The Summer Queen (109 page)

“If it were not for the Chief Justice,” Sirus went on, “I
would not have the great pleasure of seeing my son again tonight, or meeting
his family. His wife would not be Queen of this world ... we would not be here
at all, with a new future before us, and the water of life back in our hands,
if he had not given us the stardrive. I salute you, sadhu.” He looked toward
Gundhalinu, and raised his enameled goblet. The crowd began to murmur again
around him; but this time there was nothing hostile or mocking in the sound.
Gundhalinu saw other glasses raised, and palms held up in solemn acknowledgment
to him.

Gundhalinu nodded, letting Sirus read the gratitude in his
eyes. Sirus smiled and turned away, and time began to flow again.

“By the Boatman, you skewered that kortch neatly.” Jerusha
PalaThion was suddenly standing beside him. She touched his arm, and he saw
their shared past mirrored in her eyes.

His mouth pinched. “I’ve had enough years, lying awake
nights, to think about what I would say this time ....”He shook his head, and
smiled faintly. “Maybe I’m really not a coward.” He looked back at her. “How
are you doing?”

She shrugged. “I’ll live. I’ve had worse receptions. But I
think I need more fortification.” She moved away, following the track of a
servo.

Gundhalinu sipped his own drink, searching the crowd until
he spotted Vhanu. Vhanu met his gaze briefly, then glanced away, his eyes filled
with uncertainty.

Gundhalinu started forward, wanting to speak to him. But the
Prime Minister was suddenly in front of him, between them, smiling at him with
benign dignity. “A toast to Chief Justice Gundhalinu? Nothing could be more appropriate,
or give me more pleasure. Few people in our history have deserved our tribute
more, for their contributions to the prominence of Kharemough and the
prosperity of the Hegemony. “

Gundhalinu bowed his head, with the gesture avoiding having
to look anyone in the eye. He wondered, in that moment, why it had to be that
such an honor, which once would have meant more to him than life itself, was
given to him now, when it scarcely meant anything at all.

When he raised his head again, Vhanu was nowhere in sight.
Someone spoke his name, behind him, and he turned around. Moon came toward him,
with Sirus, and her family around her. “Thank you, Justice Gundhalinu, for your
defense of my reputation and my family,” she said.

He nodded, hiding the surge of emotion he felt as he saw her
face. “It was no more than what was due ... to any of us, to set the record
straight, Lady.” He avoided Sparks Dawntreader’s gaze, the silent watching eyes
of Ariele and Tammis; turning to Sims, instead: “My gratitude, sadhu.”

Sirus’s mouth quirked up in a slightly embarrassed smile. He
was a tall man, large-boned for a Kharemoughi Technician; Gundhalinu remembered
vaguely having been told that he was in fact half Samathan—a son of the Prime
Minister’s from some distant visit to Sirus’s homeworld. The accident of Sirus’s
birth had helped him to become an important political leader on Samathe; he had
been invited to fill a vacancy in the Assembly, on their next visit. “I would
be grateful, Gundhalinusadhu, if you would consider the scales equal between
us, after what must be, for you, so long.”

Sirus glanced away, at Sparks and at Ariele and Tammis.
Tammis stood behind his mother, beside Merovy, his own young wife. “We in the
Assembly have been unstuck in time, due to our travels, for all these centuries.
But now you have given me the chance to see what great things my son and his
wife have accomplished ... to see my grandchildren. It was something we put
much store by, among my mother’s people—something I have regretted about my
choice in joining the Assembly.” He put an arm around Sparks’s shoulders,
turning to him. “I know I have not had the chance to be any kind of father to
you, Son; and perhaps my pride is presumptuous. But it is heartfelt, nonetheless.
And it seems you have done extremely well with your life, in spite of my
absence.”

Sparks smiled briefly, looking back at his father. But the
smile disappeared as quickly as it had come. Gundhalinu wondered what doubts
and regrets and secrets hid behind the expression that replaced it; suddenly
sure, somehow, that Dawntreader’s expression hid as many secrets as his own had
a few minutes past.

He stood with them, making desultory polite conversation as
an excuse to go on watching them speak and interact among themselves. He knew
that he should be mingling with the crowd, doing his duty, however unpleasant;
and yet he was somehow unable to make himself leave Moon’s side, unable to take
his eyes off her, to stop watching her surrounded by her family.

