The Summer Queen (41 page)

“No,” Gundhalinu said, not meeting Reede’s gaze. “I had no
idea what I’d find. I only wanted to find my brothers. I felt it was ... my
duty to my family to find them, if you understand. A matter of honor.”

Reede listened in surprise to the stilted reserve of the
words, and wondered what Gundhalinu wasn’t telling him; what he wouldn’t let
himself say. He recognized that sudden closing off of communication, that
invisible, unbreachable wall of silence. He had used it himself every time
Gundhalinu had tried to get close to him. He hadn’t cared whether colliding
with it had bruised Gundhalinu’s ego. The less they felt about each other the
better, under the circumstances. He was surprised—and surprised at his anger—at
being on the receiving end of a rebuff. “What about the people you traveled
with?” he asked, pressing the conversation because he was annoyed. “Who were
they? What did they want out of World’s End?”

“There were two other men.” Gundhalinu glanced at him, and
away again, resigned. “Ang was an ex-Company man, a geologist. He’d quit to go
out on his own. He thought he knew where a strike was. He thought World’s End
would give him what he wanted .... Spadrin was an offworlder, a criminal;
probably in trouble with his own kind, looking for a stake. He thought World’s
End would give him what he wanted, too .... That’s what we all thought.”

“Did they get what they wanted?” Reede pushed.

“They both died.”

Niburu looked at Gundhalinu, and out at World’s End again,
his face white.

Reede sat back, inside a silence that was suddenly as bitter
as the taste of alkali. He watched endless flats of alkali and gypsum pass
beneath them like fields of snow. He forced himself to imagine traversing that
terrain day after day, in the blistering heat and the nightmarish uncertainty
.... He glanced at Niburu, couldn’t see his expression now, hidden by the seat
back; glanced at Ananke, who sat gazing into space, into some private reverie
that could have been either bright or dark. Trooper Saroon dozed on the floor
with his back against the wall, oblivious with exhaustion. The sergeant met
Reede’s glance with a sullen stare that didn’t have the imagination to look
worried. Reede looked away again, and watched the wasteland pass.

Time passed too; how much, he wasn’t sure. It didn’t seem to
matter, here when time as he knew it was a meaningless concept. Dreomtime, he
thought, feeling oddly as if he were dreaming. No one spoke again, as the dream
took hold of them all. At last Gundhalinu roused himself, his muscles tensing
as he peered ahead. “There,” he said.

Reede looked out through the hazed windshield, his own body
tightening. He sucked in his breath as he saw it, suddenly: the unnatural glow
on the horizon, the first fingernail of light, the promise. So soon. His hands
closed, holding on to an emotion that was not elation, or fear, or wonder, but
contained parts of them all.

The Lake seemed to come to them, more than they came to the
Lake, expanding below them like the surface of the sun: a blinding, shimmering
vision of light,

“Shall I set us down along the shoreline there, Commander
Gundhalinu?” Niburu asked, his voice sounding dry and uncertain. Reede wondered
if it was the hours gone without speaking, or simply awe that made him sound
like that.

“Yes,” Gundhalinu said, pointing to his left. “There’s a
canyon mouth over there; I see some green. If there’s water, it will make a
good campsite.”

Reede wondered about the consequences of drinking the water
in a place like this; realized with something that was almost disappointment
that if Gundhalinu would drink it, it must be perfectly safe.

Niburu brought them down, down, with infinite care into the
steep-walled crack in the scarp that bordered the Lake. He followed it inward
until he found a stretch of even ground wide enough for their camp, just beyond
sight of the Lake’s hellshine. The rover settled onto the desiccated earth with
a dim crunching sound.

Niburu unsealed the hatch, and a wave of heat rolled into
the rover’s cab: the wasteland’s hot, alien breath touching their faces, their
flesh. For a long moment no one moved, as if none of them had the guts to be
the first to step outside. Reede looked at Gundhalinu, saw him staring out at
the parched canyon walls with his head bent slightly, as if he were ... listening.
There was nothing at all to hear, as far as Reede could tell. Just as he was
about to say something, Gundhalinu pushed up out of his seat and left the vehicle.
Reede followed him, the others trailing them one by one.

