The Summer Queen (44 page)

Reede forced his eyes to stay open when they would have
closed, and saw the seething chaos take on a new form—a form that slowly began
to alter, until he realized that it was making sense to his eyes, the patterns
coalescing into the random forms of flames, of frost, of alien coastlines ...
the rate of change slowing, their mutation slowly, as what lay inside the
container surrendered to rationality and order, and came to rest at last firmly
connected to the reality stream in which it had been created. Waiting. Waiting
for their command.

Reede sucked in a breath, let it out in a hoarse cry of
triumph. He turned, catching Gundhalinu by the shoulders, embracing him.

“It worked ...” Gundhalinu whispered, dazed. “It worked!
Didn’t it—?” His own hands closed over Reede’s, still clutching his arms.

“Yes.” Reede looked back at the displays. “It’s under
control. We did it! We got it—we got all of it!” He looked at Gundhalinu again;
found his hands somehow touching the other man, Gundhalinu’s hands covering his
own. He pulled free, stumbling back.

Gundhalinu nodded, oblivious. “Yes, I feel it ... I felt it
happen.” His voice was choked with emotion. He rubbed his face, almost as if he
were wiping away tears. Reede wondered if it was relief, or pain, or joy that
had hold of him now—what a man would feel who had gone through all the hell
that Gundhalinu had gone through, for the sake of the Lake, for the sake of his
own sanity.

Reede felt happy—pleased with himself, in a clean,
matter-of-fact way that he did not feel very often. But the rush of triumph
that had filled him as the plasma had conn—ui—ler control had dissipated as
suddenly, when he looked into Gundhalinu’s eyes, .’—emotions had gone flat, as
if it were all an anticlimax, and he had no idea why

He shook his head, telling himself that this was only the
first stage of his real victory, that he would feel the real pleasure when he
had taken what he had come here to get. and returned with it to Mundilfoere.
Mundilfoere, whose love was all the human contact he desired. Mundilfoere,
whose touch could make him forget ever\th:ng, anything ... even this moment. He
stared at the displays, still telling him just what he wanted them to say.

He looked back at Gundhalinu finally, almost reluctantly. He
had what he had come here to get. He should be ready to carry out the next part
of the plan immediately, while Gundhalinu and the others were completely off
guard ...

But now there was the ship, the Old Empire wreckage that
Gundhalinu had shown him today. If it had anything like an intact drive unit in
it ... He couldn’t afford to pass that up. He had to keep things the way they
were a little longer; maintain this precarious balance until he found out for
certain. He could only study the ship if he had Gundhalinu down there with him,
to tell him what he needed to know.

He couldn’t kill anybody now. He didn’t have to kill anybody
now. Nobody had to die, today ....

He turned away from the sight of Gundhalinu’s face; spoke
brusquely into the communicator, calling Niburu and the others back to camp.

“Kullervo, what are the odds,” Gundhalinu murmured, his voice
still strained, “of our vaccinating the entire Lake? We could do it now. The
reprogrammed virus should just keep spreading indefinitely ....”

“No.” Reede looked back, hearing a hope and a hunger in
Gundhalinu’s voice that might or might not be Gundhalinu’s own. “I mean, let’s
take it one step at a time, all right?” he said uneasily. “Let’s make sure this
is completely stable, first.” He was almost certain that it was completely
stable—and that Gundhalinu was almost certainly right. That would be all he needed—to
give the Golden Mean and the Kharemoughis a limitless supply of stardrive. He
intended to leave them with exactly what they’d had when he arrived—which was
nothing. Less than nothing, if he did the rational thing ... He glanced at
Gundhalinu again, down again, his hands tightening.

“Niburu!” Reede gestured with his chin, summoning Niburu
away from the cluster of bodies gathered around the dully glowing solar cooker.

“Try the stew, boss?” Niburu said, shoveling another
mouthful into his face as he stopped and looked up at Reede. “It’s not bad, if
I do say so. I thought we all deserved something spe—”

“What the hell are they doing eating with us?” Reede cut him
off irritably, pulling him farther around the side of the lab dome into the
shadows.

Niburu glanced over his shoulder at the figures he could
still just see. “Gundhalinu eats with us—”

“You know what I mean,” Reede snapped. “Those troopers.”

