The Summer Queen (125 page)

Tor looked at Moon, uncomprehending. She looked back at
Gundhalinu, meeting the same hopeless knowledge in his eyes. He saw compassion,
if not understanding, fill her own.

Moon rose from the seat beside him. He stood up, realizing
as she did that there was no more to say that could be said here; that there
was no point in remaining longer. Tor rose from her own seat, and moved across
the room to put her hands on Moon’s shoulders. He was surprised to see tears in
the woman’s eyes. “He’ll save her,” Tor murmured. “I know he will.”

Moon lifted her head, as Tor let her hands fall away. “Or
die trying,” she whispered. Her own arms hung strengthless at her sides. “Thank
you, Tor.”

Tor shook her head fiercely. “Don’t thank me for this! Spit
at me, curse me if you want to, for telling you this—but for gods’ sakes, Moon,
don’t thank me.”

Moon smiled, crookedly, and reached up to touch the wetness
on Tor’s cheek. “Not for that,” she said gently. “You know what I mean.” She
turned away, her head down.

“What are you going to do about Kirard Set?” Tor asked suddenly.

Moon turned back.

“I’ll have him arrested,” BZ said.

“No.” Moon shook her head. Her eyes turned cold. “No. Let
me.”

“What are you going to do to him?” Tor asked.

Moon hesitated. “The Sea will judge him,” she said finally, “by
the traditional laws of our people.”

Tor nodded, her satisfaction tinged with sudden unease. “Do
it,” she whispered at last.

They went out of the club together, oblivious to the blaring
noise, to the stares of its patrons as they passed.

“BZ—” Moon turned to him, blinking in the sudden brightness
of the alley. “Do you remember what Reede said to us, about Sparks?”

BZ shook his head, his mind caught in an endless loop of frustration.
He had been sure the next round in the Game that had assembled them all here
would move Reede’s piece to their side ... not that Reede would be snatched
from the board. He had believed Reede’s midnight visit was the safe meeting
Kitaro had promised. But it had not been safe—and now the Brotherhood held the
key to the riddle of the mers, and the only ransom that might bring Kullervo
back was the answer to an impossible question.

Gods, how had it gone so wrong? Had the shielded figures who
brought Reede to his door simply bungled Kitaro’s orders, because she was no
longer there to guide them? Or had it been enemy action, an unexpected move by
some unknown player, throwing the crucial game piece back into the hands of
Chaos—?

“BZ?” Moon said again.

“No,” he murmured distractedly. “I don’t know ....”

“Reede said that Sparks had been keeping things from us,
too. He said, ‘Ask him about the mers.’ We can’t ask him now. But maybe we
should search his files.”

He looked at her, realizing that her thoughts had been following
the same course as his own, without ending up in a blind alley. But he shook
his head again. “Sparks has no formal technical training; there’s nothing that
he could have discovered that would be of any real use.”

“Sparks is a very intelligent man,” Moon said, looking at
him steadily. “He’s spent half a lifetime studying the mers. Most of what we
know about their speech comes from his work. Don’t underestimate him. He’s
one-quarter Kharemoughi, after all.”

BZ’s mouth quirked. He looked down. “All right then.”

“Come to the palace with me. All his work is there, at the
Sibyl College.”

He nodded. They made their way back through the city until
they reached the palace. Moon led him to the rooms that had become Sparks’s
living quarters as well as his private office. BZ surveyed the makeshift
sleeping area in one corner of the large room, which was already filled nearly
to capacity with books and electronics gear. Clothing and personal possessions
were piled haphazardly into wooden chests, or shared uneasy shelf space with
Sparks’s study materials. He felt a sudden guilty empathy for the man whose
private life he had already intruded on so profoundly. “Where do we begin?”

Moon hesitated, looking around her as he had; as if she had
never seen this room before, or did not recognize what had become of it. “I
think maybe you should search his datafiles for information. I’ll—I’ll search
through his things.” She looked away from him again at the room, her hands
pressing her sides.

He nodded, understanding both her acknowledgment of his
particular expertise, and her need to grant her missing husband the dignity of
not having his personal possessions picked through by the rival who had
replaced him.

