The Summer Queen (97 page)

“Yeah, thanks.” He grinned sheepishly.

“Pollux!” She stood back while the servo came, and watched
it refill the drink. It moved away again without speaking, to take another
order down the bar. “Well, it does the job, anyway. At least it’ll give me a
break when I want to talk to the customers. Everybody wants to talk to the
bartender ....” She took a drugstick out of the box below the counter and lit
it, inhaling the spice-scented smoke that curled lazily from its tip.

“Yeah,” Niburu said again, still smiling. “I know.” He
lifted his drink to her, and glanced away along the bar. “I hear you used to
have a restaurant .... I like to cook,” he added, with a shrug.

“What kind of cooking?” She looked at him with genuine interest.

“Home-style. Plain but filling. A lot of spice—” He looked
up again, into her eyes.

“My partner was the creative one ....” She smiled at what
she saw in his gaze. “I just like to eat. But I got tired of his cooking; too
complicated.” Her mouth quirked. “I find running a club more satisfying, these
days.”

“I like your style,” Niburu said. “Yours is the only place
in the Maze where a real person does anything personal. It’s a nice
old-fashioned touch. Customers feel like maybe you enjoy their company as much
as you like their credit.” He looked at her as if he hoped she’d tell him it
was mutual.

“Thanks.” She rested her elbows on the counter again,
letting him have another look down her cleavage as the drug smoke began to make
her feel good. “Nice of you to notice .... I used to have a real bartender when
I ran a place for the Source. It always seemed to work out.”

He looked surprised, as if he hadn’t believed that she’d
known what she was talking about, when she’d named the Source before. “You
really worked for Jaikola? Here?”

She nodded. “As a front, in the old days. Not now. Never
again ...” She glanced at his hands; she couldn’t see his brand. She looked at
her own unmarked hands, feeling perspiration prickle her palms.

“It must be nice to have a choice,” Niburu muttered, and one
of his hands made a fist.

“How’d you get to be a brand?” she asked, feeling a sudden
empathy as she looked at him.

“It was a package deal. Me and Ananke, with Reede. We worked
for him before he worked for the Source. I’m his ferryman,” he said, with a
kind of stubborn pride.

She raised her silver-dusted eyebrows; knowing common brands
didn’t have personal ferrymen, even if they worked for the Source. Only a chief
rated that kind of service. She wondered if it was actually possible that
Niburu had told her the truth, and hadn’t simply been trying to impress her
with big talk. And she wondered what motive the Source could have had for
mutilating one of his top men like a common vassal, humiliating him like that
and still expecting loyal service from him. She shook her head, never doubting
for a second that the Source was capable of any cruelty, whatever his reasons
were for ordering it done. “Look, I don’t want anything to do with the Source
anymore, you understand me?”

“Perfectly.” Niburu nodded. “Don’t worry about it. I wouldn’t
wish that on anybody .... So anyway,” he said, taking a deep breath, shaking
off the mood, “what are you doing after you close up for the night?”

Her mouth twitched; she straightened up again. “Sleeping.”

“Alone—?”

She looked at him. “Yeah, if that’s any of your business.”

He lifted his hands. “I wondered if maybe you might want
some company.”

“Why me?” she asked suspiciously. There were plenty of other
available omen around, younger and prettier, amateurs and professionals.

“Because I only sleep with women I like.”

“I could be your mother. Almost.”

“You look nothing like my mother.”

“What about your wife?”

“I’m not married. Never been married.”

“Why not?”

“I travel too much. What about you?”

“I stay in one place too much,” she said, beginning to get
impatient. “I called i ‘shorty’—”

“I’ve been called worse.” He shrugged. “Besides, where I
come from that’s a pliment.”

“Look,” she murmured, flattered in spite of herself, “you’re
too short for me.”

He leaned back on his stool. “You mean you’re too old for
me.”

She flushed. “I’m not old where it counts.”

“I’m not short where it counts.”

She grinned, in spite of herself, and knew the cause was
lost. “All right,” she said. “Why the hell not? The place closes at three. If you’re
still around here then, we’ll see what happens ....”

