The Summer Queen (18 page)

This time it was her husband who drew back in surprise. She
pulled him to her again, sliding her hands up under the linen cloth of his
shirt, pressing her body against his, covering his mouth with hers to stop his
questions. He sighed, letting her ... responding more and more eagerly,
answering her body with his own. His hands touched her everywhere with a heat
neither of them had known in longer than she could remember.

He sank with her onto the thick white furs that covered the
floor. She felt the rug as soft as clouds beneath her as he undressed her. as
he explored her with his hands, his mouth, as she pulled him down on top of
her, flesh against flesh, and felt him enter her. And as they rose and fell
together, their pleasure like the tides of the sea, she closed her eyes,
remembering a Festival night, safe in his arms at last .. remembering another
night, in the arms of a passionate, gentle stranger ....

Reede Kullervo sighed, and sighed again; he shifted from
foot to foot, gazing out through the high narrow window slit. The view did not
inspire him. From this room near the pinnacle of the Humbaba stronghold, he
could see for dozens of kilometers across low, rolling hills and tight valleys,
all of them covered by impenetrable thorn forest. Spearbush and hell’s needle
and firethorn were all that he could see, all of it well-named, and all of it
in tones of ash gray shading to brown, looking dead, looking as if it had
always been dead. The locals called this piece of real estate Tuo Ne’el—the
Land of Death.

But the thorn forest was fiercely, volatilely alive. When it
burned, it burned like the fires of hell. The leaves and bark of the plants
were loaded with petrochemicals, they burned with furious heat and intensity,
until there was nothing left but glassy-surfaced ash on vast sweeps of naked
hill. He thought of the thorn forest’s life cycle as being like his own ...
except that when he eventually burned himself out, no dormant seed of his,
waiting patiently for that immolation to set it free, would germinate and carry
on his genetic line.

He began to hum a fragment of song whose words were incomprehensible
to him, although he knew them all. Its tune sounded alien and disturbing to his
ears, the tonal shifts and intervals made him feel vaguely queasy although he
knew they were perfectly precise. He did not hum when he was happy. In the distance
he could see other strongholds—fortress towers, sleek needles of self-contained
strength rising like defiant fingers through the impenetrable barrier of the
forests. He could name the drug and vice bosses who controlled each of them,
who ruled the lives of communities of workers, researchers, and henchmen as if
they were petty feudal lords. The shielded towers were easily reached only by
air. In their business, the thorn forest made for good neighbors. It also kept
locals who weren’t in their pay out of their hair.

Reede turned away from the twenty-centimeter-thick pane of
virtually impenetrable ceramic, moving back and forth restlessly, running his
hands through his hair, pushing them into the deep pockets of his lab clothing.
He had not bothered to change, because Humbaba had sent word that he was to
come up immediately ... only to keep him pacing out here like some lackey. He
hated waiting, hated to stop moving any time when he didn’t have to, any time
when there was nothing to occupy his mind .... He sat down, stood up, his hands
tightening into fists; began to pace again, pulling at his ear. “Shit—” he
said, and said it again.

The sweet chiming voice of a hundred silver bells whispered
his name, behind him. He turned, with the swiftness of a startled animal, as
someone’s hand circled his arm.

“Mundilfoere—” He stopped himself, as abruptly and lightly
as if he had no mass, at the sight of her face. She barely came up to his chin,
and her face was veiled; the cloth was a filmy gauze, intentionally almost
transparent, so that her features were clearly visible but still a mystery,
sensually shrouded. The cloth of her gown, which covered her from neck to foot,
was only slightly more opaque. She was Humbaba’s First Wife. She said that she
was a jewel merchant’s daughter from the lands of the south, purchased on a
whim to become one of his countless concubines. But she was more than she
seemed—which was why she was now his First Wife, and held more influence over
him than any of his advisors. And Humbaba was not the only one who had noticed
her uniqueness.