Niburu looked back at him, both uneasy and defiant. He
shrugged. “I wanted to invite Saroon, so I had to ask Hundet. It’s kind of a
party to celebrate ....”Reede realized that Niburu smelled like beer, that they
must all have been drinking the local brew.

“What the fuck do you think this is?” Reede caught him by
the front of his shirt and shook him once, hard, spilling stew. “Some goddamn
social club? A fucking primitive tour? That is the enemy!” That was all he
needed, for Niburu and Ananke to start seeing those expendable pieces of meat
as individuals, as friends.

Niburu flushed. “They’re not my enemies—”

“Don’t playact that naive bullshit with me.” Reede let him
go, seeing the incomprehension on his face, wanting to strangle him. “If they
knew why we were really here, what do you think would have happened to us all
by now?”

“We’d all be dead. And who could blame them?” Niburu said
bitterly. “But they’re still human beings.” The look on his face got
dangerously self-righteous. “And it’s too late to uninvite them. You want to
eat, or not?”

Reede glared at him. The words that would shatter Niburu’s
fantasy world filled his mouth, but his tongue refused to spit them out. Niburu
turned and stalked away. Reede sighed, and followed, realizing that it was
already too late for Niburu. But that didn’t matter, as long as it wasn’t too
late for him; as long as his own resolve held.

He followed Niburu out into the open space between the
domes. He sat on a sling-stool and ate, smiling an utterly empty smile. The
stew was good; full of enough hot spices to burn away any aftertaste of stale
freeze-dry. He focused on its texture, the pungent flavors rising up inside his
head; relieved that Gundhalinu, who sat next to him, seemed too preoccupied
with his own thoughts, or the Lake’s, to make conversation. Reede tried not to
watch Ananke letting Saroon take the quoll in his lap, not to watch as it
crawled up the sweat-damp front of Saroon’s uniform shirt to huddle, murmuring
congenially, under his chin; tried not to see the first smile he’d ever seen
form on Saroon’s thin, drawn face, or to feel Niburu’s eyes measuring his own
reaction. Only Hundet’s mood seemed to match his own, and so he watched Hundet.

Hundet’s eyes flicked over them one by one, and Reede saw
his own alienation mirrored there. Hundet downed the dregs of what was probably
not his first bottle of ouvung that day. Hundet hated this surreal wasteland,
the strange-looking foreigners, the offworlders controlling his world and his
life—anything he didn’t understand, and that covered a lot of ground. He hated
what he feared; and so he drank until everyone was as much of an animal in his
mind as he was himself. If the law didn’t give him an enemy, he took it out on
grunts like Saroon; on his woman if he had one and on his children, with his
foot, with a gunbutt, with his fists. The kind of man whose hand would hold you
under in the black cold water ... Reede swore and spat as an unexpected
mouthful of spice made his eyes tear. He took a long, meaningless drink from
the bottle of cold, piss-colored beer sitting by his boot.

Hundet looked up and caught him staring, read the expression
on his face before he had time to make it noncommittal again. Hundet’s face
darkened; his eyes touched on everyone sitting around him again with obvious disgust.
He got slowly to his feet, muttering some insult in his own tongue, and started
to leave the circle. He turned back as Saroon laughed out loud, oblivious, reacting
to something the quoll had done or Ananke had said to him.

Reede watched with a peculiar feeling of deja vu as Hundet’s
booted foot swung out to kick Saroon hard in the buttock. The quoll flew out of
Saroon’s grasp as he sprawled forward, crashing into the cooker. Ananke caught
the quoll in midair with an acrobat’s reflexive lunge. Saroon scrambled to his
feet, slapping at his smoking shirtsleeve, his face stupefied with pain and surprise.
Hundet snarled an order. Reede went on watching, with unwilling fascination, as
the pleasure that had animated Saroon’s face faded until he had no expression
at all. His eyes were like holes in his face, black and empty, as he left the
circle of silent, staring strangers without a word, and followed Hundet away.

Niburu swore softly. Gundhalinu began to rise from his seat,
his mouth opening to call out an angry protest.

Reede caught Gundhalinu’s arm, pulling him back down. “Don’t
say anything.”

