The Summer Queen (62 page)

The pearls whispered as she looked away. “It’s not ‘becoming
one of you’ that I desire, Gundhalinu-sathra. You are all just as human as the
rest of us, and if you ever had to face that, you might even realize it.” She
looked back at him, as if she were expecting him to object; looked surprised,
looked away again. “It’s ... it’s the sense of tradition, the achievements of
the families. I ... you will think it presumptuous, but in school I studied the
Dark Ages, and I dreamed of what it would have been like to have been alive
then, helping to bring a return to the light. Sometimes I even imagined that I
had been a part of it, in some former incarnation; I felt it that strongly. And
it was your own family’s history that I became obsessed with—your ancestors’
intelligence and courage, their refusal to compromise their humanity in the
face of persecution and terror. When I heard that the Gundhalinu name was
actually for sale—”

His own surprise fell away; he grimaced, involuntarily.

“I’m sorry ...” she murmured. “I know now how very painful
it must have been for you. I only meant to pay you the honor your achievements,
and your true kindness toward me, deserve.”

“Perhaps we have both been guilty of the same oversight.
Netanyahr-kadda,” he said softly.

She nodded. “Yes, Gundhalinusathra.”

“Then let me do what I can to set things straight. There are
always other names and estates available, if you know where to ask.”

“No,” she said, almost sharply. Her hands knotted in her
lap.

“Why not?”

“In order to take your estates away from me again, when they
were legally mine, the litigators you hired filed a proscription. I am
ineligible for the rank of Technician forever.”

“What were the grounds?” he asked, in disbelief.

“Genetic insufficiency.”

“But that’s absurd—” He broke off. Genetic insufficiency
meant that someone was a certified mental defective. “You have several high
technical degrees, and demonstrable creativity—” And humor and beauty and
social grace—He stopped himself before he said that.

“But still I couldn’t earn my way into your estimable class,
sathra, with all that. 1 had to buy my way in. Do you really find it so absurd
that I could be judged defective—?”

He looked away.

“The heritage that I truly wanted to be mine was yours, Commander—for
the sense of continuity it would have given me, for myself and for my children,
into the future .... But the honor of the Gundhalinus lies in deserving hands,
and there is no other Technician lineage that meant as much to me. So perhaps I
am content, after all.” She shrugged, glancing away.

He thought of his brothers, and said nothing. He listened to
the voices begin a new song, and the sudden flurry of appreciative noise from
the patio crowd. “So you would have done this in part for your own family ...
for your children? How many do you have?”

“None, yet. But I shall.”

“You’re married, then—”

“No. Do you consider that one must follow the other?” He
looked back at her. “Many people don’t, of course,” he said.

She stared at him, as if she were trying to decide whether
he was being sarcastic, or possibly about to make a pass at her. “And what
about you?”

“Married to my work, I’m afraid.” He thought suddenly of
Reede Kullervo, walking beside him through a park on Number Four. Married to
your work—? Kullervo had asked him.

“And so am I.” She smiled, still looking at him that way. “But
not monogamously ...”

“Netanyahr-kadda,” he murmured, “would you ever consider—”

“Yes—?”

“Consider ... consider showing us what you can do with your
own creation, here tonight?” he finished, gesturing toward the patio as an
excuse to look away; feeling like a man who had almost stepped into quicksand.

Her face became expressionless. Her own hands, held tightly
in her lap, twitched. “If you would like me to, Gundhalinusathra.”

“I would like it very much,” he said weakly. He felt oddly
giddy, as though he had drunk too much, which he had not.

She led the way this time, back to the partiers, and took
the headset as it passed by, putting it on without hesitation. What she did
then with the sensuous luminous cloud of matter from the carven box made him
exceedingly glad that he had been a coward two minutes before.

And far later that night, when the party had ended and he
lay alone in his bed, he was painfully sorry. He spent what was left of the
night wide awake in the unfamiliar room. Only after dawn did he manage to
sleep. He woke in the late morning to a spot of wetness on his nightshirt, and
knew that it had not been the old dream, the usual dream, that had haunted his
sleep this time ....

