The Summer Queen (31 page)

Moon looked over her shoulder, hearing her grandmother’s
voice reaching cheerfully ahead up the hillside from the bay. Gran and Borah
Clearwater made their way slowly but resolutely toward the gathering on the
slope; Miroe paced beside them as host and guide. She saw their small boat, its
slack sail flapping, down at the dock, surprised that she had not noticed them
coming in. Miroe clearly had, from the house tarther up the hill. The children
left her side in an abrupt flock and rushed to greet the new arrivals with more
gleeful clamor.

Moon smiled, watching them, for a moment imagining that she
watched herself, and Sparks. She saw the children’s pleasure reflected in her
grandmother’s eyes; saw in Borah Clearwater, standing beside Gran, the
grandfather she could not clearly remember now, who had died of a fever when
she was only three. It still amazed her to see Gran beaming like a young girl,
as far in spirit from the drawn, aged woman who had come to Carbuncle as the
grandmother of Moon’s memory had been. Capella Goodventure had done them both a
kindness they could never have imagined, on that day when her grandmother had
arrived in the city—a fact which Moon silently hoped had caused the Goodventure
elder disappointment equal to the pain she had inflicted on them.

It was hard for her to believe that it had taken a Winter to
rekindle life’s fire in Gran. But over the years she had found that many of the
outback Winters had more in common with Summers than they did with the
inhabitants of Carbuncle. “Well, damn it!” Borah Clearwater said, peering with
good-natured impatience over the swarming heads of the children. “I see you’ve
added even more of those ‘windflowers’ to this crackbrained plantation of
yours, Miroe Ngenet.” He gestured at the windscrews at the top of the hill
behind them. “Damn shame it is too, when it was a perfectly fine example before—”

“It ran on hard human labor—and one very expensive
offworlder power unit—before, Clearwater, just like yours, and you know it,”
Miroe grunted, his mouth curving upward under the thick bush of his mustache. “We
get twice as much productivity at half the expense with windscrews and
generators and fuel made in our distillery, and it frees up my workers to learn
trades at the processing plant—”

“Hmph. Sounds like a steaming pile of—”

“Borah!” Gran said sharply. “Watch your tongue. There are
children.”

“Yes, heart,” he murmured, deflating abruptly, without
further objection. “But rot me if I want to hear more about processing plants
and new trades, new towns, new noise and stink and that miserable pissant
Kirard Set ... Now he’s after me again, wanting me to sell him the plantation
to develop. It was an unlucky tumble that tossed his genetic code. I can live
with the right of way, as long as he pays me well—” He looked at Moon, and she
smiled. “But don’t expect me to thank you for it. And believe it’ll be a hot
day in hell before he touches another inch of my lands with ‘progress.’ Over my
dead body! Right, love—?” Gran nodded, her face mirroring his resolution. He
put his arm around her, chuckled as she slapped his hand for getting familiar.

“Act your age, you old bull-klee,” she said, smiling-eyed;
somehow still managing to slide back into his grasp while pushing him away. She
accepted more hugs and treasured shells from a half-dozen small hands.

“Ah, but I am, you know I am,” he breathed in her ear, and
she giggled like a girl. “Where’s that nephew of mine, and your mother?” He
looked down at Merovy swinging back and forth, pulling on his arm.

“They couldn’t come,” she said, losing her own smile as she
remembered.

“Why not?” He looked up, concerned. “Is his back plaguing
him so much, then?”

Moon nodded, pressing her mouth together. Danaquil Lu’s back
trouble had grown so bad that he could no longer walk upright. The voyage down
the coast, even in a motorized craft, was too long and painful; and so they
stayed in the city.

“But we’re getting close to where 1 can help him,” Miroe
said. “The workmanship of our second-generation tool-making is getting finer
all the time. Soon we’ll be able to produce the surgical equipment I have to
have; when I have it, there’s a correctional procedure which is relatively
simple—”

Borah snorted in disgust. “False hope! Why give him false
hope? We can’t recreate something it took the offworlders centuries to produce
in the first place, m only one century! Let things be, and accept it.” He waved
his hand, turning away, dismissing them. Jerusha stiffened beside Moon; Moon remembered
her childlessness, and how the new technology had not come in time to change
that.

