The Summer Queen (141 page)

“Their—mating?” Tammis said. “I thought they mated at sea.”

“It’s a two-stage process.” Reede shrugged. The initial
stage occurred when the mers were actually within the computer; all of them
together. Their communion with the sibyl nexus primed them biologically, so
that when they did mate, they could conceive. He had intended for it to keep
their population stable, because they were so long-lived. And he had intended
for it to bring them pleasure, so that they would be glad to return, for their
own sakes, as well as the sake of the net.

He shook his head, with a smile that held as much pain as
irony. “We thought we had it all planned perfectly. We never imagined the
people the net was meant to serve would begin killing them off .... We never
realized what forces would work on a system that survived this long, through so
much history.” He looked up at them, and his smile became self-mocking. “You
try inventing a fault-tolerant system with superhuman intelligence that has to
survive forever ....”He laughed once. “We made a mistake; we were only human,
after all—”

They were both staring at him now, in wonder and
fascination. He felt an unexpected tenderness fill him, as he looked back at
them—the descendants, the survivors, the people for whom he had created all of
this. Seeing the trefoils they wore, the same symbol he had worn, so long ago;
knowing that they carried in their blood the same transforming technoviral that
he had been the first to carry. He had designed the choosing places to seek out
people like these, counted on people like these to go on seeking out the choosing
places; and after more than two millennia, even with all that had gone wrong,
it was still happening as he had planned.

He smiled, even as Reede Kullervo’s body twisted and shifted
position, made restless by the growing discomfort of its failing systems. He
wiped his sweating face on his sleeve, and wished suddenly that he had not
drunk whatever it was they had given him. Even the thought of drinking or
eating made his stomach rise into his throat. He swallowed hard, feeling panic
start inside him, not certain whose it was, who he was .... “What—?” he said,
as he realized the Queen had asked him something.

“Is there ... is there anything I can get for you?” she
repeated, her eyes troubled.

He shook his head, and stretched his cramping hands. “Just
listen. We don’t have a lot of time. Do you know why the city’s gone dark?”

“No,” the Queen said, her gaze sharpening. “Do you?”

“Yes.” He glanced away, looking out at the sky and its reflection
in the sea below. For a moment he remembered another darkness, with only the
faintest whisper of ruddy light, so fragile he might almost be imagining it, to
make its dark heart all the more terrible. He looked down again, focusing on
the fractal patterns of the rug beneath his feet. “Because it’s time—the right
time, the only time when anything can be changed. The turbines that provide the
city’s power—and power for the sibyl nexus—shut down once during every High
Year, at the time when the mers return to the city. At all other times, the
turbines make the passage in to where the computer lies completely inaccessible.
Anyone who tried to get past them would be killed. But for those three days the
way is clear, to let the mers pass inside. When the turbines start up again,
the computer will be unreachable for another two and a half centuries. Any
attempt to get at it any other way will fail, or destroy it.”

“Why?” Tammis asked.

“Because I had to be sure that it would never become the possession
of a single faction in any human power games. That’s why I made absolutely
certain that its location would remain unknown. That’s why your mother and
Gundhalinu could never explain what they were doing.”

Tammis glanced at his mother. “Then how did you find out?”

“Once, as I was crossing the Pit, it called up to me ...”
the Queen said, her voice growing faint. “It ... chose me, to help it. And all
these years, I’ve tried—” Reede saw the terrible weariness in her eyes. “Tried
to understand what it needed from me ... why it chose me.”

“It chose you because you were in the right place at the
right time.” He hesitated. “I’m not saying it was an accident ....” He touched
his own head. “I’m not saying it was entirely predestined, either. But you’re
Arienrhod’s clone for a reason.” He saw her flinch. “Arienrhod proved she had
the strength and the intelligence to get what she wanted from her own people
and the offworlders, whether they liked it or not. You are what you are, Moon
Dawntreader .... But you’re also the Lady,” he added gently, “the holder of
this world’s trust. You are what Arienrhod should have been. Because you were
raised by the Summers, who kept—kept peace with the sibyl net, and protected
the mers, you have the ability to see the long view. Arienrhod couldn’t have
done that. You understand why it matters, why it really matters—” He broke off.
“You are the future I wanted to believe in.”