Tammis Dawntreader entered Starhiker’s alone; sleepless, aimless
like the crowd around him. He scanned the faces he passed as he wove his way
deeper into the labyrinth of hallucinatory illusion, illusory pleasure, where
seduction and destruction coexisted in a delicate balance. He searched for
anyone he knew; ready to escape again into anonymity before they could call his
name.

To his relief he did not see his sister, or any of the usual
Winter crowd. They generally started their nights here; they would have gone on
to other clubs by now. He stayed away from the bar, where Tor was holding
forth; not able to face her tonight, even though he knew he would not find
anything in her eyes but sympathy. Sympathy was more than he deserved, and more
than he could bear.

He didn’t feel like playing the games either; their futility
and emptiness mirrored his own mood too accurately. He wandered like the damned
through the crowds, watching strangers play the tables, playing with each other’s
heads, in the disorienting shadowplay of random light. Blaring music and the
cloying heaviness of perfumes and drugsmoke saturated his senses, until he
could forget for a time that he was an individual human being, filled with grief,
and love, and confusion; that he had any need to think at all.

He stopped moving after a span of time he could not judge,
finding himself in the rear of the club, where the density of milling flesh was
less. Across a momentarily empty space of floor, he saw someone sitting in a
booth, alone like he was. He had seen that night-black offworlder face before,
that slight, slim figure with hair like shining jet, and indigo eyes. The
offworlder was Ondinean, he’d been told; not much older than he was, and always
part of a striking triad. Its second member was the shortest man he’d ever
seen, and the third was the one with the tattoos and the uncanny skill at the
interactives, the young offworlder his sister was trying to add to her
collection of trophies.

The Ondinean was leaning back into the corner of the booth
with one foot up on the bench; the foot wore an open-toed leather glove instead
of a boot. He was juggling berries one-handed, with a look of resignation on
his face. Occasionally he let a berry fall—always intentionally, because there
was always another that replaced it—and something the size of a cat that wasn’t
a cat would scuttle forward on the table to eat it.

Tammis started toward him, dodging random bodies, drawn by
curiosity and something stronger to stand before the booth, watching the
Ondinean perform his solitary juggling act. At last the Ondinean glanced up,
startled to find that he had an audience.

“You’re very good at that,” Tammis said; suddenly, equally
self-conscious. “I wish I could do that.”

The Ondinean nodded, with a hesitant grin coming out on his
face. “You’re a sibyl. I wish I could do that.” He caught the berries one by
one, and dropped them into a bowl.

“You mind if I join you?” Tammis gestured at the room behind
him, where there were no empty tables.

The Ondinean shrugged, as if it didn’t matter to him either
way. But he watched intently as Tammis slid onto the bench across from him. The
look was one that Tammis knew, and it was not indifferent.

“What kind of animal is that?” Tammis asked, as the creature
on the tabletop between them rearranged itself to study him. It had eyes like
the bright black buttons on a child’s toy.

“A quoll,” the Ondinean said, stroking it gently, still
looking at him with uncertainty and speculation. The quoll burbled and chittered,
sidling closer to its owner on nearly invisible legs.

“Did you bring it from Ondinee?”

The Ondinean nodded, and reached for another berry; the
quoll scuttled forward eagerly. The berry slipped out of his fingers and
dropped under the table. He glanced down, did something casually with his
gloved foot. A moment later the foot appeared briefly on the bench beside him.
He held the berry between his toes, so deftly that the fruit was not even
bruised. He took the berry in his hand and fed it to the quoll, watching Tammis
again, as if he were trying to see whether his lithe grace had made any
impression. “That’s enough,” he murmured, when the quoll looked around for more.
He ate one of the remaining berries in the bowl, in slow bites that revealed
his even white teeth. He pushed the bowl across the table to Tammis, offering
him the I one. Tammis took it, savoring its sweetness. “What’s its name?”
Tammis asked, nodding at the quoll. The Ondinean shrugged. “It’s never told me.”
Tammis smiled.

“I know you,” the Ondinean said slowly. “I’ve seen you in
here a lot. You’re I Queen’s son, aren’t you? Her brother?”

Ariele’s. Of course he would know Ariele .... Tammis felt surprise
stir in n, almost pleasure, as he realized that the Ondinean had noticed him.
He nodded. PTammis.”

