The Summer Queen

TIAMAT: Carbuncle

“Oh, Tor, this is off the scale! I can’t believe it—” Ariele Dawntreader draped her sinuous, slender form across the transparent table surface, looking down into the depths below her. She clattered as she moved, wearing a bodystocking covered with tiny, glittering silver plates. “Is this exactly what your club was like before the Change—?” Around her, the voices of her friends made a song of delight. It was opening night at Starhiker’s, the first offworlder-style gaming club to open, or reopen, in the Maze.

Tor had bought up the remnants of club technology wherever she could find it, used or abused, buried in storage around the city; had everything refitted and all their burned-out entrails repaired with suddenly available microprocessor replacement parts. With the Queen’s blessing, she had gotten in ahead of all the offworlder entrepreneurs who had been clamoring at the palace gates, and down in Blue Alley, petitioning the onworld and offworld governments for permission to start filling half-empty buildings of the Maze with stores and places of entertainment. The new Chief Justice had kept a chokehold on the influx of offworlders and their technotoys, the changes that her own people awaited with what seemed to be equal parts eagerness and dread. So far, tradespeople and technicians were given heavy preference over those in less functional occupations.

Ariele felt only the eagerness and awe, not understanding why anyone, including her mother, could feel any other way about the dazzling possibilities of their changing city. She had lived all her life with a hunger for these wonders, never realizing until they actually began to appear what it was she had been hungry for.

“Glad you like it, sweeting.” Tor reached across the table top, patted her cheek fondly with a jewel-gloved hand. “Enjoy yourself, it’s on the house tonight for you and your friends. But this is only a pale imitation of what my old place was like. The difference is that it’s my place, this time…. Wait till the technology really begins to flow—this place will turn your eyeballs inside out. The Maze … gods, I never thought I’d live to see it come alive again!” She shook her head, her gray-shot hair scintillating, netted in silver.

Ariele looked at her, feeling another kind of wonder; feeling as if she had never really seen Tor Starhiker before, although she had known her forever… that she was seeing Tor now in her element, where she had always belonged. She hoped she would have that kind of light in her own eyes when, after some inconceivable length of time, she was as old as Tor was now.

“Ye gods, Ariele—” Tor straightened suddenly, peering back at her as she passed a round of drinks and gaming pieces into the waiting hands of her friends. “What happened to your hair—?”

“I got it cut like the offworlders.” Ariele shook her head, feeling the giddy lightness of the motion, as if a weight had been lifted from her soul, along with the weight of her waist-length hair, which she had left on the floor of an offworlder’s shop only this afternoon. What was left was bare inches long, and stood out all over her head like cat’s fur. Elco Teel had dared her to do it; but once she had gone ahead, none of the others had dared not to follow her lead. Most of the crowd of bobbing heads behind her sported newly shorn hair, one cut more bizarre than the next. “Don’t you love it—?”

Tor raised her eyebrows, and then nodded, smiling. “I think it’s perfect. Your mother will hate it.”

Ariele grinned. “I hope so,” she said, feeling her own smile pinch. “At least I don’t look like her anymore.” She shook her head again, pushing back off the table surface, taking a drink with her. She sipped it, pleased and a little surprised to find that Tor had actually given her a drink with alcohol in it. “Thanks, Tor.”

Tor lifted her hand in good-natured dismissal, moving away from the table, which suddenly came alive with a hologramic vision of an alien city.

Ariele’s gasp of astonishment was lost in the murmurs of amazement around her. She stood between Elco Teel and Tilby Atwater, watching as eager offworlders materialized out of the crowd, elbowing her friends aside, flocking to the display to try their hand at a new game which was probably long since an old game to them.

She watched, trying to get a feel for the way it was done, murmuring observations, gasping and pointing with the others; all of them, all the while, still trying not to look as though they had never seen anything like it before. Music filled the air around her with loud, insistent rhythms, the imported heartbeat of some other world. They moved on after a time, drifting from one table to another, sipping their drinks, surreptitiously staring at the astonishing varieties of humanity who filled the space around them—all shapes and sizes, with hair that came in every conceivable style and texture, with colors of eyes and skin that she would have laughed at the very idea of, a year ago. She loved the sight of them, the sense of diversity that they symbolized, the living proof of life’s endless possibilities.

“Gods.” Tilby’s sister Sulark spoke the offworlder oath selfconsciously behind her. “How does anyone ever get enough points even to call it a truce? These games are impossible…. Even the offworlders can’t win.” She pointed as a red-faced player turned and stalked away from the jumbled ruins of a world shimmering in front of them.

“That one can,” Ariele murmured, nudging Tilby with her shoulder. She had been watching the man two tables away, who was doing something that seemed completely incomprehensible to her, but doing it brilliantly, from the awed cries and laughter that surrounded him. The crowd followed his every move, as she had done, ever since she glanced his way. “Look at him, Tilby, oh Lady’s Tits, I’d like to see the rest of that one, wouldn’t you—?” He was fair enough to pass for Tiamatan; but she was sure he was an offworlder, by the bizarre swirls of decoration that spiraled up his bare arms to his shoulders. She could barely take her eyes from the burning beauty of his face, the intent, perfectly controlled dance of his hands inside the showers of phantom gold that rained down on him, even to take in what she could glimpse of his body through the shifting crowd.

“Mmm,” Tilby said, ruffling her hair with a hand. “I sure would.”

“But I saw him first,” Ariele said peremptorily, pulling Tilby back when she would have started forward.

Tilby pouted, and Elco Teel said, “You’re depraved, Ariele—how can you want to do that one? Look at his skin. Do you think he was born mottled like that, or does he have some kind of disease?”

“It’s tattooing,” she said, impatiently superior. “You know that. Like a sibyl—”

“Hardly.” He made a face.

Ariele lifted her middle finger, let it droop, significantly, in front of his face.

“Do you suppose he’s tattooed all over—?” Tilby asked, with wide eyes.