She looked down; looked up at him again, with gratitude shining
in her eyes. But then her expression changed. “You said there would be access
to the computer for only three days. More than two of them are gone.”

He nodded. “That’s why we can’t wait. One reason.” He
glanced down at his unsteady hands. “Your husband had data on the lost elements
of the mersong. I have to reconstruct them—” He realized, with a sudden sinking
feeling, that there was probably not a functional computer with the kind of
database he required anywhere in the city.

“It’s already been done for you,” the Queen said.

He looked back at her. “Gundhalinu? Did he do it before his
arrest?”

“No,” she said, with a faint smile. “The Sibyl College
finished his work.” She touched the trefoil she wore. “I can get the tapes for
you—we reproduced the mersong, inserting the missing passages.”

He smiled too, in spite of himself. “I’ll need underwater
gear for two people—him, and me.” He gestured at Tammis.

She half frowned. “What are you going to do?”

“We’ve got to go down into the ... into the—” He broke off,
found himself with his hand pressed to his mouth, like a man about to be sick.
He forced his hand down to his side again. “Into the sea, through the turbines,
into the computer with the mers. I have to check out the system myself, to see
what’s gone wrong with it, and reprogram .... We have to give the right songs
back to the mers.”

Into the sea, under the water ... drowning, death,
blackness. The images filled his mind, and again he did not know whose fear
filled him, who had always been terrified of death by water, who had always
known that it would be his destiny .... He swore under his breath, wanting to
cry out. You’re damned anyway, you miserable bastard, he thought, with furious
self-loathing. Death by water, or the water of death. It doesn’t matter how you
die! But it did .... He looked out at the night, so that he would not have to
look into the eyes of the two people watching him.

“Why does Tammis have to go with you?” the Queen demanded,
and he heard fear for her son in her voice. “I’m a sibyl; the sibyl net chose
me.”

“That’s why. You have to remain clear, where you’re protected.
You’re going to be in deep Transfer, for hours, inside its mind ... it will
show you, and you’re going to tell me, what’s wrong. I need you to guide me,
let me know when the healing is done. That’s going to be dangerous enough.” He
felt the heat of her resistance, her uncertainty as she searched the face of
the man who had poisoned her only other child. “You won’t be functional, damn
it! I need someone who can work with me—and it has to be another sibyl who can
act as go-between for us.” He gestured at Tammis.

“But I thought you were a sibyl,” she said, still frowning,
even though there was the beginning of understanding in her eyes now.

He laughed, with another man’s bitter terror. “No, Lady,” he
whispered, with another man’s voice. “I am not a sibyl. Sibyls are sacred. I am
a human sacrifice ....” Tammis shuddered, staring at him.

The Queen’s face changed. She reached out slowly, as if she
were afraid he might bolt, and touched his cheek, as gently as she might have
touched her own child. The barest contact of her fingers sent a shock jittering
through the nerve endings in his face. But he did not pull away.

He felt her withdraw her hand, after a moment. “I’ll get the
data and underwater equipment for you as quickly as I can,” she said. “But how
will you reach the computer? You can’t go into the city; you can’t get to the
sea without Vhanu’s patrols seeing you.”

“Yes, we can.” He rubbed his eyes, forcing himself to concentrate
again, to stay focused, to function as one human being. “The Pit is an access
well, it goes down to the sea. It goes exactly where we need to be.”

“But there’s no power—even the well is shut down.”

“Not for us,” he said gently. “It knows about us. I want you
to come with us down into the well. We can’t risk being interrupted. Even Vhanu
can’t reach us once we’re down there.” He hesitated, seeing her face change. “Have
you ever experienced an extended Transfer?”

She nodded. “Once. It was—” She broke off, and he saw the
memory of an endless absence that still haunted her. Like drowning ...