Reede’s hands rose, trembling; he felt himself overwhelmed
by his need for her, which was at once a terrifying physical hunger for the
things that her body knew, and was teaching to him, and something deeper that
he had never tried to name, let alone understand. His life seemed to have begun
the first night that he spent in her arms, the morning that he had awakened to
find himself lying beside her. “Where were you last night? I waited ... 1
waited until the second moon rose—”

“I was with my lord Humbaba,” she said softly. “He required
my presence.”

“Again?”

She shrugged, expressionless. She had been Humbaba’s favorite
since before Reede had known either one of them; and as a rule, Humbaba was
easily bored.

“I don’t suppose you were simply discussing business,” he
said sourly.

“Not the entire night, no.” Her indigo eyes regarded him
with mild censure from behind the silvered gauze.

He made a face. “How do you kiss him without vomiting?”

She did not smile. “All men are handsome in the dark, beloved,”
she said softly. “Just as all women are beautiful.”

“You don’t believe that.”

“I must,”

He turned away from her, taking a deep breath. She waited
without speaking until he turned back again. He found that she had drawn aside
her veil. To see her face suddenly revealed to him was somehow as erotic as
seeing her completely naked. He sucked in a breath, as a hundred different
images of her face, of her body Snd his own together, filled his mind ... a
thousand memories of secret moments, hours, nights together in stolen corners
of their hermetically sealed world. How long she had been his lover—or he had
been hers, chosen by her—he wasn’t even sure. His life was all randomness and
chaos, except when he was at work in the labs. Time had no meaning for him
except when he was in her arms. He kept his hands rigidly open at his sides,
afraid that his need would betray them both.

She moved away, as if she sensed his control slipping. “He
is an old man. tisshah’el,” she murmured, barely audible. “Even he says so, so
it must be true. He has never made me weep tears of joy .... Only you can do
that.”

“Tisshah’el,” he murmured. Beloved stranger. A word like a
sigh, full of so much longing, and so much grief: the word her people used for
someone caught in adultery, a crime they sometimes punished with death by
flaying, or castration. Sometimes he wished she wouldn’t use it, even though
she appreciated its poignant irony more than he did.

“What are you doing here?” she asked him, finally.

“Humbaba wanted to see me,” he answered, noncommittal.

“Why?”

He shook his head. “I don’t know, I’ve been rotting out here
for half an hour—” He broke off. “Why are you here?”

“He asked to see me also.”

“Why?” he said, tensing, suddenly feeling afraid. “Gods—do
you think he knows?”

“I don’t know.” There was no concern on her face. There
never was. Her thoughts were like the depths of a pool; he was never allowed to
see below their surface. Sometimes he wanted to shake her, to force some
reaction out of her Sometimes he was certain her perfect calm was only an act.
Sometimes he thought it was just the resigned fatalism her culture bred into
its women, ... And then he wondered if it was his potential violence that
attracted her to him; if all she wanted from him was just another suicidal
asshole, like the men she had always known. And then he would tell himself
fiercely that he was more than that, and so was she—

The doors to the inner chamber opened, with a soft sucking
sound like a kiss, He turned, feeling her turn with him; she covered her face
quickly with her veil. Stepping back from each other until there was a neutral
distance between them, they walked together through the doorway and into
Humbaba’s presence.

Reede’s vision recoiled, as it always did, as his eyes found
Humbaba’s face—still refusing to believe, after all these years, that what he
saw was real. Humbaba came from somewhere on Tsieh-pun, and he’d heard the local
customs had merged into and gone beyond the usual underworld tattooing. They
had traditionally scarred their faces, the uglier the better, because it
intimidated their enemies and their underlings. Cosmetic surgery had given them
stomach-turning possibilities far beyond the original, primitive scarring.
Ugliness meant strength, power .... If that was true, Reede had often thought
that Humbaba should have been the most powerful man in the galaxy, because he
had to be the ugliest. He looked like he was wearing his intestines on his
face.

Reede swallowed his disgust, along with his sudden, unexpected
unease, and pressed the heel of his hand to his forehead in a salute. “Sab Emo.”
Beside him. Mundilfoere made the same obeisance.

