The Summer Queen

KHAREMOUGH: Aspundh Estates

Gundhahnu arrived, alone for once and precisely on time, at KR Aspundh’s front door. Flowering vines spilled down from the roof of Aspundh’s manor house, which blended with studied artistry into the rolling land around it. Aspundh met him in person. The silver trefoil was prominent against his dark, silver-threaded robe, and as they touched hands in polite greeting Gundhalinu felt the brief, hidden handsign that told him he was welcomed as a stranger far from home.

“Good of you to come,” Aspundh murmured, and beckoned him into the house.

Gundhalinu slowed the barely suppressed urgency of his own strides to match the older man’s gait, forcing himself to appreciate the artful use of light, the play of shadows on a wall, the subtle inlays of the carpet as Aspundh led him through the seemingly endless house. “You live alone?” he asked.

“Yes, except for the staff. My children visit me, and my grandchildren, of course.” Aspundh did not say whether his wife was dead, or simply out of his life. Gundhalinu thought of his own mother, an archaeologist, who had abandoned her family out of unhappiness when he was five. He had thought, after all these years, that while he was on-planet he would go to see her, now that she could be nothing but proud of him. But Vhanu’s search of records had told him she had died, three years before his return. Classical archaeology as a profession lay somewhere on the scale of risk between microsurgery and the bomb squad. Her research team had unearthed some Old Empire system that had utilized smartmatter, only to discover, too late, that it had decayed disastrously. The resulting catastrophe had obliterated the entire site, and everything else for kilometers around. There had been no survivors. … He walked on in silence, suddenly unable to make small talk.

At last they reached a sitting room where a wide expanse of window framed in colored glass looked out over Aspundh’s exquisite ornamental gardens. Aspundh settled himself on a low cushioned seat beside a table inlaid with amethyst, which already held a set of frosted glasses and a pitcher of drinks. Gundhalinu had a sudden disconcerting flash of deja vu, staring at the table and out at the view. Aspundh looked up at him curiously, waiting.

“I feel as if I’ve seen this room before.” Gundhalinu shook his head, attempting a shrug; surreptitiously his fingers proved the reality of the table’s inlaid edge.

“Odd how that happens, isn’t it?” Aspundh said, and smiled. “I chose this room because it always makes me think of Tiamat. The last time I sat and talked about Tiamat with anyone, it was in this room.

“. . .the gardens. And we drank lith, and ate sugared fruits.…” The words echoed in his memory. He realized that Aspundh was still staring at him, waiting, expectant. He found his voice again. “The people you were speaking of it with, KR … was one of them a sibyl named Moon Dawntreader?”

Aspundh sat studying him for a long moment. Gundhalinu realized that Aspundh was weighing whether to trust him with a secret that could easily be considered not only dishonorable but treasonous. “Yes,” Aspundh said finally.

Gundhalinu sat down at the table as his knees suddenly felt weak. “Gods …” he murmured. He looked up again, meeting the older man’s wary gaze. “Some techrunners brought her to you. Moon described this room to me—every detail. What you all drank, even about seeing old Singalu raised to Tech on the threedy just as you entered.” Aspundh’s eyes brightened, but he said nothing else. “And I wondered why in the name of a thousand ancestors the honorable KR Aspundh would have techrunners to tea—” he laughed, “let alone commit treason, to help a proscribed sibyl get back to Tiamat, where she could tell her people the truth about what we were doing to them.” He leaned forward. “You knew,” he said softly. “That she had to go back. Didn’t you—?”

Aspundh touched the trefoil sign; his face furrowed suddenly with guilt and memory. “I told her then that I had to answer to a higher authority. She said that she had had a sending from the sibyl net. She wore a trefoil—which made her a stranger far from home, who had the right to claim a higher justice, even though she did not know it.” He looked up again. “You know what became of her.” It was not a question.

“She’s Tiamat’s Queen.”

Aspundh froze; shook his head, slowly. “It was true, then.”

Gundhalinu nodded.

“And what have you to do with all of this, and her, BZ Gundhalinu? I remember you as a boy. You were not the kind I would have expected to—” He broke off, as if he realized how it sounded.