“Let’s find out.” Ariele pushed between them, making her way on across the crowded floor. But as she reached the gaming table where the offworlder was playing, she saw him withdraw his hands from the golden hallucination, saw it beginning to fade from the air. She squeezed in beside him before he could back away through the crowd, edging aside a youth with night-black skin and hair, and a man whose head barely topped the height of the table. She saw startled surprise on both their faces, and utter boredom in the piercingly blue eyes of the player himself. Intentionally she brushed up against him, letting the curve of her body slide along his hip as her hand grasped his arm. “Teach me,” she murmured, to his face.

He stared at her with what seemed to be incomprehension, for a moment. She held him pinned against the table with the subtle, suggestive pressure of her body.

“Boss—?” the short man said, behind her.

The player gestured sharply with his hand, and the short man fell silent. The offworlder shook his head slightly, but it was not a refusal; a smile that was nothing but amused pulled up the corners of his mouth. His eyes remained expressionless. “Sure,” he said. His own hands rose, circled her, slid down her back to hei metal-jangling hips. He turned her where she stood until she was facing the gaming table in front of him. She felt his body move up against hers now, not so subtly; felt the pressure of his sudden erection against her spine.

He held her hands inside his, slipping filigreed mesh over them, lifting them as if he were about to play music on an instrument. The swarming fireflies began to fill her eyes. She was only vaguely aware that her friends had gathered around her, watching her with varying degrees of amusement and envy as the game began.

He began to force her hands to move to his rhythms, murmuring explanations and encouragement in her ear as she struggled to match his artless grace. “Let go,” he said softly. “Winning means nothing. Only the act, only the flow, let it carry you like a river—”

She let go, and felt herself swept away by the flow of motion, the overflow of her senses. The light, the music, the warm pressure of his body fed the hunger inside her; the proof of his desire was a dizzying torment against the small of her back. She dissolved into the sensual heat and flow until she became one with them: her movements were his movements, she saw with his eyes, and as the gold rained down on them, she felt herself winning, and winning, the crowd’s awed cries, their applause and laughter, the shining faces of her friends, the shining gold….

And then the faultless motion of her hands began to fail; she missed the capture of one golden trajectory, and then another and another. The spell that had held her was broken, and all at once she became aware that the hands which held hers, guiding them through the arcane ritual of control, were gone as well. Startled, wondering, she watched the light fade; the crowd began to murmur and drift apart. She peeled the golden filaments from her nerveless fingers. There were no fantastically decorated arms caging her, no warm insistent pressure against her back.

Turning, she found that the offworlder was gone; that she had no idea even of how long he had been gone. He had slipped away and left her without a word.

Her friends surrounded her, their mindless, taunting envy and praise raining down on her, as insubstantial as the rain of gold. Elco Teel was beside her with a smile of knowing mockery as he saw the look on her face. “He’s too slick for you, my little Motherlover.” It was a term of insult the offworlders used for Tiamatans, and she frowned. “Caught you in your own trap, didn’t he?” he murmured, with smug satisfaction. She brought her knee up sharply, hitting him in the groin—not hard enough to double him over, but hard enough to make him swear.

“You bitch,” he muttered. But he smiled.

“And don’t you just love it?” She kissed him, then, letting him into her mouth, closing her eyes so that she could imagine the offworlder kissing her instead.

They wandered on through the crowd in a group, finding strength in numbers among the growing press of offworlders; playing at games, watching and learning, groping after a sophistication that suddenly made their own behavior seem like childish, provincial pretense. At last, when Tor refused to let them have anything beyond three drinks, they drifted out of the club and on down the Street in search of simpler, more familiar pleasures.

As they passed the entrance to Olivine Alley, Ariele stopped, peering down its throat. For most of her life its strangely baroque hive of buildings had been the home to the Sibyl College her mother had founded. But now it was called “Blue Alley” again; it had become what it had been before—the official home of the offworlders: their government offices, their ground, not to be casually wandered into, as she had done all her life since she was a small child. There were still people moving along it, even though the hour was getting late; most of them wore the uniform of the offworlder Police. This ground had been hers to walk on, to play on, by right. But now if she entered it she knew she would be stopped, questioned, driven off— politely, because she was the Queen’s daughter, but peremptorily, as if she were a nuisance or a threat.

“Come on, Ari,” Brein said, impatiently, tugging at her arm when she still did not move.

“Wait.” She shrugged off the hold, watching the three figures coming toward the alley’s entrance. They were deep in conversation; not a pleasant one, from the look on their faces. The one in the middle was BZ Gundhalinu, the Chief Justice; on his right was the Commander of Police. At his left was Jerusha PalaThion, wearing the same dusty-blue uniform, with the insignia of a Chief Inspector.

She still had not gotten used to the sight of it, or to the sight of Jerusha among those strangers with their alien faces … making her see with painful clarity the alienness of Jerusha’s own face, a thing she had never recognized through all the years before. The three of them reached the corner and started downhill. Only Vhanu, the Police Commander, glanced her way; he frowned and looked ahead again.

“Hello, Aunt Jerusha,” Ariele called out, hearing the mocking echo of her voice come back at her from the building walls.

Jerusha stopped; she turned back, the others turning with her. She searched the faces of the cluster of gaudily dressed Tiamatan youths in wary surprise. Ariele moved forward slightly, waiting through the endless moment until Jerusha picked her out of the crowd.

“Ariele—?” Jerusha came toward them, her expression half curious and half incredulous. Ariele leaned close to Elco Teel, murmuring instructions in his ear. He nodded, and grinned.

“Ariele,” Jerusha said again; Ariele read dismay in the older woman’s stare. “What have you done to your hair?”

