The Summer Queen (46 page)

“How much farther?” Kullervo’s impatient voice and hand
tugged at him, as he squeezed past a buckled section of wall.

Gundhalinu blinked, as a shaft of pure, sea-green light
struck him in the eye. “We’re there.” He pointed toward the gaping rent in the
hull wall waiting ahead.

Kullervo’s head and arms squeezed past his hip, as if
Kullervo couldn’t wait long enough for him to move aside, desperate to see the
light. He laughed, or something like it. “Gundhalinu—”

Gundhalinu looked down and back as Reede’s hand clamped over
his arm like a vise. He froze as he saw metal flash in Kullervo’s other, rising
hand—

Kullervo jerked suddenly, convulsively, releasing Gundhalinu
as his hands flew to his own throat, to the clear wall of his helmet.
Gundhalinu saw the fine mist of blood from the gash on Reede’s shoulder, where
a piece of twisted wreckage had ripped his flesh, and ripped loose the helmet’s
seal. He saw Kullervo’s face, stricken with terror, drowning in bubbles as
water forced its way in at the broken seal, forcing the air out.

Kullervo floundered, fighting to get past him, knocking him
aside as he reached out to staunch the flow of escaping air. Reede’s own
panicked struggles wrenched the helmet free, sent it tumbling away, carried by
the capricious current down into the dark heart of the wreck. Reede lunged
after it, following it down to certain death.

Gundhalinu caught him around the waist, dragging him back up
toward the light, the opening, survival. Kullervo thrashed wildly; but the
water slowed his motions as Gundhalinu got behind him, got an armlock around
his neck and dragged him, struggling like a hooked fish, out through the gap
and into the open.

Gundhalinu swam up and up through the river’s brightening
depths, feeling Kullervo’s struggles grow weaker. He felt as though he had been
swimming forever through the green light that seemed to fill his head like
music, like an hallucination, like a dream. His lungs ached; he realized that
he had been holding his breath, counting his heartbeats. He sucked in a lungful
of air, only half believing that he could. Locked in his grip, Reede had
stopped struggling. But somewhere up above him, inside that tunnel of light
glowing brighter and brighter, was the open air—

His head broke the surface of the water, and all around him
were the canyon walls, the color of the blood rushing behind his eyes. He swam
to shore, towing Kullervo’s unresisting body after him. He dragged Reede onto
the beach and fell to his knees, pulling off his own helmet.

Beside him Reede took a shuddering breath, and his stark
blue eyes opened, staring m disbelief. Gundhalinu sat back as Kullervo
struggled to roll over, coughing, and retched water onto the warm red stone. He
collapsed again, his eyes empty, mirroring the sky.

“Reede ...” Gundhalinu touched his shoulder tentatively.

Kullervo looked toward the sound and opened his mouth, but
no words came out. He pushed himself up onto his elbows, looked down along his
body at his feet, still trailing in the water. “He tried to drown me,” he
mumbled.

“Who did?” Gundhalinu asked blankly.

“I’m going to kill him, that bastard!” Kullervo’s hands tightened
into fists; he struggled to sit upright.

Gundhalinu put a hand on his shoulder again, holding him
back. “Take it easy_ You lost your helmet. Your helmet caught on the wreckage.”
He showed Kullervo the raw scrape on his shoulder, still oozing a thin film of
blood.

Kullervo rubbed his eyes, looked up again. “You saved my
life,” he murmured

“It was nothing—”

“Don’t say that!” Kullervo said furiously. “My life isn’t
worth shit, and I don’t care if I die tomorrow—but not like that. I have dreams
about dying like that ....” His eyes darkened. “I owe you.”

“It was nothing you wouldn’t have done for me,” Gundhalinu
finished.

Kullervo stared at him for a long moment, frozen, and then finally
he looked down. He got unsteadily to his feet. He started away along the shore
toward the trail that led up, stumbling, supporting himself with one hand
against the rock; not looking back or waiting for help.

Gundhalinu stood up and followed, with the Lake’s voice inside
him like a madman’s laughter.

“What do you think?” Gundhalinu asked, with eager impatience

Reede stared at the displays, nodding slowly. “Looks good
...” They had done minor structural repairs on the salvaged drive unit, under
Gundhalinu’i. guidance but at Reede’s urging, and now he had introduced their
sample of the stardrive into it. Gundhalinu had wanted to wait until they
returned to civilization. But he had pushed, insisted—aware that Gundhalinu’s
need to know had to be as great as his own; that he could break down Gundhalinu’s
knee-jerk sense of responsibility if he made the temptation irresistible
enough.

