatans
parted as though some word of magic had been spoken, opening a path between him
and the waiting Assembly members. They were resplendent in gem-brocaded,
perfectly tailored uniforms, crusted with the honors and decorations awarded to
them during their endless cycle of returns to the Eight Worlds.

Gundhalinu glanced down at his own clothing, seeing the austere
black uniform of a Chief Justice. Tonight its uncompromising plainness was
crossed by a band of silver, on which his family crest and his own honors and
decorations were displayed. He had felt disagreeably ostentatious when he put
it on; but suddenly he was glad he had, as if he had remembered to put on body
armor before confronting a mob of rioters.

He stopped before the Prime Minister, flanked by Vhanu and
Tilhonne, with the other officials of his government gathered behind them. He
made his bow as they were introduced, one by one, by the Prime Minister’s
protocol officer.

Prime Minister Ashwini touched Gundhalinu’s upraised hand
briefly, with a look of benign distraction, and murmured a polite pleasantry
which Gundhalinu immediately forgot. The Prime Minister appeared to be in his
mid-sixties, but his body was still youthful-looking; he was distinguished and
obviously Technician in his bearing. He was only the fourth Prime Minister
since the Hegemony’s formation, and Gundhalinu had no idea how long ago, in the
realtime history of his homeworld, Ashwini must have been born. He had probably
known it once, in school, but he had long since forgotten. Given the access the
Prime Minister had to the best available rejuvenating treatments, and frequent
use of the water of life, he was certainly much older in actual years than he
looked to be. And because he, and the rest of the Assembly, had spent most of
their time in sublight travel between Gates and worlds, their memories carried
back even further, a patchwork of random moments of history—most of them
probably too much like this one.

“Honored, sadhu,” Gundhalinu murmured, speaking Sandhi, as
everyone else was now. He stepped aside to give the Prime Minister and the
Assembly a clear view of the others who waited behind him. “May I present to
you the Summer Queen—”

“Arienrhod!” the Prime Minister said, his face filling with
surprise. “I say ....” He touched his nose briefly with his hand, glancing at
Gundhalinu again. “Isn’t she supposed to be dead? Didn’t we see them drown her,
a few months ago—?” He broke off, before Gundhalinu could make an answer; his
eyes glazed over as if he were listening to someone speaking inside his own
head, Gundhalinu realized that Ashwini was getting a datafeed from somewhere,
possibly from his protocol officer, or else some file of stored information
tuned to his own speech. “Oh,” Ashwini said, after a brief moment that had
begun to seem interminable; and then, “Of course. This is the Summer Queen. My
apologies. Honored, Lady, to be sure.” He stepped forward, holding out his hand
like a local. Moon bowed, with equal dignity, and shook it solemnly. “Is this
something new, then?” he said to her. “Do you have yourselves altered to match
your predecessors, now?”

Gundhalinu saw Moon flush, and winced inwardly. “No,” she
said, without using titles, as one equal to another. She spoke Sandhi that was
slightly stilted buf perfectly clear. “We do not.”

“Oh,” he said, and the look of consternation filled his face
again. “But what are you doing here at all? Your people weren’t even permitted
in the starport, the last time I was here.”

“Things have changed, sadhu,” Gundhalinu said, with gentle
urgency. “If you recall. Because of the stardrive. Our relationship with Tiamat
included.”

Ashwini half frowned, and seemed to listen to his inner
voice. “Of course they have,” he said, blinking. “Well, of course, that makes
perfect sense.” He nodded to Moon again, as if they had just been introduced,
before looking back at Gundhalinu. “And you are the man we have to thank for it
all, are you not, Justice?” he said, with a smile that actually seemed genuine
and full of appreciation. “You must tell me the whole story of it, in your own
words, at dinner—”

“It would be my pleasure, sadhu.” Gundhalinu returned the
smile, briefly, before the Prime Minister’s attention wandered. Gundhalinu
exchanged glances with Vhanu as Ashwini looked away; seeing his own
disconcertion reflected in Vhanu’s eyes. Gods, the man is a shufflebrain, a
walking cipher. But he went on making introductions, as if nothing had
happened, presenting Sparks Dawntreader, “... the Queen’s consort, the son of
First Secretary Sirus ...”

A murmur went through the gathered men and women of the
Assembly, and he saw someone push forward for a better look—Sirus himself, if
he recalled the half-remembered face correctly. The man looked no older than
Sparks Dawntreader did now; but he smiled, with pride and feeling, as his eyes
found his son. Gundhalinu felt Dawntreader look back at him in brief surprise,
before turning to face his father.

The Prime Minister was being guided on into the room with
gentle insistence, chaperoned by a handful of advisors and protectors.
Gundhalinu felt his neck muscles loosen with relief as other members of the
Assembly and their companions came forward to greet him and his staff, by turns
blandly congenial, or unthinkingly arrogant, or seeming vaguely disoriented, as
the Prime Minister had. They spent the majority of their time in their own
hermetically sealed floating world, except when they left their ships to attend
functions like these—an endless succession of sparkling soirees and elegant
dinners among the ever-changing elite of world after world. Generally they only
elected new members when someone died. He supposed it was surprising that their
behaviors did not seem even stranger.

