The Summer Queen

TIAMAT: Prajna, Planetary Orbit

Reede Kullervo opened his eyes with the confusion of a man wakened after too little sleep; heard his own slurred voice mouthing sounds that should have been questions, or demands.

“Boss …” someone else’s voice was saying, with more effect than his own. “Boss—?” Niburu. His last memory was of Niburu, fog-gray, melting away. Niburu’s face was perfectly clear in front of him now; his hand crossed Reede’s line of vision to shake his shoulder with hesitant insistence.

“We’re there—?” Reede asked, managing somehow to speak intelligible words this time. He sat up, surprised that his body would obey him; clutched the seat-arms as he began to float upward, until he saw that restraining straps held him in. “Tiamat space?”

Niburu nodded; Reede filled in the slim, silent shadow of Ananke behind him, wearing a headset. “What about—?” He jerked his chin at Ariele’s seat, where the smoke-gray shield still rested undisturbed.

Niburu shrugged, and nodded.

“They’ve closed with us, Kedalion,” Ananke said suddenly. “They’re locking on to our hatch.”

Reede released his restraint harness and pushed up from his seat unsteadily. He clung to the solid support of the seatback until his sense of balance stabilized. “What is it? Have we been contacted?”

“More than that,” Niburu said grimly. “We’re being boarded. They barely gave us time to set orbit before they were on our backs; they must’ve been tracking us since the minute we came out of the last jump. The Hedge’s nearspace security wasn’t this paranoid before we left.”

“Move—” Reede gestured them aft with sudden vehemence. “Clear out of the LB, and seal it up. I don’t want them snooping around in here, fucking with those stasis units and asking a lot of questions. Hurry up!”

They followed him without protest; Niburu sealed the hatch behind them and led the way out of the Prajna’s holds toward the passenger area. Reede worked his way through the serpentine corridors that Niburu had filled with extra cargo storage so that there was barely space for a normal-sized man to pass through without banging his head on something. He swore under his breath, watching Ananke swimming lithely along the passageway ahead of him. His own sluggish body was made dizzy by his every movement. “Damn it, Niburu, why didn’t you turn on the gravity?”

“Sorry, boss,” Niburu said, looking back/down/up at him. “I move faster this way.”

Reede grunted. He had commented, complained, and finally ordered Niburu to get the interior of the ship refitted so that it was more comfortable to a man his own height. Niburu had ignored him, stalled, and finally, standing eye to eye with him from the height of a raised access in the systems center, told him to fuck off. “This is my ship,” Niburu had said. “It has to be my way.” And to his own surprise as much as Niburu’s, Reede had let it go.

He looked down/in as they passed the empty room that was the ship’s real heart, where Niburu navigated and they all endured the brutal passage through Black Gate transits. Its passenger cocoons gave them some protection against the stresses of hyperlight as well, now that the ship was outfitted with a jury-rigged stardrive unit, and the past and the future were fused into one imperfect present.

He went on without stopping through the cramped maze of dayroom, commons, and private sleeping cubicles, with nothing worse than bruises and curses. They arrived in the systems center just as the access at the other end filled with a cluster of armed troopers in spacesuits.

Niburu and Ananke raised their hands, drifting free, at the sight of the guns trained on them. Reede did the same, reflexively, kept his hands up reluctantly.

“Who are you? Why are you on my ship?” Niburu demanded, the indignation in his voice belying the submission gesture. “We had clearance when we left. You’ve got no reason to board us, let alone threaten us. I’m going to report this—”

“You can report it to me.” The front man in the group of intruders pushed toward them; banged his head on a piece of suspended equipment and pulled himself up short. He swore under his breath, his eyes threatening death to anyone who cracked a smile. “Lieutenant Rimonne, Hegemonic Navy. Tiamat is under martial law, and we are investigating the arrival of all unscheduled ships.”

“Martial law?” Niburu said blankly. “Look, I’m a free trader. I get shipments where I can; I don’t run on a schedule.”

“Our records show you claim to be arriving with the same cargo you were carrying when you left Tiamat. Would you like to explain that?”

Niburu shrugged. “A deal fell through. It’s a hard life.”

“Nice try.” The lieutenant gestured at his men. “We’re taking you aboard our vessel for questioning, and probably detention.”

“Wait a minute,” Reede said, moving forward cautiously, his hands still high. “I’m their return cargo. They brought me here to see Gundhalinu. I have to see Gundhalinu, as soon as possible.”