He sat down at the terminal, calling it on, requesting a
review of its contents, file by file. Occasionally he ordered it to transfer
something to his own private files, for more detailed study, but there was
nothing he saw that surprised him. Moon moved around and past him quietly,
searching through heaps of printouts with scribbled notations, glancing through
books and recordings and tapes, separating them into coherent piles of her own
making. A part of his mind followed her as she moved, always aware of her, even
as another part of him scanned the flow of data passing in front of his eyes.
She moved with obsessive single-mindedness through her search, holding her emotions
at bay. But every now and then he registered her hesitation, as she came upon
something that caught her painfully. He tried at those moments especially not
to look at her.

The last of the summary overflies slid into view before him,
finally. He sat up straighter in his seat as the port’s synthetic voice
informed him, emotionlessly, that the file was code-sealed. “Damn,” he
murmured.

“What is it?” Moon looked up, across the room.

“There’s a file here that’s locked.”

“And there’s a drawer here that’s locked—” she said. He
watched her pry at it with the curved blade of a scaling knife she found on the
desktop. She gave a sudden exclamation as the drawer jumped out at her. Sitting
down at the desk, she picked through its contents, which were not visible to
him. She held something up; a small handmade pouch, beaded and embroidered,
some sort of native crasftsmanship. She laid it on the table; not looking at
him, seeming even to have forgotten his presence.

She lifted something else out—a pendant of silver metal on a
chain, the perfect match to the one that Reede had worn. This time she looked
over her shoulder, holding up the sign of the Brotherhood.

He watched all the kinds of darkness that moved through her
eyes as she saw u spinning in the air, knowing now what it symbolized. She let
it go; the clatter as it hit the floor was loud in the quiet room. She turned
back again, away from his eyes, picking other objects out of the drawer: an
offworlder medal, a string of bright glass beads, an ancient calibrator, a
child’s wooden top. She held the last object a little longer than the rest,
before she put it down.

She reached into the drawer again, and removed something
hesitantly, as if it were fragile. He saw a lock of pale hair, like the foam on
the crest of a wave, sealed in a blown-glass vial. She stared at it, holding it
cupped in her hands.

“Yours?” he asked.

She shook her head. “No.”

“Arienrhod?” he said gently.

She placed the glass bottle on the desk with exaggerated
care. “It could be. It could be Ariele’s ....” Suddenly the tears that she had
refused to let fall were overflowing. Her shoulders shook with silent sobs as
she turned away, leaning on the desktop, burying her face in her hands. “I didn’t
even know she was seeing him.” Reede. “I could have stopped it! I never really
knew her, she was my own child ....”

BZ rose from his seat and crossed the room, kneeling down beside
her where she sat weeping. “I never knew her at all ....” His own sudden grief
left him speechless, and he only held her, his head bowed against her shoulder.
Her arms moved spasmodically, to tighten around him, and he felt her tears soak
his uniform jacket. “I should have stopped him. I had him in my hands!”

“It’s not your fault—”

“It’s not yours.” He lifted his head, forcing her to look at
him. “It isn’t over yet,” he said, somehow keeping his voice steady. “We can’t
let this paralyze us, we need every minute ....”

She nodded, wiping her face on her sleeve, taking a long,
tremulous breath. “I know,” she murmured. She moved away, out of his arms,
straightening her shoulders. She took one more item out of the drawer and laid
it on the desk—a book, its cover so worn with use and time that he could not read
its title.

Surprised, he picked it up, unable to resist such a
curiosity, as he always was. In his youth he had loved books, fascinated by the
primitive but profound nature of their information storage, by their ability to
cross all technological barriers, by their portability, by their feel and
smell. He had read endless Old Empire romances, addicted to the flow of words—the
way they let his imagination create its own fantasies of that lost time,
instead of forcefeeding him a prepackaged reality created by someone else.