The Chief Justice followed Jerusha toward them, as Ariele had hoped he would; only the Police Commander remained where he was. She saw Gundhalinu’s belated, barely concealed start as he recognized her. She had not seen him close up in months. She heard Elco murmur something behind her, and snickers of laughter: He was the one. The Blue who had slept with her mother, before she was born. The one who had made the father she loved suddenly look at her as if she were a stranger, and turn away from her without a word. The one who had come back to Tiamat to tear her family apart….

She thought she caught, again, the look she had seen in Gundhalinu’s eyes before—the strange mix of uncertainty and longing. It was not sexual, but an emotion that ran equally deep and strong… the kind of look a man might give to his long-lost child. The thought made something twist in her stomach. “Hello, Ariele,” he said, in Tiamatan; his voice was soft and faintly accented.

She looked away from him deliberately. “I wanted it to look offworld—” She touched her hair, answering Jerusha’s question instead; ignore Gundhalinu entirely now. “We love everything offworld.” She put her hands on her hips, flaunting her glittering clothes, the flamboyant circle of friends all around her.

“Except the offwortders,” Elco Teel said, with perfect venom, just as she had told him to.

“Yes,” she murmured, leaning her head languorously against his shoulder, smiling with satisfaction. “Too bad they can’t just all stay home where they belong.” She let her gaze meet Gundhalinu’s again, raking him with spite.

He looked down. “Good night, Jerusha,” he murmured, to his Chief Inspector. He glanced back at Ariele, and she thought he was going to say something more to her. But he only gazed at her a moment longer, as if he were taking her picture with his mind. And then he turned away, back to the other Kharemoughi, who was still pointedly keeping his distance, his dark face closed and suspicious. They went on down the Street.

Jerusha watched them go, before she looked back at the small cluster of Tiamatans. Ariele read disapproval and annoyance in her glance. Jerusha opened her mouth—changed her mind, as Gundhalinu had, before the words could form. Instead, she said, “You look like a hooker.”

“What’s a hooker?” Ariele said.

“A whore,” Jerusha said flatly. “You look like a whore in that outfit.”

Ariele frowned, feeling her face redden. She had never heard the term before the offworlders had come back. “So do you,” she said sullenly. She jerked her head, the abrupt motion signaling her friends to follow her. She felt their hands stroking her, their voices in her ear congratulating her, giggling and muttering like the empty cries of sea birds as she started on down the Street, leaving behind the woman who had once been her mother’s loyal defender—and perhaps her own.

Gundhalinu sighed heavily, rubbing his face, as Vhanu fell into step beside him and they continued on their way. Vhanu glanced at his expression, and away at the crowd of Tiamatan youths who were already passing them by, accompanied by rude remarks and catcalls. Vhanu made an audible noise of disgust. “Delinquents,” he murmured, in Sandhi.

Gundhalinu did not respond, watching the crowd of teenagers, his eyes following a white-blond crest of hair bobbing in their midst; watching to see whether Ariele Dawntreader looked back at him. “Sorry, NR—what was that?” His mind snapped back into focus as he realized that Vhanu was still speaking.

“I said that—” Vhanu pointed at the Tiamatan youths disappearing into the crowd ahead of them, “is exactly the kind of thing I mean. They laughed at us! That pack of miserable—”

“In Tiamatan; please, NR—” Gundhalinu said abruptly, in Tiamatan. “Speak Tiamatan, not Sandhi. We all need the practice.”

Vhanu glanced at him, and controlled his sudden, obvious irritation. “Very well. Those miserable little—” He broke off, at a loss for a satisfactory term in a foreign tongue. “They put on our clothes and cut off then-hair, but that doesn’t make them our equals. They still behave like… like… dashtanu.” He fell back into Sandhi in exasperation. Barbarians. “Damn it, PalaThion keeps putting all of us through these indoctrination sessions along with the new recruits— By all the gods, even you and I have been fed the tapes half a dozen times ourselves. I can recite the information word for word—”

“It makes a good impression when the force sees us studying the material as well,” Gundhalinu said, keeping his voice neutral; wondering to himself a little wearily when the information would actually begin to have any effect on Vhanu’s attitude.

“But the real point—which PalaThion seems incapable of understanding—is not that we need to learn the way the Tiamatans live and speak and think. They need to learn our way of doing things. Until they do, they’ll go on being dashtanu in fancy clothing, unqualified to be citizens of the Hegemony, and undeserving of its full privileges. Look at that little yiskat”— slut—“we just saw. The Queen’s daughter, and she has the manners of a mekru. She ought to be publicly thrashed; that would make the point more effectively than—”

“Vhanu!” Gundhalinu bit down on his sudden anger, as Vhanu looked at him in surprise. “The real point, NR,” he murmured, not looking at his old friend now, “is that both sides need to understand the other’s point of view. Jerusha PalaThion not only knows that, she’s done it. That’s why I wanted her to work with you in training the force. If we want more cooperation and less catcalls from the locals, we have to do it too. You do see the point of it—?”

Vhanu nodded once, stiffly. “But by all my ancestors—” he said, his voice taking on an edge, “you heard what she told them tonight, after the meeting: She was sure everyone there could see now why all intelligent beings deserved equal respect and equal treatment… but just in case someone couldn’t, she wanted them to know that anybody who so much as called a native a Motherlover could pick up their pay and turn in their uniform. She can’t enforce that.”

“Why not?” Gundhalinu said. “Her new policy has the backing of my office—and, I hope, yours.”

Vhanu looked at him again, searchingly. He shrugged his shoulders. “Yes.”

Gundhalinu glanced away at the passing crowd. “If there’s one thing I’ve learned over the years, NR, it’s that enlightened self-interest is a more effective motivator toward good than mere understanding of the situation.”

“I suppose so,” Vhanu said, somewhat glumly. He glanced away again, as someone shouted drunkenly; a fishhead flung from somewhere down an alley struck the invisible field of his bodyshield, and dropped at his feet. “Perhaps she should be encouraged to try the same methods on the natives she knows so well.”

