The Summer Queen (53 page)

He started toward it, having no better guide ... took three
steps, and stumbled as his feet caught on something. He sprawled headlong onto
a hard, slick surface that felt like ceramic tiles. He pushed himself up on his
hands and knees, his body and the remains of his confidence bruised and shaken.
Something was still caught under his feet—whatever he had fallen over. He
reached around, fumbling blindly until he could touch it. Cloth. An odd-shaped,
rumpled mound of it, like somebody had kicked aside a rug ... Like somebody had
left a corpse lying there. That smell. Gods, was this—? Shit—.’

He jerked his hand away, scrambled to his feet, before any
part of his body could accidentally discover too much about the mound. And
froze, suddenly certain that he had heard faint laughter. “Who’s there—?” His
voice shook, telling whoever it was too much about how well their plan was
working. “Turn on the lights, damn you. Talk to me!” Echoes of his own voice
came back at him, were all that he could hear, distorted by surfaces he could
not imagine the forms of.

“I prefer the darkness,” a voice said, a voice which sounded
like something that had been torn physically out of its owner’s throat, the
words striking him like gobbets of flesh “It’s so much more revealing ....
Everyone is naked, in the dark.”

Reede froze, not even breathing; staring into the blackness
with every nerve ending of his body. “You ... ?” he whispered. Trying to make
out a form against the dull red ember-glow ahead of him, trying to make himself
recognize a human shape in the silhouette he could now barely detect against
the light. But he didn’t need to, knew already that it would be impossible. He
felt his guts turn to jelly. The Source. That was what Thanm Jaakola called
himself, that was whose citadel he had come to be held prisoner in. Jaakola’s
cartel was one of the strongest, their drug production and distribution network
had outlets on every world in the Hegemony. But Jaakola was more than simply a
bigtime narco. He was one of the Brotherhood, and even Reede had no idea how
far, how deep, his real power extended.

Reede peered into the darkness again, blinking compulsively.
Rumor claimed Jaakola needed the darkness because there was something wrong
with him, that light hurt his eyes, that he had some hideous, disfiguring
disease. Reede had never believed it, had always figured it was a lie, a
disguise, so that the Source could be anybody he wanted to be, and nobody would
know. But now, lost here in the darkness, with only that misshapen mound of
blackness ahead of him ... now suddenly, he wasn’t so sure. What was that smell—was
it whatever was lying on the floor, was it his imagination, or was it ... was
it—Stop it! Don’t even think about it.

“Come closer, Reede. There is a seat here by me. No need for
you to stand.” It was a challenge: Jaakola sensing his fear, daring him to get
closer.

Anger and old resentment goaded him forward. He moved with
painful caution this time, testing the space ahead of him with each step;
afraid of finding another trap, a corpse, a gaping pit. He found an unexpected
step up, navigated it without falling on his face, and abruptly encountered the
padded outline of what seemed to be a chair. He groped his way around it and
sat down, after first exploring the seat and back thoroughly with his hands.

“You must be exhausted after your long, arduous journey,” Jaakola’s
disintegrating voice said. “Congratulations.” For a moment Reede actually
wondered whether Jaakola meant his journey back from Four, or the journey here
to his seat. “You have been completely successful on behalf of the Brotherhood,
I see.”

“You see?” Reede repeated, picking his words as carefully as
he had picked a path across the room.

“We have the container of stardrive plasma that was hidden
in your craft. A brilliant coup, how you stole it right out of the Kharemoughis’
hands—and you even brought us a stardrive unit! The name of the Smith will soon
be legendary among the agents of Chaos. Perhaps you really do deserve to be
called the new Vanamomen .... Taking the plasma home to your beloved
Mundilfoere, were you?”

Reede felt the hatred inside the words close around his
throat and squeeze. “Any reason 1 shouldn’t?” Focusing his own white-hot rage,
he managed, somehow, to ask the question without his voice betraying him again.
“You know I’m a member in good standing—I wasn’t trying to hide anything from
anybody but the Blues. I sent Mundilfoere word, I said call a Meeting first
thing. Why the fuck am I here with just you? And why shouldn’t I want to go
home?”

“Perhaps the fact that you no longer have a home to go to ...
?” The shadow against the darkness moved insinuatingly.