Reede squinted in the glare, flipping down the visor of his
helmet. It was hotter here than back in the jungle; but at least it was dry. He
turned in the direction of Fire Lake, but it was hidden from his view by a
curve of the canyon. He looked down at his feet, felt heat seeping in through
his insulated boot-soles from the pale, inert gravel of the canyon’s floor;
looked up the walls of rock-hard, lithified clay to its rim. Rising like
incongruous umbrellas against the glaring ceramic sky he found a stand of giant
tree-ferns, their trunks the color of iron, the startling green of their
feathery leaves softened by a coat of dust. He wondered at their perversity,
growing up there on the plateau when down here in the dying wash was the last
of the water, a scattering of shallow, green-rimmed pools set in protected
pockets like footprints along the canyon bottom ... as though Time had come
striding down this wash, on its way to somewhere else, leaving everything here
frozen in limbo until their arrival had violated an ancient peace.

Someone swore loudly behind him. Reede swung around,
abruptly aware of time again, and that he was not standing here alone; that the
others were already in more or less efficient motion around him, following Gundhalinu’s
orders. He watched them setting up camp, in the act of protecting themselves
and their equipment from the brutal heat—the only thing they could reliably protect
themselves from, here. He turned back, irritated, mostly at himself; gave sharp
orders to Niburu and Ananke. He reminded himself that Gundhalinu had seen this
landscape, or ones just as strange, half a dozen times; and even if he hadn’t,
he was compulsive enough not to let the alienness of it distract him from
getting the job done.

Reeds wiped a hand across his sweating face, trying to ignore
the song of his own blood inside his ears. “Gundhalinu,” he called. Gundhalinu
turned to look at him, and came back to his side. “Is this place safe? What
about flash floods—” He gestured at the stagnant, standing pools, the high,
narrow walls of the wash, their image overlain by a memory that wouldn’t take
form but scraped the back of his eyes with a razor’s edge.

Gundhalinu shook his head. “It won’t happen while we’re
here.”

“You mean it’s the dry season ... ?” Reede’s voice faded
before he finished the sentence, as he saw the expression on Gundhalinu’s face.

“Yes, of course,” Gundhalinu murmured, “it’s the dry season.”
He looked away, calling out directions to Hundet.

Reede started back to the rover and went to work, suddenly
wanting it all to be over, to be finished with his real work here as rapidly as
possible.

By the time they had fully set up camp the setting sun had
all but disappeared behind the canyon wall, giving them some respite from the
pitiless heat. Reede found himself still stunned by it, each time he left the
access to one of the bubble domes, even though he was no stranger to hot
weather. At least the shielded microenvironments they had set up inside the
domes would protect their equipment—and incidentally themselves—from as much of
Fire Lake’s disruptive electromagnetic fluctuation as possible.

Reede exited the dome that held his personal living
quarters, certain at last that his own equipment was reasonably functional, and
his personal belongings were completely secure. He had spent the entire
afternoon checking and rechecking them, running experiments. He wanted to rest;
but he could not keep his thoughts off Mundilfoere. Her mystery, her heat, her
power over him were as all-consuming, as inescapable as World’s End ... and he
was exiled in this bizarre wilderness, unable to return to her until he had
fulfilled the quest she had set for him. And he realized now that the quest was
going to be harder to complete than he had ever imagined ... for all the wrong
reasons. The knowledge fed his need for her, fed his doubt and sense of
isolation, until he could not close his eyes.

“Niburu!” he shouted. Niburu appeared in the arched doorway
of the tent that he shared with Ananke, facing Reede’s. Reede stared at him,
realizing that he needed to have a reason for calling the other man out here,
besides simply to prove that he still existed. “What’s for dinner?” If anyone
could make the rudimentary rations he had seen unstowed from the rover
palatable, Niburu could. And at least this was one ungracious request Niburu
actually wouldn’t resent.

Niburu shrugged. “Shit surprise, probably.” He grinned. “I’ll
see what I can do.” He started away toward the supply dome.

“Niburu.”

Niburu hesitated, looking back at him with sudden wariness.

“Good job today.” Reede nodded toward the rover, fingering
his ear cuff self-consciously.