Humbaba turned away from them, toward his aquarium, peering
in at the fish that moved like glinting shadows through its green-lit depths.
Reede could see Humbaba’s face reflected in the glass, huge and grotesque, with
their own two figures tiny and distorted in the background. Behind the
transparent wall, the fish peered back at them curiously; their faces were a
wad of distorted flesh that matched their master’s. They came from Tsieh-pun
too, where for some segment of humanity ugliness had even become beauty. Reede
kept the grimace off his face, telling himself that it made as much sense as
anything else humans did. And from a bioengineering standpoint, maybe it was
even true.

The ever-lengthening moment of Humbaba’s silence stretched
Reede’s nerves like time on the rack. At last Humbaba turned away from the
green, peaceful world of the hideous fish and faced them again. “They have
given me so much pleasure ...”he murmured. His voice was perfectly normal, a
deep, pleasant baritone; as was the total unselfconsciousness of his manner—another
incongruity he used to good effect. “As you have, my jewel.” He nodded to
Mundilfoere, and she bowed her head in acknowledgment, her bells singing
softly.

“And your work has brought pleasure to millions, Reede.” His
voice took on an ironic amusement. He reached out, his thick, blunt fingers
hovering over a long side-table covered with what Reede realized suddenly was a
banquet of drugs—all of his creations. Humbaba selected something from the
display, popped it into his mouth and chewed it like a sweetmeat. “And put
millions into my accounts, which pleases me even more. Our mutual working
agreement has served us both well.”

Reede said nothing, shifting uncomfortably, sure that this
round of empty compliments was not the reason for their being here. He could
tell nothing from Humbaba’s expression, which was always totally inhuman.

Humbaba turned back to them abruptly. “But something has
come to my attention that does not bring me pleasure. In fact, it causes me
more pain than anything has since I lost my beloved mother.” His small, black
eyes seemed to flicker, as if he was blinking rapidly inside the mottled piles
of flesh. “How long have you been lovers’?”

Reede froze, left groping for words by the bluntness of the
unexpected question. “We aren’t—”

“Since before I brought him to you, my lord,” Mundilfoere
said quietly. “Since the day I first saw him.” Reede shot a disbelieving look
at her as Humbaba moved slowly forward, his massive body dwarfing her.

Humbaba reached out, taking hold of the veil that covered
her face, his fist tightening, as if he were about to rip it off. But he lifted
it almost tenderly, as he stood staring down at her. “Are you saying you
seduced him, in order to ensure his loyalty to me—?”

Reede watched her, unable to take his eyes off her; suddenly
needing to know her answer more than he needed to go on living.

She glanced at him; her eyes lingered on his face, before
her gaze flickered downward. “No, my lord. That was not why.”

Humbaba’s fist tightened, muscles bunched in his arm. “Damn
you,” he said. “Why won’t you ever lie to me? I even gave you the lie myself—”

She glanced away, up at him again. “I have never lied to
you, my lord. You know that. That is why [ have been your First Wife for so
long.”

He snorted, and wattles of flesh quivered. “I’d like to know
what else you never bothered to mention to me, though, my jewel,” he said
sourly, his hand leaving the veil aside, to close over her jaw until she
winced. “I trusted you. in ways I never trusted any other woman ... and perhaps
more than I ever trusted any man—”

Reede’s hands tightened impotently; his chest ached from the
breath he was holding. “So,” Humbaba murmured, “you like pretty young boys the
best, after all—’? How, many other have there been1’”

“None, my lord,” she answered, with difficulty. “Only him.
Only you—”

He snorted again, with derision, letting her go. “You know
the penalty for adultery among your people, Mundilfoere. 1 could have the skin
peeled off your face until you looked like me.” He shot a glance at Reede. “I
could cut off your pnck and make you eat it, Kullervo.” Reede gnmaced. “I
always wondered why you had nu interest in sex,” Humbaba muttered. “I offered
you women, all you wanted, or men, or boys—you remember?” Reede nodded numbly. “But
you always said no. 1 thought maybe you were getting it in town. But you were
getting it right here. I gave you everything. But you had to take the one thing
you were not offered.” His heavy fist rose, stopped just short of Reede’s face.
Reede flinched involuntarily. “Why’’”