Rimonne raised his eyebrows, taking in Reede’s bandaged head and torn, bloodied clothing. “The Chief Justice? That’s going to be difficult.”

Reede glanced down at himself, realizing that his appearance didn’t help his credibility any. “Take me down to the surface. Contact him, tell him I’m here, he’ll see me. My name is Reede Kullervo.”

The lieutenant looked unimpressed. “It doesn’t matter—”

“Maybe you’ve heard of me. They call me the Smith.”

Everyone’s eyes were on him suddenly, staring. “The Smith?” Rimonne laughed. “There’s no such person. The Smith is a legend; he doesn’t exist.”

“What if you’re wrong?” Reede said, staring back at him.

Rimonne hesitated. His face pulled into a frown. “What kind of business would the Smith have with the Chief Justice of Tiamat—if the Smith existed?” He held his gun aimed more precisely at Reede’s chest.

“It’s about the water of life,” Reede said steadily. “He needs what I know. I ave to see him.”

“That’s unfortunate, because he’s gone,” the lieutenant said. He smiled sourly. f^And you’re under arrest.”

“Gone? What do you mean he’s gone?” Reede said, feeling his mind stop functioning. Ilmarinen, you can’t abandon me again.

“He was sent back to Kharemough, charged with treason. Police Commander Vhanu has declared martial law; he’s in charge now.”

“No,” Reede said fiercely. “He can’t be, that goddamn son of a bitch—” He “looked at the guns trained on his heart, as the full realization of what he had done to himself hit him. He turned suddenly, shoving Ananke aside as he pushed toward the doorway.

Someone fired; the stunshock caught him full in the back, deadening his entire body. He drifted, helpless, as they hauled him ignominiously into the systems center again. They locked his hands together behind him; did the same to Ananke and Niburu. They searched him; he watched in numb despair, unable even to protest as they took the vial containing the water of death from his belt pouch.

“He’s sick,” Niburu protested, as the marines confiscated the drug. “He needs that. It’s medicine, let him keep it.”

The lieutenant shook his head. “That’s not what it looks like to me.” He glanced at the man holding the vial. “Send it down with them. Have the Police check it out.” Reede shut his eyes, unable to make any sound at all; feeling as if the frustration and rage inside his brain would explode his skull like shrapnel.

The lieutenant pointed toward the access behind him. “Take them out. Contact the Police.” He looked back at Reede. “Too bad the Chief Justice can’t see you, Kullervo. But Commander Vhanu’s going to be overjoyed.”

By the time they reached dirtside his voluntary nervous system had come alive again, letting him stand and walk on his own feet as the marines turned them over, with the water of death, to the waiting squad of Blues.

The Blues took them back through the umbilical tunnel that connected the starport to Carbuncle. Reede slumped in his seat, saying nothing, staring straight ahead into the blackness shot with light.

They did not take the usual lift ride, up through the hollow core of one of the city’s pylons to an exit somewhere along the Street. Instead, the Blues forced them on into the twilit docks below the city, toward the main access ramp the Tiamatans used to get to and from their ships.

“Why are we going this way?” Reede snapped, breaking his silence at last, irritable with tension and fear.

One of the Blues glanced at him. “Lift’s not functioning,” he said.

Reede looked at him in disbelief. He looked away again, already too aware of the crawling itch beneath his skin, the bum of his soles as the ground pressed against them, the separate exquisite pain of every cut and laceration on his battered body, as his nerve endings became hypersensitized. He tried not to think about how much longer their journey would take this way, how much more effort it would take, how much less time and strength he would have at the end of it.

The Blues halted him at the foot of the ramp, as another cluster of patrolmen came toward them, carrying what looked like a corpse in a body bag.

The sergeant in charge of his squad moved forward, his face tight. “Who is it?” he asked.

“Not one of ours,” the woman leading the other detail said. “Some local.”

The sergeant’s expression eased. “One of those Motherloving Summers fall overboard again?” His mouth turned up in a hopeful smile.

She shook her head. “A Winter. One Kirard Set Wayaways. We’re turning him over to the city constables.”

Reede stiffened. “What happened to him?” he demanded

The female Blue looked toward him, surprised. “The Queen’s justice,” she said sourly. “Guess he wasn’t much of a swimmer.”

Reede felt his own face form a smile more like a rictus. “Out of his depth …” he murmured. His guards urged him forward again, and he began to climb.

