The Summer Queen

NUMBER FOUR: World’s End

“What are you doing here, at this time of night?” Gundhalinu stopped in the prism of light outside the open door of Kullervo’s office, looking in.

Kullervo jerked around in his seat, blinking as if reality made no sense to his eyes. “Gods …”he muttered, “you startled the hell out of me.” He shook his head, stretching, as Gundhalinu came into the room. “I often work at night, when I can’t sleep.” He ran a hand through his disheveled hair. “But what are you doing here? I thought you always retired early, and slept the sleep of the just.”

Gundhalinu matched his ironic smile unwillingly, and shook his own head. “I can never sleep, the night before I go into World’s End.”

Kullervo laughed. “So you do have nerve endings, after all, Commander Gundhalinueshkrad-sibyl-Hero of the Hegemony.”

“Father of all my grandfathers!” Gundhalinu said, exasperated and suddenly angry. He began to turn away.

“Wait.” Kullervo pushed up out of his seat. “By the Render, you are on edge. Are you leaving?”

“Yes,” he answered, frowning, without turning back.

“So am I. Leaving,” Kullervo said. And when Gundhalinu did not respond, “On edge …”

Gundhalinu turned back. Kullervo was gazing moodily at the display on the desk behind him. “What are you working on?”

“Nothing,” Kullervo said, with sudden bitterness. “A dead end.” He ordered the display into oblivion before Gundhalinu could get more than a glimpse of the constructs drifting through its screen. Gundhalinu stared at the suddenly empty desktop; he glanced up at Kullervo’s face, expecting to find the same impenetrable surface. But stark, unexpected hopelessness filled Kullervo’s eyes.

Gundhalinu hesitated as Kullervo abruptly looked away; knowing that he had seen that look before … seen it in the mirror. “Reede, do you want to talk about it?” he said quietly. “Can I help—?”

“No,” Kullervo snapped. He looked up again, as if he realized how it had sounded, and muttered, “But I appreciate the offer.” Something that could have been gratitude, or even longing, showed fleetingly in his eyes. But he shook his head. Don’t waste your time; it’s too valuable. I’ve wasted enough of my own. There are some mistakes that can’t be erased. You just have to live with them….” He turned away, striding toward the door; stopped, looking back at Gundhalinu. Waiting.

Gundhalinu accepted the invitation uncertainly, and followed him out of the room. They went up through the security levels and out into the fetid embrace of the night.

Kullervo hesitated, as Gundhalinu stopped just beyond the dimly glowing screen of the Project’s entrance to say a perfunctory good-night. “Share a ride?” Kullervo asked.

Gundhalinu shook his head. “I feel like walking tonight.”

“That’s a hell of a walk,” Kullervo said, looking surprised. “Or aren’t you going home?”

“I’m not going home.” Gundhalinu glanced away, mildly annoyed by Kullervo’s uncharacteristic impulse to camaraderie. He gazed out across the starkly ht artificial landscape, the deceptively open grounds that separated the Project’s semi-subterranean fortress from the old Company town. “There’s someone I have to see.”

“A woman?” Kullervo raised his eyebrows. “Personal?”

“Yes,” Gundhalinu said, growing more annoyed by the second. “Not what you’re thinking.”

Kullervo stared at him, his eyes shadowed by the night. “Then would you mind if I walked with you awhile?”

Gundhalinu hesitated; realized that he was trying to think of a way to refuse. His mind remained stubbornly blank, and so he nodded. “If you like,” he said, resigned

They crossed the gentle vagaries of the parklands together. Gundhalinu looked up at the sky, able to see it for once; seeing an unremarkable scattering of stars on the utterly black face of the moonless night. He remembered Tiamat, where the stars were like glowing coals, where once he had seen his own shadow at midnight. … He looked down again, watching his steps as he felt himself stumble.

Kullervo walked beside him, looking down intently, with his hands pushed deep into the side pockets of his loose-fitting blue overshirt. Gundhalinu thought of a boy searching for lost coins; not an image he would have associated with Kullervo before tonight. It occurred to him again, as it had occurred to him before, how young Kullervo was. But then, most geniuses burned their brightest when they were young

“So it’s not a tryst we’re going toward. …” Kullervo looked up at him, watching him back. “Are you married?”