He had tried, and he had been right. And now he had fed the
stardrive plasma into its intended matrix. They were watching the process
imaged on the displays as the plasma settled into its new home—and from what he
could see, it was doing fine The piece of equipment had been in an incredible
state of preservation for something buried underwater in a wreck that was
gods-only-knew how ancient. But nothing obeyed the rules of the known universe
in World’s End, because of the stardrive. And the stardrive had wanted this
unit saved, as it had wanted itself to be saved .. think it’s happy,” he said
at last.

Gundhalinu moved closer, staring at the images on the
screens. “Then so am I—” He let out a whoop of sheer elation. “Gods, I’ve never
been this happy! Thank you, gods!”

“Neither have I.” Reede forced the words out, almost choking
on them as elation died stillborn in his throat. He picked up a calibrator. It
felt hard and heavy inside his clenched fist, like a stone. He looked back at
Gundhalinu. “Because now I don’t need you anymore—” He swung, aiming for
Gundhalinu’s head.

Gundhalinu was already reacting, as if a sixth sense from
his years as a Blue had told him something he couldn’t have known. He shouted
for the troopers loitering outside, lunged backward before Reede’s own momentum
could catch up to him. He collided with a table in the crowded space behind him.

Reede’s fist with the calibrator caught him in the side of
the face, slamming him back into a pile of equipment. Gundhalinu fell, crashing
down in a rain of electronics gear. He lay still; Reede saw blood.

Reede spun back again as Hundet burst into the tent. Hundet
took it all in in one glance; the stun rifle he already held in his hands rose
to his shoulder.

Reede reached frantically for the knife at his belt. He
flung it without even time to aim, trusting blind instinct and his perfect reflexes.
The blade caught Hundet in the chest, stopping his forward motion with the
shock of the counterblow. He seemed to hang, agonizingly suspended in midair,
through an endless moment before his legs gave way and he sprawled facedown on
the floor. Reede crossed the lab in less than a heartbeat to the place where Hundet
lay in a spreading pool of red. He rolled Hundet with his foot.

Dead. Hundet’s eyes stared up at him in unblinking hatred as
he leaned down and jerked his knife from the dead man’s body. He wiped the blade
on Hundet’s tunic impassively, and put it back into his belt sheath. He picked
up the rifle, checking its charge. He adjusted the setting to maximum; on that
setting it would stop a man cold from a considerable distance, and kill him
easily at short range. Holding the gun, he went outside.

Trooper Saroon stood in the open space between domes,
clutching his rifle indecisively. His face was tense and worried as he watched
Niburu and Ananke, who stood looking toward the lab. The expressions on all
their faces changed abruptly as Reede came out of the dome, carrying Hundet’s
gun.

“Freeze!” Reede said, but he could have saved his breath.
Saroon stood frozen already, with the look on his face turning to pathetic
betrayal as he grasped what must be happening. He stared at Niburu and Ananke
again, in disbelief; his gun wavered.

“Drop it,” Reede said, gesturing with his own weapon. Saroon
tossed the rifle away and raised his hands. He kept stealing glances at the
tent, hoping against hope that someone else would come out of it. “Niburu,”
Reede said, “Ananke. This is it. We’ve got everything we came for, and more.
Get inside and get started—I want that stardrive unit in the rover now. We’re
leaving, as soon as I take care of details.” He moved a few steps toward Saroon,
getting within fatal range, and raised the rifle again. Saroon sat down
abruptly in the sand as his knees buckled. Reede adjusted his
rifle
downward.

“No, Reede—!”

Reede lowered the rifle, furiously, as he found Niburu
squarely in his line of sight. “Goddammit! Get out of the way, you stupid
bastard.”

But Niburu stood motionless, placing his body like a shield
between the trembling boy and the gun. “You don’t have to do this. What’s the
point—?”

“Yes, I do. Get out of the way.” Reede gestured with the gun,
feeling his face harden over. “Get out of here if you don’t want to watch. But
get the fuck out of my way. Now!”

