The Summer Queen (83 page)

Another small clutch of officials entered the bridge, as he
watched. Still more remained below, recovering from their ordeal. They had all
made this journey willingly, but he could only begin to guess their individual
motives for it. If a quarter of them had the vision and flexibility he had
hoped for, he would be lucky.

Women were a distinct minority among them. Equality depended
less on sex than on social standing for Kharemoughis, who valued brain over
brawn, unlike most of the cultures of the Eight Worlds. But he had forgotten,
until he returned to Kharemough—if he had even realized it before—how the
Foreign Service seemed to attract the most rigid and inflexible of his own
people. He had wanted a higher representation of women, because Tiamat was more
egalitarian and more matriarchal than any world he had ever been on; understanding
and cooperation would be more likely on both sides if his own representatives
were equally divided between the sexes. But because of the biases and
restrictions built into the Foreign Service, there had been few women even
qualified for the positions he had needed to fill.

The llmarinen carried not only the staff of the new
provisional government, but also a squadron of Police, the backbone of the new
government—virtually all of them Kharemoughis as well, most of them Nontech,
all volunteers. They were all Kharemoughi because it was both convenient and
efficient; but it also meant another link in Kharemough’s chain of control. It
meant that he would understand the mentality of the police working for him better
than he had understood the largely

Newhavenese force he had served with on Tiamat before.
Whether they would understand the people of Tiamat any better than the
Newhavenese had was the question he could not answer. He had had them working
with cultural indoctrination tapes, learning the language with enhancers, even
before they boarded the ships. But he remembered how much good that had done
him, in his smug, self-satisfied youth ....

He realized, with a pang of irony, that he had finished the
last of his gracious, automatic responses to the congratulations of the new
arrivals. Their comments had barely even registered in his mind. He looked out
at Tiamat, watched the planet’s cloud-whorled arc of blue move slowly from day
into night. He looked away, shaking off the vision, refusing to read any symbolism
into it.

“This time tomorrow, Gundhalinu-sadhu,” Sandrine said, beside
him, “all this will be ours.”

Gundhalinu looked at him, and said nothing.

“Excuse me, Commander,” Tabaranne said, coming back to his
side. “I thought you would want to know that we’ve completed one orbit of
Tiamat. We’re about to begin positioning the high defense weaponry.”

Gundhalinu turned back to the image of the world on the
screens before them, unable for a moment to make a response. “Thank you,
Captain.”

Tabaranne moved away to his station, and input a brief,
irrevocable series of codes into the waiting systems. Gundhalinu tried to
concern himself with the conversations and speculations going on around him for
the time it took to make another complete orbit of Tiamat; knowing that at
preset intervals they were dropping the components of an orbital weapons system
into place—weapons that could be turned on potential invaders, illegal entries
... or any rebellious activity occurring on the planet’s surface.

“We have verification, Captain,” one of the crew reported. “Systems
are completely deployed, and coming on-line.” Images of the new defenses came
and went in the corners of the display; he watched them spread arrays of
microwave lasers and plasma weapons.

“Good,” Tabaranne said. He looked back at Gundhalinu and the
silently attentive audience behind him. “Tiamat is secure, sadhanu. You can
sleep easily in your new beds tonight.” A murmur of appreciation filled the
space around him. “I’m bringing the starport on-line ... now.” The view behind
Tabaranne changed as the ship’s remote sensors brought the surface of Tiamat
spiraling up suddenly, disconcertingly, toward their eyes. “We’re passing over
Carbuncle right now.” And Carbuncle appeared, pushing the image of Tiamat
aside, like a split-screen hallucination. It was barely more than an outline of
lights against the burning sky on Tiamat’s nightside ... but still it looked
the way he remembered it, an immense shellform, like some incongruous jetsam
cast up on the shore of Tiamat’s omnipresent sea. “Send the signal to activate.”