“Ananke,” the Ondinean said, suddenly self-conscious again.
He turned his I palm up on the tabletop, staring at it. “You’re a sibyl too,
like the Queen. Are i going to become king someday?” he asked softly.

Tammis saw the scar, like a strange eye, staring back at
him. “No.”“ He shook head, sensing Ananke’s unease, wanting to put it to rest. “My
sister will be en, if she wants it. How did you get that—?” He risked the
intimacy of pointing : the scar, livid against the paler skin of Ananke’s palm.

“It means I work for somebody called the Source.” His voice
turned flat. Tammis blinked, and changed the subject. “Where are your friends
tonignt?” Ananke looked up at him, surprised or confused for a moment. “Kedalion’s-over—”
he pointed toward the bar, “making time, I guess. He claims the owner’s ; to
take him home later. Reede’s with your sister.” His voice was toneless, and i
didn’t meet Tammis’s eyes.

“What about you?” Tammis asked. Ananke shrugged. “I’m here.
I’ve got to wait for Reede.”

“You’ve got to?”

His mouth quirked. “Taking care of Reede is what we do.” He
glanced up, ; back his long, shining hair. The gesture was almost feline in its
unconscious lity. “You worried about your sister?”

“No,” Tammis said.

Ananke looked at him a moment longer, and then shrugged
again. “Then why are you here?”

Tammis met his eyes; eyes so deep a blue that they were almost
black. “Because I didn’t feel like being alone tonight,” he said softly.

Ananke’s hand hesitated, in the act of reaching out to
stroke the quoll. He continued the motion as if he had not meant to betray
himself with that hesitation, as if the meaning of the words was lost on him.
But he did not look away. “I guess nobody wants that,” he said. “I guess
everyone gets tired of being alone.” He looked down, finally, with an odd spasm
working his mouth.

Tammis put out his own hand, stroking the quoll’s back;
letting his fingers stray until they made tentative contact with Ananke’s hand.
“We could go somewhere ... somewhere else.”

Ananke froze, staring at the interface of pale and dark
fingertips. And then slowly, almost painfully, he took his hand away. He shook
his head. “I can’t,” he murmured. “Got to stay here. Got to look out for Reede.”
He shrugged, as if he were trying to shake something free from his back. “It’s
what we do.”

Tammis hesitated, seeing depths of fear in Ananke’s eyes;
but the eyes clung to his face with sudden, helpless longing.

Ananke shook his head, his midnight hair moving across his
shoulders in a way that made Tammis ache with sudden need. He looked down. “I
can’t.”

“Another time—?”

“I can’t.” His head came up again, to meet Tammis’s gaze. “I
can’t, ever.” A tremor ran through him. His long, slender hands made fists, and
he withdrew them below the tabletop.

Tammis stared at him a moment longer; certain all at once
that for once he understood exactly what someone else was feeling. He took a
deep breath, forcing the heat inside him to subside, until all that was left
was the unexpected warmth of a different kind of contact. “That’s what I always
tell myself ...”he said at last. “But I never mean it. That’s why I’m here
tonight, and not at home with my wife. Because I don’t know what I want.”

“Your wife—?” Ananke murmured.

Tammis looked down. “I can’t explain it to her—why I feel
these things. I can’t explain it to anyone I care about. I can’t even explain
it to myself.”

Ananke nodded. Understanding and amazement filling his eyes
like dawn. “Yes,” he said softly. “It’s like that for me. No one ever
understood. There’s no one that I can ever share it with. Kedalion and Reede ...
they’re all the family I’ve got. But if they ever found out, I’d lose them ....
I hate the way things are, the ideas about men, and women, and what makes them
different; what they can do and can’t do about it. I hated it on my home world,
I thought if I could get away from there, there must be a place, somewhere,
where it would be better for me. But I’m still afraid—of what would happen if
anybody found out what I really am—”

“—or afraid you’d see they’re really right, and you’re
wrong. Or that even if you could have what you thought you wanted, it wouldn’t
make you happy, because it’s not the real problem ... because there’s no real
answer.” Ananke nodded slowly; his face reflecting the impossible sorrow that
squeezed Tammis’s own heart. “And so you never ... ?”