The Summer Queen (25 page)

He had done his job well, and he would be rewarded well, as
the sibyls’ wisdom again flowed freely through the lives of his people ... as
he accepted the influential new post of Subminister of Finance that would be
his just reward for this service .... He closed his eyes, shutting out the
memory of another man’s death, feeling it fade into the brightness of the
future; feeling everything fade ....

And he saw a woman, cowering on the steps of a once-great
building below him where he stood. He was Haspa, wearing the criqpson robes and
the spined golden crown of the Sun King ... and she wore the spined trefoil of
a sibyl. The crowd of faces surrounding her (looking somehow strangely,
terrifyingly familiar, as if he were gazing down into the faces of his own
ancestors) cried out for her death. And he raised his arm, the curving golden
sacramental blade gleaming in the sunlight (he cringed in horror) as he brought
it down. But it was not to kill her (death to kill a sibyl ... ) but to lay
open his own wrist, and, before the gaping astonishment of the crowd, to mingle
his own blood with the blood of a sibyl; to become one himself, to end the
madness of persecution ... because he had made the journey to their sacred
choosing place, seeking the truth; and he had heard the music of the spheres and
seen the unbearable brightness .... He felt the mystery of the divine virus
take hold of him as their blood flowed together, and he knew fear and awe as
the darkness of night overtook the sun ....

And he was falling through destiny, vision after vision,
until he lost all sense of identity, any proof that he had ever been an individual
man, in a structured reality he could call time ... through centuries of hidden
history into the future ... feared and worshiped and persecuted and revered ...
a sibyl offering the key to knowledge openly, intimately, blood to blood; a
member of a once-proud Guild forced into hiding by the secrets it bore, as it
guarded its gift to humankind and forged a silent network of its own, a secret
order underlying seeming chaos ....

And he was BZ Gundhalinu, third son of a rigid, Technocrat
father—Survey member, Police inspector ... traitor, failed suicide. He had gone
into the wilderness called World’s End in search of his brothers, to save their
lives, to salvage the family’s honor ... to salvage his own honor, or end his
own life. There he had found Fire Lake, and in the grip of its tortured reality
he had lost all proof of his own reality ... had been taken for a lover by a
madwoman, a woman driven insane by the sibyl virus.

In the heat of lust she had infected him. And he had become
a sibyl, and it had driven him sane; he had discovered at last the secret order
at the heart of the chaos called Fire Lake .... And he had brought his brothers
back, and given the secret of Fire Lake to the Hegemony. They had made him a
hero and honored him, and respected him and kidnapped and imprisoned him and
shown him the truth within truth ....

“—like he’s gone into Transfer, for gods’ sakes.” Someone
shook him, not gently, driving the words through his darkness like lines of
coherent light.

“What? How? That’s never happened—” Someone else peeled back
his eyelid, letting in light; let it go again.

“—got no control, only been a sibyl for a few weeks. No real
training either.” Their voices echoed blindingly across the spectrum, making
his eyes tear, yet so impossibly distant that they seemed unreachable.

“No formal training? It’s a miracle he functions at all.”

“He is a Kharemoughi—”

A snort of laughter. “He’s a failed suicide, too; which
meant he was better off dead by your count, until he discovered stardrive
plasma in Fire Lake. Neither of those things has a pee-whit to do with why he’s
here ... or why he’s a Hero of the Hegemony either, probably.” The words were
clearer now, sliding down the spectrum from light to sound, growing easier to
comprehend, closer to his center.

“Kindly keep your lowborn snideries to a—”

“Quiet! Remember where you are for gods’ sakes, and what we’re
here for. We haven’t got all night. How can we get him out of Transfer?”

“We can’t. Once the net’s got him, he’s gone.”

“This wasn’t supposed to happen. Where did it send him? What
if he can’t pull out of it?”

“By the Aurant! Don’t even say it.”

“There’s got to be a way to reach him. Use the light pencil.
Maybe if you really burn him, threaten his life, the net will let him go.”

“That won’t ...” Gundhalinu drew in a shuddering breath and
squeezed the words out, “won’t be necessary.” He forced his eyes open, was
blinded for his efforts, and shut them again with a curse, turning his face
away from the light.

