The Summer Queen (74 page)

And yet they had been experiencing power outages, brownouts,
lapses and lags that were causing critical complications in their productivity.
And he had been able to think of only one possible way to determine where the
problem lay in that ancient, unexplored system.

“What is it?” Moon said, with a flicker of impatience. “What
is it we need to discuss so badly that it can’t wait until—” She broke off, as
if she had realized that whatever she had been going to say was meaningless. He
wondered what nonexistent moment in the day she had been thinking of; what time
they had once reliably shared, and no longer did. There was none that he could
think of. “What is it?”

“It’s about the Pit,” he said. She looked at him uncomprehendingly.
“I want to go down into it—to explore it. If there’s any way to work around the
power problems we’ve been having lately, the key has to be there.”

Moon put her hand up to her face, blinking, as if what he
had just said was somehow appalling, or terrifying, to her. Her hand dropped
away, as coherence came back into her eyes. She touched the sibyl pendant
hanging against the drab cloth of her shirt. “No,” she murmured. “I don’t think
that would be a good idea.”

“Why not?” he snapped, in reflexive anger; unable to stop
it, because his angei had so little to do with what she had just said, and so
much to do with something that ran much deeper. “The Pit is the access shaft to
Carbuncle’s operating system—there’s no other way to affect or change it. That’s
what the Pit is there for—to give access for repairs and adjustments.” While he
had been at the palace with Arienrhod, researchers from offworld had come there
many times; they had gone down into the access well to study its function,
apparently without any noticeable success. The system had never required any
adjustment that he knew of—until now. But while the offworlders had been here
the storm walls had still stood open in the Hall of the Winds, causing
tremendous updrafts to form inside the shaft. Anyone who descended into the Pit
would have had to stay sealed in the system’s elevator capsules or be swept to
their deaths. Maybe that had even been the reason for the whole bizarre setup—a
kind of perpetual security, to protect the system from tampering.

But Moon had sealed the Hall of the Winds. The Pit was still
the Pit, a green-lit well dropping down and down until it met the sea. But
without the treacherous winds, it should be possible to actually explore the
catwalks and ledges, the outcroppings of display and hardware visible down
there.

‘‘But you don’t know anything about how the Old Empire’s
technology ^functions,” Moon said.

He shrugged, an abrupt, barely controlled gesture. “And how
will we ever ^learn, unless we study it? There are certain basic rules which
everything that I functions obeys, on one level or another. But until we can
get a closer look at the ystem, we can’t even begin to study it.”

She shook her head, and he saw something unnamable come into
her eyes. “It’s |:too dangerous. I don’t want you to try it. I don’t want you
to go down there. I don’t want it to ... want you to get hurt.”

“It’s not dangerous, without the wind. Nothing will happen
to me. It’s an access well—”

“You don’t know how dangerous it is.”

He frowned, his exasperation growing. “Do you know something
about this you en’t telling me?” He remembered again how she had stopped the
winds.

She looked at him with anguish and frustration, but she only
shook her head

“Even Ngenet agrees with me about this. He wants to go down
with me.”

Moon turned in surprise to Jerusha. Jerusha nodded her confirmation.
“And do you agree too?” Moon asked.

Jerusha shrugged. “I think Miroe’s too old for this kind of
thing,” she said. “But I expect I’d let him break his neck before I’d say that
to his face.” A weary half smile of resignation showed on her own face. “As to
whether I actually believe that what they want to do is necessary and useful ...
yes, I do.” She glanced down, looked up again. “Protecting the mers has become
more important to me than anything else, too, Moon. But everything else hasn’t
ceased to be as important as it ever was. We need to do more than we’ve been
doing for the people who’ve followed you this far. The problems they’ve been
experiencing are too important to ignore.”

“Yes. Yes, I suppose ... I ...” Moon lifted her hands in a
gesture that looked almost helpless, hopeless. She glanced back at him, her
face pinched as if she were in pain; but her eyes showed him something like
understanding at last.

“Danaquil Lu Wayaways said he would go too; we can ask
questions—”

“No!” Moon caught his arm, suddenly white-faced with anger,
or terror. “With his back—?”

