The Summer Queen

KHAREMOUGH: Orbital Hub #1

“Your visitor is waiting, Gundhalinu-ken.”

“Thank you.” Gundhalinu moved past the guard through the doorway to the visitor’s room. They addressed him as “Gundhalinu-ken” here, because it was the only title he had which was not in limbo since his arrest. The sibyl tattoo was clearly visible above the loose neck of his detention-center coveralls, although they had taken away his trefoil: It could be used as a weapon.

The room was small and brightly lit, with calm green walls and a single table positioned at its center. There was carpeting under his feet as he walked forward, there were pictures on the walls. And running across the center of the room, through the middle of the table, there was an invisible force barrier separating him from the woman who stood waiting at the other side.

“Dhara—” he said. The full impact of all that had happened to him in the past weeks hit him like a blow, leaving him dazed. He stopped, staring back at her, at the child she held in her arms. He realized suddenly that he had gone numb since his arrest; that he had been in a state of shock, unable to face the reality of his situation or his reaction to it, until now.

“BZ?” she murmured, and he saw in her eyes the depths of uncertainty that he remembered, always hiding beneath the surface of her bright calm when she came near him. Her hesitation goaded him forward to take a seat at the table, encouraging her to do the same.

She sat down across from him, conservatively dressed in a long robe and slacks, her hair caught up with clips into graceful wings, the way he had liked it best. She settled the baby on the table with a sackful of toys; the baby reached eagerly for the bag, dumping out its contents. “Mine!” he said.

BZ watched in fascination as the child sat among the toys like someone who had just discovered treasure. The baby tried them on, twisted them, banged them on the table surface, oblivious to the absurd and tender smiles suddenly on the faces of the two people watching him at play.

“How do thou like thy son?” Pandhara said at last. She reached out, stroking the little boy’s hair; he glanced up at her, distracted, and offered her a bright, star-filled rattle. “BT Gundhalinu. … But it’s so stuffy. I call him Little Bit,” she said. The baby looked up again, hearing his name. “Big Little Bit …” she said, touching the tip of his nose with her finger. He smiled and put his own small, stubby-fingered hands up in the air. “So big,” he said.

“He’s beautiful,” BZ murmured. “Even more beautiful than the holos thou sent me. Gods, how he’s changed—”

“Babies do that,” she said, softly and a little sadly.

“And so do our fortunes,” he murmured, not meaning to.

She looked up at him, away again quickly.

“It’s not as if we didn’t know this could happen.”

She nodded, keeping his gaze this time. “He has thy eyes.”

BZ took a deep breath, remembering another boy with the same eyes, half a galaxy away. “Yes,” he said “I think he does.”

She nudged the baby toward him across the table. “See,” she whispered. “It’s thy father.” BZ leaned forward, reaching out until his hands encountered the barrier The baby cocked his head, seeming to notice him for the first time. He clung to his mother’s arm for a moment, peering reluctantly over his shoulder. And then he smiled, his face filling with delight again. He held out his own hands, until they met the invisible wall. He batted them against the tingling surface, butted it with his head, trying to reach his father. BZ pressed his own hands against the faintly yielding barrier, feeling joy and longing fill his chest until he could scarcely breathe.

“Move away from the barrier.”

BZ jerked his hands away as a mild shock stung them. The baby fell back, wailing; Pandhara scooped him up in her arms, comforting him.

“There was no need for that!” BZ pushed up out of his seat furiously, shouting at the walls. He sat back down again, answered only by the echo of his own voice, mocking him.

Pandhara stared at him as the baby quieted. “Are we being monitored?” she asked incredulously, her eyes dark with impotent anger. “They said we would have privacy—”

“It was probably just an automatic response,” he said, not at all certain that it had been. He watched the baby turn in her arms, struggling to get free, reaching out to him, calling, “Ba! Ba!” His hands rose; he lowered them, clenching them into fists below the table’s edge. Pandhara picked up a ball filled with colored lights and waved it in front of the baby; he took it in his arms, biting it, and settled reluctantly into her lap. “How … how are things at the estates?”

“Fine,” she said, her voice strained. “Truly. Everything is fine.”

“And how is thy work? Has BT let thee get anything done since his birth?”

She smiled. “Well … less. But I asked Ochi—my youngest sister, thou remember her—to stay with us while she completes her study course. She watches him part days while I work. He would be into everything otherwise, wouldn’t thou, my Little Bit—?” She looked down at him. He held up the ball. “Pretty ball,” she said.

“Pitty baw,” he echoed, and nodded.

“And how has thy social life been?” BZ asked, not quite casually. “I nope thou’ve been able to see thy friends, and not felt too … isolated there.”

She looked at him for a long moment. “No,” she said finally, “I’m not lonely. My friends come often, someone is almost always there; they love the beauty of the place as much as I do.” She glanced down. “I see Therenan Jumilhac quite often these days … thou met him that afternoon at the cafe…. BT adores him, he’s very good with children.”

“I’m glad,” BZ said, and smiled.

She looked up again. “BZ, I wanted to come sooner. I tried. They wouldn’t even let me see thee, until KR Aspundh intervened, somehow. He sends thou his highest regards, and regrets that he could not come with us. His health is poor right now, and he isn’t permitted to leave the surface. He said to tell thee that he is doing all he can to help thy cause, that he knows these charges are unjust.”