Gundhalinu stepped over the offal. “How difficult have you found your interactions with the local constabulary to be?”

“Surprisingly easy, all things considered,” Vhanu admitted. “They seem glad enough to have our help in dealing with the increased population in the city. They’re competent and efficient, but they know their limits.”

“PalaThion trained them,” Gundhalinu said. “Give her a chance to prove what she can do for us. The rules are different than they used to be, for us, for the natives. If they don’t understand that we exist as a buffer, to protect them from our own people, then the hostility won’t stop with catcalls and fishheads; it will keep on escalating.”

“You said that PalaThion was in charge here during the Snow Queen’s reign, as ‘Commander of the Police.” Vhanu gestured at the city around him. “Are you telling “me it’s worse with the Summer Queen running things?”

“Different,” Gundhalinu said, shaking his head. They stepped aside to avoid the sudden, almost silent approach of a passenger tram. “Most of the force were Newhaven-ese, hard-nosed and pig-headed. They never did understand. And the Snow Queen had her own reasons for giving us hell. She did it very well. She actively protected the underworld elements on-planet, because she knew the legitimate government was exploiting her people. We have a chance to prove to the new Queen that it isn’t like that anymore—that both sides have something to gain from the new relationship.”

“Frankly, BZ, what does Tiamat have of any real value to offer us, besides the water of life? I haven’t seen anything—”

“A good point, Commander Vhanu,” a Tiamatan voice said behind them.

Gundhalinu looked back, surprised that anyone, let alone a local, would intrude on their conversation so casually. He recognized Kirard Set Wayaways, from the City Council—remembered him from the old days, vaguely, as one of the Snow Queen’s Winter favorites. He recalled an impression of mocking superiority whenever Wayaways had looked at him, or at anyone who did not share Arienrhod’s favor. Wayaways had appeared to be barely older than his own twenty standards, at their first encounter; although the wardroom gossip had it that he was closer to sixty. But without the water of life, the years since the Departure had left their mark on Wayaways. Gundhalinu observed the signs of aging in the other man’s face with silent satisfaction.

“Are you walking, when you could be using our new public transportation?” Wayaways gestured at the tram, which was moving past them again.

“We haven’t far to go,” Gundhalinu said, glancing on down the Street. “After a long day of sitting in meetings and interfacing a dataport, I prefer to walk.”

“Good idea. They say exercise is one way to keep young,” Wayaways remarked, showing a trace of the sardonic smile that Gundhalinu still remembered with distaste.

“It’s the one I prefer.” Gundhalinu began to turn away, eager to put an end to the conversation.

“Is that why you suddenly chose to get off the tram and join us?” Vhanu asked Wayaways, with a sharp curiosity that was more professional than personal. For once Gundhalinu regretted his friend’s unshakable attention to duty.

“No, actually.” Wayaways took the question as an excuse to continue with them as they began to walk again; Gundhalinu frowned. “I was just curious to see two of the top officials of our new Hegemonic government walking in the Street like anyone else. I was pleasantly surprised to see that you weren’t in a hovercraft.”

“Then I hope we’ve satisfied your curiosity,” Gundhalinu said shortly. “Now if you’ll forgive us, Elder Wayaways, we were having a private conversation—”

“About the water of life.” Wayaways nodded. “Commander Vhanu was remarking that he didn’t feel our poorly endowed planet had much to offer the Hegemony, in return for all the benefits you bring to us—except for the water of life. I think that’s absolutely true. Which is why I felt compelled to behave so rudely, and intrude on your privacy.”

Vhanu glanced at Wayaways, his initial look of distrust fading. “Who did you say you were?”

“I didn’t, actually. I believe we’ve met before, but we’ve never really spoken. I’m Kirard Set Wayaways Winter. I’m one of the Queen’s advisors.” He held out his hand, palm up; Vhanu touched it briefly with his own palm. Wayaways looked back at Gundhalinu. “I was very surprised to hear that you had declared a moratorium on the hunting of mers, under the circumstances, Justice Gundhalinu. I’d think you’d be eager to start demonstrating to the Hegemony, as soon as possible, that its return to Tiamat is economically profitable as well as technologically feasible.”

Gundhalinu looked at him. “I don’t know why you find it surprising, Wayaways, since I’m doing it at the Queen’s request. A full study is being made on the question of whether the mers are actually an intelligent race, before the hunting begins again. As a member of the City Council, I’d think you would know that.”

Wayaways shrugged. “Certainly we all know about the Queen’s recent … obsession, for want of a better word, with the mers. Being a Summer, she is rather more conservative in her beliefs than her predecessor. But we don’t necessarily all agree about the wisdom of this move … just as I’m sure your people don’t all agree about it.” He raised his eyebrows.

Gundhalinu frowned slightly. He wondered how much Wayaways really knew—if he really knew anything—about the struggle with his own Judiciate members and chiefs of staff, including Vhanu, to win their support and gain even that grudging concession from the Central Committee. “There is also the matter of whether continuing unrestricted slaughter of the mers, sentient or not, will cause them to become extinct… and a study needs to be done concerning the feasibility of synthesizing the water of life…” He let his voice run on through all the arguments he had used to sway his own council, not sure why he felt compelled to justify himself, except that something in Wayaways’ tone put him instinctively on the defensive. He didn’t like the feeling, any more than he liked the man. “Do you have some personal interest in this matter?” He took the offensive again. “I seem to remember reviewing your applications. You were the first to request that your holdings be hunted—”

Wayaways made an unreadable gesture. “Is that against the law?”

“No,” Gundhalinu said, aware that Vhanu was looking at him sidelong.