As they ascended the ramp he realized that something else was wrong with the city: it was growing darker instead of lighter as they climbed. Carbuncle had always been filled with light, day and night—he had never even thought about it, taking it for granted, like the automatic climate control of the city’s self-contained system. It had existed that way since before the Hegemony’s recorded time, a product, a relic, of the Old Empire. He had been told that Carbuncle ran on tidal power, that there were immense turbines in caves somewhere deep in the rock below the city. He had been told that it always ran perfectly, self-maintaining, self-perpetuating.

But there was no such thing as perpetual motion. The city’s darkness, waiting above to swallow him, filled him with a strange emotion, that was as much urgency as it was fear. “What the hell happened?” he asked. But he knew what had happened; he knew, these signs were important, he had to act now. If he could only remember what he had to do—

“The lights went out,” the Blue walking beside him said. “Everything went out. The city’s stopped working.”

“Why?” Reede asked.

“I don’t know.” The Blue shrugged, frowning.

“How long ago?”

“Two days,” the Blue said.

“Three days,” Reede murmured. “Two gone …”

“What?” The Blue stopped him.

“I have to see the Summer Queen,” Reede said. “I have to see the Queen.”

“You know something about this?” the Blue asked. His hand struck Reede’s shoulder, when Reede did not answer. “Do you—?”

“He doesn’t know anything, for gods’ sakes,” another man said. “He’s trying to jerk us around. Get moving—” A hand caught Reede between the shoulder blades, propelling him forward.

Reede went on without protest, stupefied by the seething mental energy that the darkened city had set loose inside his brain. Yes, he thought, looking left and right at the batteries of portable lights, at the flickering dance of candles being carried along the night-filled alleys of the Lower City, where mostly Summers lived. Yes. I’ve come home…. But he did not know why he thought it, and the thought only filled him with desolation.

They went on, circling slowly, ever upward, the helmet lights of the Police surrounding him like glowflies, showing him the way ahead. The few other lights he aw passed them by like the motion of strange creatures in the black depths of the sea. ‘Most of the citizens seemed to be staying at home, by choice or otherwise. The air sit stagnant to him, although the transparent storm shutters at the ends of every alleyway stood open now, letting Carbuncle’s human hive breathe on its own. His face ran with sweat; he could not wipe it away, with his hands locked behind him. They went on, through the Maze, although he had difficulty even recognizing it with so much of it in darkness. Even Persiponë’s Hell was closed down and dark, find him Kedalion swore, breathless from trying to keep up. He had not realized he was slowing down too, until someone shoved him again from behind. He stumbled into Ananke, who was ahead of him now. Ananke lurched sideways, with a clumsiness Reede only recognized as intentional when Ananke collided with the Blue shadowing his own steps. The Blue went down with a grunt of surprise, in a sudden lightstorm of intersecting headlamp beams.

“Reede, run—!” Ananke’s voice shouted, as Reede dodged groping arms and flailing legs. Reede broke away from their struggling bodies, looking back as he Ananke cry out in pain behind him. Run— He ran, with no choice but to abandon them. He had to make it to Street’s End, to the palace— A random stunshot grazed his arm; he felt it go numb and tingling.

He ran faster up the black, nearly empty street, knowing that he still had a third of the city to go, all of it uphill through the darkness. He wondered if the Blues were able to call for reinforcements. The darkness must be crawling with Police, out doing their job, harassing potential thieves and troublemakers. Thieves and troublemakers; gods—

The way ahead was still a tunnel with no light at its end; but as he passed one more alley entrance, light flooded around him suddenly, and voices shouted at him to stop.

He jerked to a halt; trapped in the sudden crisscross of beams like an insect, as dark figures swarmed around him.

“We’ve got him! Commander!” someone called behind him, catching hold of the binders that still trapped his wrists. He jerked free, but there was nowhere left for him to go. He stood still, his exhausted body trembling, humiliating him. Someone stepped in front of him; he was blinded as another helmet light shone directly into his face. He swore, squinting; opened his eyes again as the light unexpectedly dimmed to a bearable level. Blinking his sight back, he tried to make out the face of Vhanu, BZ Gundhalinu’s right-hand man, the ass-kissing martinet Gundhalinu had stupidly made Commander of Police.