His frown deepened. “Well, someone else then, another sibyl—”

“No.” She stood face to face with him, clutching her elbows.
“No sibyls are to try a descent into the Pit.”

He stared at her. “By’r Lady, why not?”

“It isn’t safe. There are ... I’ve felt ... there’s
something there ....” She looked away, her lips pressed together. “Not a sibyl.
No sibyls. I forbid it.”

“All right. Then we’ll map it with recordings and
instruments,” he said, hearing the coldness in his own voice. He folded his
arms, echoing her unconscious gesture of self-defense. “If you have no
objection to that.”

She looked at him for a long moment, still holding herself
tightly, and he saw—thought he saw—a tremor pass through her. “Do what you
must,” she said faintly.

His anger turned to ashes, as he saw what filled her eyes.
She stepped back as he reached out; eluding him when he would have touched her,
when he wanted suddenly to take her in his arms. “But it won’t do you any good,”
she said, turning away. “You won’t learn anything. It’s impossible.” She went
on across the room, moving toward the light, the doorway; escaping, leaving him
there to meet Jerusha’s uncomprehending gaze with his own

“Da—?”

Sparks looked up, surprised by the sound of his son’s voice
calling his name. He straightened, looking past Ngenet’s shoulder, to see
Tammis coming toward them across the Hall of Winds. “What is it?”

Tammis stopped a short way from the two men, staring at the
small pile of equipment they had been going over. He glanced at the half-dozen
assistants, including Danaquil Lu Way away s, who waited nearby to monitor
their descent.

“You’re really going to explore the Pit?” Tammis asked.

“What does it look like?” Sparks jerked his head at their
preparation. The words sounded harsher than he had intended, and he felt Ngenet
glance up at him. He told himself that his nerves were simply on edge.

“You didn’t tell me—” Tammis’s own voice took on an accusing
tone; but Sparks saw him swallow his anger, as if he were afraid of it, or of
the worse response it would bring down on him. “Nobody told me. I overheard
Aunt Jerusha talking about it. Did you tell Ariele?” He tried to disguise the
jealousy in his voice, with less success.

“No,” Sparks said, truthfully, realizing why his son had
asked the question.

“Why didn’t you tell anyone?”

Sparks sighed. “We did.” He nodded toward the small gathering
near the edge of the Pit, where the access to the elevator modules lay.

“It wasn’t a secret,” Ngenet said, fastening his equipment
belt, lifting a pack. “But an experiment like this is not something that you
want a big crowd for, either.” He shrugged. “Probably just be a bloody
anticlimax, anyway.”

“Are you going to repair the city’s power system?”

“We’re only going to look at it,” Ngenet said patiently. “This
is our first try. The gods only know if we’ll be able to make any sense out of
it. If we can we’ll decide from there what our next move will be.”

Tammis looked away, toward the rim of the Pit, and the span
that bridged it. He had been crossing that bridge all his life, but Sparks knew
he had always been afraid of it. Even now, he could see the shadow of fear in
his son’s eyes. Sparks looked away from it, picking up his own pack.

Tammis turned back to him. “I want to come with you.”

Sparks looked at him incredulously. “Why?”

“I know I’ve always been afraid to look over the edge,” Tammis
murmured. “But I’ve always wanted to know what was down there.” The only fear
in his eyes now was the fear of rejection.

Sparks reached out, feeling an odd surprise, and put his
hand on his son’s shoulder. “Maybe next time,” he said. “It could be dangerous;
we just don’t know enough about it.”

“You’re not worried about getting hurt,” Tammis protested.

Sparks laughed. “On the contrary. I don’t want to have to
worry about you too. That would cause me twice the pain of something happening
to myself.”

Tammis blinked as the words registered, and then he smiled.
It was not an expression Sparks saw on his face often. “I’m seventeen, Da,” he
said softly. “Can’t we watch out for each other?”

Sparks began to shake his head, but Ngenet said, “Let him
come. Originally we’d planned on taking a third person. He’ll be safe enough,
between the two of us.”

Sparks glanced toward the rim of the Pit, remembering how it
had been before ... remembering the moaning of the winds, the way he had always
heard them long before he reached this place. Then, this had been a place
hungry for death. He had a sudden strobing vision of himself at seventeen,
standing alone on that bridge facing Herne, the Snow Queen’s Starbuck, in a
duel to the death over Anenrhod ....

