The Summer Queen (23 page)

But what in the name of all his ancestors would make the Police
do this to him—? Maybe it was terrorists; maybe they were going to—Oh gods,
this is insane, why is this happening to me now—? No. Stop it. No. The stunshock
was making it hard to breathe, doubled up in the cramped space. He recited an
adhani silently, calming himself, and lay still, because he had no choice. He
waited.

They were coming down again. The flight hadn’t been a long
one. He must still be within range of Foursgate, at least. He tried to feel
encouraged by that fact, and failed. The craft settled almost imperceptibly
onto some flat surface, and he was hauled out of the vehicle like the dead
weight he was. He was carried into another building, downward ... down a long,
echoing hall, into a lift which dropped them farther down. Had they landed on a
rooftop pad? Or were they going underground? He had no clue.

At last the sickening motion stopped; he was dropped, dead
weight again, onto a hard surface. He felt his leaden hands and feet jerked
wide and pinioned, felt a sting against his neck as someone gave him the
antidote for the muscle paralysis. He took in a deep, ragged breath of relief
as control came back to him, felt his muscles spasm as he tried to move his
limbs. And then the invisible hands did something by his jaw, dissolving the
security field—letting him see and hear at last.

He raised his head, all he could do freely; let it fall back
again. He made a sound that wasn’t really a laugh. I’m having a nightmare. This
isn’t happening .... What he had seen was too absurd. He was not really lying
here like this, inside a cone of stark white light, surrounded by a dozen
figures in black star-flecked robes, their identities hidden behind hologramic
masks: featureless forms crowned by the image of a Black Gate’s flaming corona,
its heart of darkness sucking his vision relentlessly down toward madness. It’sa
dream, a flashback, stress, nightmare ... wake up, wake up, damn you—!

He did not wake up. His eyes still showed him the same figures,
barely visible at the edges of the cone of light which shone relentlessly on
his own helpless, half-clad body. He watched silently as one of the figures
came toward him, stood over him, gazing down at him with infinity’s face. He
had to look away; he turned his face aside and shut his eyes. Sweat trickled
down his cheek into his ear; the itch it caused was maddening, agonizing. His
hand fisted with exasperation inside its restraint.

The robed figure reached out, touched his straining hand almost
comfortingly. The blunt, gloved fingers closed over his own, formed a hidden
pattern as distinctive as it was unobtrusive. He stiffened as he recognized it;
returned it with sudden hope.

But then the face of flaming nothingness turned back to his
own, and suddenly there was a light pencil in the stranger’s hand. The blade of
coherent light pricked his throat, touching the trefoil tattoo there; hot
enough to make him jump, but not set to burn. An electronically distorted voice
asked him, “Are you a sibyl?” The voice gave him no clue to the speaker; he
could not even tell if it was a man or a woman.

“Yes,” he whispered, with his eyes still averted from the
face of Chaos. “Yes, I am—my blood carries the virus.” Hoping that the implied
threat might prevent his suddenly seeing too much of his own blood.

The voice laughed unpleasantly. “Considerate of you to warn
us. But this cauterizes nicely.” The faceless figure twitched the light pencil,
making the spot of pain dance on Gundhalinu’s neck. “What do you know about
Survey?”

“Input—” he murmured, taking the question as one asked of
him in his official capacity; taking the easy way out.

“Stop,” the voice ordered, jerking him back into realtime
just as his mind began the long fall into the sibyl net. “Answer me yourself.
Are you a member of Survey?”

“Yes,” he repeated, reorienting with difficulty. His hand
tightened over the memory of the other’s touch. But you know that. Why am I
here? Can you help me—? Not asking any of the questions forming in his mind,
because he was afraid of what would happen if there were no answers. The
silence when no one was speaking was almost complete; the sound of his own
breathing hurt his ears.

“What do you know about Survey?” the voice repeated.

He shook his head, more surprised than frightened now by the
unexpected turn of the questioning. Of all the possibilities his frantic brain
had offered for this ordeal, his membership in Survey had not been one of them.
He stared at the ceiling—if there really was one, in the darkness behind the
blinding glare. “It’s a private social and philanthropic organization. Almost
everyone I knew—every Technician—on Kharemough seemed to be a member. There are
chapters on all the worlds of the Hegemony.” Many members of the Hegemonic
Police belonged to it; he had attended meetings on three different worlds. “Look,
this is absurd—” He raised his head, with difficulty, to confront the face of
nightmare. “What in the name of any god you like do you want from me—?”