Someone’s arm slid under his shoulders, raising him up carefully
until he was almost sitting. Someone else held a cup to his lips. He drank. It
was bandro; the strong, raw flavor of the spices and stimulant made his mouth
burn.

He opened his eyes again, blinking in the glare, and lifted
his hands, as he suddenly realized that he could, that he was sitting unaided,
freed from his bonds.

The circle of faceless inquisitors still ringed him, at the
limits of the light that shone down on him alone. He shook his head, rubbing
his eyes, not entirely certain now whether this reality was any more real than
the ones he had just inhabited these past minutes ... hours ... ? He had no
idba how long he had been lost. He was thirsty and he needed to urinate, but
that could be nerves, or the drugs they had used on him. He pulled his robe
together, covering himself, and fastened the clasp almost defiantly.

“Welcome—home, Gundhalinu,” one of the figures said solemnly.

Gundhalinu found himself searching for a hand that held a
mug of bandro, anything that would distinguish any one of them from another ...
but even the mug had vanished. “Have I been away?” he asked tightly, his voice
rasping.

“You can answer that for yourself,” another figure said. “I
trust your journey was enlightening?”

“Very,” he answered, using the single word like a knife.

“Then you understand who we are ... and what you have become,
now?”

He looked from one flaming, featureless face to another, and
shook his head. “No,” he muttered, refusing to give them anything, his anger and
indignation still fresh and hot inside him.

“Don’t lie to us!” One of the figures stepped toward him,
with the light pencil appearing suddenly in its hand. Gundhalinu flinched back
involuntarily. “Don’t ever underestimate the seriousness of our resolve, or of
your situation. If we are not certain—now or ever—that you are with us, then
you are against us, and you will pay. Sibyl or not, it is simple necessity. The
group must survive. You saw how easily we brought you here. Nothing escapes us.
Do you understand?”

Gundhalinu nodded silently.

“You went into Transfer during the interface. Was that intentional?
Where did you go?”

“It wasn’t intentional,” he said. He looked down at the
reassuring familiarity of his own hands, the skin smooth and brown, scattered
with pale freckles. “I wasn’t aware that you hadn’t done it to me yourself. I
don’t know where I was .... I was—history.” He shrugged, turning his palms up.

“You experienced an overview of the origins of the sibyl network,
and its ties to historical Survey.”

“Yes.” He looked up again, facing the flaming darkness of
the face before him. “I was ... Ilmarinen.” The archaic name felt strangely
alien on his tongue.

“Ilmarinen—?” someone muttered, and was waved silent.

“I see,” his questioner murmured; but he sensed from the
tone that he had not made the anticipated response.

“I understand now,” he pushed on, before they could lay any
more questions in front of him like pressure-sensitive mines, “the link between
Survey and the sibyls.” His mind spun giddy for a moment as the full
implications hit him. If it was all true ... And somehow he was sure that it
was. “Then it is true that there are higher orders within Survey, inner circles
hidden even from our own members?”

“Now at least you’re asking the right questions,” the
questioner said.

Gundhalinu let his feet slide off the edge of the table, so
that he was sitting more comfortably, more like an equal. He did not attempt to
put a foot on the floor, actually challenging their territory. “I have another
question, that may not be the one you want me to ask .... Why? Why are you
still necessary? Sibyls are no longer persecuted.” Except on Tiamat.

His questioner shrugged. “In all times and places there are
sociohistorical developments which threaten to impede or even destroy humanity’s
progress. Even before the sibyls, Survey was dedicated to helping humanity
grow. To giving our people space, both physical and mental. It has always been
that way; it always will be. We are dedicated to doing the greatest good for
the most people, wherever possible ... as unobtrusively as possible.”

Gundhalinu rubbed his arms inside the sleeves of his robe. “But
you’d kill me just like that if I oppose you?”

The questioner chuckled; the distorted sound was like water
going down a dram. “I don’t think that will be necessary. Commander Gundhalinu.”

