The Summer Queen (32 page)

Sparks took a deep breath, finding himself unexpectedly at
the center of attention. He glanced away, gazing into the fire that burned in
the stone hearth beyond Ngenet’s back. “Even when I was a boy in the islands, I
used to play the flute ....” He touched the pouch at his belt, where he kept
his shell flute. “I knew all the old songs everyone sang; but when I played
them on the flute they sounded different ... They reminded me of the mer songs;
the way they were constructed, the timbre, the intervals between notes and the
tonal slides. I didn’t know the terms or understand the relationships then
....”He smiled, at Moon’s face as she watched him; at the memory of that other
time, their lost world. “But my ears knew. After I came to the city, and—” and
Arienrhodfound me, “and I had access to what tech data the offworlders gave us,
I began to learn the mathematics of music. How what I’d thought was just ...
instinct, beautiful noise, was actually a matrix, a network of relationships,
each note with its own exact resonating wavelength, in a precise location
relative to all the others ....”

“So?” Ngenet said, impatiently.

“So, I’ve kept on studying the relationships between the mersong
and our songs, even the notes of the tone boxes we used to cross the Hall of
Winds, which are actually surprisingly similar.” He saw Moon straighten up in
surprise. She looked at him strangely, and he could not guess what it was that
she was thinking. He forced himself to look away without asking, to go on
speaking while he had the chance.

“What’s the point?” Ngenet snapped. “Don’t waste my time.”
His weather beaten face was furrowed with frown lines; his dark, hooded eyes
were still pitiless and cold like the wind. Ngenet was the last of a family of
offworlders who had gone native in the Tiamatan outback, and he loved this
world and all its parts obsessively. He had tried to protect the mere on his
plantation from the Hunt. But Arienrhod had sent her Starbuck to his shores at
Winter’s end for one final, illegal harvesting. All their scattered fates had
been brought into collision on that bitter day, on that hideous stretch of
beach, by the tightening of the Snow Queen’s fist. And none of them had escaped
unscarred.

Sparks glanced at Moon, saw his own sudden pain mirrored in
her eyes. Their shifting colors were like memories, shimmering reflections on
the surface of water. He swallowed the hard knot of his unexpected grief. “I ...
The point ... the point is that I believe there may be segments missing from
the mersong. Parts of it fall into patterns, meaningful enough to be fragments
of something greater. But there are gaps ....” He had begun to talk with Moon
about Ngenet’s work years ago, at first out of what must have been a kind of
masochistic guilt. But from his need to atone there had come a cleaner, purer
interest in the mersong, as it fed his curiosity about the nature of their
music, and music in general.

He had studied the recorded data until he was certain the
songs the mers sang were something separate from the simple tonal language they
used to communicate with one another. The tapes were filled with complex,
almost indecipherable polyphonic strands of alien sound, lasting sometimes for
hours. But they were songs in the true sense, as distinct and unchanging for
each mer colony as they were varied among those separate groups. Each extended
family within the colony seemed to possess a different musical strand, passed
on by the adults to their small number of young, over countless generations as
humans counted time. Blended together the strands comprised something greater,
the pattern of which he had only begun to sense in the past few weeks.

“I’ve been studying the recordings you’ve made, charting the
melodies, and it seems to me that with the—slaughter decimating their numbers
over and over, maybe they’ve lost the purpose of the songs themselves, along
with specific passages of them. Even when the offworlders are gone, the mers
reproduce slowly; it takes at least the century they have to rebuild their
population. It wouldn’t be surprising if parts of their songs were lost
forever. But if we could somehow reconstruct what’s missing, we actually might
understand them, maybe even give back to them some of what they’ve lost.”

Ngenet sat forward slowly. Sparks realized suddenly that the
older man’s eyes were open and looking at him ... waiting to meet his gaze. “That
makes sense,” Ngenet said slowly, as if it pained him to admit it.

Sparks bit his tongue, and smiled. He glanced at Moon’s
face, at the fascination and respect and, suddenly, the unquestioning love he
saw there. Her smile widened.

Ngenet leaned forward on the heavy-framed couch, his hands
locked together, his knuckles like burls on wood. “Take a look at what we have
here. And tell me more about your methods—how did you come to this idea? Do you
have your data with you?”