He reminded himself that today he would see KR Aspundh; that
in a few hours more they would talk together about Tiamat. He needed suddenly,
desperately, to talk to someone about Tiamat

Gundhahnu arrived, alone for once and precisely on time, at
KR Aspundh’s front door. Flowering vines spilled down from the roof of Aspundh’s
manor house, which blended with studied artistry into the rolling land around
it. Aspundh met him in person. The silver trefoil was prominent against his
dark, silver-threaded robe, and as they touched hands in polite greeting
Gundhalinu felt the brief, hidden handsign that told him he was welcomed as a
stranger far from home.

“Good of you to come,” Aspundh murmured, and beckoned him
into the house.

Gundhalinu slowed the barely suppressed urgency of his own
strides to match the older man’s gait, forcing himself to appreciate the artful
use of light, the play of shadows on a wall, the subtle inlays of the carpet as
Aspundh led him through the seemingly endless house. “You live alone?” he
asked.

“Yes, except for the staff. My children visit me, and my
grandchildren, of course.” Aspundh did not say whether his wife was dead, or
simply out of his life. Gundhalinu thought of his own mother, an archaeologist,
who had abandoned her family out of unhappiness when he was five. He had
thought, after all these years, that while he was on-planet he would go to see
her, now that she could be nothing but proud of him. But Vhanu’s search of records
had told him she had died, three years before his return. Classical archaeology
as a profession lay somewhere on the scale of risk between microsurgery and the
bomb squad. Her research team had unearthed some Old Empire system that had
utilized smartmatter, only to discover, too late, that it had decayed disastrously.
The resulting catastrophe had obliterated the entire site, and everything else
for kilometers around. There had been no survivors .... He walked on in silence,
suddenly unable to make small talk.

At last they reached a sitting room where a wide expanse of
window framed in colored glass looked out over Aspundh’s exquisite ornamental
gardens. Aspundh settled himself on a low cushioned seat beside a table inlaid
with amethyst, which already held a set of frosted glasses and a pitcher of
drinks. Gundhalinu had a sudden disconcerting flash of deja vu, staring at the
table and out at the view. Aspundh looked up at him curiously, waiting.

“I feel as if I’ve seen this room before.” Gundhalinu shook
his head, attempting a shrug; surreptitiously his fingers proved the reality of
the table’s inlaid edge.

“Odd how that happens, isn’t it?” Aspundh said, and smiled. “I
chose this room because it always makes me think of Tiamat. The last time I sat
and talked about Tiamat with anyone, it was in this room.

“ .. the gardens. And we drank lith, and ate sugared fruits
....” The words echoed in his memory. He realized that Aspundh was still
staring at him, waiting, expectant. He found his voice again. “The people you
were speaking of it with, KR ... was one of them a sibyl named Moon
Dawntreader?”

Aspundh sat studying him for a long moment. Gundhalinu realized
that Aspundh was weighing whether to trust him with a secret that could easily
be considered not only dishonorable but treasonous. “Yes,” Aspundh said
finally.

Gundhalinu sat down at the table as his knees suddenly felt
weak. “Gods ...” he murmured. He looked up again, meeting the older man’s wary
gaze. “Some techrunners brought her to you. Moon described this room to me—every
detail. What you all drank, even about seeing old Singalu raised to Tech on the
threedy just as you entered.” Aspundh’s eyes brightened, but he said nothing
else. “And I wondered why in the name of a thousand ancestors the honorable KR
Aspundh would have techrunners to tea—” he laughed, “let alone commit treason,
to help a proscribed sibyl get back to Tiamat, where she could tell her people
the truth about what we were doing to them.” He leaned forward. “You knew,” he
said softly. “That she had to go back. Didn’t you—?”

Aspundh touched the trefoil sign; his face furrowed suddenly
with guilt and memory. “I told her then that I had to answer to a higher
authority. She said that she had had a sending from the sibyl net. She wore a
trefoil—which made her a stranger far from home, who had the right to claim a
higher justice, even though she did not know it.” He looked up again. “You know
what became of her.” It was not a question.

“She’s Tiamat’s Queen.”

Aspundh froze; shook his head, slowly. “It was true, then.”

Gundhalinu nodded.

“And what have you to do with all of this, and her, BZ Gundhalinu?
I remember you as a boy. You were not the kind I would have expected to—” He
broke off, as if he realized how it sounded.

