The Summer Queen (20 page)

His body always felt as if electrodes were attached to it, vibrant,
jangling, alive. But while he slept the drug had turned up the voltage. He
should have realized that the incredible sensations of his wedding with
Mundilfoere were more than just her skill, and his desire. He should have
recognized the warning signs. But he had been too preoccupied .... By the time
his body had wakened him from his sodden slumber, every nerve ending was on
line, and singing; he could not get back to sleep when his skin told him he was
lying on a bed of nails, knowing that by morning he would think it was a bed of
hot coals.

Every step he took now was exquisite agony from the pressure
on his feet; the light hurt his eyes, every breath he took made his chest ache
from the fluid collecting in his lungs. Stupid. Stupid. His brain repeated the
litany with every step he took, too dazzled by sensation to provide the more
graphic epithets his stupidity deserved. He had actually been so besotted with
lovemaking that he had not gone back to the lab—

He reached the doorway he was looking for, touched the identity
sensor with his fingertip as gingerly as if it were red hot; had to hit it
harder when it didn’t register him, and swore. The sound made him clench his
teeth. The security seals dematerialized and he went inside.

A high anguished keening drilled into his consciousness the
moment he entered the room. He stopped, then crossed the lab, not even
bothering to order the doors closed behind him.

In a small transparent cubicle was a quoll, the only living
thing in the lab besides himself. He had picked it up in Razuma, just one of
countless abandoned animals starving in the streets. He never used animals for
tests; the results he got from the datamodeling programs were far more precise.
But in this case, he had made an exception. In this case, the perversity of his
need to know had made him bring the wretched creature back with him to the lab.
He had fed it, cared for it, given it the drug .... He had watched the quoll
grow and thrive as the technoviral had taken over every cell in the animal’s
body, just as it had done to his own; turning the quoll into a perfect physical
specimen. The drug, which he had designed himself, had been meant to do what
the water of life did; to keep a body’s systems functioning without error—to
extend a human life indefinitely. It had almost worked ....

The quoll had come to know and trust him, greeting him with
eager whistles every time he entered the lab, watching him at work. Sometimes
he had even put a hand into the cage when it scratched at the plass, and stroked
its soft, tufted fur ....

And then he had stopped giving it the drug, and begun to record
the results. Its decline had been rapid, and terrifying. The drug had been
designed for a human system, but its function—too simplistic, as he had
realized, too late—was generic enough to affect a quoll in similar ways. And to
kill it in similar ways.

It was the killing he had told himself he wanted to see in detail—not
just a computer model, but the real, intimate, bloody, puking symptoms. Because
after all, he had such a very personal interest in those symptoms.

He had been trying to recreate the water of life, and he had
failed. He had knowingly and intentionally infected himself with the
semisentient material he had recreated so imperfectly, even though his test models
had shown him what would probably happen to him—what had happened to him. His
body had become dependent on the drug as an arbiter of its normal functioning.
His body still aged—one more way in which the drug was a failure—but, ironically,
it functioned at peak efficiency while it did.

But the substance was unstable. Like the real water of life,
it required continuous doses to sustain its effects. Except that the body did
not develop a dependency on the genuine water of life. It developed a
dependency on his. Without a continuous supply of the drug, virtually every
cell in his system would cease to function—dying, running wild; millions of
infinitesimal machines all gone out of control.

He stood in front of the cage, forcing himself to look at
the agony of the creature inside it; forcing himself to look into the mirror.
He watched its body spasming with uncontrollable seizures, the bloody foam
flecking its mouth, its soft, spotted fur matted with filth, its eyes rolling
back in its head .... He had wanted to see it, wanted to know what he had in
store—Then look at it, you fucking coward! You did it; you did it to yourself,
because you wanted to ....

The dreadful keening of its torment went on and on, filling
his head. Slowly, with hands that trembled from something more terrifying to
him than fear, he reached into the cage and lifted out the quoll. He held it a
moment in his arms, oblivious to the bites it inflicted on him in its agony.
And then, with a sudden, sure motion of his hands he snapped its neck.

