The Summer Queen (133 page)

Reede did not answer. Drink it, he thought. Come on, take
it, you putrescent bastard. Drink it, “The first dose is yours, Master,” he
said finally, trying to keep the urgent need out of his voice. “That’s why I
brought it straight to you. So you could be the first.”

“What?” the Source said, with faint mockery. “You didn’t try
it first on yourself, like you did with the water of death?”

“What’s the point?” Reede said harshly. “It wouldn’t do me
any good. It’s yours, Master ...” adding just the right note of bitterness, “just
like I am.”

“Yes,” the Source murmured. “Yes, that’s fitting.”

I Reede heard another rustling sound, as if someone had
shifted his weight. He stared at the spot where he imagined he had set down the
vial on the surface that separated them, stared so intently that he almost
thought he could really make it out, limned with a faint corona of red; that he
could really see a dark, shapeless form come down on it, covering it, faking it
away. There was more rustling; he was sure now that the glow was brighter, that
he could see clearly the misshapen lump thai pretended to be a human form
somewhere in front of him, when before he had not even been sure of that. It
was happening, even here.

He heard a sigh of satisfaction. “At last,” the Source whispered.
“It feels right .... Yes—it feels the way I remember it.”

Elation sang through him. At last ... And there was still
enough time: he had enough time to twist the knife. “There’s something I forgot
to tell you,” he said. “Something else about the water of life. It isn’t just
stable outside the body of a mer. It’s stable in the host.”

“What do you mean?” the Source rasped. “Stable for how long—?”

“Decades, at least. I’m not really sure. It’s working right
now, taking the measure of your DNA, preserving every system and function in
your body just the way it finds them at this exact moment. Nothing will change,
everything will remain the same from now on ....”

“Then no one will need it more than once over decades,” the
Source snarled. “There’s no profit in that—”

“I suppose not,” Reede murmured. “But that’s not the real
problem.”

“What do you mean?”

“The real problem is what it does to you.”

“What—?” the Source breathed.

“The water of life was designed to produce longevity in
mers, not human beings. The mers were bioengineered—their genetic makeup is far
simpler than ours, far more streamlined. Our bodies were designed by trial and
error; we’re a crude, inefficient mess by comparison.” Reede let a smile start;
let the Source feel it grow, cancerous. “The water of life has a very narrow
definition of ‘normal function’ for any given biological system. The only
reason that human beings were able to use it to slow their own aging was because
it was always breaking down. It never imposed limits on a human body for more
than a day without interruption. It allowed the body the freedom it needed to
change ... to vary its natural cycles, its rhythms, its randomness. Chaos—” he
said savagely, “versus Order.”

He pressed forward, on the cutting-edge of darkness. He
could see a silhouette clearly now, as the space before him flickered,
momentarily brightening. He could not tell what it was the silhouette of; but
he was beyond caring. “Pretty soon your short-term memory is going to start
failing. Pretty soon you’ll be living in isolation, because your immune system
won’t be able to respond to an attack .... Pretty soon you’ll be perfection.
The Old Empire thought they’d found perfection. That’s what destroyed them.
They say perfection makes the gods jealous ....” He pushed away from the hard
edge of the night, laughing as he heard the Source swear again, a guttural,
viscous sound. He realized that he could see the shadow outlines of his own
hands, his body, now.

“I don’t believe you,” the Source snarled, and he heard fear
in it. “You wouldn’t dare.”

Reede’s mouth twisted. “‘Things change.’ Do you remember
when you said that to me? I do. Now the power is in my hands. You told me
Mundilfoere took a long time to die .... How long do you think you’ll take—?”

“Why is it so bright in here?” the Source shouted in sudden
fury, into the air. “It’s too bright in here!”

“Blame me,” Reede said. “It’s my fault. It’s my doing,
Jaakola. My virals are taking over your body and they’re taking over your
entire citadel too. Soon you’ll have no defenses at all.”

“It isn’t possible—”

“Then why is it happening?” Reede whispered. Only silence
answered him. ‘‘Would you like me to stop it? What if I could still stop it,
would you give me “anything I wanted? Everything? How much do you really
control, how long is your h? What secrets do you know ... what’s enough to buy
back your life?”