Gundhalinu shook his head, watching his steps, suddenly uncomfortable again

“Ever?” “No,” he said softly. He glanced up at the sky. “How about you? Are you married?”

“Yes.” Kullervo looked straight ahead now, as if he were remembering someone’s face. “Gods,” he said fiercely, “I want to finish this, and get back to her!” His hands made fists inside his pockets. “She’s my life—”

“How long have you been married?” Gundhalinu asked, trying to keep the incredulity out of his voice.

“Not long … forever,” Kullervo murmured.

Gundhalinu realized that he had never seen Kullervo look twice at a woman in all the time he had been here. He tried to imagine what son of woman could hold Kullervo’s quicksilver temperament in that kind of thrall, when he knew that years would have passed for her before they saw each other again. What kind of woman … He looked up again, at the stars. “Is she Kharemoughi?”

Kullervo laughed once. “What? No! She’s on—from Ondinee. No offense, but Kharemoughi women aren’t my type.”

Gundhalinu glanced back at him. “No, I suppose not,” he said, a little shortly. “But we’re not all of us dead from the neck down, Kullervo.”

Kullervo bent his head, meeting Gundhalinu’s half frown with a mocking smile. “But you’re married to your work. There’s really nobody waiting for you out there, somewhere? No lovers—no regrets?”

Gundhalinu felt his throat tighten; he swallowed, and the ache slid down into his chest. “Yes,” he said at last. “There is a woman. There was. There is. And a lot of regret … Maybe I’ll see her again. After all this is finished.”

“Where is she?”

“On Tiamat.”

“Tiamat!” Kullervo said, incredulous. “Ye gods … Tell me that you did all of this just to find a way to get back to her—” He grinned suddenly, waving a hand at the Research Project behind them. “Go on, surprise me.”

“I did it all to get back to her,” Gundhalinu said, feeling a faint smile turn up the corners of his mouth.

“Liar,” Kullervo said, and his grin widened.

Gundhalinu shrugged. “Have it your way.” The warm night breeze kissed his face.

They entered the maze of streets that led into the old part of the town, the part that had been there as long as the Company, maybe longer. Cracked, time-eaten walls showed the scars of battle with the inhospitable climate. Here, beyond the protected parklands, mottled graygreen creepers and fleshy, spined shrubs left the jungle’s spoor everywhere; its living fingers, working with infernal patience to undo what humans had made. Gundhalinu had found the town and everything about it depressing the first time he had seen it; he still found it depressing. The streets were better-lit at night now, and the nighttime diversions more varied, although they held no more appeal for him than they had three years ago. The streets were noisier and more alive, too, because the credit flowed more freely. More outsiders passed them as they walked than the residents of this place had probably ever dreamed existed, before the Project had come into their lives.

“Who are we going to see?” Kullervo asked, looking from side to side with mild interest.

“Hahn—the sibyl who brought me to meet you.”

Kullervo glanced back at him. “Why now? It’s late for a social call.”

“There’s something I need to give her before we leave.” Gundhalinu indicated the heavy container he carried in one hand.

“What’s in it?” Kullervo asked, when he did not elaborate.

“Something that belongs to her daughter.”

Kullervo frowned slightly, either annoyed or trying to remember something. “You said her daughter was a sibyl too … but she wasn’t meant to be? Does that “lean she’s—” He gestured, his hand fluttering, touching his head. Crazy.

“Yes,” Gundhalinu said abruptly, looking down. The sibyl virus caused wearable mental breakdowns in people who were not emotionally stable enough to become sibyls.

“How did it happen? I thought the choosing places rejected anyone who wasn’t suitable material to become a sibyl.”

“She was rejected; but she wouldn’t accept it. Her mother infected her.”

“Gods,” Kullervo muttered, shaking his head. He looked at Gundhalinu again glancing briefly, wordlessly, at the trefoil he wore.

Gundhalinu slowed his pace as they reached the corner of a cross street. “This is her street. …”

“I’d like to come with you,” Kullervo said.

Gundhalinu hesitated. “All right.” He shrugged, and entered the side street, it became quiet and residential as they left the main thoroughfare; one-and two-story buildings, some with new, intrusively ornate balconies, rubbed shoulders along the dim-lit, empty sidewalks.