Gundhalinu smiled ruefully. “Nor I… until I met Moon. I was a Police inspector at the time, I had been taken prisoner by a band of nomad thieves we were pursuing. They treated me … badly. I felt … I attempted suicide, as my family’s honor demanded … but I failed.” He faced Aspundh’s stare, baring his own painful secret. “They captured Moon too, on her way to Carbuncle after her return. When I met her I’d given up all hope of rescue … of any future at all. But she made me see that my life was a sacred gift, not a soiled rag to be thrown away. Together we escaped. And then, when we reached the city I helped her find her … helped her become Queen. I could have—I should have—arrested her. I knew where she’d been, what she was, what it meant … probably better than you did. I knew my duty. But I couldn’t do anything else.…”

“Because you both wore that?” Aspundh asked gently, indicating his trefoil.

Gundhalinu shook his head. “I wasn’t even a sibyl, at the time. It was because I’d become her lover.” He looked down, away from the expression that followed realization onto Aspundh’s face.

“I see,” Aspundh said, but he did not. Gundhalinu waited, staring at his hands, wondering if he had made a mistake in coming here. But after a moment Aspundh sighed. “You wear that sign now, and you are the same man you were then. If y°u hadn’t helped her, she wouldn’t be Queen. … If I hadn’t helped her, and she hadn’t helped you, you’d be dead now, or stranded for life on Tiamat. Instead, you’ve become a leader among your own people, and given us back the stars. So who is to say, really, whether either one of us committed an act of treason in helping her, or an act of profound patriotism?”

Gundhalinu looked up again, and smiled. “Thank you, Aspundh-ken.”

“Thank you, Gundhalinu-ken. For letting me know, after all these years, that in the Great Game, the gains have outweighed the losses for once.” He shook his head, looking down. “I used to find the conflict between loyalty to my people and loyalty to Survey burdensome, at times. I have become somewhat more philosophical in recent years, due to greater—insight, or simply to age. My perspective on the purpose of the Game has shifted. But still, it’s good to know…. Tell me, was it true what you said about wanting to return to Tiamat?”

Gundhalinu nodded. “Yes. I very much intend to go back when contact is reestablished, as the new Chief Justice.”

Aspundh half frowned. “Why?”

“Because I am responsible for what’s about to happen to that world, and its people … and they are not going to be given any kind of justice unless I’m there to enforce it.”

“That’s a large judgment for one man to make,” Aspundh said mildly. “What makes you believe it?”

“I have ears. The power factions that are pushing for an early return to Tiamat want one thing from it—the water of life. Even people like Gelvasthan and Pernatte think Tiamat is backward and barbarous, with marginal resources—not worth the effort otherwise. No one else will pay attention to its fate until the damage is done—they’ll have too much else on their minds. Their shortsightedness will crush whatever progress its people have made under the Summer Queen’s guidance, because the Hegemony won’t want the Tiamatans able to interfere with its exploitation, any more than they did before.”

Aspundh nodded. “I begin to see your point. Have you brought this matter up at a Survey meeting?”

Gundhalinu shook his head. “I’m still feeling my way. I know what I have to do. But as you say, choosing between loyalty to one’s people and loyalty to what seems the greater good can be … treacherous and painful. And not just for you or me. I don’t yet have a feel for the motion of the wheels within wheels that I sense in the inner circles of the Golden Mean here.”

“So the power factions you spoke of are not simply confined to the halls of the Hegemonic government.”

“No.”

“Then my estimate of your judgment rises.” Aspundh smiled faintly. “There are indeed wheels within wheels, because there are many opposing views on how best to play the Game. And I think I can help you there. …”

Gundhalinu rubbed his eyes, slumping back among the cushions. “Gods—I’m so tired of trying to figure it all out.” He looked down at his hands. “I’ve carried this thing inside me for so long, and there’s never been anyone I could share it with. Sometimes it begins to feel like a delusion, and I wonder if I’m living a lie, gone mad with greed and power, all the while believing that I know what’s best for everyone else; just like all the rest of the manipulators.…”

“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, I 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….