The Summer Queen (63 page)

“Rest assured, sibyl, you sound quite sane to me,” Aspundh
said. Gundhalinu looked up again, with gratitude in his eyes. “Tell me, though—what
made you so certain you could trust me to judge this guilty secret of yours? I
did not think I had a wide reputation as the most understanding or
liberal-minded of men.”

“Moon.” Gundhalmu shrugged, and smiled briefly. “That was
enough.”

Aspundh nodded, his own expression still wry. “By the way,”
he said, after a long moment, “do you know what happened to the techrunners who
brought her here, and took her back?” He hesitated. “One of them was my
sister-in-law.”

Gundhalinu choked off a laugh of disbelief, as he saw the expression
on Aspundh’s face. Dimly he remembered that KR had inherited these estates from
a dishonored older brother, who had been stripped of his rank for some scandal.
“The Police spotted their ship on entry and shot it down; Moon said a woman
named Elsevier died in the crash.”

Aspundh grimaced, and looked away.

“I’m sorry,” Gundhalinu murmured, no longer wondering about
why KR Aspundh had techrunners to tea; wondenng again how it had been possible
for him to have believed, for so many years, that everyone else led exactly the
perfect lives their perfect public faces had suggested to him.

“The end of a long story.” Aspundh sighed, and Gundhalinu
saw the lines deepen in his face before he looked up again. “And while we are
speaking of unfinished business—what about you, and Moon? What is it that makes
you feel such a compulsive responsibility for her fate, and her world? Are you
still in love with her?”

“Yes.” Gundhalinu’s hands tightened into fists on the
tabletop. “I mean, 1 think so .... Ye gods, it’s been nearly nine years—sixteen,
for her. And she was married to another man.” His voice faded. “But I saw her once,
in Transfer; 1 spoke to her. She said she needed me—” He felt heat rise into
his face. “She does, from what you’ve told me,” Aspundh said mildly. “But what
you really want to know is whether she still wants you. Isn’t it?”

Gundhalinu nodded, as sudden longing closed his throat

“What if you get there, and she doesn’t?”

Gundhalinu took a deep breath. “As you say ... at least she’ll
still need me.” His mouth twitched up.

“Does she know about your discovery? Or that you’re coming
back—that the Hegemony is, for good this time?”

“No.” He looked down again. “I—wanted to make sure it would
happen, first, before I ... before I ...” He broke off. “And ... I needed to
find a medium I could trust—” Another sibyl, to form the triad that it took to
initiate directed contact.

“Sensible,” Aspundh murmured, as if his guest had not suddenly
turned into a stammering brain wipe.

“I think I’ve found one.” Gundhalinu pulled his voice
together, and faced Aspundh’s measuring state. “Have I?”

Aspundh smiled, and something that might have been sympathy
filled his eyes. “Then perhaps now is not too soon to let her know.”

Gundhalinu sucked in a breath of surprise. “You’re willing—now?”

Aspundh nodded. “Are you ready? Ask, and I will answer.”

Gundhalinu swallowed his disbelief and nodded, realizing
that he had been ready for this moment for years, rehearsing what he would say
to her, and how he would say it, to make her understand. He began to speak the
words that would put them into a mutual Transfer, opening a line of
communication that would finally give {both Moon and himself the freedom to
ask, and to answer ....

Moon began to fall, drawn down into the helpless,
vertiginous spiral of the Transfer; taken by surprise, because there had been
no question asked. She was being called—to someone else, somewhere else. Her
vision of the room and the face before her faded as reality began to turn
inside out; she fell into the timeless moment, expecting in another moment to
find herself captive inside someone else’s reality, looking out through the
eyes of a sibyl on some other world ....

But this time the blackness remained. She drifted inside it,
formless, like an embryo. She waited, calm because she had been here many times
before, in what the sibyls called the Nothing Place, which the offworlders had
taught her was the lifeless heart of the sibyl computer itself .... But she had
never been called to it like this; only in answer to someone’s direct question.