Gundhalinu turned in under the arched entryway to a familiar apartment houst He stopped before the glowing ident plate, touched the proper name, let it register their faces. Hahn’s voice answered from the air, sounding surprised, asking him to come inside. The security screen at the building entrance faded.

They went in. Gundhalinu followed the hallway back, found Hahn waiting at the open door of her flat, dressed in a long, loose tunic that might have been sleep wear Her curiosity was plain, but she gestured them inside without question; her eyes darted at Kullervo’s face, and away again.

Gundhalinu had not been inside her home in nearly two years. It looked much as he remembered it, neat and modest, like its owner. The soft, modular furniture she had purchased after he had gotten her a job at the Project still looked almost new

He set the container he had carried from the research center down on a low table in the middle of a scattering of uncollected dishes. He turned back, answering Hahn s still-unspoken question. “I’ve brought you something. For Song.” He looked again at the box, away from her eyes. He unsealed its cover and took out a globe filled with coruscating fire.

He held it out to her, seeing the small frown of consternation return, furrowing between her brows. “What is it—?” she asked, her voice barely more than a whisper

“That’s stardrive plasma.” The answer did not come from him, but from Kullervo. Kullervo stared, his mouth hanging open with utter disbelief. “What the hell are you doing with that?”

“Returning it to its rightful owner,” Gundhalinu answered, sounding calmer than he felt.

“You mean you just walked out of the Research Project with that; we just walked out of there with it, together?”

Gundhalinu nodded.

“How is that possible?”

Gundhalinu smiled faintly. “I am the Director of the entire Project. I gave myself permission.”

“And the security systems listened to you?” Kullervo murmured. “Just like that?”

“Of course. I programmed them. No one else here was experienced enough with the new system.”

Kullervo shook his head. “I need to sit down.” He sat.

“Song—” Hahn said suddenly, looking past Gundhalinu; not calling a name, but acknowledging a presence. Gundhalinu turned, following her gaze, as Kullervo looked up from where he sat.

Song stood in the doorway to another room, motionless, with darkness behind her. A long, shapeless sleeprobe covered the painful thinness of her body; her heavy, midnight-black hair hung about her like a shroud. She stared at Kullervo, her mouth open. Slowly she put one hand up to her mouth, pressing it; pointing at him with the other as if she saw a ghost. Or maybe she really was seeing a ghost, Gundhalinu thought. He had seen enough of them himself, at Fire Lake. But her dark eyes moved away again, distractedly, until they met his own. They filled with something that might have been recognition, rejection, hatred … or nothing at all, before her gaze fell to the globe in his hands. Her expression slowly changed until he was sure that he was seeing wonder.

She came toward him, holding out her hands uncertainly, as if she was afraid of him, or of his refusal. He put the globe into her hands. She stroked it, held it close to her body; looked up at him, her eyes suddenly gleaming with tears. She half frowned, her quizzical expression making her look momentarily like her mother.

” Yes.” He nodded, making no move to touch her or the globe. She looked down at it again, almost as if she were listening with her eyes. He remembered that look; remembered that feeling. “Do you feel it? At peace …”

He thought that perhaps she nodded, a tiny spasm of her neck; but she did not look at him again. She turned away slowly, holding the globe close, and drifted like a spirit back through the doorway. The globe’s light filled the darkness beyond it with an eerie, momentary radiance.

Gundhalinu turned back to Hahn, ignoring Kullervo’s eloquent silence. “I’m leaving for World’s End tomorrow.”

“I know,” she said. “To test Dr. Kullervo’s viral reprogramming.”

“Yes, we—” He broke off. Of course; everyone knows. “I thought … whatever happens, whether we succeed or fail … in case something should happen to me, I wanted to give you this now. That’s stardrive plasma, in the globe.”

She nodded again.

“The transformation process was successful on every sample we tested here, including this one. I thought it might help, somehow.” He looked down.

“Thank you,” she murmured.

“It’s the least I can do.” He looked up at her again, seeing her lined, weary face, the trefoil tattoo visible on her throat like the one at his own: the reminder that a sibyl was a sibyl even when the pendant on a chain was not there; day and night, waking and sleeping, eating, drinking, making love … every moment of one’s life. “I wish I knew how to do something more.”