“What do you want?” the Source grated, the words like chains
dragging rWhat—?”

“I want you to beg. You made me beg for Mundilfoere’s life,
you stinking, sadistic bastard ... I want you to beg me for yours.”

“Stop it ....”

“What?”

“Stop it! Stop, stop it, by the Unspoken Name, I’ll give you
anything you want, you lunatic, everything, name anything you want, just tell
me there’s a way to stop it!”

Reede began to laugh. “You can’t stop it—there isn’t any
way.”

He heard a strangled sound of disbelief, or rage. “You
brain-dead puppet! You madman!” Something lunged at him across the barrier
between them; he danced backward, still laughing, untouched. “You’re killing
yourself too!” the Source bellowed. “You fucking lunatic, you’ll kill us all!”

“That’s the idea,” Reede said softly. “That’s what I’m here
for.” He began to back away. “Your enemies are coming, Jaakola. I’d run, if I
was you. I’d hide .... Not that it’ll do you any good.” He turned, moving
toward the doors, able to see them now, a faint outline in darker gray.

“Kullervo!” The ruined voice shrieked obscenities somewhere
behind him. The room brightened, graying like fog at sunrise, revealing the
featureless wall, the doors, growing closer with every step. If he turned back,
he knew he would be able to see it now—the face of his nightmares, still
screaming impotently. He did not look back.

He reached the doors, and flung himself against them with
all his strength. They gave way, dissolving under his impact, so that he
sprawled through into the daylight beyond.

Jaakola was screaming at the guards now, screaming for them
to cut him down. Reede scrambled up and lunged into the closest of them,
catching him in the stomach, knocking him flat. He grabbed the man’s fallen
stun rifle; even as he rolled for it seeing the other guard raise his own gun,
knowing that it would be too late.

A wall of white fire blotted out the blue expanse of sky, as
the meter-thick ceramic of the window behind the guard blew inward with a
blinding roar. Reede flung up his arms, covering his head as a hurricane of
transparent shrapnel hurtled through the space around him. He was slammed back
against the wall beside the guard he had sent down, lacerated in a dozen places
at once as the fragments kept falling, as time itself seemed to go into slow motion.
Already—the citadel’s defenses were failing already, and somehow everybody
already knew it. Gods—it was happening too fast.

He staggered to his feet, bleeding, deafened. He saw the
eyes of the man who lay beside him staring up at him, wide and unblinking; saw
the dagger of shattered ceralloy protruding from his skull. There was no sign
at all of the other guard; as his vision cleared he saw a spray of red
splattered across the far wall like graffiti. He heard more explosions in the
distance, dimly; felt them through the floor as the entire structure shuddered.
There was no more shouting, no screaming, no sound at all now coming from the
room he had just escaped. It was dark again in there, as he looked through the
doorway.

He turned back in stunned disbelief to the gaping breach in
the wall, the blue vastness of the sky beyond it; saw smoke tendriling upward
as the thorn forest caught fire below. Smoke stung his eyes and throat as he
stooped down to pick up the guard’s rifle. He turned away again, stumbling
toward the lift. He beat his fist on the callplate; laughed incredulously as
the doors opened to him and he found the lift waiting.

He gave it an override command, preventing it from stopping
until he had reached his destination. He slumped against the wall, sliding down
to sit on the floor as the lift dropped him level after level, its velocity
varying from sluggish to precipitous. He stared at his bloody, stupefied
reflection gaping back at him from the polished metal, wondering whether Niburu
and the others were still waiting, or had gotten clear and gone up already.

If they weren’t crazy they’d gone, they’d saved themselves.
If they hadn’t, he cursed them for fools; if they had he cursed them for
abandoning him when he suddenly wanted so badly to live ... wanted to live, had
to live, to get back to Tiamat—because he had unfinished business there. What
he had left undone there was more important than life itself, even his own life—

And he knew all at once that he would not die here like this—would
not, could not. That if he had to murder and maim and crawl over broken glass,
he would do it, because this was not his destiny; his destiny lay on Tiamat and
he had to go home ....

