The Summer Queen

NUMBER FOUR: World’s End

“What do you think?” Gundhalinu asked, with eager impatience.

Reede stared at the displays, nodding slowly. “Looks good …” They had done minor structural repairs on the salvaged drive unit, under Gundhalinu’s guidance but at Reede’s urging, and now he had introduced their sample of the stardrive into it. Gundhalinu had wanted to wait until they returned to civilization. But he had pushed, insisted—aware that Gundhalinu’s need to know had to be as great as his own; that he could break down Gundhalinu’s knee-jerk sense of responsibility if he made the temptation irresistible enough.

He had tried, and he had been right. And now he had fed the stardrive plasma into its intended matrix. They were watching the process imaged on the displays as the plasma settled into its new home—and from what he could see, it was doing fine The piece of equipment had been in an incredible state of preservation for something buried underwater in a wreck that was gods-only-knew how ancient. But nothing obeyed the rules of the known universe in World’s End, because of the stardrive. And the stardrive had wanted this unit saved, as it had wanted itself to be saved... “I think it’s happy,” he said at last.

Gundhalinu moved closer, staring at the images on the screens. “Then so am I—” He let out a whoop of sheer elation. “Gods, I’ve never been this happy! Thank you, gods!”

“Neither have I.” Reede forced the words out, almost choking on them as elation died stillborn in his throat. He picked up a calibrator. It felt hard and heavy inside his clenched fist, like a stone. He looked back at Gundhalinu. “Because now I don’t need you anymore—” He swung, aiming for Gundhalinu’s head.

Gundhalinu was already reacting, as if a sixth sense from his years as a Blue had told him something he couldn’t have known. He shouted for the troopers loitering outside, lunged backward before Reede’s own momentum could catch up to him. He collided with a table in the crowded space behind him.

Reede’s fist with the calibrator caught him in the side of the face, slamming him back into a pile of equipment. Gundhalinu fell, crashing down in a rain of electronics gear. He lay still; Reede saw blood.

Reede spun back again as Hundet burst into the tent. Hundet took it all in in one glance; the stun rifle he already held in his hands rose to his shoulder.

Reede reached frantically for the knife at his belt. He flung it without even time to aim, trusting blind instinct and his perfect reflexes. The blade caught Hundet in the chest, stopping his forward motion with the shock of the counterblow. He seemed to hang, agonizingly suspended in midair, through an endless moment before his legs gave way and he sprawled facedown on the floor. Reede crossed the lab in less than a heartbeat to the place where Hundet lay in a spreading pool of red. He rolled Hundet with his foot.

Dead. Hundet’s eyes stared up at him in unblinking hatred as he leaned down and jerked his knife from the dead man’s body. He wiped the blade on Hundet’s tunic impassively, and put it back into his belt sheath. He picked up the rifle, checking its charge. He adjusted the setting to maximum; on that setting it would stop a man cold from a considerable distance, and kill him easily at short range. Holding the gun, he went outside.

Trooper Saroon stood in the open space between domes, clutching his rifle indecisively. His face was tense and worried as he watched Niburu and Ananke, who stood looking toward the lab. The expressions on all their faces changed abruptly as Reede came out of the dome, carrying Hundet’s gun.

“Freeze!” Reede said, but he could have saved his breath. Saroon stood frozen already, with the look on his face turning to pathetic betrayal as he grasped what must be happening. He stared at Niburu and Ananke again, in disbelief; his gun wavered.

“Drop it,” Reede said, gesturing with his own weapon. Saroon tossed the rifle away and raised his hands. He kept stealing glances at the tent, hoping against hope that someone else would come out of it. “Niburu,” Reede said, “Ananke. This is it. We’ve got everything we came for, and more. Get inside and get started—I want that stardrive unit in the rover now. We’re leaving, as soon as I take care of details.” He moved a few steps toward Saroon, getting within fatal range, and raised the rifle again. Saroon sat down abruptly in the sand as his knees buckled. Reede adjusted his 81111 downward.

“No, Reede—!”

Reede lowered the rifle, furiously, as he found Niburu squarely in his line of sight. “Goddammit! Get out of the way, you stupid bastard.”

But Niburu stood motionless, placing his body like a shield between the trembling boy and the gun. “You don’t have to do this. What’s the point—?”

“Yes, I do. Get out of the way.” Reede gestured with the gun, feeling his face harden over. “Get out of here if you don’t want to watch. But get the fuck out of my way. Now!”

“No. I won’t let you kill him.” Niburu stood straighter, white-faced and tightlipped. He barely topped the kneeling trooper’s height, but Reede found nothing absurd about his position. Slowly, as if he were hypnotized, Ananke moved forward, ready to add his body to the human shield. Reede’s hands tightened over the gun.