Gundhalinu watched, searching the inland darkness for a sign
of the starport that lay in hibernation there, its systems dreaming of peace
for another eighty-odd years. While he watched, new lights blossomed suddenly
against the darkness: The starport answered, rudely awakened but responding to
their commands. “Will the natives know we’re coming?” someone said behind him.
The spot of brightness grew as if te were watching a signal fire, a beacon lit
to mark their landing place, the location-point of their new home ...
announcing their arrival to the city of Carbuncle, from which it was very
visible.

“They will now,” he murmured. Although it would hardly be a
surprise, at least to their Queen. He wondered fleetingly what Moon had told
her people—if she had told them anything, warned them, prepared them. Not, he
supposed, that it would matter much one way or the other, in the end ....

More displays began to appear, overlapping the image with
readouts and simulations.

“Starport systems are intact, Commander,” Tabaranne
reported. “The landing grids are powering up according to schedule. We can
begin sending down shuttles after another pass.” Unlike the coin-disc ships of
the old technology, which were individually small and made the transit to
Tiamat in groups, the Ilmarlnen was too massive, and its hull too fragile, for
a planetary landing. It would remain in orbit until their arrival was secured,
and then begin its return trip to Kharemough, to come back again with the first
group of civilians, who would begin the process of turning Carbuncle once again
into an interstellar port of call.

“Do you still want to make the trip down using the
traditional hologramic displays, Commander?” Tabaranne asked him.

Gundhalinu nodded, staring at the images of Tiamat on the
screen. Remembering how he had stood with Moon Dawntreader in the hills above
the city, watching as the Prime Minister and the Assembly made their descent
from the starry heavens like gods, in a flaming cascade of hologramic imagery.
Their magic fires had told him that he had returned from the wilderness to
civilization in time for the Final Departure; that he had not come too late,
that he was really free to leave Tiamat and never come back ... the thing he
had believed he wanted more than life itself, until it was too late to change
his mind.

The hologramic show had been a hollow display, as empty of
real magic as the Hegemonic Assembly had been empty of real power. But he had
been blind to that subtle irony, as awe and wonder transformed the face of the
beloved stranger beside him; as Moon Dawntreader watched them fall like stars.
All he had seen was their promise—of freedom, of safety, of a return to the
life he’d believed he had lost forever. A life he had regained, by a miracle, because
of her.

If she was watching—and he was certain she would be, now—she
would see that same display, and perhaps remember that night, and all it had
meant to them both .... “Yes,” he said at last, remembering to give an answer. “Yes,
I want the full display. There won’t ever be another night like this one.”

Moon Dawntreader stood alone in her study at the peak of the
city, sleepless now since word had reached her that the starport had come back
to life. She stared out at its brilliant beacon astonishing the night, unable
to look away; knowing that it was only a matter of time until she looked both
the future and the past in the face ....

She turned away at last as her husband entered the room
behind her. It had been a long time since he—or anyone else—had sought her out
here. This had always been her private space, separate from the meeting rooms
and audience halls down below. She had never made it forbidden ground, as
Arienrhod had, but as the years passed she had found herself alone here more
and more, inviolate, isolated; not even certain why, but only certain that she
had no one else to blame for it.

feeling

She met Sparks’s gaze, feeling relief fill her as he broke
her silence the smile that began to fill her face fade as she saw the look on
his own face.

“Are you still awake?” he murmured, asking the obvious, as
if he suddenly didn’t know what to say to her.

“I couldn’t sleep.” She answered with the obvious, because
there was nothing else that she could bring herself to say.

He hesitated for a moment, before he crossed the stretch of
time-worn rug that had once been as white as new-fallen snow, to stand beside
her and look out at the starport glowing like a buried sun half a kilometer
inland. He did not put his arms around her, or even touch her. She suddenly
wished that he would; but she did not ask him to. “So they’ve really come,” he
said.

She nodded, folding her arms around herself, clutching her elbows
tightly because she wanted to tremble, feeling something break loose and spin away
inside her, leaving her sick with nameless fear. Oh, Lady, she murmured
silently, a plea but not a prayer.