Her family. He glanced at Ariele, whose face was still so
much like he remembered her mother’s, except for the chronic mocking smile, the
restless impatience in her eyes. She had pasted a stim patch from the passing
tray in the middle of her forehead like a third eye. Her cropped, cream-white
hair was caught up in a cascade on top of her head; she wore a clinging
dawn-colored bodysuit and loose soft trousers knotted around her slender waist,
relentlessly expensive and sophisticated, as usual.

Her gaze settled momentarily on Sirus as he spoke to her
mother; glanced away again, and Gundhalinu suddenly found himself being stared
at. She half frowned, glancing at Sirus and back at him, and then at Sparks,
the man she had always known as her father. Just for a moment Gundhalinu saw
her mocking mask slip, saw the confusion of a lost child in her eyes. She
turned away as she caught him still watching her, and disappeared into the
crowd. He wondered if she had gone looking for that miserable little snot Elco
Teel. Kirard Set Wayaways and his family were here tonight, being too
influential to snub, although so far he had managed to avoid even the sight of
them by some good fortune.

“It is quite remarkable, isn’t it?” Sirus said to him,
gesturing at Ariele’s disappearing back. Gundhalinu looked over at him. only
then realizing that he had been staring, and the others had noticed it. “The
resemblance between her and her mother, I mean.”

“Yes,” he said, glad to take that as an excuse for his
behavior. “I actually mistook her for the Queen, the first time I saw her.” He
smiled, glancing at Moon, seeing her surprise.

“Tammis here takes after his father more.” Sirus’s smile widened,
as he turned to the young couple still standing beside him. “He has the look of
a Kharemoughi about him; don’t you think, Gundhalinusadhu?”

Gundhalinu hesitated, feeling five sets of eyes suddenly
fixed on his own face. “Yes,” he said softly, “he does.” Tammis glanced down;
Gundhalinu thought the boy was simply avoiding his gaze, until he realized that
Tammis was staring at his trefoil. Tammis’s hand rose, touching his own sibyl
sign; dropped away again, to take and hold his wife’s hand. Gundhalinu saw her
try surreptitiously to avoid his touch, and then give in. He had heard that
they were having marital problems.

He looked back at Sirus. The First Secretary seemed
mercifully oblivious to the undercurrents of tension, caught up in the pleasure
of his illusory fantasy about his son’s family life. He would not have to be
here for long enough to see it shattered, if he was fortunate ... any more than
he ever had to be anywhere for long enough to experience more than an illusion
of life in the real world, with all its pain and pitiless imperfection.

Gundhalinu had wondered from time to time what could make
someone like Sirus choose to join the Assembly, to sever his ties so completely
with the life he had always known. Now, tonight, he thought that perhaps he
finally understood. He was suddenly aware of the music that was playing—a
limpid fuguetheme work from his homeworld. Somehow the music he had always known
had never seemed as beautiful to him, or as poignantly sad.

Sirus turned back to Moon, as she spoke his name. “Please,
call me Temmon—”

“Temmon,” she said, nodding, with a brief smile, “you said
that we might discuss the mers.”

“Yes, of course; it’s obviously a question that needs to be
addressed. Sit with me at dinner, and we’ll—” He broke off, as guests began to
stir and mutter across the room.

Gundhalinu strained to see past the random motion of half a
hundred heads turning toward the doorway. He made out Tilhonne, standing at the
focus of a small open space, holding up something vaguely familiar. He froze as
recognition hit him, hearing Moon’s audible gasp: Tilhonne held a vial of the
water of life.

“Sadhanu, bhai,” Tilhonne announced, raising his voice to be
heard above the crowd’s. “Dinner waits for us. But first, thanks to the
diligence of our new Hegemonic government, and the cooperation of our Tiamatan
friends—” he gestured, and suddenly Kirard Set Wayaways was standing beside
him, smiling and bowing, “we have a special gift for our honored visitors
tonight. The first fruits of a renewed harvest. The water of life.”

A murmur of surprise and eager anticipation spread through
the crowd; ripples of motion followed, as the Assembly members began to press
forward toward Tilhonne.

Gundhalinu stood motionless, feeling the people around him
suddenly staring at him again. He looked at Moon, seeing disbelief and betrayal
in her eyes.