Gundhalinu smiled ruefully. “Nor I ... until I met Moon. I
was a Police inspector at the time, I had been taken prisoner by a band of
nomad thieves we were pursuing. They treated me ... badly. I felt ... I
attempted suicide, as my family’s honor demanded ... but I failed.” He faced
Aspundh’s stare, baring his own painful secret. “They captured Moon too, on her
way to Carbuncle after her return. When I met her I’d given up all hope of
rescue ... of any future at all. But she made me see that my life was a sacred
gift, not a soiled rag to be thrown away. Together we escaped. And then, when
we reached the city I helped her find her ... helped her become Queen. I could
have—I should have—arrested her. I knew where she’d been, what she was, what it
meant ... probably better than you did. I knew my duty. But I couldn’t do
anything else ....”

“Because you both wore that?” Aspundh asked gently, indicating
his trefoil.

Gundhalinu shook his head. “I wasn’t even a sibyl, at the
time. It was because I’d become her lover.” He looked down, away from the
expression that followed realization onto Aspundh’s face.

“I see,” Aspundh said, but he did not. Gundhalinu waited,
staring at his hands, wondering if he had made a mistake in coming here. But
after a moment Aspundh sighed. “You wear that sign now, and you are the same
man you were then. If y°u hadn’t helped her, she wouldn’t be Queen .... If I
hadn’t helped her, and she hadn’t helped you, you’d be dead now, or stranded
for life on Tiamat. Instead, you’ve iLL, become a leader among your own people,
and given us back the stars. So who is to say, really, whether either one of us
committed an act of treason in helping her, or an act of profound patriotism?”

Gundhalinu looked up again, and smiled. “Thank you,
Aspundh-ken.”

“Thank you, Gundhalinu-ken. For letting me know, after all
these years, that in the Great Game, the gains have outweighed the losses for
once.” He shook his head, looking down. “I used to find the conflict between
loyalty to my people and loyalty to Survey burdensome, at times. I have become
somewhat more philosophical in recent years, due to greater—insight, or simply
to age. My perspective on the purpose of the Game has shifted. But still, it’s
good to know .... Tell me, was it true what you said about wanting to return to
Tiamat?”

Gundhalinu nodded. “Yes. I very much intend to go back when
contact is reestablished, as the new Chief Justice.”

Aspundh half frowned. “Why?”

“Because I am responsible for what’s about to happen to that
world, and its people ... and they are not going to be given any kind of
justice unless I’m there to enforce it.”

“That’s a large judgment for one man to make,” Aspundh said
mildly. “What makes you believe it?”

“I have ears. The power factions that are pushing for an
early return to Tiamat want one thing from it—the water of life. Even people
like Gelvasthan and Pernatte think Tiamat is backward and barbarous, with
marginal resources—not worth the effort otherwise. No one else will pay
attention to its fate until the damage is done—they’ll have too much else on
their minds. Their shortsightedness will crush whatever progress its people
have made under the Summer Queen’s guidance, because the Hegemony won’t want
the Tiamatans able to interfere with its exploitation, any more than they did
before.”

Aspundh nodded. “I begin to see your point. Have you brought
this matter up at a Survey meeting?”

Gundhalinu shook his head. “I’m still feeling my way. I know
what I have to do. But as you say, choosing between loyalty to one’s people and
loyalty to what seems the greater good can be ... treacherous and painful. And
not just for you or me. I don’t yet have a feel for the motion of the wheels
within wheels that I sense in the inner circles of the Golden Mean here.”

“So the power factions you spoke of are not simply confined
to the halls of the Hegemonic government.”

“No.”

“Then my estimate of your judgment rises.” Aspundh smiled
faintly. “There are indeed wheels within wheels, because there are many
opposing views on how best to play the Game. And I think I can help you there
....”

Gundhalinu rubbed his eyes, slumping back among the cushions.
“Gods—I’m so tired of trying to figure it all out.” He looked down at his
hands. “I’ve carried this thing inside me for so long, and there’s never been
anyone I could share it with. Sometimes it begins to feel like a delusion, and
I wonder if I’m living a lie, gone mad with greed and power, all the while
believing that I know what’s best for everyone else; just like all the rest of
the manipulators ....”