“Tell him I’m grateful, and wish him a swift recovery.” BZ nodded and smiled. “My attorneys tell me that the Central Committee is trying to suppress what happened on Tiamat, calling it a matter of Hegemonic Security, in order to keep my side of it from the people. They can’t afford to let me have any kind of access to the public record. But Pernatte himself sent assurances that when my trial comes up there will be Hegemony-wide media coverage. He’s the head of the Secretariat, and he’s always been one of my strongest supporters.”

Pandhara opened her mouth; closed it again, with an odd frown working the muscles of her face. “I don’t even know, myself, what happened on Tiamat, BZ. They would not even tell me what thou had been charged with.”

He felt his own mouth tighten. “With treason. ‘Secretly working to undermine the Hegemony’s security.’”

Pandhara looked stunned—exactly the way he had looked, when he had heard the full charges. “But that carries a sentence of life imprisonment, if thou’re found guilty.”

Without reprieve. He nodded, glancing away. “At least I’ll still be alive; we’re civilized, after all… . And it’s not like I’ll be sent to the Cinder Camps. Wherever I am, I’ll be able to work to change their minds. They won’t send me anywhere too unpleasant,” he repeated, trying to reassure her. “They owe me that much.” He forced himself to smile, and shrug. “Let’s take it as it comes, Dhara. I haven’t even been tried yet. If I make my case well enough, I’ll be exonerated.”

The stricken look did not leave her face; but she nodded, controlling herself with a visible effort “How did it happen, BZ? Who brought the charges?”

“It was Vhanu,” he said.

“Vhanu?” She leaned forward in disbelief; the baby squeaked, and dropped his ball. She reached down to pick it up, and he knocked it out of her hands. She handed him a flutterstick, her eyes still on her husband. “But Vhanu was like a brother to … to thee. …” She broke off, biting her lip.

“Yes,” BZ whispered. “Like a brother.” He shook his head. “From the day we arrived on Tiamat—long before that, really, but I didn’t want to believe it—we didn’t agree on anything about the way the Hegemony should be running things. 1 should have seen it coming … but I couldn’t afford to. The irony is that the real problem wasn’t even the one I thought I was going there to deal with. That was no problem at all, in the end. Instead it was the water of life… . Gods.” He leaned back in his chair, drained. “It can’t have been meant to happen like this.”

“And what about the Queen?” Pandhara asked, her voice betraying only the slightest hesitation. “Was she involved in what happened?”

He looked up, to see both regret and understanding fill her eyes. “Yes,” he said. “Our—relationship was the thing that turned the situation critical.” He looked down again, remembering the humiliation of his arrest, of being dragged from Moon’s bed in the middle of the night and taken away. He forced the memory out of his thoughts. “Dhara, I … I have two children on Tiamat, too. Moon was pregnant, when I left there before. I didn’t know it. They were grown, by the time I got back.” He looked at the child in her arms, beyond his reach, and was filled with a vast, aching emptiness. He sat very still, afraid that any motion would make him lose control. He could not afford to do that to her now, or to himself. He could not, he could not….

She was silent too, watching him watch their child. “I’m so sorry,” she murmured, at last.

“Don’t,” he whispered, shaking his head. “The—the worst part of it was—” he forced himself to go on speaking, clearly and evenly, “that I would have had to make the same choices, even if I hadn’t still been in love with her. It was true, I was needed there. I had to go back, I had to do what I did. I wasn’t crazy, I wasn’t wrong. Tiamat is far more important to the Hegemony than anyone knows, and the mers are more vital… . And yet it came to this.” It was his love for Moon that had driven him to return to Tiamat. It was only their passion for each other that had revealed the truth of his purpose there to him. And yet, the only mistake he could see that he had made was to love her, to consummate that love. It was flouting the restrictions of his position, and the sensibilities of his people, that had made him vulnerable and brought him down, leaving Moon there alone to bear the inescapable geas that had been laid upon them both. “Damn it, I’m ready for this trial! Maybe that’s why I’m back here, to challenge everyone’s perceptions about the situation, to tell the truth—”

“BZ,” Pandhara said, in sudden anguish, “there isn’t going to be a trial.”

“What?” he said.

“They’re not going to give thee a trial, they won’t let thee be heard.”

“No, they will, Dhara. I’ve been assured—”

“They’re lying to thee!” she said. “KR told me that the Secretariat is passing judgment on thee itself.”

“That’s impossible—”

“Everyone has been lying to thee, even Pernatte, even thy own attorneys.” She turned, looking back over her shoulder, as the doors on both sides of the room burst open, and uniformed guards came in. “They were watching!” she blurted. “They lied about everything!”

He pushed to his feet. “Go to Aspundh! Tell him no one knows the real truth but Moon. He has to contact her—” The guards reached him first, dragged him back away from the barrier.

“BZ!” she cried, but suddenly he couldn’t hear her voice anymore; the guards reached her, seizing her by the arms. She pulled away as they tried to force her toward the door. The baby began to wail, soundlessly; she stopped resisting, and let them lead her out, still looking back.

“Tell him—!” BZ shouted. The guards forced him through the doorway; the door closed behind him, and that was the last he saw of her.