The Summer Queen (34 page)

Even after he became the Snow Queen’s favorite ... after he
became her consort, and then her henchman, her Starbuck, he had returned here.
Even after he butchered the sacred mers and drank the water of life, he had
returned to this alley seeking sanctuary, when what he had become was too much
for him to bear. He had come back to see Fate, whose eyes saw almost nothing;
whose soul saw everything, but seemed never to pass judgment on it.

He had never known why she continued to welcome him on her
doorstep, any more than he had known that she was a sibyl, the only one in
Carbuncle, hiding her secret from Winters and offworlders alike—the way
Starbuck had hidden his identify behind a mask and gone all in black. But she
had hidden her secret identity to serve a greater good, while he had hidden his
reality behind a faceless lie, his only reasons for existence to commit treachery
and murder ....

He shook his head, driving out the shadows as he started
into Citron Alley. He had not visited Fate in a long time—not for the reasons
he had visited her in the old days, or for the reason he was about to visit her
now.

The buildings nearest the Street were occupied by a mix of
new Winter-run businesses and a few Summer shops, although farther down the
alley the ancient buildings were shuttered and abandoned, waiting with inhuman
patience for someone to return. The transparent storm walls let in the garish
colors of the sunset; twilight came late in the northern latitudes, as the
lengthening days of the annual spring moved on toward annual summer, adding
their warmth to the High Summer of the system’s approach to the Black Gate.
Fewer and fewer people passed him as he made his way down the alley. By the
time he reached Fate’s doorstep he was entirely alone, and glad that he was.

He knocked on her closed double-door, lightly at first, and
then harder, when there was no answer. Still he got no response, except for the
faint yowling of her aged cat telling him impatiently that she was not at home.
He swore under his breath, wondering where in hell a blind woman could be at
this time of night. Probably she had gone to a tavern somewhere with Tor
Starhiker, to listen to music. He knew she did that sometimes. He even thought
he knew where. But he did not want to see her with Tor Starhiker, not tonight,
with his head too full of the memories of all their former lives, and how they
had spent them at Winter’s end.

He went back along the alley toward the Street; stopped at
the corner looking uphill along its spiral, facing the prospect of his return
to the palace. He took a deep breath and made himself start walking. He had
nowhere else to go, no one else to talk to, nowhere else to turn ....

As he walked he thought of spending the night there, lying
alone in the darkness, sharing his bed with Arienrhod’s specter, with the chill
touch of her ghost arms turning his flesh to carrion, the memories of what they
had done together in that place leaving him sleepless .... He thought of lying
beside Moon, Arienrhod’s ghost made flesh—how she would turn her back to him in
anger when she joined him, far later, her body cold and tense with exhaustion
and resentment. She was held captive not just by her obsessions, but by something
even more profoundly inescapable, something he could not begin to comprehend.
He thought about its pitiless hold on her ... the bitter spines of the trefoil
she wore, the same symbol tattooed at her throat, inescapable.

He felt a brief surge of compassion, knowing that she
deserved more than she had gotten from him tonight, of kindness, of understanding,
of love—that she had always deserved more from him than he seemed able to give
since they had been reunited. But he also knew that he needed more of her than
she could give him ever again. The space around them, the space within their
lives, was too small, they had nowhere left to turn; the future had filled it
all in with inescapable truths ....

His steps slowed as he reached the corner of another
familiar alley:
OH vine
Alley, which held the Sibyl
College. His office was there, where he spent his days working with his wife:
asking questions that would send her into Transfer, and recording the answers;
trying to make sense of what the Transfer told them, as the sibyl net answered
queries in its own strange and elliptical fashion.

He realized suddenly that he enjoyed what he did there, was
proud of it .. that when he worked and did research for Tiamat, it was as if he
united his two heritages, Summer and offworlder, in a way he had longed to do
when he first came to Carbuncle. Discovering the perfect beauty of the
mathematics which underlay so many forms and functions, both of human progress
and natural order, filled him with a pleasure and satisfaction he rarely found
in the randomness and pain of human relationships.