But it was a woman’s face he saw—middle-aged, cinnamon-skinned; New havenese, not even Kharemoughi. The Chief Inspector… PalaThion, that was her name. But they’d called her Commander. He peered at her, seeing that she was not wearing a Police uniform; realizing that the people surrounding her, and him, were all Tiamatan—the local constabulary, not the Blues. “Huh—” he said, half in confusion and half in disbelief. And then, like a mindless recording, he said, “I have to see the Queen.”

PalaThion’s eyes narrowed as she looked at his face, until she was almost frowning. “Who are you?”

“Reede Kullervo. I need to see the Queen.”

“Yes—” she whispered, but for a moment she wasn’t seeing him. “Thank you, gods!” she murmured. Uncertainty filled him as she looked at him again, at his pinioned hands. She turned away as the sound of running feet closed with them, and more lights joined their pool of illumination.

“You got him?” a voice demanded. He saw blue uniforms gathering in the light of the constables’ lanterns; recognized the voice of the sergeant who had been in charge of him.

“Don’t let them take me back,” he muttered, holding PalaThion’s gaze. “Don’t.”

She nodded, a barely perceptible movement of her head, before she stepped past him to face the Blues. Reede turned, squinting again as their lights picked him out inside the ring of constables. “This man is in our custody now. We have a prior claim on him.”

“He’s an offworlder,” the sergeant said. “He’s under our jurisdiction.”

“What’s he charged with?”

The sergeant hesitated. “He says he’s the Smith.”

“Do you have any proof of it?”

The Blue glanced at his men, back at her. “No. Not until we run an ID check on him. What does the Queen want him for?”

“He kidnapped the Queen’s daughter,” PalaThion said, her voice deadly. “He’s in our custody, and he stays with us. If Vhanu wants him, let Vhanu come to the palace, and discuss it with the Queen. Although I don’t expect he’ll get much cooperation, as long as we’re under martial law.”

The sergeant’s face twisted; Reede watched him assessing the situation, the fact that the Tiamatans outnumbered his own men. He must have left part of his patrol behind with Niburu and Ananke. Finally he jerked his head. “Keep him, then. And tell the Queen if she wants to talk about an end to martial law, she’d damn well better turn the lights back on!” He gestured at the others; they followed him away down the Street.

“Did the Queen really shut down the city?” Reede asked, when they had gone.

PalaThion shook her head. “But Vhanu’s ready to blame it on her. Are you really the Smith?”

Reede looked away. “I thought you worked for Vhanu,” he said, ignoring the question. “I thought you were Chief Inspector.”

She shook her head again. “I worked for Gundhalinu. But he’s gone.”

“I know,” Reede murmured. “I know.” He felt a sudden wave of nausea hit him, and realized that he was shivering again, as if it were cold. It was not cold. “Shit!” He jerked his head. “Take me to the Queen, damn it, I don’t have much time!”

“Ease off, boy,” she said, putting a restraining hand on his pinioned arm. “We’ll get you there soon enough.”

He glared at her; pulled away from her grasp and started on up the hill at a jog trot, forcing them to follow.

At last they reached Street’s End, the plaza before the palace entrance. Its white alabaster expanse was ringed with lanterns. PalaThion took the lead now, speaking to the guards who stood as they always did near the heavy doors. The doors opened to let them pass, and Reede entered the Summer Queen’s palace for the first time. He followed PalaThion down a long, echoing corridor, his eyes disturbed by the dance of light around him, the glimpses of painted pastoral scenes—green hills, water and sky, illuminated by the restless motion of lantern beams.

Up ahead the hall finally ended, opening out into a vast, high chamber. The air smelled suddenly, surprisingly, of the sea. Far above him were more windows like the storm walls at the end of every alley along the Street. But these were shut, unlike all the rest. Beyond the windows the night sky burned with the light of a million stars.

Reede looked down again, seeing another cluster of lights across the chamber. Someone was waiting there. “It’s the Queen,” PalaThion murmured.

But between the Queen and where he stood, there was something else … a strand of darkness arcing across a well of eerily glowing green light. Reede moved past PalaThion, starting toward it with a sense of premonition, a sudden urgency.

“Kullervo!” PalaThion called sharply, catching hold of his arm. “Wait a minute, that’s the Pit. You can’t cross this room in the dark; there’s no floor.”

“It isn’t dark,” Reede murmured.

“It’s pitch black,” she said. “What are you talking about?”