Her confusion began to slide into a darker emotion, her fear
quickening with every measureless second. The sibyl mind had touched her,
murmured its will to her own mmd before—goading her on to achieve its goals—but
never like this. Its guiding voice had rippled through her subconscious,
leaving impressions of rightness, visions, compulsions to do that could have
come out of her own thoughts, until in her worse moments she had sometimes
wondered if they had. It had never called her here ....

(Moon ... ) Her name came singing through the void, and suddenly
a golden wind enfolded her, and swept her beyond the heart of absence. She
shimmered through an infinite spectrum of sensation that fired all her
nonexistent nerve endings, into a rippling symphony of light.

(Moon—?) The vision of her name filled her, she watched it
transform the darkness again, wave after wave of opalescent music echoing,
fading fading fading ....

(Here—) She tried a response, with sudden urgency as the sensation
diminished; watched as her own thought charged the unspeakable emptiness with a
flare of brilliance.

(Moon ... )

Once more the sensory song of her name touched her, this
time caressing her impossibly, like the gentlest lover’s hand. Impossible,
improbable longing filled her, and with it, fear. (Who ... What? What do you
want?)

(Moon, it’s BZ. BZ Gundhalinu—) There was an odd, shadowy
hesitation in it, as if the voice imagined that she might have forgotten the
name, forgotten even that she had ever known the man who bore it.

(BZ ... ) Her astonishment flowed out into the darkness and
silence like bright waves, overlapping the radiant music of his words. (BZ.
How? Where are you—we—?) Not understanding why she could not see him, or why
she was able to speak freely.

(In Transfer. A special kind of Transfer.)

(Are you in the Nothing Place? I feel you .... ) Feeling
herself lifted, raised, exalted by light, by the sensation, the realization ...
Realizing, in that moment, that the years had not diminished her need to know
his fate, or her memory of the sacrifices he had made for her in the name of
love. Or the memory of all they had shared, so fleetingly, so long ago ...

(I’m not sure where we are .... I feel it too, but it’s
completely indescribable. Moon, I ... ) Dark-bright, the sound of his sudden
silence lapped her consciousness.

(BZ?) She called out his name. (Oh, BZ, I dreamed once
before that you spoke to me like this. Was it a dream? Is this a dream?)

(No,) he answered softly, the word touching her like a sigh.

(Then why haven’t you done this before ... since ... if you
can control the Transfer? I’ve wanted—) She broke off, as the radiance of her
sudden longing warmed her like the dawn sea.

(Have you—?) he whispered. Again, the shadow of his silence
lengthened across the waters of her thought. (I couldn’t,) he answered at last.
(I couldn’t, because I wasn’t certain .... Certain you’d want that; certain
that there was any point in torturing myself, or torturing us both, when there
might never be a future where we would ever meet again.)

She absorbed the radiance of his words, her double vision falling
through them into their deeper meaning. (Are you saying ... that we will?)

(Yes.)

(How ... ?) Feeling something within her catch fire, burning
her with an exquisite pain that was as much fear as wonder, as much desire as
dread. (It isn’t possible. It can’t be possible—)

(It is now. It will become a reality very soon. Moon, after
I contacted you in Transfer, at Fire Lake—I found out that the Lake was made up
of stardrive plasma. I brought it back to the Hegemony. I’m on Kharemough now.
They’re building starships.)

The exquisite pain inside her turned suddenly to fear as
cold and inexorable as glacial ice. (The Hegemony is returning to Tiamat?)

(Yes.) One word, falling out of the brightness like a sword.

(Soon—?) She was barely able to ask it.

(As soon as they can. I’m overseeing the construction
project. In three or four years, I estimate, it will be possible to reestablish
contact.)

(And you—made this happen? Why—?) she asked, her disbelief
metamorphosing. (Why are you telling me this? To make me afraid? Because you’ve
changed your mind about Tiamat’s right to a future?)

(No! Because ... Damn it, I don’t know how to ... ) His
voice strobed in the darkness. (Moon, if I could only see your face! Do you
remember what I told you, when I called you to me in Transfer at Fire Lake?
What I ... felt, when I thought that I would never see you again?)

(Yes.)