“Then why shouldn’t I put in my application? It’s no more than what I’ve always done…. Well, of course, you’re too young to remember that far back…” He shrugged again. “You were only on Tiamat for… what? About five years, before the Change. I seem to remember seeing you at Arienrhod’s court, along with Commander—Chief Inspector—PalaThion, when she was only an inspector. In fact, I remember an amusing incident….” He broke off, as Gundhalinu’s expression darkened. “But you’ve probably forgotten that encounter with Starbuck, long since. I remember much more vividly that spectacularly heroic moment during the final Festival, when young Inspector Gundhalinu burst in on the mob in the Hall of the Winds, as Arienrhod was trying to have Moon Dawntreader thrown into the Pit. You single-handedly saved the woman who became the new Queen.”

“Ye gods,” Vhanu murmured in Sandhi, looking at Gundhalinu as if he had never seen him before. “Thou never told me about that, BZ.”

“He exaggerates,” Gundhalinu said abruptly, answering in the same language. “Moon Dawntreader saved herself, Wayaways—” switching back to Tiamatan, “or don’t you remember how she stopped the wind, when you were in the hall with the rest of the mob?”

“Yes, I do remember.” Wayaways shook his head. “Incredible. How does she do that? Did she ever tell you? … But you’re too modest, Justice. The mob would have had her anyway, if you hadn’t shown them your Police badge and faced them down.”

“Father of all my grandfathers,” Vhanu said. “Why would the Snow Queen want to kill Moon Dawntreader in the first place? Arienrhod surely couldn’t know that she would become Queen.”

“Well, because Moon was—” Wayaways hesitated, glancing suddenly at Gundhalinu, his gaze like a spotlight, “a sibyl. You know, Commander, how stupidly superstitious we used to be about sibyls, before the Summer Queen enlightened us.” He laughed. Gundhalinu pressed his mouth together. “But there was more to it, there was Sparks Dawntreader, Moon’s pledged. The Queen had him for a lover, and Moon wanted him back. Jealousy is one of the great random factors in history, you know. But I probably don’t need to tell you gentlemen that, considering the positions you find yourselves in.” His eyes danced speculatively from Gundhalinu’s face to Vhanu’s, and back. “It’s no wonder the Queen is so fond of you, Justice. She must have been someone special to you back then for you to risk your life for her.”

“I was doing my sworn duty as a Police Officer.” Gundhalinu looked straight ahead, frowning again. “That was all.”

“But you chose to come back to Tiamat, after all this time, knowing she was Queen. And the way you’ve supported her policies—”

“That has nothing to do with the present.”

“I say, BZ, how did you come to know Moon Dawntreader?” Vhanu asked. The faintly scandalized fascination still showed in his eyes.

“Really, he never told you—?” Wayaways exclaimed, in mock surprise.

“It’s a long story, and exceedingly unremarkable,” Gundhalinu said, his voice grating.

“Not the version I heard,” Wayaways protested. “Something about techrunners, and nomad thieves up in the interior; that the two of you were lost together—”

“We’re here.” Gundhalinu stopped abruptly, cutting Wayaways off. He looked up at the newly installed sign above the ancient doorway, which marked the reopened Survey Hall. He turned back to Wayaways, meeting the Tiamatan’s gaze with a stare of cold warning. “Some other time,” he said. He looked back at Vhanu, putting a hand on his shoulder.

Wayaways nodded and shrugged. “Until then,” he said, gracefully retreating. “Have a pleasant evening. The Survey Hall must seem like a haven of peace and respite for strangers like yourselves, far from home.” He raised his hand in farewell, turning away, disappearing into the crowd even as he spoke the words. Gundhalinu stared at the Tiamatan’s retreating back; his body quivered, caught between the urge to go after Wayaways, and the urge to be rid of him. He looked back at Vhanu, finally.

“A chance remark?” Vhanu murmured. His expression said that he doubted it.

Gundhalinu shook his head. “No.”

“I thought there were no Tiamatan members of Survey,” Vhanu said.

“So did I.” Gundhalinu turned back, looking toward the dark, shadowed rectangle of the building entrance, below the static image that displayed only a single data figure, the ancient star-and-compass symbol of the order. He had never seen a Tiamatan face inside this building, when he had visited the Hall during his previous tour of duty on Tiamat. He had been told that the locals were excluded from membership, and he had simply accepted it. But back then he had thought that this was merely a social club. He had not known then anything of what he knew now … about the secrets this building held, even from the majority of its membership; or the secrets within secrets signified by that symbol above its door. He looked back at the crowd eddying past along the Street. Wayaways had disappeared.

“He must have picked up the expression during the previous occupation. He seems to have collected a great deal of unexpected information.…” Vhanu glanced at Gundhalinu again; curiosity still glinted through his doubt and concern.

“He was a user.… I suppose anything is possible,” Gundhalinu said, still frowning. Even that he is Survey. But not the one they knew and served.

“A user—of people?” Vhanu asked.

“Of the water of life.” Gundhalinu’s mouth pulled down. “Of people too. I wouldn’t trust anything he says, if I were you.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.” Vhanu nodded. But Gundhalinu felt Vhanu’s eyes linger speculatively on him a moment longer.

He shook off his unease, cursing Wayaways under his breath for making him doubt the one man he really depended on, for making that man doubt him, even for a moment. He went in under the overhang, into sudden darkness; pushed through the ancient, windowpaned doors and on into the light.

Superficially the Survey Hall was just as he remembered it from before: one large main room for social functions, with smaller offices and meeting rooms above it. Now he knew there were rooms within the rooms, hidden inside each other like Samathan votive-boxes. The main room was still rather spartan, with few of the odd souvenirs of other worlds that had formerly decorated its walls and native-crafted shelves, an accretion of mementos that had been left there by visiting members over a century and a half. He wondered what had become of the old collection; supposed the things had been carried off by the locals, or thrown away.

The room was sparsely populated tonight, even though this was the night of a scheduled meeting. There simply were not enough Survey members on-planet yet to fill the Hall. It was late enough for them to have missed the somewhat tedious pattern of rituals that had opened this evening’s gathering, at least. Most of the men and few women stood clustered together in small conversational groups, eating and drinking desultorily, or huddled on the clusters of cushioned benches in the ghostly light of their dozen gaming tables.