“My da will so get better!” Merovy cried indignantly. “Don’t
say that.”

“Of course he will,” Miroe snapped, his good humor vanishing
like smoke.

“If the Lady wills it,” Gran finished, patting Merovy’s head
with stern resolution.

Moon looked away from them, rubbing her arms inside the
loose sleeves of her sweater. Sparks rolled his eyes beside her, and pushed his
fists into the pockets of his canvas trousers. “Goddess! He’s worse than the
Summers,” he muttered, so softly that only she heard it.

“Mama, come with us to get more shells!” Ariele pulled at
Moon’s hand, gazing up at her with bright eagerness.

Moon hugged her, smiling. “Well, I—”

“Moon, I need to talk with you about the newest studies we’ve
been doing on the mersong. I’m running short on inspiration, and I need input.”
Miroe caught at her with his eyes, nodding toward the house, where they had
already spent half the day discussing new ways to encourage Summers to accept
the technology that was changing their lives almost daily.

“Come on, Mama.” Tammis clung to her other hand.

Moon felt her mouth tighten, seeing the silver stretch of
beach waiting, feeling her children’s need pulling at her, and Miroe’s. “I can’t
right now ....”

“Mama! You promised—”

Moon frowned, caught in a tightening vise of frustration.

“You’ve played with me half the morning,” Sparks said. “You
can run on the beach by yourselves a while. Build a city in the sand, like
Carbuncle—”

“But Mama promised—”

“You come with us now, children,” Gran said, moving forward
to pry them loose from Moon’s arms. “You haven’t been with us, either, and your
mother has work that must be done,” regardless of what I think of it, her eyes
said, “like her mother before her, and even I myself, in my day. But now I have
time to walk barefoot in the sand! Come on, Borah ...” She enlisted his support
with a jerk of her head. He took Merovy by the hand as Gran pulled Tammis and
Ariele half reluctantly away down the hill. “Mama—!” Tammis called plaintively,
one last time.

“Nobody’s stimng the paddies! Your seahair crop is going to
rot, Miroe Ngenet!” Borah waved a hand at the empty fields. “What good will all
your technology do when you all starve to death?”

“I’ve automated,” Miroe shouted back. “Wind-powered wavemakers.
Worry about your own crops!”

“Automated, you say—?” Borah called, but Miroe was already
turning away, waving his hand in disgust.

“Go south around the bay!” Jerusha called. “There was a
storm the day before yesterday. There will be wonderful shells along the bay.
Maybe you’ll even find fog-agates.”

“Will we see mers?”

“Not so soon after the storm—” Moon shook her head, waving,
a halfhearted, reluctant gesture of farewell. She turned away from the sight of
them, her eyes suddenly stinging. “All right, Miroe,” she said, to the unspoken
apology in his glance, “let’s talk about the mers.”

Sparks fell into step beside her as they began to walk back
up the hill. Miroe glanced at him. “I don’t think this is your area of
expertise, Dawntreader.”

Sparks frowned slightly. “I’ve been studying the mersong,
and I think I may have found a clue to the—”

“Jerusha, why don’t you take him down to the factory?” Miroe
gestured across the bay.

“I’ve seen the factory. I want to talk about the mers.”

Miroe turned abruptly to face him. “After what you did to
them, you have no right.”

Sparks stopped in his tracks, and Moon saw the desolation
that emptied his eyes like death. She looked back at Miroe, his stare as black
and hard as flint, and said nothing, did nothing, as the past breathed on them
all with the cold breath of Winter. She followed Miroe on up the hill, gazing
at the cloud-hung, distant peaks. Sparks did not follow.

Sparks watched them until they were out of range of his voice.
Jerusha PalaThion was still standing beside him; he wondered why he was not
completely alone. He took a deep breath at last, and turned to face her. “Why
don’t you make it unanimous?” he said.

“Because I don’t think you deserved that,” she answered, meeting
his gaze.

“Why not?” He looked away again, feeling something gnawing
like worms inside him. “I butchered mers for Arienrhod, so she could sell the
water of life, so we could stay young together by committing genocide. You know
what I did; you saw what I did—just like him. He’s right; I’m guilty.”

She looked at him for a long moment without speaking. “That
wasn’t you ...” she said finally, “that was Arienrhod. You were only a boy. You
were no match for a woman like her. She’d been committing soul cannibalism for
a hundred and fifty years. She nearly destroyed us all.”