On an impulse he turned into the alley, turning his back on
the uphill climb toward home and family. He walked until he came to the
entrance to the College; let himself in, moving through its familiar, twilit
halls until he reached his office. He turned on a light and sat down at the
regulation Police-issue desk, abandoned there by its former owners at the
Change. Its useless terminal stared back at him like a sightless eye. Shuffling
through the disorder of typewritten papers, handwritten notes, and riches, he
picked up an aging text on fugue theory he had found in an abandoned data shop.
He leaned back into the embrace of the shapeshifting chair and put his feet up
on the desk. He opened the book and began to read, losing himself in thought

Reede Kullervo rested moodily on a freeform couch in the
Port Authority hotel suite, gnawing a hangnail and staring out across the
artificial stars of the landing field, into the black heart of the jungle
beyond it. He watched another shuttle rise without seeming effort and disappear
into the greater blackness of the night. His fist tightened around the bottle
of ouvung he had been drinking straight; the cheap plass crumpled under his
grip, and viscous ruby liquor oozed out and down over his fingers like blood.

He could hear muted voices and unintelligible noise coming
from the next room, where Niburu and Ananke were lost in some time-wasting
interactive on the entertainment unit. He sighed, and took another drink from
the ruined bottle, staring out at the night. This room stank of newness, like
everything here did—of restless molecules still escaping from wall surfaces,
fabrics, furniture. Somewhere behind him, if he could have seen through walls,
was the sea of light that was the Stardrive Research Project and the prefabricated
instant city that had sprung up around it, here in the middle of nowhere, on
the edge of World’s End.

“By the Render—” He swore and sat up abruptly, felt the
couch re-form around him. He took another handful of iestas from the dish on
the table and stuffed them into his mouth, chewing them up pods and all. The
pods tasted like shit, but they were supposed to have more natural tranquilizer
than the seeds themselves. Not that it would do him any good. He washed them
down with another gulp of ouvung. No matter how much garbage he put into his
system, the water of death annulled the effects. It was virtually impossible
for him to get drunk or high, to get even the slightest bit numb, no matter how
hard he tried. He kept trying, hoping for a miracle.

He could not have come all this way pointlessly! Damn that
stupid bastard Tubiri, who was supposed to have provided the verification that
Reede Kullervo had been sent here by the Kharemoughis—who had gotten himself
wiped off the face of Number Four so damned inconveniently, so short a time
ago. “Incinerated in an accident with the stardrive plasma.” That was what they
had told him. Was it possible that it wasn’t an accident ... ?

No. Accidents happened, even to the Brotherhood. If it hadn’t
been an accident, it would have happened to Reede Kullervo instead .... He was
still safe and alive, but he was stranded, with no way to get the access he
needed to the research that was going on. If he couldn’t get inside and show
these shitbrained fools how to contain and control the stardrive material—and
in the more than two and a half years of their time it had taken him to get
here, they had failed to be successful at either—then he would never be able to
get a stable sample of it for himself, to carry back to Ondinee. To Mundilfoere
.... Mundilfoere. If only she was here with him, to tell him he had done the
right thing, to tell him what to do next. To hold him in her arms ...

He rubbed his eyes, muttering another curse. The Brotherhood
had members on Four, but they were few, and he had to be careful about
contacting them. They had no one at all on the inside at the Research Project,
now that Tubiri was gone. And he knew the security around this place. Between
the ruthlessness of the locals and the obsessive technological innovations of
the Kharemoughis, this place made the paranoia of the Tuo Ne’el cartels seem
like an open market square. He had tried every argument imaginable to make them
let him in today, but nothing had worked. And he needed not just the access,
but cooperation. Now he would have to go back at least to Foursgate—that was
the most cosmopolitan city center on the planet, the heart of their offworld
trade. He would have to start all over ....

There was a knock at the door. He pushed to his feet,
frowning. He was not expecting visitors. He did not want visitors. “Niburu!” he
shouted. But the noise and the laughter went on, undiminished in the next room.
Swearing under his breath, he crossed to the door; he stopped, reaching inside
his overshirt, checking the weapons he had rearmed himself with as soon as he
left the Project.