The light shining down on him went out, leaving him in
sudden darkness, ringed by glowing holes that sucked his vision into the night,
Black Gates opening on countless otherwheres or endless nightmare, myriad
lights like the stars of an alien sky .... He sat motionless, hypnotized,
seeing ancient starfields through the eyes of ancient Ilmannen; the
ghost-haunted hellshine of Fire Lake—

And then, one by one, the lights began to go out, until the
darkness surrounding him was complete.

Abruptly there was light again, all around him this time;
letting him see at last the room in which he was held prisoner—whitewashed,
windowless, lined with portable carriers which could have held anything, or
nothing—and the three men who remained in the room with him. He had counted
nearly a dozen figures before. He wondered where the others had disappeared to,
so quickly.

He fixed his gaze on the three who remained, realizing with
a start of disbelief that he knew them all. Two were Kharemoughis—Estvarit, the
Hegemonic Chief Justice, and Savanne, Chief Inspector of the Hegemonic Police
force on Number Four; the third questioner was Yungoro, the Governor-General of
the planet. He barely controlled the reflex that would have had the man he was
before Fire Lake down off the table, delivering a rigid salute before he had
taken another breath. Instead he looked behind himself, pointedly, at the
restraints that had held him down He looked at the men again, forcing himself
to remember all he had learned and endured and become in the past months ....
Forcing himself to remember that he himself was now a Commander of Police, and
though he had no assigned command, outranked two of the three men in the room
with him. He nodded to each man in turn, an acknowledgment between equals. “Gentlemen,”
he said. “It’s a pleasure to see you again.” His voice was steady; his mouth
curved up of its own accord into an ironic smile. “Especially as a stranger far
from home.”

“The Universe is Home to us all.” The Chief Justice—the one
man who outranked him in the outside world—made the response, with a smile that
looked genuine.

“You’re a little hard on strangers,” Gundhalinu said, and
saw Savanne glance away. He got down from the table at last, feeling muscles
pull painfully in his stiffened side. His relief and exhaustion left him weak;
he supported himselt unobtrusively against the cold metal edge of the table.

“I’m sorry. Commander,” Estvarit said. “But it is always
done this way. It is imperative that we impress upon new initiates both the
seriousness of this induction and its grave importance to their own lives. A
certain amount of fear serves the purpose.” The Chief Justice was a tall, lean
man. the tight curls of his hair graying. He had a slow, almost languid way of
speaking that put others instinctively at ease.

Gundhahnu felt the iron in his smile turn to rue. “My nurse
told me, when I was a boy, that one day when she was a child a winged
click-lizard appeared on the windowsill of her parents’ house. Her people
considered it to be a blessing on the house. When she pointed it out to her
father, he knocked her across the room. He told her afterward that an important
event should always be marked by pain, so that you would remember it. But she
said that she was not sure now whether she remembered the lizard because of the
slap, or the slap because of the lizard.”

He heard a barely restrained chuckle from the
Governor-General. Estvarit quirked his mouth. “I think you have a career ahead
of you as a public speaker, Gundhalinu.”

“What made you decide all at once that I was material for
the inner circles of Survey?”

Estvarit reached into his uniform robes and pulled something
out. Gundhalinu started as his eyes registered what the other man held up for his
perusal: two overlaid crosses forming an eight-pointed star within a circle,
the Hegemonic Seal he had seen reproduced on every official government document
and piece of equipment down to the buckle of his uniform belt; but transformed
here into a shimmering miracle of hologramic fire. “I’m to be given the Order
of Light?” he murmured; stunned, but, he realized, not particularly surprised.
He had a sudden memory of the wilderness, of the fiery gem called a solii held
out to him in the slender-fingered hand of a madwoman .... He shook his head
slightly, clearing it.

Estvarit nodded. “For conspicuous courage and utter
sacrifice, you are being made a Hero of the Hegemony. You won’t be informed—officially—of
the honor for about another week. Congratulations, Commander Gundhalinu. This
award is usually given posthumously.”

Gundhalinu wondered whether there was actually irony in Estvarit’s
voice. “I’m honored ....”He shook his head again, in awe, not in denial, as
Estvarit placed the medal in his hand, letting him prove its reality.