Gundhalinu’s frown turned to him. “He’s going to stop mistreating
his man like that or I’ll—”

“He’s not going to stop,” Reede said flatly. “If you call
him on it, he’ll only wait until your back is turned. And then he’ll treat the
kid worse because you gave him trouble about it. Leave it alone.”

Gundhalinu stared at him, then settled slowly back onto the
stool, all his resistance gone. He nodded, tight-lipped with resignation. Reede
glanced at the others, saw the resentment fade from their faces, and the helpless
anger it left behind. They watched Hundet enter the rover, going inside to
sleep it off, leaving Saroon on guard outside, able to see what went on where
they all sat, just across the camp from him, but not able to join it.

After an endless moment of silence, Gundhalinu pushed to his
feet again. “It’s been a long day.” He disappeared into his sleeping quarters.

“Saroon is in the army,” Niburu said, “because one day a
squad came into the village where his family lived and took away all the young
men they could find, at gunpoint. He’s been in the army three years. He’s
eighteen.”

Reede stared at him. “How the hell do you know things like
that?”

“I ask,” Niburu answered, meeting his stare.

“There are some things you can’t change, Niburu.” Reede
looked away from him. “Unless, of course, you’re willing to kill somebody.” He
stood up and went toward his own quarters without looking back.

Gundhalinu stood in the heart of Sanctuary, on the
cliff-edge above the shining river, looking down. Even from this height the
water’s motion seemed indefinably alien. He stared at the wreckage that lay
waiting in the depths like a fallen star. A fallen starship. The heat licked at
his sweating body with sensual desire; the voice of the Lake was a lunatic choir
screaming inside his head. He stood listening to its voice a moment longer,
before he turned to look at Kullervo.

Kullervo stood beside him in nothing but a pair of shorts; a
delirious profusion of stunning color and vibrant design covered his naked arms
to the shoulders. His face showed a stubble of beard; the pale unprotected skin
of his back was already burning in the fierce heat. Gundhalinu watched a ghost
hazed in red drift heedlessly through Kullervo’s slim, well-muscled body and
wander back toward town—the energy echo of some former resident of Sanctuary,
indelibly trapped in the random memory of Fire Lake. It struck him that
Kullervo looked surprisingly strong and fit, for a researcher.

He looked away again. The town behind them was filled with insubstantial
forms, to his haunted eyes. They were redshifted into the past, blueshifted
into the future, because the Lake existed not only in the here and now but, as
far as he knew, in all times. The Lake had even shown him unnerving glimpses of
his own future and past. He knew that no one else here saw them. It was no wonder
he had thought he was crazy .... He envied Kullervo his relative ignorance,
even though Reede was not blissfully immune like most people. Kullervo reacted
to the Lake in a way he had never seen anyone else react, and he had no idea
why.

But he was in no position to figure it out, when the Lake
was like a parasite living in his own mind, feeding off him, every single
moment day and night while he was within range of its power. Its voice murmured
like the sea behind his eyes, louder now as he stood here, preparing to do this
thing. Its emotions bled into his own, making him moody and distracted. It took
all his self-discipline even to keep a thought in focus.

All his life he had been taught that less than perfect
self-control was unacceptable. The Lake had taught him the absurdity of that
unachievable ideal. It had made him a better human being ... but everything had
its price. He hated being here; he wished it would end. He wiped sweat from his
face, not all of it caused by the heat.

Kullervo glanced up at the glaring blue sky. It seemed never
to rain here; just as it seemed always to be raining in Foursgate. As
Gundhalinu glanced at him, Kullervo looked down again, staring grimly at the river
waiting for them far below, and the narrow path cut into the rockface leading
down to it. His entire body was clenched like a fist, and his disturbing blue
eyes touched the path, the water, the red rock walls, the water again, with the
restlessness of a trapped animal.

Kullervo had barely spoken three words since they had left
camp this morning. Something about the water had obviously triggered his
paranoia, though he would not admit it. And yet Gundhalinu was aware that on a
certain level, Kullervo always felt the way he felt right now, barely holding
it together while something inside him tried to eat him alive. He wondered
whether it was Kullervo’s genius that was also his personal gutworm .... And as
he thought it, suddenly the voice of the Lake in his own head did not seem so
loud.