He peered through the one-way panel beside the door, and
froze. And then, slowly, his hand fell away from his gun and he released the
lock. The door slid open silently. He stood looking out at the local woman, a
worker from the Research Project who had tried to speak to him as he left there
late this afternoon, and at the stranger standing beside her. She had been a
sibyl, he suddenly remembered; and in his exasperation, as they had shown him
the door after six hours of useless interrogation, he had shouted, “For gods’
sakes, I’m a stranger far from home—”

She and the man with her were both wearing dark, shapeless
rain slickers, the hoods shadowing their faces. And yet he suddenly knew beyond
a doubt who it was that she had brought to see him. Reede held out his hand to
the woman. “Hello again,” he murmured, in the local dialect. “I’m sorry I didn’t
return your courtesy this afternoon.”

“I don’t blame you.” She took his proffered hand somberly,
and he felt her answer the subtle movement of his fingers. “I’m Tiras ranKells
Hahn,” she said; last name first, in the local fashion. “I’m sorry I couldn’t be
of more help to you then. I’m afraid they don’t make strangers welcome easily
at the Project .... May I present to you the Honorable Researcher Commander BZ
Gundhahnu—”

“Yes, yes, of course—” Reede held out his hand to the man
who accompanied her, feeling his face flush with unexpected emotion. “Gods, you
can’t imagine what a pleasure this is.” You can’t. He met the other man’s eyes,
with a smile that was completely genuine. “Reede Kulleva Kullervo, from the
Pandalhi Research Institute. “

Gundhalinu offered him a hand, raised paim out in the
typical Kharemoughi manner. Reede twisted his own hand quickly, so that their
palms met in what he hoped seemed like a natural motion. Careless, you ass. He
felt the hidden question the other man’s touch asked him in turn, and he
answered it with silent satisfaction. Of course Gundhalinu was Survey; at a
high level too, he was sure.

“I understand you’ve come all the way from Kharemough to
work with us, only to be turned away today by our overeager watchdogs?”
Gundhalinu answered his smile with one that looked more reserved. His eyes were
so dark they were almost black, and they regarded Reede with frank curiosity.

Reede managed a laugh that might have been rueful. “I seem
to have disappeared from your data reality—and they told me my contact has been
incinerated .... Your security sets a new standard for the entire Hegemony.”

“Our bureaucracy, you mean.” Gundhalinu shook his head. “I’m
truly sorry This place has always been a godforsaken bottleneck. You should
have seen it before there was a research center here, when it was the Company’s
town .... But I wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy.”

Reede felt his smile pull. He shrugged, loosening the
muscles in his back. “You were here then?” he asked, surprised.

“Our histories have become one, I’m afraid.” Gundhalinu’s
smile turned sour, and he didn’t elaborate. Reede realized that Gundhalinu’s
discovery of the stardrive must have been the catalyst that had precipitated
all this change. He had, by his single act, become responsible for the town’s
transformation.

Reede glanced at the woman named Hahn again, sensing her
restlessness. “Excuse my manners. Come in, won’t you?” he murmured, including
them both in the gesture.

Hahn shook her head. “I can’t stay. I have to get back. My daughter
...”

“How is she?” Gundhalinu asked, turning toward her with sudden
solicitude.

“Better ...” she murmured. “I think she is a little better.”
She shrugged, in a gesture Reede read as hopeless.

“I’m glad to hear it,” Gundhalinu said, with a peculiar
sorrow showing in his eyes.

“You’re kind to remember her, Commander.”

“Schact!” Gundhalinu said abruptly. “Don’t you start
treating me like one of your sainted ancestors, Hahn. You know me better than
that.”

She turned to him in surprise; smiled, and it was a real
smile, given to a real man. “Yes, of course ... BZ.” She nodded, looking down
again as she did, unable to stop herself.

He took a deep breath. “Thank you for bringing me here.
Hahn, if there’s ever anything else I can do ... You know.” He shrugged. She
smiled at him over his shoulder, and went on down the hall.