He dropped the limp, lifeless form into the incinerator
chute, watched it dematerialize before his eyes, cleanly, perfectly, freeing
its soul—if it had one—to eternity. And who will do the same for me?

He turned away, stumbling back across the lab, the telltale
early-stage discomforts of his own body suddenly magnified a thousandfold. He
had to stop and inhale a tranquilizer before he could concentrate. He woke up
his work terminal, fumbled his way across the touchboard, lighting up the wrong
squares as he tried to feed in the security code that would let him get what he
wanted. At last he heard the faint sound that told him the proper segment of
secured stasis had released. He went to it and pushed his hand through the
tingling screen, pulling out an unlabeled vial. The drug had no official
designation. It had only one user. He called it the “water of death.” He
unsealed the vial, and swallowed its contents.

“Lady—”

“Lady ....”

Voices with a poignantly familiar Summer burr called to Moon
as she made her way down the long, sloping ramp at the terminus of Carbuncle’s
Street. The ramp dropped from the Lower City down to the harbor that lay
beneath Carbuncle’s massive, sheltering shellform. Workers bowed their heads to
her, lifted their hands in greeting, or stared dubiously as she entered their
world, which had once been her own world. She wore the drab, bulky work clothes
of a deckhand—linen shirt, canvas pants, a thick graybrown sweater her
grandmother had made for her by hand. She had come at her grandmother’s urging,
with Sparks at her side—leaving behind the Sibyl College, the dickering Winter
entrepreneurs and the struggling Winter engineers, to remind her people, and
herself, of the heritage she had left behind. Gran was with her, pointedly
keeping her distance from Jerusha PalaThion, who had also accompanied them, as
she insisted on doing whenever Moon left the palace. Standing midway up the
ramp was the small knot of Goodventure kin who also followed her everywhere,
hounding her and spying on her; one good reason Jerusha was always by her side.

“Lady, what can we do for you?” A sailor came up to her,
dragging a ship’s line. There was something like awe, but also uncertainty, in
his eyes when he faced her; as if he were afraid that she had come down here to
pass judgment on her people fot their recalcitrance in embracing the new order
of things.

But she took the tow rope from his hands, feeling its rough
fibers scrape het palms, realizing how her own hands had lost the
leather-hardness that physical laboi had once given them. “Nothing,” she said
humbly, “but to let me be Moon Dawntreader Summer for a time, and work the
ships, and answer the questions a Summer sibyl has always answered, for anyone
who wishes to ask.”

He looked at her in surprise, and released his hold on the
rope, leaving it in het hands. She tied it around the mooring-post, her hands
by habit making knots that her mind had almost forgotten how to form.

Slowly and almost reluctantly, the other Summers began to
show her what they were doing. Sparks followed her, self-consciously easing
into the pattern of their activities. Their rhythms became her body’s rhythms
once more, more swiftly than she would have imagined was possible. Gran sat
down on the pier and took over the mending of a net from a willing sailor;
Jerusha leaned against a barrel, looking uncomfortable, with her gun slung at
her back. She had just told them this morning that she was pregnant for the
fourth time, after three miscarriages. Miroe had ordered her to avoid any heavy
work. Moon knew he would have kept her confined to bed if he dared, but not
even he dared that.

No crowd gathered. The other Summers watched her discreetly,
still either suspicious or uncertain; but she knew that word of her presence
was spreading through the sighing, creaking underworld, where sailors and
dockhands loaded and unloaded supplies, scraped, lashed, and refitted hulls,
mended nets, all as surely as the cold sea wind moved through the rigging of
their ships. She forced herself to forget that there were easier, safer, faster
ways of doing most of these things; letting herself remember the satisfaction
of everyone working together like one body, each separate part knowing its
role. She savored the smell of the sea, its soft, constant, murmurous voice,
the feel of a deck shifting under her feet as she loaded cargo.