But as he began to raise it again, Ananke glanced away, distracted by some unexpected motion. Reede followed his glance, swore as his eyes caught sight of something—someone, disappearing around the bend of the canyon. Someone running like hell toward Fire Lake.

Reede ran back to the tent. A glance inside told him all he needed to know. The far wall of the dome gaped, letting in daylight. Gundhalinu was gone.

Reede went after him down the canyon, leaving Saroon behind, forgotten. Gundhalinu was the one who mattered, the one he had to stop. Because Gundhalinu was heading for the Lake, and he didn’t know why. The canyon seemed to go on forever, shimmering with heat, until he began to wonder desperately whether the Lake was shifting reality around him, stretching out spacetime so that he would never reach his quarry. He had almost drowned because the Lake protected Gundhalinu; the Lake loved Gundhalinu….

But he burst out of the canyon mouth onto the open shore at last, and Gundhalinu was there, standing silhouetted by the Lake’s hellshine on the barren, tortured stone. Facing the Lake he raised his hand, to throw something—

“Gundhalinu!” Reede raised his rifle even as he shouted the name. He fired.

Gundhalinu staggered as the shock hit him; the impact carried his arm forward. His hand released whatever it had held, as his nervous system went dead and he collapsed on the beach. Reede saw something too small to identify disappear into the shimmering haze.

Reede ran forward, crouched down, rolling Gundhalinu’s helpless body onto its back. Gundhalinu stared up at him, bloody and bruised but completely aware.

“What was it?” Reede said fiercely. “What did you throw into the Lake?”

Gundhalinu didn’t answer; silent whether he liked it or not, because his voluntary responses had been put on hold. He breathed in ragged gasps. He’d taken a bad hit, enough to affect his autonomic nervous system. But Reede saw triumph slowly replace the fury and the betrayal in the other man’s eyes.

Reede kicked him anyway for not answering, out of spite or something darker. Gundhalinu’s face spasmed with pain. Reede straightened up, looking toward the Lake; watching, half-blind, for some clue. And then he saw it—a glitch, a ripple, a shimmering transfiguration in the distortion all around him. He could almost feel it … the vision of his worst fear coming true. And yet something inside him was filled with wonder.

“You did it, didn’t you—?” he said, looking back at Gundhalinu. “That was the virus! You’ve infected the whole fucking Lake with it!” He kneeled down, catching Gundhalinu by the front of his sweat-soaked shirt, and dragged him up to sitting. He held Gundhalinu’s bruised face clamped in his free hand so that they were eye to eye. Gundhalinu met his gaze unflinchingly, and blinked once, slowly, like a nod.

Reede slapped Gundhalinu, hard; feeling the other man’s pain with the same dizzy sense of terror and pleasure that he felt when the pain was his own. “I was going to kill you because I had to, because you knew too much… . But now it’s too late for that. Now I’ll just have to kill you for revenge.” He let Gundhalinu go, letting him fall back onto the mottled surface of the stone. He pushed to his feet.

Picking up the stun rifle, he leveled it at Gundhalinu’s head. Gundhalinu’s face did not change, could not. But in his eyes Reede saw desperation and fear... grief, betrayal, loss. The muzzle of the gun sank slowly as Reede’s hands lowered, suddenly strengthless; as his mind’s eye replayed his waking to a vision of red rock and glaring sky, to Gundhalinu’s face hovering above him and the knowledge that the man he had just been trying to kill had saved him from death by drowning.

His rage and resolve drowned in the clear, sweet river of his memories. He remembered all that they had accomplished together, the uncanny way their minds meshed, the knowledge that he had never worked with anyone before who had … who had … He turned his back on Gundhalinu’s naked vulnerability, stared out at the seething, blinding Lake, the face of Chaos. He listened to it screaming, inside his head. But because of what they had created together, already it was transforming into something new, into Order… .

He hurled the gun, watched it tumble end over end, arcing out and down until it disappeared into the eye-warping haze, the way Gundhalinu’s flung vial had disappeared.

He turned back, his eyes burning with the vision, his hands trembling. “Ilmarinen…” he whispered. He fell to his knees, lifting Gundhalinu’s hand, pressing it against his face, his lips. He looked down, saw Gundhalinu staring up at him in anguish and incomprehension through the shadow-bars of his nerveless fingers. Ilmarinen— And his mind imploded, as the black hole at its heart tore coherent thought limb from limb.

He staggered to his feet, looking toward the Lake and back again with sudden fury. “Why did you make me do that? I have to kill you—!” His hand jerked the knife from his belt as if it had a will of its own; his body kneeled down again beside Gundhalinu’s. He pressed the blade to Gundhalinu’s throat. His entire body was trembling now. He held himself that way, unable to finish the act, paralyzed as completely as his victim by the anguish of unbearable loss.