“And he’s come with them,” Sparks said.

“I suppose so,” she whispered, helplessly noncommittal. “What
does he want?” Sparks asked, still softly. He turned to face her, to face the
unspoken truths within the truth they knew. She was surprised that this had not
happened before, even while she knew why it had not.

“I told you,” she said numbly. “He feels responsible for the
return of the Hegemony. He wants to help us.”

“And what else does he want?” Sparks’s eyes darkened. She
felt him pushing her, felt the pain inside the pressure; knew that it was
hurting him as much as it was hurting her.

“He’s become a sibyl,” she said, hoping that after all this
time he would understand what that meant, about a willingness to put the needs
of others before oneself. But she saw his mouth tighten, and realized that
after all this time it still meant only one thing, to him: She had become a
sibyl, when he could not. She had chosen it over his love. And now even this
stranger, who had once tried to take her from him, had become a sibyl too. “He’s
become a sibyl,” she went on, hopelessly, insistently. “That means he
understands now that ... there are things which are more important than ... individual
feelings.”

“More important than his loyalty to his own kind?” Sparks
asked bluntly, asking her for the truth; asking her—

“Yes,” she said, meeting his eyes.

He looked away from her, ojt at the glowing, waiting
starport. “There’s one more question I have to ask you—” He kept his eyes
averted; she watched his profile, seeing his throat work as he tried, and tried
again, to speak it. He looked back at her, his eyes as green as emeralds,
shining, too full, and the question went unasked.

She reached out to him; put her arms around him, holding on,
pressing her face against his shoulder as she felt his arms go around her
almost reluctantly. And his unspoken question went unanswered, as they stood
locked in an embrace; holding each other like lovers at a crossroad, unable to
speak a farewell.

At last she turned slowly inside the circle of his arms, to
look out again at the night. She lifted her hand suddenly, pointing. “Look.”

Sparks followed her gaze; seeing what she saw, and knowing
as well as she did what it meant. Stars were falling out of the sky ...
hologramic stars, their perfectly controlled trajectories crossing and
recrossing, to form one stunning congruence and then another as they fell to
earth. She had seen this sight only once before, and that time she had had no
idea what they were, what they stood for, what they meant to her world. Then,
it had been the sign that the offworlders’ days on Tiamat were numbered. Now
they were a sign that its future days here would be numberless, unending. And
what of her own future—? She clung to her husband’s arms; a woman caught in an
invisible storm, afraid of being swept away.

BZ Gundhalinu gazed out through the mirrorshielded windows
of the hovercraft as it made its slow progress up Carbuncle’s Street—moving
slowly for effect, and for the sake of caution. He shared its insulated space
with Vhanu, who made desultory conversation and asked an occasional innocuous
question, which he answered absently, and with Echarthe, the new Minister of
Trade. A well-armed Blue in a regulation uniform piloted the craft, doubling as
security. Two more craft followed, carrying other officials and other security
personnel, all equally equipped with shields and weaponry, at Vhanu’s insistence.

Gundhalinu studied the clusters of Tiamatans who lined the
Street to watch them pass. Some of the natives looked hostile, but most simply
looked unblinkingly curious, probably more interested in the strange vehicles
than in their nearly invisible occupants. A few actually waved and made
gestures of triumph—Winters, he supposed.

Even before the first shuttle had set down on the starport
grids, the Ilmarinen’s sensors had begun to pick up data about Tiamat that had
made everyone on board—except himself—abruptly paranoid. Their routine EM scans
had turned up evidence of widespread, if primitive, use of electronic equipment
where there should have been complete EM silence; evidence of factories and new
construction: real progress, instead of the primitive lifestyle and cultural
stagnation they had been told to expect.

He had kept his own responses muted and cautious—downplaying
the concern of everyone around him as much as he could without revealing too
much, second-guessing every word that came out of his mouth for fear some casual
comment would reveal that he knew too much, about the past, about the present ...
about the Summer Queen.