The air was rich with the mingled odors of various recreational drugs—none of them on the prescribed list, since the majority of people in this room were wearing the uniform of the Hegemonic Police. He wondered what they would think if they knew what kind of mind-altering substances were sometimes used in the hidden rooms just behind these walls—just beyond their knowledge. It astonished him to think of some of the drugs he himself had been forced to take, under strict supervision, to guide him toward deeper levels of insight and strengthen his concentration.

There were a few random non-uniformed figures, dressed in the melange of styles typical of the Hegemony’s disparate cultures. Out of habit his eyes took in each outsider, seeing loose robes, pragmatic coveralls, lace-edged funeral foppery. … His gaze caught on a figure standing across the room, leaning against the wall beside the mantel above an artificial hearth. The figure wore loose pants and robes of a deep midnight blue; face and head were almost entirely covered by the serpentine folds of a night-blue length of scarf. All that he could see were eyes, gazing back at him through a narrow window of exposed flesh. He felt vision and memory make a connection abruptly: Ondinee. His immediate image of a traditional Ondinean was that the women covered their faces among strangers, not the men; but this one wore a man’s garments. He remembered hearing about a perversely independent cult that defied the dominant theocracy; where the women went unveiled and were not treated like slaves, where the men covered their faces instead, probably as much to escape persecution by the government as to preserve their spiritual essence.

The man looked away abruptly, just as it struck him that he was being studied in turn, and began to inspect some object on the mantel.

Gundhalinu turned back to Vhanu, telling himself that he had probably imagined the man was staring at him; that his nerves were on edge. Vhanu had drifted away into a conversation with YA Tilhonne, Pernatte’s grandnephew. Mithra Kitaro, the , Police inspector he had first met at KR Aspundh’s, approached him to ask whether j he needed anything. He requested lilander, allowing himself that indulgence. He sat down on a bench and activated the gaming table in front of him; not really in the ; mood to play games, but needing some semblance of social activity to cover a few |moments of uninterrupted thought.

He was not sure what Kirard Set Wayaways had wanted from their unexpected Rencounter, but he was certain that Wayaways’ intent had been neither harmless, nor casual. He decided that he would speak with Jerusha PalaThion about it, privately, tomorrow….

He glanced up again, realizing that it was not for the first time, to check on the Ondinean. The other man had moved a short distance away, and was talking to a Kharemoughi whose back was turned to Gundhalinu. The Ordinean glanced past the other man’s shoulder at Gundhalinu, as if he felt himself being looked at.

Kitaro returned with a tall lilac-tinted glass of lilander. He touched Kitaro’s arm as she handed him the drink. Gesturing unobtrusively at the Ondinean, he asked, “Do you know that man?”

Kitaro glanced away, and back. “Only that he’s a stranger far from home.”

“You’re sure of that?”

Kitaro looked at him, surprised. “Absolutely, Justice. He wouldn’t be inside, otherwise.” Not only human intervention, but also certain hidden surveillance checks made certain of it. “I remember seeing him before. Is something the matter?”

“No.” Gundhalinu shook his head. “Just curious. I suppose I wore that uniform,” gesturing at Kitaro’s blue tunic, “for too long. A man who hides his face makes me nervous.” But he knew, in his gut, that what bothered him was not so simple. It wasn’t the man’s hidden face. Something about the way he carried himself, the way he moved, was familiar. Gundhalinu knew that body language, in the same way he might have recognized the work of a familiar artist, deep in the nonverbal sectors of his brain. But the part of his mind that thought it knew could not speak, and the part that could, couldn’t remember.

He sipped the lilander, letting its pungent sweetness fill his senses and still his impatience. Maybe it was only his imagination, after a day full of nerve-racking, tense debates, and an evening’s walk filled with unpleasant innuendos… . But he found himself on his feet again, moving not-quite-casually across the room in the direction of the Ondinean, who seemed to drift away with equally deceptive randomness … or was he just imagining that too? But the part of his brain that was still taking the measure of every movement the stranger made told him he was not.

He reached the mantel, with its dark, fancifully carved supports and its liner of small, foreign oddities. He picked up the thing he had seen the Ondinean handle. It was a silver vial, almost like a perfume bottle. He studied it for a moment, trying to remember where he had seen such a thing before. Recognition caught him suddenly, painfully: It was a container for the water of life. Not the liquor, but the genuine water of life, the extract from the blood of mers.

He turned it around in his fingers, handling it carefully, cautiously. It had not been here a few days ago. Where had this come from? Who would have left such a thing here? He looked up, searching the room. Or had the Ondinean put it there himself? The Ondinean had his back turned now, as if he were oblivious to whatever Gundhalinu was doing; although Gundhalinu was certain he was not. The water of life… It had been on his mind ever since he had arrived here. It had been in his thoughts and on his lips constantly for the past weeks, as he had hammered out his compromise with the Judiciate and the representatives from the Central Coordinating Committee. Finding this here, now, he felt as if he had conjured it up out of his own preoccupation.

But he had not. Someone had left it there, intentionally—and in this Hall, there were no coincidences. He reached into the belt pouch underneath his jacket and pulled out a scanner, part of the Police-issue equipment he still habitually carried with him. He ran a full scan on the vial, measuring and recording everything that could be known about its age and previous provenance, including the fingerprints of anyone who had touched it.

He put the scanner back into his belt pouch, placed the vial back on the mantel. Then he glanced away into the room, to see whether anyone had been watching. Only the Ondinean was looking back at him, standing perfectly still at the opposite side of the room. Gundhalinu started toward him, keeping eye contact; unable to see anything about the other man’s expression. VX Sandrine caught his arm as he passed; he murmured an abrupt excuse and moved on, willing the Ondinean to stay put. The stranger stood unmoving, still gazing back at him, until he had almost closed the distance between them. And then the man turned suddenly, and disappeared through the darkened doorway behind him.