He fell back, the knife dropping from his hand to clatter on the hot surface of pitted stone. Beneath his hands he felt the pressure of countless screaming mouths and mindless eyes. “Get up!” he shouted, shouting at himself now. “Get up and do it! Do it! Do it!” He picked up the knife again.

“Reede!”

Reede looked up, feeling something that was almost disbelief as he saw Ananke appear at the mouth of the canyon; as he remembered that he and Gundhalinu were not alone in the universe, the last two men alive.

“Reede! Come on!” Ananke waved his arm, his voice almost shrill as he gestured toward camp.

“What?” Reede shouted furiously, climbing to his feet with the knife in his fist

“Kedalion says we have to get out of here now!”

“Why?”

“Because he called in the army!”

Reede swore in disbelief. He forced himself to look down at Gundhalinu one last time … seeing the trefoil that shone like a star on Gundhalinu’s chest, hearing the harsh sound of his labored breathing. Reede touched the solii pendant hidden beneath his own shirt. “Live, then, damn you—” he said, his voice shaking. “It won’t matter anyway. We have what we need.” He brought his heavy boot back, kicked Gundhalinu in the side with all his strength; felt dizzy with relief as he made Gundhalinu cry out, feebly, involuntarily.

Reede began to run, only stopping when he reached the place where Ananke waited. He struck Ananke’s shoulder, jarring the boy out of his slack-faced staring.

“Is he dead?” Ananke asked weakly, still gaping at Gundhalinu’s motionless body.

Reede did not answer, forcing him back down the canyon, driving him ahead toward the camp.

“Niburu!”

Niburu stood waiting beside the rover as they reached the campsite, his arms folded, as if this were only another visit to town. He had the second stun rifle slung over his shoulder. Reede didn’t believe the expression of calm control on his face for a second. Saroon was nowhere in sight; Niburu must have sent him away somewhere. Reede was beyond caring, now. Trooper Saroon was no more than a nuisance, a detail, a loose end in a net that had suddenly sprung vast, gaping holes….

Reede strode across the camp to Niburu, the knife still clutched in his fist, not caring that Niburu had a stun rifle and he did not. Niburu watched him come without making a move to unsling his weapon.

“Did you call in troops?” Reede snapped, looking down into Niburu’s upturned face.

Niburu’s body shrank in on itself as Reede loomed over him, as if he suddenly faced an avenging demon made flesh. “Yes,” he said, faintly but evenly.

“Why?” Reede shouted, and saw him flinch.

“Because if I didn’t, you’d hunt him down and kill him.” Saroon.

Reede sucked in a breath of burning air. “What makes you so sure I won’t kill you—?” he whispered, letting Niburu face his own reflection in the blade of the knife.

Niburu looked away from it, with an effort. “Because I’m your pilot,” he said, his eyes clear, his voice calm. “Because you need me.”

Reede glared at him, not speaking, not moving.

“Boss, it’s time we got out of here.” Niburu jerked his head at the rover. “Everything important’s on board, except us.”

“So you really are willing to die to save that pathetic, puling bastard,” Reede murmured. “In fact, you’re actually going to kill all of us, just so he can live, and the Four government can go on giving it to him up the ass for the rest of his miserable life.”

Niburu stared at him blankly.

Reede smacked him with an open hand, knocking him to the ground. “Did it ever occur to you,” he shouted, “in your eagerness for justice, that the Fours are going to track this vehicle and shoot it down?”

Niburu looked up at him, glassy-eyed. “They can’t track us here—” He shook his head.

“You don’t know that.” Reede rubbed his sweating face. “You can’t be sure of anything here, you know that—! Gundhalinu vaccinated the Lake with the microviral, you shitbrain! The gods only know what’s going to happen here now.”

Niburu blanched. “I—”

“How did you propose we survive outside World’s End, until we reach Foursgate, anyway—not to mention reaching orbit and our ship, now that you’ve so effectively drawn their attention to us? Why do you think I wanted no witnesses!”

“I thought—”

“No, you didn’t think,” Reede snarled. “You miserable cretin, you didn’t think, you didn’t think at all!”

“But we can still get away. We have the stardrive.”

“It’s not enough—” Reede broke off, half frowning. They had the actual unit; Gundhalinu had shown him the programming. There was barely enough sane smartmatter plasma suffused through the unit to replicate itself, let alone make the drive function … not nearly enough to transport a ship across interstellar space. But if he could get it to respond, then maybe it was enough to get them halfway around one world in a spacetime eyeblink, to a specific track in planetary orbit. . He felt the jangling filaments of his mind begin to find harmony as he focused on the possibilities; letting him think with blinding clarity, in the way that only confronting a problem whose answer lay in pure logic ever did.

He dragged Niburu up, shoved him roughly toward the rover’s doorway. “You’d better hope you’re smarter than I think you are, pilot. Because if you’re wrong, you’re dead. We’re all dead.”