“Well done, Gundhalinu-sadhu!” Sirus said, his face beaming.
“No mere speech could have silenced the arrogant bigotry of certain fools so
neatly.” He clapped Gundhalinu on the shoulder. “You have given them their
dream—you and the Lady.” He turned to Moon, but she had looked away, watching
in anguished fascination as the Assembly members passed the vial from hand to
hand, lifting it to their mouths, inhaling, swallowing the spray of heavy
silver droplets with an eagerness approaching lust.

“Well, come then,” Sirus said, his expression turning to surprise
as everyone around him remained motionless. “Surely we are all entitled to our
share of this blessing? Unless of course you’ve already sampled it?”

“No,” Moon said, her voice filled with desolation. “I don’t
drink blood. Mers die for every drop of the water of life you take. The Hegemony
has broken our laws to slaughter them—”

He stared at her for a moment, as if it had never actually occurred
to him before how the water of life was obtained.

“This was the matter concerning the mers that I wanted to
talk with you about,” she said, looking at him now, with pain-shadowed eyes.

“Ye gods,” he murmured, chagrined. “I never imagined the two
things would be related .... But yes, I still wish to discuss it, more than
before. Dinner will run long, if I recall, and we can—”

“No.” She shook her head, her face stiff and unyielding. “To
attend your dinner as if nothing had happened would mean that I accept what was
done here tonight, and that would make me a complete hypocrite.” She looked at
Gundhalinu, away from him again, before he could speak.

“Moon—” Sparks said, catching at her arm as she started to
turn away.

“Stay if you want to,” she answered, with both understanding
and anger in her glance. She started away, with Tammis and Merovy following her
wordlessly.

Sparks hesitated, looking at his father. But then he shook
his head, murmuring something that Gundhalinu could not make out, before he
went after them. As he passed, Sparks met Gundhalinu’s eyes briefly, with a
look that raked his conscience like claws. Surprised and disturbed, Gundhalinu
watched until the other man disappeared through the doorway across the room.

Sirus shook his head, caught between concern and embarrassment,
as they found themselves standing abruptly alone in the crowd. “Will you join
me, then, at least, Gundhalinu-sadhu?” he asked, gesturing toward the water of
life.

“No, sadhu,” Gundhalinu said. “I’m afraid I would find it undrinkable.”

Sirus stared at him a moment longer, and then looked away
again at the silver vial still circulating through the crowd. He sighed. “Well,
perhaps I am beginning to lose my interest in it—at least until I’ve heard more
about this. You are staying for dinner, I hope?”

Gundhalinu smiled faintly. “Yes, Sirus-sadhu. I have no
choice in that matter, unlike the Queen.” He glanced toward the doorway that
she had disappeared through, watching the counter-ripple of comment her abrupt
departure had caused collide with the spreading excitement of the water of
life. As he watched, he saw to his surprise that Ariele Dawntreader was arguing
angrily with someone. He saw her turn and leave, as if she was offended like
her mother by the water of life and all that it stood for.

As she disappeared from his sight, his gaze fell on Vhanu,
standing near the door. “Excuse me. I have someone I have to speak with first.”
He left Sirus and made his way through the gossiping crowd, trying to hear as
little as possible of what was said along the way.

He reached the place where Vhanu stood waiting. “Damn it,
NR,” he said furiously, “how the hell did this happen? This is a diplomatic
slap in the face. The Queen was so angry she’s left the complex. I never
authorized this—”

“It was Tilhonne’s idea, to have the water of life here and
present it to the Assembly—”

“With Wayaways’ eager cooperation, no doubt.” Gundhalinu
said sourly.

Vhanu shrugged, and nodded.

“How did they perform a hunt, without the Queen’s cooperation?
Arienrhod used her Starbuck, and dillyp hunters from Tsieh-pun to—”

“I authorized any supplies and operators they might need to
get the job done.”

“Gods! And it was thy doing—?” Gundhalinu repeated, feeling
himself flush. “By what authority? Goddammit, NR, how could thou not bring this
to me?”

“Because I knew thou would reject it out of hand.” Vhanu
frowned, his hands twitching at his sides. “In the name of a thousand gods, BZ,
we have to make a good impression if we want the continued support of the ones
who count, back on Kharemough. We have to prove we’re getting the job done.
That we’re in control here, and not some enclave of superstitious natives. And
damn it, thou were letting this obsession with ‘enlightened government’ get in
the way of that.” Gundhalinu saw his own troubled image reflected in the other
man’s eyes, and looked away. “Thou were cutting thy own throat. I did this
thing for thee.”