Niburu smiled uncertainly, and went on again. Reede watched
as Hundet intercepted his course, imagined the conversation he read into their
gestures, as Niburu justified his right to freely access their communal food
supply. The two government troopers had taken the rover as their sleeping
quarters—for security reasons, he supposed, so that they controlled the
communications equipment and the only way of escaping from this hellhole. It
amused him to realize that their institutionalized paranoia was perfectly
justified. It was also damned inconvenient to his plans; but he told himself
that it was only an inconvenience, no more ....

Hundet let Niburu pass, finally; momentarily satisfied by another
round of petty humiliation. Reede had watched him all afternoon, bullying
Saroon, harassing Niburu and Ananke. He did his own work with a sullen disinterest,
glaring at Gundhalinu and at Reede.

Reede looked away, wondering where Gundhalinu was. Ananke
came around the back of the dome with the quoll draped across his shoulders
like a fur piece; started violently as he almost walked headlong into Reede.

“Where were you?” Reede said, more abruptly than he meant
to.

“Just ... looking.” Ananke shrugged, looking guilty now. “I
wanted to see Fire Lake ....” His eyes broke away from Reede’s gaze and focused
on his feet, which were scuffing gravel. “Did you need me for something, bo—Dr.
Kullervo?”

“No.” Reede tried to make his own expression more pleasant;
every time he looked hard at Ananke, the kid wilted like a plant. Dressed in a
loose shirt and baggy shorts, with his hair tied back in a ponytail, he looked
almost fragile, in spite of the athlete’s muscles that showed along his bare
arms and legs. Ananke couldn’t be more than three or four years younger than he
was himself; but sometimes Reede felt as if the difference between their ages
was measured in centuries. “Gundhalinu said not to get too far from camp. It’s ...
dangerous.” He hadn’t tried to explain; World’s End’s reputation was enough.

“Yes, Doctor, I know.” Ananke nodded earnestly, patting the
quoll. The quoll burbled contentment, apparently undisturbed by anything as
long as it was attached to its owner “Commander Gundhalinu went with me; he
said it was all right.”

“Where is he?”

“He’s still looking at the Lake.”

Reede glanced away down the canyon, and back. “Doesn’t that
thing ever walk?” he said, gesturing at the quoll, wondering why they didn’t
both have heat prostration.

Ananke shrugged again, the quoll riding the motion easily. “They
like to sit,” he said.

Reede smiled in spite of himself, as Niburu returned with an
armload of supplies. He left them standing together and walked off between the
domes.”

He followed the curving canyon in the direction he knew led
toward Fire Lake. As he rounded the first bend, shutting away the sight and
sound of the camp behind him, he had the sudden, unnerving feeling that if he
turned back he would find it was no longer there, and he was all alone .... He
pushed on resolutely, frowning, listening to the substantial crunch of sand and
gravel under his boots, feeling the heat, touching the crumbling mud of the canyon
wall as he walked.

Up ahead a flicker of movement caught his eye on the stark,
stony ground. He caught up with the thing that floundered there; stared down at
it in silent fascination. It was brown, or green, or red, or all of those, and
it resembled a fish more than anything else he could imagine, but it was
crawling, after a fashion, on things that were more than fins but less than
legs. He watched the fish-out-of-water struggle on up the canyon, oblivious to
his presence in its grotesque, single-minded urge toward something that was
probably forever incomprehensible even to it.

Reede stood wondering what in the name of a thousand gods it
was searching for, tortuously dragging itself millimeter by millimeter over the
heated stones. He followed its trajectory with his eyes; saw up ahead in the
protected curve of the wash another of the moss-green, ephemeral pools that
dotted the canyon bottom. A scattering of ferns waved like feathers at its
edge, beckoning with their motion in the hot, faint wind. Reede glanced back
the way the thing had come, and saw in the distance another pool, reduced now
to barely more than a mudhole. Escape. He looked again at the fish-thing, in
agonizing, floundering progress toward something better. It didn’t know that
the pool it was struggling toward would be a mudhole too in a few more days;
that all its struggles were in vain. He could see that, but the fish-thing
couldn’t. When that pool dried up, it would struggle on again, until it found another
pool, a little deeper, or the floods came, or it died .... Survival. Maybe it
was all meaningless, but that thing would go on futilely struggling to survive
.... He watched it, feeling wonder, and grudging admiration, and disgust.