(That hasn’t changed ... this doesn’t change it. When I
realized the truth about Fire Lake, I realized it couldn’t be kept secret. I
knew the stardrive plasma had to be given to the Hegemony, for the future. And
I knew ... I realized a stardrive would make it possible for me to see you
again. But I also knew what it would mean for Tiamat. And I knew that because I
would be responsible for that, I would owe you a debt 1 could only repay in one
way. I’m coming back with the Hegemony, I’m coming back in charge, if I can
manage it—to stand between your people and mine, to make certain we don’t
destroy you. I didn’t know ... can’t know ... whether you even want to see me,
after all this time—)

(I—) she began, not knowing what answer she would make;
feeling as if the words had swept her up into a whirlwind, leaving her
centerless and without refuge.

(It’s all right—you don’t have to answer.) As if he were
trying to convince himself, he repeated, (It’s all right .... I’m not coming
there to force myself on you. I believe in what you’re doing for your world,
and I mean to preserve that. But to help Tiamat we will have to work together.
That’s why I’m warning you now—not to make you afraid of me, but to give you
time to prepare. That’s also why I didn’t contact you sooner ... because until
now I wasn’t absolutely certain that nothing would go wrong; there was still
doubt in my mind that everything would happen as I believed it would.)

(And there is no doubt in your mind now—?)

(I know that the Hegemony wants Tiamat back; they want the
water of life. I’m not certain yet of how high I can climb before it happens.
But my prospects are good. I hope to be the new Chief Justice by the time I get
there.)

She was silent, filled with brilliant noise, filled with the
future his words had painted inside their spectral prison of light.

(Moon—?) He called her name again, as softly as rain, when
she made no answer. (Are you still Queen? Have you been Queen all this time?
Have you done what you set out to do—shown your people the truth, and begun to
rebuild?)

(Yes ... ) she murmured, as realization rose inside her,
wave upon wave in a blinding flood. All she had done to create a new,
independent technological base for Tiamat would be useless. She had believed
Tiamat had a century in which to reach a level of development where they could
protect themselves, and the mers, from the Hegemony They had come so far ...
but nothing like far enough. Even if she had known from the beginning, there
would not have been enough time. It had been an impossible task ... futile from
the start. The Hegemony would come, and they would slaughter all the mers in
their blind greed. (But why—?) she said, asking it of the sibyl mind itself,
the invisible Other whose presence must be all around them. (Why did I begin
this, if there was never going to be time to finish—?)

(But you’ll still be the Queen. And I will be Chief
Justice.) It was BZ who answered her, with words like the light of stars falling.
(Have faith in what you have done already, have faith in me. I believe now what
you always believed, that there is some reason for all of this, and for what
our lives have become. It doesn’t mean *e’ll win. But it means we have a chance
.... Moon, when I left Tiamat, I left it feeling as if I was a moth that had
been caught in a flame. I’ve come so far since then, along stranger paths than
I ever dreamed of, because of what I shared with you—)

(Yes,) she thought, feeling an infinity of clear skies
suddenly illuminate her soul. (Yes, we both have. I would have had nothing, no
past at all, all these years, if it weren’t for you .... And it will come to
nothing in the end, without you.)

(Are you still ... with Sparks?)

(Yes,) she said again, and there was a dark silence. (BZ,
there is something you don’t know,) she pressed on, forcing brightness, (about
Tiamat, about the mers. Something more important than you are or I am, more
important than you ever imagined. The mers are sentient.)

(What?) he murmured. (No ... how is that possible?)

(The Hegemony knows—on some level they must know; because
the sibyls know. The Hegemony has been slaughtering an intelligent race for
centuries.)

(But, it makes no sense ... he protested.) (The mers were an
experiment left over from the Old Empire; they’re only animals. It couldn’t be
that the Hegemony would knowingly—)

(Ask, and you will see.)

(But why? Why make the mers intelligent, and then abandon
them on a lost world like Tiamat? What purpose could there possibly be for such
a thing?)

(The most important purpose imaginable, BZ, and it will be
lost, destroyed, if the Hegemony is allowed to go on killing them. Because ...
because the mers ... ) She became aware that the luminous lightmusic was
beginning to dissipate, the waves of limpid sound breaking up into static, into
the rush of rapids, flickering geometric patterns of lost image. (BZ—)