“Let me go.” He jerked against her hold, starting forward again. “I see perfectly. I have to go there …”

She released him, wordlessly; he saw the look in her eyes. She doesn’t see it. He felt his skin prickle with sudden terror, felt his entrails knot up inside him. But he went on, alone, drawn toward the glow like an insect, helplessly, instinctively. He reached the spot where the railless span bridged the Pit, and stopped again. Now, here, at last, all his questions would be answered… . He had finally come to the place where he had been meant to be.

He held his breath as compulsion locked his muscles and forced him to step out onto the bridge, over the well of bottomless light. He was dimly aware that PalaThion had followed him, but was keeping her distance. He took another step, trembling with awe and fear, feeling the green light reach up to caress him like a lover, engulfing his senses in the most beautiful music, the sensation of silk and velvet, the smell of the ocean wind… . “No,” he whispered, like a child, as he went on into the light, “no, I don’t want to, I’m afraid …”as his consciousness dissolved into the sea of sensation and compulsion. He sank to his knees at the center of the bridge, as he sank deeper and deeper under its spell… .

Vanamoinen. It reverberated in his brain, a demand, an affirmation. Yes…. He was Vanamoinen, not the other, the receptacle of flesh and blood, the stranger who huddled on the span now in pathetic human misery. He remembered… how he had chosen this world, created this city, an ornate, incomprehensible jewel that would haunt humankind for generations after he was gone. They would preserve and protect it, because it was unique, never guessing that it existed to be the pin in the map, marking the secret place where lay his real girt to future generations: the databanks that preserved all that he could gather of human knowledge—the nexus of the sibyl mind, the mirror of his soul.

But not his soul alone—Ilmarinen’s. It would never have existed, he could never have realized his dream … he would never have had those dreams, if it had not been for Ilmarinen, whom he loved. Whose calm rationality and understanding of human weakness amazed him, whose dark eyes were deeper than infinity, whose sudden, unexpected smile had come to mean more to him than a hundred honors, a thousand empty gestures of praise from the corporeal gods of the Interface. Ilmarinen, who had been the other half of him, of his genius; whose soul was joined with his forever in the design and programming of the sibyl system. The system born of their mutual vision and sacrifice had survived the generations since their deaths, doing good, spreading knowledge freely; the symbol of all they had been to each other, all they had believed in. Ilmarinen … he called. Ilmarinen—?

But Ilmarinen was dead, laid to rest millennia ago, as he thought he himself had been. He should not be here now, like this, awakened from his centuries of peace, brought back to life as a total stranger in this strange and terrifying existence.

Except … He remembered it now, remembered everything that had been denied to him for so long: He remembered that he had willed this himself. After Ilmannen’s death, he had made the arrangements, had recorded his brainscan and hidden it in a secret place remembered only by the sibyl mind, in case the net should ever need him in some future time.

And now that time had come. He had been called back to life, and he did not need anyone to tell him what had happened. There had been no crucial errors in the system’s design or programming; there had been no mistakes in the genetic design when they had played god and created the mers. Their only failure had been in underestimating human greed. Giving human beings indefinitely extended lives had never been their desire, or their point. But someone had taken notice of the mers’ longevity, someone had unlocked their secret, and the Hunts had begun.

And because, over the centuries, they had slaughtered the mers, the sibyl mind was failing. Now it had called him back, to save it if he could. If he could…

Come with me, the voice said. Help me….

“Come with me.…”

He raised his head, looking up into the face of the Summer Queen. He realized slowly that he was down on his knees, crouched fetally on the fragile span above the glowing Pit, his body shaken by tremors as though he were having a seizure.

“Help me,” the Queen murmured, her hands lifting him, gently but firmly. “Help me get you away from here, to somewhere you’ll be safe.”

“Nowhere …” he mumbled. “Nowhere I’m safe.”

“Yes,” she whispered, with soft conviction. “With me.”

He got clumsily to his feet, drawn by something in her gaze, and let her lead him on across the bridge, to the safety of the far rim. She carried no light; she did not seem to need one. PalaThion followed them; when they stood on solid ground she breathed a sigh of relief, and released the binders he still wore.

Reede brought his hands up; pressing his eyes, trying to burn away the suffocating echoes of green. He let his hands drop again, and found the Queen’s steady, searching gaze still on his face. He saw other figures standing behind her, but registered only one—thinking, for a brief, heart-stopping moment, that he saw Gundhalinu waiting in the shadows. But it was only the Queen’s son, Tammis, with his wife standing beside him, her expression guarded and fearful.