“Just answer the question.” The voice thrummed gratingly
with its owner’s impatience. The light pencil traced a stinging track down his
naked chest and half-exposed stomach to the vicinity of his private parts. His
eyes began to water as he felt the heat concentrate there.

He took a deep breath, letting his head fall back again. “What
do you want to know—?” His own voice sounded thin and peevish. “You can find
out anything 1 could tell you down at the local meeting hall!”

“Do many sibyls belong to Survey?” the voice asked, ignoring
his response.

He thought about it. “Yes. Quite a few.” He had never
realized until now what a high percentage of them there were. “But it isn’t a
requirement.”

“Do all sibyls belong to it?”

He shook his head, remembering Tiamat. “No.”

“Why not?”

He opened his eyes. “I don’t know. I don’t even know why so
many of them do belong—” he said, exasperated.

“How old is the organization?”

“I don’t know. Very old, I think. I believe it originated on
Kharemough.”

The masked questioner chuckled. “Like everything else of any
value?” Gundhalinu grimaced. “How many levels of organization are there?”

“What—? Three, I think. Three!”

“And what level are you?”

“Three. I am—was—am a Technician of second rank “

“There are no higher levels, no inner circle—?”

“Not to my knowledge.”

“You’ve never even heard rumors that such things may exist?”

“Well ... yes, but that’s all they are. People like to see
conspiracies everywhere. Some people like to fantasize about secrets. I’ve seen
no evidence—”

“There are no secret rituals involved? No rites of passage
which you are forbidden to reveal?”

“Well, yes, but they’re meaningless.”

“You’ve never revealed them to anyone, though?”

“No.”

“Describe them to me.”

“I can’t.” He shook his head, and felt the discomfort
increase as his inquisitor pushed aside his robe, baring his flesh.

“Describe them.”

“For gods’ sakes!” he shouted, squirming, hating himself for
it. “Even you know the goddamn handshake! It’s meaningless! It’s a stupid,
meaningless social club’”

“You’re so wrong ...” the voice murmured. The pain disappeared,
suddenly and completely.

Gundhalinu sucked in a loud gasp of relief. “Please ...”he
said, his voice thick, “at least tell me why I’m here—”

“Then ask the right questions.”

Gundhalinu swallowed the protests forming in his throat. Ask
the right questions .... He had asked the right questions at Fire Lake,
finally, and discovered a treasure of ancient knowledge locked inside the
seemingly random phenomena of World’s End; discovered a lost source of the Old
Empire’s stardrive plasma, which made faster-than-light travel between worlds
possible. Was that the point, then9 Was he supposed to discover some secret
meaning behind this gathering of madmen? Gods, I’m too tired for this .... But
maybe he had been given the clues—or why all the questions about secrets within
Survey, inner circles, higher levels ... ? “Are you all strangers far from
home?” It was the ritual question he had heard others ask, and asked himself,
for years in the Survey Meeting Halls of three different worlds. The hologramic
mask above him shifted focus, as if the wearer had nodded. “Very good,” his
questioner answered. “Now you’re beginning to think like a hero.”

Gundhaiinu bit down on his imtation and was silent again, trying
to concentrate on facts and not the incongruity of the situation. “What is the
real purpose of this organization, then, if it isn’t just what it seems?”

Silence answered him, for a long moment; and then his inquisitor
murmured, “There are some things which cannot be said, but only shown—” He
reached out and touched Gundhalmu’s forehead, in a gesture that was almost a
benediction. But in his hand was something that resembled a crown, and it
stayed behind, embracing Gundhalmu’s head as if it were impossibly alive. Rays
of light made a sunburst between the fingers of the disappearing hand; grew,
intensified suddenly and unbearably, burning out his vision, throwing him into
utter darkness and silence.