He accepted a drink from the assortment of mild drugs
offered by a passing servo, as its highly burnished form wove an expert course
through the flesh-and blood bodies of the gathered guests. He swallowed down
half the drink at once, disgusted at himself for needing it, for letting his
memories get on his nerves so much. He had encountered the Assembly only once
before, in that brief, bitter meeting at the port hospital. That meeting had
been thirteen years ago for him, but these people had scarcely aged, and it
seemed to him that some of their faces were familiar, too like the ones burned
indelibly into his brain.

What was it, he wondered, that gave humiliation such a
terrible power over the human soul, making the painful memories of half a
lifetime ago more vivid than his memories of last week, let alone of all the
good and worthwhile things he had accomplished in the years between? When he
had returned to Kharemough with the stardrive, no one had dared mention his
disgrace. Years had passed without a single disapproving stare or a cutting
remark about his past. His suicide attempt had even begun to seem like ancient
history to him.

But for these people, the memory of their last encounter
with him was only a few months old. He had been barely twenty-five then, and
looking half-dead besides; but even so he found himself praying to the shades
of his ancestors that no one would remember, or make the association ...

“Justice Gundhalinu,” a voice said, too loudly, from just
behind his left ear. “A great pleasure to meet you, sadhu—someone who has come
to be a living symbol of what makes Kharemough great, of why we still rule the
Hegemony, after so long.”

Gundhalinu turned, backing up a step from the other man’s uncomfortable
proximity, and the overpowering scent of cologne. His stomach turned at the
odor, one he had never forgotten.

“IP Quarropas,” the man said, “Speaker of the Assembly.”

“Honored,” Gundhalinu murmured automatically, meeting the
Speaker’s palm as he looked down into the other man’s fleshy, smiling face. The
Speaker had obviously been a handsome man in his youth, but his life of ease
and privilege had not worn well on him.

“I feel we’ve met this way before—” A strange expression
came over the Speaker’s face as their hands touched. “Have we?”

“No, I don’t think so ....”

“But I remember your name, from before—” Quarropas wagged
his finger, and Gundhalinu watched the answer struggling inexorably toward the
surface of his mind.

Gundhalinu kept his expression neutral with an effort, as memory
doubled his own vision. “Yes, Quarropas-sadhu,” he said quietly, “we have met.
On your last visit to Tiamat. I was a Police inspector then.” And Quarropas had
refused to touch his hand in greeting, because he had crippled it, in his
attempt to slash his wrist.

“Inspector Gundhalinu,” Quarropas murmured. “Sainted ancestors!
Are you that one—the one from the wilderness? How is it possible? I’d thought
that you would have done the honorable thing years ago, after so debasing your
family and your class that night—” Several people near him turned around to
stare, in open disbelief or scandalized curiosity. Gundhalinu heard someone
whisper, “I said so ....”

Gundhalinu said nothing for a long moment, seeing Vhanu
among the onlookers who were suddenly bearing witness to this confrontation. “The
‘honorable thing’?” he repeated, finally, his voice perfectly even. “By that do
you mean that I should be dead now?”

“You were a failed suicide,” Quarropas said. The term also
meant coward. “And with a filthy native girl for a mistress besides—”

“Do you mean Moon Dawntreader?” Gundhalinu asked, damming
the flood of words. “Then you are referring to the Summer Queen—” He nodded
toward Moon, who stood motionless in the crowd near them, with her expression
caught somewhere between anger and pain. Sparks was with her, and there was
only bleak disgust on his face. “In that case,” Gundhalinu continued, with
deadly calm, “you are mistaken. She was, and is, married, to First Secretary
Sirus’s son. Their children are here among the guests tonight. She helped me in
a time of need; I did as much for her, a long time ago. That was all. There is
nothing more to be said about the matter “ He took a deep breath. “Except that
I came to realize that to throw away my life was the real act of cowardice. The
truly honorable choice was to go on living, and by my actions earn the right to
forget the past.”

“Well said, Gundhalinu-ken.” Sirus, the First Secretary, was
standing now behind Sparks Dawntreader. His dark, shrewd eyes met Gundhalinu’s.
“And well done, too. I daresay, Quarropas,” he murmured, lowering his voice as
he moved forward to stand between the Speaker and Gundhalinu, “I would sooner commit
suicide myself than speak such words to this man here. We both committed an unworthy
act during our last visit, to have questioned his honor even once, under circumstances
we could not fully understand. To insult the honorable Gundhalinueshkrad twice
is unforgivable.” Quarropas bristled, glaring at Sirus with the shoe of attention
suddenly on his own foot, and pinching.