“All right,” he said at last, aware again of where he was
now, of when, and with whom ... “All right, he can come.” He looked back at his
son; telling himself that perhaps at least Tammis might not walk like a condemned
man every time he crossed the bridge if he saw what was really down there. That
maybe after a willing descent into that green-lit darkness, neither of them
would have to feel that way ever again He met Tammis’s half-eager,
half-uncertain stare. “You stay between us,” he said, “or you stay in the car,
if it makes you dizzy to step out.”

Tammis nodded, his face resolute. “I will.”

Sparks looked into his son’s eyes for a long moment—eyes
that were the clear windows to a soul untouched by bitterness and disillusionment;
as clear as his own eyes must have been, when Arienrhod had first looked into
them. He turned away, not saying anything. He led Ngenet and Tammis toward the
waiting car, toward the people waiting beside it. The one person he had needed to
see was not there: Moon.

He wondered what it was that made her avoid this place. Was
it her own memory of the things that had happened here? Or was there something
else, something more, some secret hidden in the way those windows high overhead
had closed miraculously at her command?

But he didn’t believe in miracles, any more than he still believed
in the Sea Mother. It was easier to believe that something had gone wrong with
his wife’s mind, as Kirard Set had muttered at the last Council meeting; that the
sibyl net had done something to her on the night he had seen her seized by the
Transfer. He thought of the sibyl he had seen stricken by a fit. He looked up
at the wind-curtains where they hung still and dust-softened in the space where
they had once held clangorous sway. They reminded him of corpses.

He looked down again, hastily, as the morbid image formed in
his brain. He searched the stairway leading up to the palace, finding it still
empty; tried not to follow the other images that spread like ripple-rings
deeper into his mind, of other kinds of death, the death of innocence, of love
and trust between two people, all rippling outward from this haunted place,
from that long-ago time. Moon, where are you? I can’t reach you anymore.

He looked back again, at the expectant faces waiting for
him. He saw the others move aside to reveal the open hatch that gave access to
the car.

Jerusha PalaThion glanced past him at Tammis, and looked a
question at her husband, who shrugged and nodded. “Does Moon know about this?”
She turned, inflicting a look full of official scrutiny on Tammis. He shook his
head, and her mouth pulled down. “Be careful,” she murmured, looking at no one
in particular.

“We’ll keep the comm link open all the time we’re down
there,” Ngenet said, touching her shoulder briefly, reassuringly.

“You’re sure the link will work down there, in all that EM
noise?” She frowned; lines of concern deepened around her eyes.

“It did when we sent equipment down in the capsule yesterday
as a test,” he said. “No reason why it shouldn’t today.” No one said anything
more, but Sparks knew every one of them felt the need for that fragile link
between the capsule and the people waiting above; the need to preserve that
tenuous psychological bond, even though there was no way anyone could help them
if they ran into a problem. Ngenet looked toward Danaquil Lu. “I wish I could
say the same for the visuals. It just isn’t sophisticated enough.”

Danaquil Lu nodded. “We’ll work with whatever data you
manage to bring up, and your observations. It will be a start.” He smiled;
Sparks felt some of his own anticipation come back as he saw the hunger for new
knowledge fill the other man’s eyes.

Ngenet pulled Jerusha into his arms and kissed her with sudden,
unexpected passion, before he moved to the hatchway, the first one to enter.
Jerusha smiled crookedly, smoothing the collar of her shirt.

Sparks gestured Tammis ahead of him, watched the boy climb
down after Ngenet and disappear. He glanced again at the empty stairway; looked
down, avoiding Jerusha’s gaze. He went to the hatch and started down the ladder,
seeing the faces of Ngenet and his son look up at him expectantly.

Hesitating in that last moment, he could not help looking
up, one last time. And he saw her appear suddenly at the limit of his sight, at
the far side of the hall, looking on. He lifted his hand; thought she raised
hers in response. He went on down the ladder, heard the door seal shut above
him. He glanced up. It had merged so perfectly into the ceiling that he could no
longer see it.