He lay that way for a long time, waiting, not trying to
struggle because he knew that to struggle was useless; listening to the echoes
of his own breathing, until the sound of each breath began to seem part of a
larger sighing, as if the darkness itself were breathing around him. He had no
sense of physicality at all anymore; of the room or the strangers around him;
of the bonds which held him there; of his own body .... Cast adrift, he felt
the muscles of his body slowly relaxing of their own volition. He began to feel
as if he were falling into the blackness, seeing the heart of unlife, the Black
Gate opening ....

And then, distantly, he began to make out sound again ... a
crystalline music that was almost silence, almost beyond the limit of his
senses; the song that he had always imagined the universe would sing (somehow
he only realized this now) if the stars had voices.

And as he listened he realized that he had known that song
forever, that it was the song the molecules sang, the DNA in his genes, the
thought of eternity: the thread of his life, of a hundred, a thousand lives
before him, carrying him back into the heart of the Old Empire.

The stars began to wink into existence around him as he listened,
almost as if by his thought, godlike, he had placed them there ... their images
lighting the sky in a new and completely strange variation on their universal
theme of light against the darkness. The night of another world was all around
him, breathing softly, whispering, restless in its sleep.

“Look at the stars, Ilmarinen,” someone said suddenly,
beside him. “The colors ... I’ve never seen stars like this anywhere. This is
magnificent. How do you arrange these things—?”

(Where am I—?) He felt himself start to laugh at the
comment; felt himself choke it off, still not sure, after all these years (all
these years—?) whether Vanamoinen was joking or actually meant it. That was a
part of Vanamoinen’s gift, and his infuriating uniqueness .... Vanamoinen had
been sitting there looking at the stars for nearly three hours, he estimated,
and those were the first words out of him. (Vanamoinen? Who are you—?) “I wish
I could take credit for the view,” he said, (but he was Gundhalinu, wasn’t he?
Why was he Ilmarinen, answering, letting himself smile ... ?) “A veil of
interstellar dust, that’s all.” But it was a magnificent sky; he had to admit it
.... That was the only word for it. The kind of view that reminded him of—(Of
what? Ilmarinen knew, this stranger whose eyes he was looking out of, whose
sorrow and urgency he felt tightening his throat, whose life he seemed to have
usurped, when he knew he was a prisoner somewhere in Foursgate, strapped to a
table ....)

“‘That’s all,’” Vanamoinen murmured. His amusement might
have been ironic; or maybe not. “They’re late—?” he asked suddenly, as if they
had not been sitting here for what felt like an eternity, waiting.

“Yes,” Ilmarinen said. (And Gundhalinu felt the tension
inside Ilmarinen pluck at his guts again. He felt his body move, with old
habit, to put an arm around Vanamoinen’s shoulders where he sat. He could
barely see the form of the man who sat cross-legged beside him on the sandy
soil of the highlands, but he knew who it was; had always known Vanamoinen. He
surrendered to the vision, letting it take him .. , felt a surge of emotion
that was part wonder, part hunger, part need, fill him ) His hand tightened as
Vanamoinen’s hand rose to cover it. After all these years ... he thought, still
amazed by the feeling. Surely they must always have been together; life had
only begun when they had met, and discovered the bonds of mind and spirit, the
contrasting strengths, that had first made them lovers and then drawn them as a
team into the Guild’s highest levels. They were at the top of their fields
within this sector’s research and development—and their fields were information
resources and technogenetic programming, which made it just barely possible
that they would be able to do what they had set out to do ... which made what
they were doing, ir betrayal of the Establishment’s trust, doubly treasonous.

(He knew without looking down that he wore the uniform of
Survey, the igramming of Sector Command; knew it somehow, as well as he knew
that no one, one at all in the Governmental Interface must ever dream of what
they were doing on this godforsaken promontory of this abandoned world—or they
would be Eliminated like an unwanted thought.)

Goddamn it. where was Mede—? He looked up restlessly at the
Towers beyond Vanamoinen’s silhouetted form: the massive, organic growths,
branching, twisting, reaching for the stars with blunt limbs, no two of them
alike ... still standing like silent guardians, watching over this secret
rendezvous. Once they had been home to a race of semisentient, parasitic
beings; and then they had been home to the human settlers who had violated
Survey’s settlement code and decimated the population of their former owners ...
who had been decimated in turn in one of the interstellar brushfire wars that
were both a cause and an effect of the Pangalactic’s decay.