Gundhalinu started after him; stopped, looking down suddenly, as the call beeper sounded on his belt remote. He swore, knowing that the only message he would be getting at this hour would be an urgent one. He glanced over his shoulder at the room behind him, knowing that he should find a place to take the call—looked back, to find that the dim-lit hallway ahead of him was empty. He swore again, in disgust. Standing just inside the hall entrance, he put the call through on his remote.

“Judiciate,” a disembodied voice said.

“This is Justice Gundhalinu,” he said, as the link came alive. “You have a message for me?”

“Justice Gundhalinu—?” The voice that answered him sounded nonplussed. “No, sir. No message.”

“You just called me,” Gundhalinu snapped. “There must be a message.”

“No, sir—” He could hear the embarrassment in the voice that answered him. “There must be some mistake. No one called you. There’s no record of any call here.”

“All right,” he said brusquely. “Thank you.” He shut off his comm link with an angry motion of his hand. He went back into the main hall, crossing it to where Vhanu stood in conversation with JK Wybenalle, one of the Central Committee representatives. Beside them was a table that held a buffet of native foods, prepared with surprising skill by a local restaurant called, oddly, Stasis.

“…And what do you suppose this is?” Wybenalle was saying, in Sandhi, as he prodded a flaccid, glistening piece of meat with a silver-pronged pick.

Gundhalinu reached past him and speared a slice off the plate. He put it into his mouth and chewed. The taste was indescribably spicy, the texture chewy, just as he remembered it. “Try some,” he urged, speaking Sandhi, as Wybenalle always insisted on doing. “It’s quite good.”

Wybenalle accepted the slice he proffered, looking at him with raised eyebrows Hnd so missing Vhanu’s look of disbelief, which was plainly visible to Gundhalinu. Gundhalinu smiled.

“Interesting,” Wybenalle said, chewing gamely. “What do they call this?”

“It’s pickled squam,” Gundhalinu said. “A kind of indigenous sea slug, I believe.”

The scattering of pale freckles on Wybenalle’s brown, narrow-featured face turned a sudden, anemic white. He swallowed the mouthful of squam like a man swallowing poison.

“Try some of this—” Gundhalinu gestured at a platter of small cakes heaped with fish eggs.

“Excuse me…” Wybenalle mumbled, beginning to turn away, searching the room with desperate eyes.

“We grow or we die…” Gundhalinu said, smiling pleasantly as Wybenalle left them abruptly, heading for the bathrooms. “Right, Vhanu?” He looked back at his Commander of Police, letting his smile widen.

Vhanu grimaced. “Do thou really think that was wise?” he said, still speaking Sandhi.

“No.” Gundhalinu shook his head, still smiling. “It wasn’t kind, either. But by all my sainted ancestors, that man has given me enough grief for a lifetime in the past weeks. Allow me the privilege of being petty.” He shrugged, trying to loosen the tense muscles in his shoulders and neck. He reached into his belt pouch, and pulled out the scanner. “I have some data I’d like you to run a check on for me, NR.”

Vhanu produced his own scanner, and let it replicate the readings Gundhalinu had taken off the vial. “I should have the analysis for you some time late tomorrow. Will that be soon enough?”

“Fine.” Gundhalinu nodded. “It’s nothing pressing,” he said, answering Vhanu’s unspoken question. “Just my curiosity about one of the objects on the mantel over there.” He gestured casually, leaning against the table, looking toward the doorway the Ondinean had disappeared through. He was not sure why he didn’t say more; whether it was simply the fear of seeming absurd, or something deeper. Maybe tomorrow he would know.

Vhanu looked up as Kitaro approached them. “Excuse me, sathranu,” she said. “That friendly cycle of tan is about to begin on the upper level, if you care to join us?”

Gundhalinu nodded; answering both a spoken and an unspoken question

“Tan?” someone said behind him. “May I join you?” Kitaro shook her head. “Sorry. We already have our set. Next round—?” He shrugged, and drifted away. They followed her to the back of the room, and up the curving stairway. On the second floor they entered the gaming room, where five others waited expectantly, sitting cross-legged on floor mats around the circular game board. Gundhalinu looked down at the complex pattern of geometries on its surface. The board had been hand-crafted somewhere on Tsieh-pun from perfectly fitted inlays of colored wood. He admired its workmanship as he took his place in the circle. Vhanu sat down across the board from him; Kitaro closed the door and sat down on his left. To anyone looking in on them through the single window they would appear to be doing exactly what they were doing.

But they were doing something else, playing games within games, playing the Great Game, in this private room within the walls of the Survey Hall. He looked around the circle of faces, all but one of them Kharemoughis, and familiar to him. The one offworlder was a businessman from Four; the only woman was Kitaro, who was the only other sibyl besides himself. He looked down at the tan board again, the glittering colored-crystal gaming pieces, the almost hypnotic patterns of the wood. There were subtleties hidden within subtleties among the interlocking geometries of the board; he had learned to seek them out visually in all their permutations, as one of the disciplines he had been forced to master to reach the Seventh and the Fourteenth levels within Survey… discovering, the second time, all that he had missed the first, and wondering how he could have been so blind.

Tan was rumored to be nearly as old as the Great Game, if not older. There was an entire twelfth-level adhani made up of meanings ascribed to the crossings and combinations of the various forms, as if it were a kind of mystical genetic code. Some of the numerical symbolism had a relation to patterns occurring in the real world; some of them were completely obscure to him, and yet seemed to be utterly consistent within themselves. Others seemed to him to be nothing but accumulated superstitions… so far. He had yet to learn whether he would ever be required to study the game of tan again, at some future stage of his ongoing initiation into some unknown heights of perception, from which he could look down more clearly on the endless complexity of the human condition, on the interfaces of Order and Chaos.