“I can get it.” Sparks pushed to his feet, still hardly
believing he had heard the other man speak those words, that his own words had
been listened to, when he had lived so long with Ngenet’s unspoken censure. He
had done his solitary research for what seemed like an eternity, seeking the
key that would grant him free access to the work Moon shared with Ngenet—grant
him the hope, however small, that one day he would not see hatred and loathing,
pity or pain, in the eyes of everyone who knew the truth ... including his own
eyes ... including the eyes of his wife.

He hesitated, as he heard the sound of dogs barking and the
excited voices of children coming toward the house.

Ngenet pushed to his feet, with annoyance showing on his
face again; but this time his gaze was directed toward the windows, the
threatened interruption.

“Mama! Mama!” Ariele burst through the front door, flushed
and breathless, barely skidding to a stop in time to avoid a collision with the
table below the window “Da!” she added, seeing her father standing distractedly
with the others. “We found mere!”

Mild surprise filled Ngenet’s face, momentarily replacing
his annoyance at the interruption.

“It’s a good sign that you saw mers, Ari,” Moon said,
getting up, “but we’re—”

“On the beach! On the beach!” Ariele cried, as more figures
entered the house Sparks turned as Jerusha entered, her heavy boots clumping on
the wooden floor, something heavy and child-sized held in her arms. He froze,
until he realized that the other two children were flanking her. “Dead!” Ariele
went on. “But look, we found a baby—” She darted back to Jerusha’s side,
hovering protectively by the bundle held face-high in front of her, her eyes
wide as she touched it, stroking it gently.

Sparks stood where he was, suddenly as strengthless as if it
had been a child of his in Jerusha’s arms, while Moon and Ngenet rose from
their seats and moved past him. He watched them go to Jerusha, the conversation
they had all just been having forgotten as utterly as he was himself. Ngenet
shooed the children aside; they stood back obediently, impressed by his sudden
intentness.

“Still alive—?” he asked, answering the question for himself
as he ran experienced hands over the merling, and studied its small,
unresponsive face. It made a tiny whimpering as he opened its eye; the fragile
thread of sound turned Sparks cold inside. He looked away, his hands
remembering the velvet soft texture of their thick fur; wanting to move
forward, to stand with the rest, but unable to, unnoticed, unwanted—

“We found an adult female too,” Jerusha said, “but she was already
dead.”

“What killed her?” Ngenet asked. Sparks looked back at them,
found Moon’s gaze on his face; she looked away again abruptly.

“I don’t know.” Jerusha shook her head. “There was nothing
wrong that I could see. Maybe the storm—” The mers had no natural enemies,
except their creators.

Sparks let his breath out. Jerusha glanced at him as if she
had sensed his response; only then did he realize that he had been expecting to
hear her speak his name, blaming him.

Ngenet shrugged, glancing up as Borah Clearwater and Gran
came into the house “Or parasites, or bad food ... but usually the colony keeps
watch when one of their own is in trouble. To find them all alone like that is
damned rare. And so is finding a young one, at this time in the High Year ....”
He reached out to take the merling from Jerusha’s arms, but she resisted,
rocking slowly, almost unthinkingly, from foot to foot, like a mother rocking
her child. Ngenet’s expression changed, and he let his hands drop. “Maybe they
were separated from the rest by the storm Or maybe ...” He shook his head
again. “I don’t understand it. But this one will starve before the day is out,
let alone before we locate the colony, if we don’t take care of it right now.”
He started out of the room, already calling to someone in the kitchen.

“Will a colony take in an orphan?” Moon asked, her own eyes
on the small head resting listlessly against Jerusha’s shoulder.

“I’ve never encountered a solitary merling before,” Ngenet
said. “We’ll find out.” Mers separated forcibly from their own kind invariably
died, but he did not mention that. He paused, giving directions to the startled
cook who had appeared in the doorway, sending her off again in search of
something suitable to feed a young mer.

“What if the mers don’t want their baby back, Uncle Miroe?”
Tammis asked, his eyes dark with concern as he gazed at the merling. “Will it
be all alone? Who will take care of it?”

Ngenet glanced over at the boy, a smile cracking the shell
of his preoccupation. He had studied the mers for a lifetime, but even he knew
little concrete about their society, the relationships they formed or did not
form, how they raised their young. “Then we’ll keep the baby here. But we’ll
worry about that later. First we’ll make the baby strong and healthy “

“Is the baby going to get well?” Merovy asked, pressing forward
hesitantly against Gran’s gentle restraint.