“It won’t be like that, this time,” he murmured. “It will be—nothing
like anything you’ve ever known. But it will still be difficult ....”

“I know.” She looked up at him with a weary, sorrow-filled
smile. “Isn’t everything?” She rose from the couch. “I’ll see to things,” she
said, looking away again, suddenly distracted. For a moment she gazed at
Tammis, and then she went silently out of the room.

Moon entered the room that had become her husband’s entire
world within the palace, before his journey to Ondinee ... to the Land of
Death. She moved slowly about its perimeter, her eyes taking in every detail of
its contents ... the study materials, the imported electronics equipment, the
makeshift bed to which he had exiled himself, after she had driven him away. He
had never allowed servants to enter his private workspace; she had not allowed
it either, since his disappearance.

She sat down on the edge of his cot, picking up a rumpled
shirt that he had carelessly thrown aside. She pressed it to her face, inhaling
the familiar scent of his skin until her mind filled with images of lying
beside him in the sweet abandonment of love ... memories of all that they had
meant to each other, for so many years. Even knowing all that they had done to
each other, all that they had thrown away or let slip through their hands,
still in this moment she could remember only the good things. Because there was
no need now to remember anything else. Because he was dead. He was dead ....

She dropped the shirt and rose from his bed again, moving on
around the room, passing the terminal, remembering the work he had done, alone
and unappreciated: the hidden secrets of the mersong he had discovered, the difference
that his discoveries were about to make, which no one would ever be able to
thank him for, now.

She stopped again before the small table whose private
drawer she had forced, seeing its contents still scattered on the tabletop
where she had left them, thoughtlessly, on the day she had lost the only other
man she had ever loved. The sign of the Brotherhood still lay on the floor
where she had dropped it: the symbol of Survey, in all its endless permutations
of treachery and betrayal—yet with a gemstone as beautiful as the sun, the
symbol of enlightenment, glowing at its heart.

She looked away from it, kicking it aside with her foot. She
sat down by the table, picking up the objects that lay on its surf ace, one by
one ... the wooden top that Sparks had played with when he was a boy ... the
lock of someone’s hair, as pale as milk, inside a blown-glass vial ... the embroidered
love-token that she had made for him, when they had first pledged their lives
to each other .... Why had no one ever warned them about how long the years
would seem ... about how they would end, without warning? She fastened the
small embroidered pouch to the inside of her shirt, next to her heart, as
Sparks had always worn it in his youth. She wiped the wetness from her face
with the edge of her sleeve.

And then she rose from her seat, dry-eyed, and went out of
the room; because the sibyl mind was waiting, and her life was not her own.

Moon followed her son and Reede Kullervo down into the
transport car that waited below the rim of the Pit. She looked up at the last
moment at Jerusha, who stood watch over her here, now, as it seemed she had
always done. She saw the memory that haunted Jerusha’s eyes, the way memory had
always haunted her own vision, here in this place. She had told Jerusha only
that Reede believed he could find a way to reactivate the city’s silent core,
and give them a bargaining point in their war of nerves with the offworlders
... all that she could tell anyone, but it had seemed to be enough.

“The gods—the Lady—go with you,” Jerusha murmured. She
glanced past Moon at Tammis’s pale, upturned face below them, his own eyes
clouded with memory. She looked at Reede. Her concern turned suddenly to doubt,
and she frowned.

“We may be gone a long time,” Moon said. “Maybe for hours.
We won’t be able to communicate with you from down there.”

“I’ll be waiting,” Jerusha said. “For as long as it takes.”
She gripped Moon’s arm tightly, as if she could send her own energy, her own
spirit, with them, before Moon let herself down into the space below.

Moon saw instrument lights scattered like gems across the
dim faces of the equipment around her, more and more of them winking on as she
watched, just as Reede had predicted. The hatch sealed above them, sealing them
in. Beyond the expanse of the viewing window the walls of the Pit remained dark
and dead, revealing no sign of active response. But Reede stood at the window
beside Tammis, gazing down, the two of them equally still and intent.