She smiled in gratitude, but he saw a world of sorrow in it.

“I’d better be going.”

She hesitated, and he wasn’t sure whether the hesitation was because she wanted him to stay, or simply didn’t know how to talk to him anymore. She turned and led them to the door. “Good night,” she said, “and thank you again.”

He said, “Good night,” in turn, and Kullervo followed him out of the building into the street.

“Explain,” Kullervo said, catching him by the sleeve as they began to walk. “You just gave away one third of all the stardrive plasma you’ve been able to collect in over two years—on a whim?”

“No….” Gundhalinu shook his head. “Hardly a whim.” He started back toward the center of town, taking Kullervo with him. “The amount of stardrive we’ve been able to contain and collect is far less than we need to make even one faster-than-light drive function. We can’t even get it to replicate. If what we do at Fire Lake is unsuccessful, that won’t change. If we are successful, it won’t matter.”

“But what’s stardrive plasma got to do with Hahn’s daughter?”

Gundhalinu was silent for a few steps more. They were nearing the corner of the street, and he gestured Kullervo into a seat at one of the tables of an outdoor tavern. Sitting outside at night had become a favorite pastime for workers from the Project, since sitting outside during the daytime was unbearable. The almost subliminal hum of the sonics employed everywhere to keep insects at bay made a soothing, white-noise counterpoint to conversation.

The tavernkeeper brought them a bowl of heavily salted carrod rinds and two beakers of water. Gundhalinu sipped at the lukewarm liquid, and thought that the tavernkeeper looked annoyed; thinking that he had no right to, since not even a beaker of water was free here—a tradition that still held from his first visit to this dismal town. It surprised him that Kullervo drank nothing stronger; but he had not seen anything that resembled a drug pass Kullervo’s lips since the night they met.

“But what’s that got to do with Hahn’s daughter?” Kullervo repeated, this time holding Gundhalinu’s gaze stubbornly. “What have they got on you?”

Gundhalinu laughed. “A hand around my heart, I suppose.” He shook his head, glancing away from the look on Kullervo’s face. “Nothing more. But the globe that contained the stardrive plasma—that’s an original, a relic. A stasis field capable of containing the stardrive harmlessly, without altering its properties, and yet it looks and feels like nothing so much as a ball of plass. I have all the specs on it—we understand it perfectly, in principle—but we have no way to manufacture anything like it … yet. Which is why we have to have the plasma’s willing cooperation. …”

“Damn it, I know all that. What’s that got to do with Hahn?” Kullervo insisted. “What’s it got to do with her crazy daughter?”

“It belongs to Song. It was the original sample of the stardrive plasma that 1 brought out of World’s End with me. She had it. I brought her out too, along with my brothers… . I went in to find them. That’s why I was there, in the first place.” It sounded like an excuse. He glanced at Kullervo, to see if he had noticed. “I met Hahn here in the town; she asked me if I would look for her daughter.”

“And you found all of them, out in that … ?” Kullervo jerked his head in the vague direction of World’s End, as words failed him. “That’s harder to believe than that you found stardrive out there.”

“I suppose so,” Gundhalinu said, half smiling. “Although at the time I imagined that it would be simple.”

” “The gods take care of fools’ …” Kullervo murmured.

Gundhalinu grimaced. “Maybe so. As it turned out, by blind luck or otherwise we all ended up in the same place—a place called Sanctuary, by the Lake itself.”

“There’s a town out there?” Kullervo said in disbelief.

“There was. On an island of red rock in the middle of the Lake. It was built by the survivors of the ship that crashed there at the end of the Old Empire—the one the stardrive plasma escaped from. The gods only know what became of the original inhabitants. It was full of murderers and lunatics when I got there. …” His voice faded; he drank water, aware that Kullervo was looking at him strangely. “My brothers were prisoners there—slaves. Song was its queen.”

Kullervo laughed, a strangled sound that was more incredulous than amused.

“She was in communion with Fire Lake. She kept the people there protected, more or less, from its randomness.” Gundhalinu looked up, facing him directly again Kullervo only nodded, showing no surprise now. “It was able to communicate with her, after a fashion, because she was a sibyl. I have a theory—”

“That all the forms of Old Empire technovirus still in existence have a single common denominator,” Kullervo said. “Their differences are simply a reflection of how they were programmed.”