His hands tightened. “Give me more credit than that. I knew
what I was doing. You used to believe that, when you hated my guts as Commander
of Police.”

“I hated Starbuck, the Queen’s butcher, just like I hated
the Queen. I didn’t know Sparks Dawntreader, then, any more than I knew Moon
Dawntreader. I thought I did, but I was wrong.” She shook her head. “I was a
Blue, and I thought I was a good judge of character ... I still think so. Moon
told me you’d never been what you were for Arienrhod, before; she said you’d
never be like that again. She made me believe in her because she wore a
trefoil. I wasn’t so sure about you. But she was right. I’ve known you for
nearly ten years now. You’re a good man.”

He looked after Moon’s retreating back, at Miroe’s tall,
broad-shouldered silhouette towering over her, making her look small and
fragile. He looked back at Jerusha, and suddenly he was not afraid to meet her
eyes, for the first time since he could remember. “Thank you,” he said finally,
softly.

She nodded. “My pleasure.”

He looked toward Miroe’s retreating back again. “But ten
years hasn’t changed his mind.”

“That’s another thing I’ve learned,” she murmured. “He’s not
an easy man to reach.”

Sparks heard the bitter disappointment in the words, and
wanted suddenly to reach out to her. He did not, because there was something of
her husband’s intangible armor about her too. “How can I make him listen to me,
at least? Is there any way’’”

She shifted from foot to foot, her eyes thoughtful. “He’s a
determined man; he’s self-righteous, and won’t be easily shaken out of what he
believes .... But he respects determination in other people.” She looked back
at him. “If you want to tell him your ideas about the mers, go and do it. Don’t
let him shut you out. Stand your ground.” A slow smile came out on her face. “It’s
worth a try. It’s how I got him to admit he loved me.”

Sparks laughed; he nodded, his smile fading again. “All
right. I will.” He glanced toward the house. “Are you coming?”

She shook her head, looking toward the beach, where the
small group of young and old were gathered in the ageless pursuit of digging
miracles out of the sand “Not me. This is your fight, I’d just be in the way “
She stretched her arms. “For once I’m going to the beach “ She glanced back at
him. “Good luck,” she said, and strode away down the slope of rippling salt
grass.

Sparks watched her for a moment, until he realized that he
was not really envious, and then he began to climb the hill. A dozen windscrews
whirled almost silently above him, scattered across the land like surreal
flowers, turning the wind’s restless energy into energy for humans to use, to
keep the water in constant motion in the beds of cultivated sea hair, to provide
electricity for light and power in the growing sprawl of the manufacturing
plant Ngenet had been constructing on the far side of his small harbor. There
was a village growing up around it, where Winter workers had come to live and
raise their families; old-style dwellings built in old-style ways to mark a
new-style life.

He reached the plantation house that lay at the hill’s crest
like an immense cairn, its solid, century-old stone and wood construction
reminding him of the houses of his youth; reminding him again that the people
of this world, Winter and Summer, shared a common heritage because they faced
common problems of survival. He wondered why it was so easy for them to forget
that. It was the perversity of all human beings, that they forgot their humanity
so easily, and nursed their bitter memories for so long ....

Sparks went in through the heavy iron-hinged door, found Miroe
and Moon sitting at a low table spread with handwritten documents among the
uneasy mix of offworld heirlooms and stolid native furniture that gave this
house its unique personality.

They looked up at him, Moon in surprise, and Ngenet in something
closer to anger. “What do you want?” he demanded.

“I want you to listen to my ideas, Ngenet.” Sparks held
himself straighter, settling his hands on his hips. “Shut your eyes if you have
to, if having to look me in the face makes you sick. But hear me out.”

Ngenet stiffened, glancing at Moon. But Moon’s eyes were on
his own, with a mixture of pnde and urgency, telling him he had done the right
thing, strengthening his resolve.

He sat down with them as if he had been invited, making them
a triad—Lady’s luck, he told himself, feeling irony pinch him. Ngenet studied
Moon’s face a moment longer, looked away again with what seemed to be resignation.
His glance flicked back to Sparks; he closed his eyes, deliberately. “All
right,” he said. “I’m listening.”