Kitaro gathered up the colored fire of the gaming pieces and scattered them casually as she began the Recitation of Questions, taking on herself the role of Questioner. He marked in his memory where the pieces came to rest, randomly scattered across the board, but showing a heavy concentration of single-figures. The businessman from Four gathered up the crystals, tossed them out again, as he gave the first response. The sine wave of question and answer moved on around the circle, touching Vhanu, touching the official who sat next to him; the game pieces clattered against the edges of the game board and regrouped.

Gundhalinu made himself remember the outcome of each throw, searching for the greater pattern that would inexorably take shape out of the random motion; forcing himself to comprehend it, whether he believed it had any significance or not. The question-and-answer pattern of ritual response was the same one they used in the larger meeting hall below, at the formal social gatherings held there. But the questions asked here were not the same ones; nor, more importantly, were the answers.

He had found the rituals of the Survey he had known in his youth to be excruciatingly empty of meaning. But this ritual sang in his brain: Order and Chaos, the random workings of fate precariously balanced by the laws of universal motion. He found himself thinking of the Ondinean. His eyes wandered away from the game board toward the wide window looking out on the hall, as a pattern began to take form in the motion of falling stones, and fell apart again.

“And who has called this fellowship into being, and given us our duty, and shown us the power of knowledge?” Kitaro asked

“Mede,” Abbidoes answered, beside him.

Gundhalinu looked down at the game board again, and gathered up the crystals. “Ilmarinen.” He spoke his ancestor’s name as he cast the stones. He watched the pieces fall, stared at the sudden, subtle shift in the pattern he held inside his head. “Vanamoinen—!” he murmured, echoing Kitaro’s voice as she spoke the response in proper progression beside him.

Gundhalinu looked away at the window again, not even noticing the sharp looks of annoyance several people directed at him; half expecting to see a face staring in at them, at him, disguised by a fold of cloth, by skin dyed black, eyes darkened to indigo—but still with a gaze as insistent as a madman’s.

The window was empty. But he had seen Kullervo: Kullervo. Kullervo was here. He bit his lip to keep himself from shouting out the name, interrupting the pattern again, inexcusably. He forced his emotions back under control, recognizing the significance of the pattern, the importance of not breaking the surface tension of the group’s concentration…. Holding to his own place in the ritual, while at the same time his mind scattered clues like gaming pieces and read their pattern…. Kullervo had been here tonight; had been here before, disguised. But Kullervo was in the Brotherhood… Survey corrupted by the power of knowledge, using its secrets and its influence to destabilize and poison societies, feeding off the chaos they created, profiting off of it. The ones who had turned the values and beliefs of the guild’s original members inside out … who had murdered his brothers, and tried to keep him from returning to Tiamat.

Why had Kullervo come here tonight, and deliberately—he was sure of it—tried to attract his attention? He remembered the vial on the mantel suddenly. Even if Kullervo had not put it there, he had made Gundhalinu notice it. Why? Kullervo worked for the Brotherhood; Kullervo was a bioengineering genius, who knew more about technovirals than any living human being in the Hegemony….

And suddenly he understood: It was about the water of life. The Brotherhood was already at work here, insinuating itself into the fabric of the new society, as if he had set up no safeguards at all to prevent it. They wanted the water of life for themselves… . and Reede Kullervo was here to give it to them.

But then, what had Kullervo been doing here tonight? Spying, possibly; gathering data on the strength and organization of his enemies. Except that he seemed to have been deliberately drawing attention to himself, intentionally placing clues in the path of the one person who would understand them… .

The gaming pieces rattled for the final response; Gundhalinu stared at the element that completed the pattern, the forms which he had graven on his mind.

“Are there any questions which must be asked to be answered?” Kitaro murmured, glancing around the circle of pensive faces.

“Yes,” Gundhalinu said. “There was a man here tonight, passing as one of us. I just realized who he is. He’s one of the Brotherhood—the man who stole the stardrive from me at Fire Lake. His name is Reede Kulleva Kullervo.”

Vhanu started, across the table from him. “The Smith?” he murmured. “Ye gods—they say the Smith’s responsible for everything from the illegal stardrive market to half the drug trade coming out of Ondinee. He’s linked to Thanm Jaakola—”

Gundhalinu stiffened. “I hadn’t heard that. For how long?”

“Since the stardrive incident,” Vhanu said.

Gundhalinu grimaced, and frowned. “Vhanu, you have scanner data on his bionomes. … I had him investigated through official channels once; what I got didn’t satisfy me. I would like to put our resources to work on revealing who and what he really is. I think it could be vital to us to know exactly what he wants.”

“Let the Police pick him up, then, BZ,” Vhanu said with sudden eagerness. “Deactivate him, put him through deep questioning. Gods, to capture the Smith! It would be a phenomenal victory for us—for the Golden Mean.”

“No,” Gundhalinu said, filled with sudden repugnance. Vhanu stared at him. “No, NR,” he said again, less abruptly, and shook his head. “I think … I think the consequences would be too unpredictable.” Because Kullervo was too unpredictable. He tried to imagine the effect deep questioning would have on Kullervo’s unstable personality. It could easily cause him to have a complete breakdown. He wasn’t even sure exactly why that mattered te him, after what Kullervo had done to him at Fire Lake. Only that he wanted that mind intact … and, perversely, the soul of the man it was attached to. “We’re better off just watching him discreetly, now that we know he’s here; seeing where he leads us. There’s time enough to short-circuit him, if that becomes necessary. He isn’t going anywhere. I’m sure of that much.”

Vhanu nodded reluctantly.

“We’ll run a search on him, then,” Kitaro said. “As soon as possible.” Gundhalinu nodded, barely listening as the next question was brought up by Abbidoes… as his mind sank into memories of Reede Kullervo, the mystery, the contradictions of the man. Realizing suddenly how deep his need to have the answers was… how deep his need to see Kullervo again, and confront him, really ran. The pattern between them was incomplete: they had unfinished business….