Reede’s fingers dug into the chair arms as the fireball went
off again inside his memory, incinerating the citadel before his eyes. He let
go, abruptly, as something about the consistency of the chair itself made his
flesh crawl. “Goddamn you—” He broke off. “If Mundilfoere was—”

“She was not present when we took out the citadel,” the
ruined voice murmured gently. “Rest assured.”

Reede sank back into the chair’s suffocating softness, as
his rigid muscles let go. “Then, why—?”

“To prove a point, shall we say? To dispose of the
middleman. To demonstrate my eagerness to have you as a member of my personal
operation. To let you and every little operator out there in the thorn scrub
see what real power is ... and to give the outer world a reason for my claiming
you, a tragically patronless biochemist, to do service with me.”

“That’s crazy,” Reede muttered. Nothing he had heard so far
made any sense—it only got progressively more maddening. He wondered suddenly
if Jaakola was actually insane, or was simply playing with him. “You know
Humbaba’s was my safehouse, the place where I ran my labs. We had an agreement—I
kept him well-supplied and he didn’t ask me any questions about my real work.
He wasn’t even Survey—”

“He was Mundilfoere’s pet horror.” Jaakola sniggered with
sardonic amusement. “We both know who made him as successful as he was ... who
was the real Man at Humbaba citadel. But now that the Brotherhood has the
stardrive plasma, our precocious Smith needs facilities appropriate to the task
of developing the new technology. What better place than here? The Source and
the Smith, in perfect symbiosis. You don’t have to play any loyalty games with
me .... I exist on both planes, just as you do. I have the contacts, the tech
base, the resources—everything you’ll need .... You can call me ‘Master.’
Everyone does.”

“Kiss my ass,” Reede said. “You don’t tell me what to do. I
don’t see any Survey meeting here, I don’t see any voting quorum. It’s just you
and me, Jaakola, equal votes.”

“There is no need to call a Meeting. This matter was settled
among the Brotherhood well before you returned.”

“What are you talking about?” Reede snapped. “Mundilfoere
would never—”

“You were gone a long time, Reede. Things change—alliances,
fortunes, balances of power. And you do not have an equal say in Brotherhood
matters. You never did. You weren’t Humbaba’s possession ... you were Mundilfoere’s.”

Reede shook his head, feeling as if he had been expelled
into sudden vacuum “That’s a lie.”

“Do you actually believe you ever really functioned at the
same levels I did? Or even Mundilfoere? Did she actually let you think that?
Yes, you were elevated to the inner circles; you were even raised to the tenth
level, at Mundilfoere’s urging. But you have no idea how many levels there are
still above you—or even the slightest idea of what goes on there, far, far over
your head. Humbaba was Mundilfoere’s tool, she used him well ... just as she
used you.”

“Fuck you.” Reede tried to push up out of his seat—and could
not. He tried again, throwing all his strength against whatever invisible bonds
held him there; felt his muscles wrench with the effort, getting nowhere. He
fell back again. The pressure eased as he stopped resisting.

“You were always her favorite tool, Reede,” Jaakola went on,
as if he had noticed nothing. “Her other pet: the clever one, the pretty one ...
She made you herself, Reede—out of stolen pieces. There is no Reede Kullervo.
Once there was. But he’s gone now. You’re not a man, you’re a brainwipe:
nothing but the biological receptacle for the embers of a great flame. And even
that heat is unbearable, it’s burning away what’s left of your mind ....”

“You bastard, damn you—” Reede jerked forward again, into a
wall of self-inflicted pain; unable to reach Jaakola, unable even to cover his
own ears. Every time he struggled, the invisible bonds tightened.

“You don’t believe me—?” the voice said, wounded. “Tell me
about yourself .... What did you enjoy doing, as a child? What was your family
like? Where were you educated? After all, when you came to Humbaba you had knowledge
a brilliant master biochemist couldn’t have discovered in a lifetime ... but
you were barely seventeen years old. How? How did you do it? Don’t you ever
even wonder about that?”

“I know who I am!” Reede said hoarsely.

“Then answer the questions ....” Jaakola waited, and the
silence stretched Reede’s mind echoed with whispers and cnes, the stray
fragments of a puzzle that had long since been jumbled and thrown away. “Or can’t
you?” He chuckled, water going down a dram.