But then he had come to Tiamat, to ancient, mysterious Carbuncle,
trying to make his fantasies come true; and for a long time after that, he had
had no stomach for reading. And then he had had no time .... He flipped the
book open, glancing at the title page. It was in Tiamatan, laid out in the
universal phonetic alphabet: a book about fugue theory. He thumbed through the
soft-edged pages, seeing notes scrawled along the margins in an unfamiliar, unembellished
hand. There were mathematical formulas and musical notations side by side, with
arrows and question marks and scribbled abbreviations he could not decode. But
holding the book, he felt something resonate in the hidden levels of his brain
where pure reason met pure inspiration. He closed the book again, looking at
Moon. “May I take this?”

“Do you think it’s what we’ve been looking for?” she asked.

“I don’t know. But it’s worth more study.” He glanced away
at the terminal’s unblinking eye. “Do you know the key codes Sparks used to
lock his personal files?”

“I didn’t even know he had any files that weren’t freely
accessible—” She broke off. “I knew so little about them all.” She rubbed her
eyes distractedly. “He turned his back on all of us, not just me, when he
learned ... It hurt him so much, it took everything away from him. He always
loved her more than anyone, I think.” Ariele. “But he wouldn’t even speak to
her, anymore.” She shook her head. “And now he’s gone after her ....”

BZ was silent, looking down. He laid his hand gently on her
shoulder; she pressed her face against it, closing her eyes.

Someone entered the room, and stopped in surprise. They
looked up together, startled, to find Tammis in the doorway staring back at
him. BZ withdrew his hand hastily, self-consciously; stood not touching Moon,
as their son came into the room.

Tammis stopped again, looking at BZ and back at his mother
in unspoken empathy. “They told me you were here,” he said. “I have some news—”
Moon stiffened. But then his somber expression broke into smiles. The pride and
pleasure that filled his face touched them both. “Merovy and I are going to
have a baby.”

A small sound of disbelief escaped BZ’s throat, as Moon’s
face emptied of all expression.

Tammis took in his mother’s stunned expression uncertainly,
before he turned to BZ. “We’re back together,” he said. “We’re working it out.
And I owe it to you—” He broke off, not saying “Justice,” not saying “father.”
He held out his hand.

“Congratulations.” BZ shook his hand; wanting to reach out
and embrace him, but not able to ... suddenly feeling as much of a stranger to
his son as his own father had always seemed to him. “I’m honored to hear it,”
he said.

Tammis smiled, with a fleeting regret that matched his own,
before he turned back to his mother. His face fell. “What’s wrong—?”

She pressed the back of her hand against her mouth, shaking
her head in mute apology; her eyes filled again, suddenly, with tears.

“Sit down, Tammis,” BZ said quietly. He explained, keeping
his eyes averted, unable to watch either one of them react to the words.

“Mother of Us All—” Tammis murmured, when he was finished. _
“I’m sorry, Tammis,” Moon whispered, “to ruin your wonderful news.” She ; got
up from her seat and crossed the room to him. BZ saw apology for far too many moments
like this one fill her face, as she gazed down at her son. But she smiled all at
once, the smile that BZ had always remembered. “I can hardly believe it,” she said,
her smile widening. “Thank you for bringing hope back into this day.” Tammis rose
from his chair, BZ watched them hold each other in the unselfconscious, loving way
he had longed to hold the son he barely knew, as he saw the endless pattern of life
unfold before his eyes. A child, he thought, was hope’s laughter in the face of
existence.

“Do you think Da will be able to bring Ariele back?” Tammis
asked, as she let him go at last.

“I don’t know.” Moon shook her head slightly, glancing at
BZ.

“Can you help them?” Tammis said, looking at him too, following
her gaze. “Can you send the Police?”

“It isn’t that easy,” BZ answered. “But by all my ancestors,
I’ll do everything I can.” He glanced away, at the open port in the waiting
desk/terminal, and the secrets it refused to give up. “Tammis, do you now
anything about—your father’s private file codes?” Asking, although he knew it
was a futile question, knowing that Tammis and Sparks had never been close.

But Tammis nodded, looking curious. “He used to use runs of
mersong.” He shrugged, at BZ’s look of surprise. “The only time we ever talked
much was when I had something new I’d learned about the mers ....”He took a
flute from the pouch at his belt; BZ realized that he always carried one with
him, just as Sparks did. Tammis looked at the fragile shell for a moment, his
gaze suddenly distant.