“No. I won’t let you kill him.” Niburu stood straighter,
white-faced and tight-lipped. He barely topped the kneeling trooper’s height,
but Reede found nothing absurd about his position. Slowly, as if he were
hypnotized, Ananke moved forward, ready to add his body to the human shield.
Reede’s hands tightened over the gun.

But as he began to raise it again, Ananke glanced away, distracted
by some unexpected motion. Reede followed his glance, swore as his eyes caught
sight of something—someone, disappearing around the bend of the canyon. Someone
running like hell toward Fire Lake.

Reede ran back to the tent. A glance inside told him all he
needed to know. The far wall of the dome gaped, letting in daylight. Gundhalinu
was gone.

Reede went after him down the canyon, leaving Saroon behind,
forgotten. Gundhalinu was the one who mattered, the one he had to stop. Because
Gundhalinu was heading for the Lake, and he didn’t know why. The canyon seemed
to go on forever, shimmering with heat, until he began to wonder desperately
whether the Lake was shifting reality around him, stretching out spacetime so
that he would never reach his quarry. He had almost drowned because the Lake
protected Gundhalinu; the Lake loved Gundhalinu ....

But he burst out of the canyon mouth onto the open shore at
last, and Gundhalinu was there, standing silhouetted by the Lake’s hellshine on
the barren, tortured stone. Facing the Lake he raised his hand, to throw
something—

“Gundhalinu!” Reede raised his rifle even as he shouted the
name. He fired.

Gundhalinu staggered as the shock hit him; the impact
carried his arm forward. His hand released whatever it had held, as his nervous
system went dead and he collapsed on the beach. Reede saw something too small
to identify disappear into the shimmering haze.

Reede ran forward, crouched down, rolling Gundhalinu’s helpless
body onto its back. Gundhalinu stared up at him, bloody and bruised but
completely aware.

“What was it?” Reede said fiercely. “What did you throw into
the Lake?”

Gundhalinu didn’t answer; silent whether he liked it or not,
because his voluntary responses had been put on hold. He breathed in ragged
gasps. He’d taken a bad hit, enough to affect his autonomic nervous system. But
Reede saw triumph slowly replace the fury and the betrayal in the other man’s
eyes.

Reede kicked him anyway for not answering, out of spite or
something darker. Gundhalinu’s face spasmed with pain. Reede straightened up,
looking toward the Lake; watching, half-blind, for some clue. And then he saw
it—a glitch, a ripple, a shimmering transfiguration in the distortion all
around him. He could almost feel it ... the vision of his worst fear coming
true. And yet something inside him was filled with wonder.

“You did it, didn’t you—?” he said, looking back at Gundhalinu.
“That was the virus! You’ve infected the whole fucking Lake with it!” He
kneeled down, catching Gundhalinu by the front of his sweat-soaked shirt, and
dragged him up to sitting. He held Gundhalinu’s bruised face clamped in his
free hand so that they were eye to eye. Gundhalinu met his gaze unflinchingly,
and blinked once, slowly, like a nod.

Reede slapped Gundhalinu, hard; feeling the other man’s pain
with the same dizzy sense of terror and pleasure that he felt when the pain was
his own. “I was going to kill you because I had to, because you knew too much
.... But now it’s too late for that. Now I’ll just have to kill you for
revenge.” He let Gundhalinu go, letting him fall back onto the mottled surface
of the stone. He pushed to his feet.

Picking up the stun rifle, he leveled it at Gundhalinu’s
head. Gundhalinu’s face did not change, could not. But in his eyes Reede saw
desperation and fear .. grief, betrayal, loss. The muzzle of the gun sank
slowly as Reede’s hands lowered, suddenly strengthless; as his mind’s eye
replayed his waking to a vision of red rock and glaring sky, to Gundhalinu’s
face hovering above him and the knowledge that the man he had just been trying
to kill had saved him from death by drowning.

His rage and resolve drowned in the clear, sweet river of
his memories. He remembered all that they had accomplished together, the
uncanny way their minds meshed, the knowledge that he had never worked with
anyone before who had ... who had ... He turned his back on Gundhalinu’s naked
vulnerability, stared out at the seething, blinding Lake, the face of Chaos. He
listened to it screaming, inside his head. But because of what they had created
together, already it was transforming into something new, into Order ....

He hurled the gun, watched it tumble end over end, arcing
out and down until it disappeared into the eye-warping haze, the way Gundhalinu’s
flung vial had disappeared.