“Mundilfoere!” Reede shouted, crying out for her to bridge
the pit of bottomless terror that had suddenly opened below him. “I want
Mundilfoere here!”

“Of course you do,” the Source murmured, “to stroke you and
make love to you until you forget, to tell you it doesn’t matter, to try to
keep you sane until you’ve served our purpose. You love her more than your own
soul, don’t you? You should ... she took your soul away from you.”

“She loves me—”

“Yes ...” Jaakola murmured, “I believe she did. But then,
she was a woman—weak, flawed, for all her brilliance. A foolish mistake, to
fall in love with her victim ... an inevitable mistake ... a fatal mistake. She
wouldn’t give you to me, even to save herself.”

Reede felt his heart stop. “No. You said she wasn’t at the
citadel—”

“She wasn’t.” The Source’s shapeless bulk shifted. “I said
she wasn’t there ... but I didn’t say she was still alive.”

“I don’t believe you.” Reede pushed the words out between
bloodless lips. Sweat crawled down his cheek, but he couldn’t wipe it away.

“Things changed, while you were away—as I said. Power
shifted ... to me. Destiny delivered her into my hands ... and with her, you. I
had waited a long time, for her, for you. She took a very long time to die ...
I saw to it personally.”

“I don’t believe you,” Reede whispered again, shutting his
eyes. “It isn’t true. Mundilfoere will come for me, she won’t let you hold me
here ....”

“You want Mundilfoere? More than your soul? More than life
itself?”

“Yes. Yes—” Reede said, grasping at futile hope like a drowning
man; not caring what Jaakola wanted in return, willing to give him anything he
asked for to make the unbearable untrue. “Anything you want. Anything—”

“Then have her ...”the Source whispered. “What’s left of
her.”

Reede felt something drop into his lap; something very
small. He looked down, blind in the darkness, unable even to move his hands to
touch it. He began to tremble helplessly.

A thin beam of brilliant white light lanced out of the
darkness in front of him, striking the crotch of his pants, illuminating what
lay there. Reede blinked, dazzled by the brightness; forced himself to look
down at it, dizzy and sick.

A human thumb. The dried blood crusting it was almost the
same darkness as the desiccated skin. And still circling the meaningless stub
of flesh and bone was a ring of heavy silver, set with two soliis. The ring he
had given to Mundilfoere before he left, a marriage troth.

Reede screamed, a raw soul-deep cry of agony and loss, that
went on and on, until at last he had no voice at all left to scream with. And
that was when the single beam of light went out.

When there was nothing left in the black silence but the
sound of his sobbing, the Source’s laughter began.

And when that was finished, the Source said, “I waited a
long time for this, too, Reede. To hear you scream like that. You arrogant,
strutting piece of garbage, calling yourself the Smith, wearing the genius of
the ages in your brain and thinking it was your own. Acting as if you were our
equal—believing it, when you were nothing but her creature. I only wish that
she could have heard you scream ... that you could have watched me take her
apart.”

Reede groaned, a mindless, animal noise of grief that echoed
in the blackness.

The Source made a low sound of satisfaction. “I knew there
was nothing 1 could do to your body that would hurt you this much, and let you
go on living. And you will go °n livmg. Reede. You’re my creature now .... I
have great plans for our symbiosis. You’ll breed the stardrive, I’ll control
its spread, causing the Kharemoughis the most inconvenience possible and
bringing the Brotherhood the most influence possible. And when the time is
right, you will return with me to Tiamat, and give us the water of life—”

“I’ll die first,” Reede whispered, his throat, his eyes as
dry as dust. “I’ll kill myself.”

“No ... I don’t think so,” the Source murmured. “And you won’t
break down and go insane either. Do you want to know why? Because already some
part of your mind is telling you that if you go on living, you’ll find some way
to pay me back.” He chuckled again, as if he could see every thought in his prisoner’s
mind. “You’ll live a long time trying, Reede .... But cheer up. I’ll keep you
in comfort. You will have everything you need, the best equipment, the best
researchers money can buy, plenty of credit to spend as you like—as long as you
produce. There’s only one thing you had from her that you won’t be getting from
me ... unless, of course, you really want to share my bed.”