Gundhalinu stared at him. “Exactly,” he said.

Kullervo laughed and nodded, his eyes shining. “You’re dead right, Gundhalinueshkrad.”

“You sound like you know that for certain.”

Kullervo shrugged and ate a rind. “What we’ve done here proves it … at least to me. I’ve been working on analyzing and charting the differences to a degree where we can predictably reprogram the basic substance for our own uses. What we’ve done, and are about to do, with the stardrive is a first step. The options are almost infinite. If only we could recreate the kind of precision they must have had …”

“If we’re successful at Fire Lake, we’ll have proof that more funding and more effort should go into your work when you return to Kharemough.”

Kullervo looked back at him blankly, as if the comment were a complete non sequitur; as if his own thoughts had drifted into alien country again. “Yes, I suppose so,” he murmured. He rubbed his arms, pushing his sleeves up toward his elbows.

Gundhalinu froze, staring at the profusion of colors and patterns that started at Kullervo’s wrists and went spiraling up his forearms. Tattooing. The only place he had ever seen tattooing like that was on the arms of criminals. He looked up again, found Kullervo staring back at him.

Kullervo’s long-fingered hands twitched, as if they wanted to pull his sleeves down; but he did not. “I got the tattoos on Samathe,” he said, “when I was … young.” He shrugged. “It’s not what you think.” He held out an arm so that Gundhalinu could see it clearly; see that the intricate geometric designs flowing one into another like music made visible were not the crude pictorials he had seen on underworld thugs. “I liked to look at them. …”

“They’re very beautiful,” Gundhalinu said softly. He was reminded of the fluid patterns of adhani. “I’ve never seen anything like this. Why do you keep them covered up?”

Kullervo studied the tattoos as if he were hypnotized; but Gundhalinu thought he saw the younger man flush. “So that everybody at the Project won’t look at me the way you just did.” Kullervo pulled his sleeves down again.

Gundhalinu watched the designs disappear, his embarrassment oddly mingled with regret. He said nothing more, waiting.

Kullervo’s attention returned to him abruptly; Gundhalinu read non sequitur again in Kullervo’s half frown. “If the Lake communicated in some fashion with Song, what about you?” Kullervo gestured at the trefoil he wore, as if there had been no discussion at all about tattooing a moment earlier.

Gundhalinu forced his mind to retune to Kullervo’s sudden change of frequency. He touched the trefoil absently, wonderingly; as he still did often, every day. “Yes. It communicated with me too. It forced me to think about it until I … understood.”

“What’s it really like out there—World’s End?” Kullervo twisted the ring he wore on his thumb; a ring of silver metal set with two soliis, that Gundhalinu realized suddenly was probably a wedding ring.

Gundhalinu shook his head. “I can’t tell you. I can’t explain it. … Maybe it’s different for everyone who goes out there.” He lifted his hands. “Anyway, you’ll see for yourself, soon enough. Gods, look at the time. We’d better get some sleep before the night’s gone … if we can.” He smiled and lifted his beaker to Kullervo, for once feeling the kind of comfortable companionship with him that had been almost perversely missing from their relationship these past months. Kullervo raised his own mug, smiling wryly in return, and drained it. “I’ll share that ride home with you now,” Gundhalinu said.

Kullervo nodded, and used his remote to call a cab. He stood up, stretching, rubbing his neck. “Tell me,” he said, “do you still hear the Lake when you go out there?”

Gundhalinu hesitated, nodded. “I still hear it. And I still have some effect on it. Expeditions I head are … safer. But the Lake is—insane, for want of a better word. It flows in and out of our particular continuum at will, there’s no hard-and-fast reality around it. That’s why it’s been so damned difficult even to collect a sample.” He glanced up, as the cab they had ordered drifted down onto the street beside them. “Reede. …” Kullervo looked back at him. “When I’m around the Lake I—get a little disoriented sometimes. It’s hard to concentrate, there’s so much static in my head.” He took a deep breath, feeling himself flush as he went on, “I’m glad you’ll be with me on this trip. I’m glad I’ll have someone I can count on.”

Kullervo “s smile came back. “We need each other, on this trip… .”He looked down at his wedding ring; his smile quirked oddly. “You can count on that.”