“We’ll do our best to help her,” Ngenet said gently, not
really answering the question. Sparks saw the doubt in his eyes, and knew the
concern that ran like a dark river below it. Ngenet touched the motionless
merhng again. He had always fought for the mers’ survival, with a determination
that would have earned him deportation if it had not earned him the love and
tolerance of the Hegemonic Police Commander

“Miroe,” Moon said almost hesitantly, her own eyes never
leaving the merhng, “if you can save her, if you can actually raise her ... it
could be a way of reaching the others. It could help us learn—”

Ngenet looked from Moon’s face to Jerusha rocking the merhng
in her arms “I’m way ahead of you,” he said, with an unexpected smile. “Come on—”
He nodded, starting for the doorway, and the others followed.

Sparks watched them go, still rooted where he stood, unable
to go after them Anele came back through the doorway alone, looking curiously at
him. “Come on, Da!” She came across the room to his side.

He put his arms around her, holding her close for a moment.

She squirmed free, tugged at his hand. “Come on, Da, come
help the mer—”

“I can’t, Anele,” he whispered, barely audible even to
himself. “I don’t know how.” He freed his hand from her gnp, and started back
across the room to the door He went out without another word, slamming the door
behind him.

“Wasn’t it wonderful, Mama?” Anele returned her mother’s
good-night hug, hanging on her in an ecstasy of excitement. “We had so much
fun! Now we can have our own mer to be our pet. I want to call her Silky,
because she’s so soft!” She squirmed as Moon tried to cover her with blankets.

Moon started in surprise, as the name reflected unexpectedly
in her memory “Our friend,” she corrected softly, stroking Ariele’s hair. “We
don’t own them, any more than they own us. Our people, the Summers, call them
the Goddess’s other children, and say the Sea is the Mother of both our peoples
.... But I think Silky is a perfect name,” she added. “I had a ... friend once,
from offworld, named Silky. He was more like the mers than anyone I knew. I
think he would be glad to be remembered this way. And maybe Silky will help us
understand the mers better as she grows.” She kissed her daughter gently on the
forehead. “Lie down and go to sleep.”

“It’s so early—”

“And you’re so tired.”

“I want to help learn about them—”

“I know. Shh.” She turned away, going to Tammis’s bed across
the darkened \tfKX of the room they shared. There were enough unused rooms in
the palace for them each to have one of their own. But the rooms were vast and
sterile, and seemed to her always so cold, that she had chosen to keep the
twins together in the nursery, close by her own room, until they were old
enough to complain, or at least old enough never to wake from a nightmare,
terrified to find themselves alone.

But maybe no one ever outgrew those dreams .... She still
woke at night, feeling lost, terrified, alone; even though she slept next to a
man who loved her, a | man she had known all her life.

“I want to help too!” Tammis said, propped on one elbow, listening.

“I know.” She hugged him, kissed him on the forehead, smelling
the scent of sea and wind in his hair. “We’ll all do it, together.”

“When can we see the mer baby again? Tomorrow?”

“Silky—!” Ariele whispered loudly. “I want to name her
Silky, don’t you?”

“We just came back.” Moon smiled. “We’ll go again soon. Not
tomorrow. You have lessons to study.”

Tammis made a face. “Where’s Da? Isn’t he going to play his
flute for us?”

Moon glanced toward the empty doorway of the room, feeling
her face tighten. “Not tonight. He’s very tired.” He had been impatient and
moody through the long, weary trip back up the coast. The only words he had
spoken to any of them had stung like nettles; until all that she could do was
try to keep herself, and the children, out of his sight. He had not said
anything about the reason for his smoldering anger, but she knew. It was the
merling. “I’ll sing you a song.” She closed her eyes, letting go of her frustration;
letting her mind carry her back until she was a child in Summer again. She
remembered being rocked in the arms of her strong, sandy-haired mother, who
came home with the fishing fleet smelling of the wind and the sea; who had sung
them songs about the mers like the one she began to sing for her children now.
She let herself imagine that they all sat before the fire in a tiny,
stone-walled cottage on a tiny windswept island, in a room that had always
seemed warmer, safer, more real than any room she ever found herself in these
days. She wished, with a sudden soul-deep longing, that she could take herself
and her family back to that dreaming island, away from this haunted city.