The lift car slammed to a stop, jarring every bone in his
body; its doors opened halfway, jammed. He squeezed through, cursing, into a
bedlam of panic-stricken workers, soldiers bellowing futile orders, falling
masonry and the stench of burning plastic. He saw a mob off to one side; saw
that they were fighting over a hovercraft. He sprayed them with the stun rifle,
clearing a path to it; dodged over helpless fallen bodies and squeezed into its
cab.

He sent it spiraling up through the vast inner column, like
a leaf caught in an updraft; through the access canyons toward the docking bay
where Niburu and the others would be waiting for him, had to be, had to be
crazy if they were still there, had to be still there ....

He landed on a loading platform, seeing barricades ahead. He
fought his way out through the instant mob that formed around the hovercraft,
wondering where the hell anybody thought they were going to go in it. Just away
from where they were, maybe—He staggered as the citadel shuddered around him;
ran on toward the barricade, with his heart in his throat. The guards
blockading the access swung their weapons toward him.

He slowed, and dropped his own weapon. “I’m Kullervo!” he
shouted. “I’ve got clearance, I’ve got to get through, they need me inside!”

They hesitated, staring at him. “Something came through
about Kullervo—” the man in charge said.

“Couldn’t make it out, sergeant,” someone said. “Garbled,
like everything else—”

The sergeant frowned, then gestured. “Go on,” he said. The
other guard shouted, and the sergeant ducked aside as something smashed down
between them. “What the fuck is happening here?” he bellowed.

Reede ran on, not sure the question was meant for him;
certain that he didn’t nt to answer it.

The access corridor to Docking Bay Three was filled with
acrid smoke and ‘‘ armed men. Reede shoved his way through them, half afraid
that by the time he—reached the end there would be nothing left to find. At
last he emerged inside the bay’s lower level, seeing the vast chamber still
intact, its docks rising and falling away for stories on all sides.

There was motion everywhere, noise and smoke, the looming
hulls of freighters cutting off his view, until it was impossible to make sense
of anything his eyes and ears fed to his brain. He swore, looking left and
right, up and down. All the citadel’s systems must be choked with the poison of
his virus program by now; there would be no way he could call up the LB’s
location or communicate with its onboard systems—no way to find out whether
they were even still here.

He found a ladder, began to climb the scaffolding, hoping it
might give him a better line of sight.

“Kullervo!” A voice called his name as he pulled himself up
onto the platform. He turned, saw Sparks Dawntreader pushing toward him through
the mass of semi-rational human bodies that lay between them. Dawntreader
gestured frantically. “This way!”

He shouted in acknowledgment and relief, began to run toward
the half-visible beacon of Dawntreader’s red hair, dodging workers and
soldiers.

“Kullervo!” Someone else shouted his name, behind him; a
hand clamped over his arm, jerking him around. He was face to face with the
sergeant from the barricade. The sergeant’s eyes were black with fury. A
gunbutt came at him out of nowhere, struck him in the side of the head,
clubbing him to his knees. “The Master wants you back, you miserable fuck.” The
guard’s fist closed over the front of his shirt, dragging him to his feet. “They
said you did this! I ought to kill you myself—”

Reede swayed, his hands pressing the side of his face; he
was knocked reeling into the metal wall of the bay as someone else slammed between
them.

Dawntreader. Sparks collided with the guard, knocking him
off-balance. The guard pitched backward down the ladder-well with a strangled
cry, and disappeared from sight.

“Are you all right?” Dawntreader was beside him now, supporting
him with an arm around his waist.

“Yeah,” Reede muttered, wiping blood from his eye. “Come on—”
Dawntreader led him on along the echoing platform through what seemed to be an
endless game of human carom. Reede thought he heard shouting behind them,
someone calling his name again. “How far—?” he gasped, as they started out
across the scaffolding between two looming transport hulls.

“Other side,” Dawntreader panted, gesturing ahead. “See it,
right there—?”

Reede wiped his eye again, nodded. “Are they all—?” Something
shook the catwalk like a giant’s fist, jerking it out from under him. He went
down, with Dawntreader sprawling on top of him, as gouts of fire exploded
through the wall of the bay high above. He watched helplessly as enormous
chunks of twisted metal came hurtling out of the sky, falling toward them like
deadly leaves. “Hang on—!” He shut his eyes, sinking his fingers into the
grillwork beneath him.