Sparks smiled at her as he worked, and gradually she saw his
face take on a look of ease and peace. It was an expression she had not seen
for so long that she had forgotten he had ever looked that way. And in his eyes
there was the memory of the unexpected passion that had taken them two nights
ago, the fulfilling of a need that was not just physical but soul-deep, and
which had not been satisfied in either of them for too long.

She smiled too, breathing in the sea air, remembering a time
when each time they lay together had seemed to be all she lived for, when they
had been young and free and never dreamed that they would ever be any other way
.... But the memory of the Transfer, calling her away into the night, suddenly
filled her vision with the face of another man, his hand reaching out to her,
his mouth covering hers; made her remember the words / need you.

She looked down and away, her thoughts giddy. She forced her
mind to go empty, as she had had to do time and again these past two days;
suppressing the emotion that the memory stirred in her, a feeling as dark as
remembered eyes, as desperate, as haunting. There is nothing you can do about
it now. Nothing. She repeated the words over and over again, silently, letting
them flow into the pattern of her work until the helpless grief inside her
faded.

She looked up again as a clamor reached her from somewhere
up the ramp. She squinted past the crate in her arms, seeing what appeared to
be two men arguing with the constables Jerusha had set to question whoever came
this way. One of the arguing figures was an old man, the other younger, but
painfully stooped. Danaquil Lu. And as the voices reached her clearly, she
recognized the unmistakable bellowing of Borah Clearwater. “Jerusha,” she
called over the side of the ship, and pointed with her chin toward their
argument. Jerusha nodded and started away.

“Lady ... ?” someone murmured behind her. She turned back,
looking into the face of a tall, brown-haired woman. “I have a question.”

Moon set down the crate she was holding, and nodded. “Ask,
and I will answer Input ....” From the corner of her eye she saw Sparks stop
his work and move toward her with protective concern as the woman’s voice
filled her ears, her mind, and she began the abrupt fall away into darkness.

“... No further analysis.” She came back into herself again,
and sat down on the crate as a brief wave of dizziness caught her. Sparks put
his hands on her shoulders, rubbing them gently. She felt the eyes of the other
deckhands and sailors watching her, watching her differently now.

“Thank you, sibyl,” the woman murmured, smiling and bobbing
her head as she backed away. Moon saw two or three others beginning to cluster
near her; knew that they would be the next to come forward with questions.

“Well, what am I supposed to make of this?” A man’s voice—Borah
Clearwater’s voice—carried sharply and clearly up to her.

She pushed to her feet and went to the small trimaran’s
rail, peered over it. “Make of what, Borah Clearwater?” she said, to his turned
back.

He jerked around, away from Jerusha’s annoyed expression, to
look up at her. He looked blank for a moment, seeing only a plainly dressed
island woman with her hair in braids, and not the Summer Queen, answering him.
His frown deepened as he recognized her. “If you think you can change my
opinion about anything by doing an honest day’s work, you’re wrong.”

Moon laughed, wondering if he actually believed she was here
because she was trying to impress him. She felt Spark’s impatience like heat as
he came up beside her.

“I’m sorry to intrude like this, Lady,” Danaquil Lu said,
edging his uncle aside with an effort. “But my uncle has been ... wishing to
speak to you about the—uh, right-of-way you granted to our kinsman Kirard Set
Wayaways.” From Danaquil Lu’s chagrin and air of resignation, she guessed that
Clearwater had not let him rest until he had agreed to speak to her.

She smiled at him, a brief, reassuring smile, before she
looked at Borah Clearwater. Leaning on the rail, she met his stare with a calm
centeredness that would have been impossible two days ago—two hours ago. “So
you think I arranged this for your benefit, Borah Clearwater? Just as you seem
to think I granted that right of-way to spite you?”

Clearwater snorted, but for just a moment he didn’t answer. “Who
knows why you do anything? Rot me, this makes as much sense as the other!”

“And who do you think you are,” Gran’s voice interrupted
suddenly, “to come here and speak to the Lady in that tone of voice?”

He turned back to look at her as she stood up, putting aside
the net she had been mending. “I think I have more business speaking to her
than you have speaking to me,” he grunted.