Tammis was not looking at him, but past him; staring at the Pit. He sees it too. Reede moved slightly, for a better view; saw the glint of a trefoil against the boy’s tunic. Does he know—? He let them lead him away, on up the wide stairway into the palace’s heart; gazing in fascination at the glimpses of form and decoration illuminated by their passage. He recognized nothing, and yet he knew, with an indefinable sense of space, exactly where he was, as if he were a traveler returning home after an absence of many years.

They brought him into a small room that had been made into a library, filled with varieties of information storage from primitive to state-of-the-art. One wall opened on the city’s silver-lit silhouette, on the sky and the sea. He looked around him, only remembering to sit down because his body abruptly insisted on collapsing. I The Queen herself brought him something to drink. He accepted the cup without I comment and sipped the cool, bitter liquid, feeling its pungency begin to clear his I head.

“Where is my daughter?” the Queen asked, as he raised his head again. “Where 1 is my pledged?” Reede saw how she looked at him, taking in the bloodstains, his 1 ruined clothes, his face.

“Ariele’s safe, for now,” he said. “On board my ship, in stasis. Your “husband … your husband died.” He looked down, away from her stricken face. t”He caught a bad one, getting us out. He died. I’m sorry. …”

The Queen made a small, wordless noise as grief choked her. She turned away “from him, moving toward the windows. She stood there alone looking out at the stars; no one around him moved, granting her the illusion of solitude. Reede set his I cup down roughly on the opalescent table surface beside his seat; wanting to shout at her that there wasn’t time for grief, there wasn’t time— He kept his silence, like the _rest of them, until at last she turned back again.

“What about the drug?” she said to him. Her body gave an involuntary spasm. I “The water of death?”

“The Blues got all 1 had.” He shook his head. “I thought Gundhalinu would be f here, damn it! I thought he’d be able to help us—”

The Queen was silent again for a long moment; fighting for control, he realized, I when he looked back “at her at last. “He will come back,” she said finally. “When I we’ve done what we have to do.”

“It’ll be too late,” he whispered. He felt giddy suddenly, as if his head were lighter than air. He swore under his breath.

“Vanamoinen,” the Queen said softly. “Do you know why you’re here? Did it tell you—?”

He raised his eyes again, studying the strange paleness of her hair, the porcelain translucency of her skin. “Yes,” he murmured.

The Queen glanced at the others waiting behind her. “We need to speak alone.” They nodded, starting one by one toward the door. PalaThion hesitated, her eyes | asking a question. The Queen nodded, and she followed the others out.

“Not you,” Reede said suddenly, as Tammis moved away from his mother’s I side. “You stay.”

Tammis hesitated, half frowning with doubt or surprise. His wife closed her Ihand over his, trying to pull him after her without seeming to. Reede recognized the | slight swelling of her belly, and wondered if that was what made her try to change this mind. But Reede held the boy’s gaze with unrelenting insistence. “You saw ^something,” he said to Tammis. “You know something.”

Tammis nodded, and urged his wife silently, apologetically, away from him. I She went out, and her doleful stare was the last thing they saw as she shut the door.

When they were completely alone, he said, “I need two sibyls—the sibyl net [picked you,” he gestured at the Queen, “and Gundhalinu. But Gundhalinu’s gone.” l He turned back to Tammis. “I think you’re here to replace him. Can you swim? Use ‘, underwater gear?”

Tammis nodded, settling into an ornate corner chair. “What’s this about?”

The Queen took a seat on the long couch where Reede was already sitting, and j he saw the dubious glance she threw his way. She was prevented from explaining; the sibyl mind controlled her, as it had controlled Gundhalinu. But it didn’t control him, and it was too late now for second thoughts. “The artificial intelligence that runs the sibyl net—the entire database, and the programming that controls it—is located here, below Carbuncle,” he said.

Tammis stared at him. “How do you know that?” he asked. “I thought nobody knew where it was.”

“Your mother knows.” Reede glanced at her. “And Gundhalinu. And I know it, because I put it here.”

Tammis laughed in disbelief. “There’s been a sibyl net for millennia! Even the Snow Queen didn’t live that long.”

“I’m not just someone named Kullervo. I’m something more now. My name was—is—Vanamoinen. The real Vanamoinen died long ago; I’m a construct, a database … his avatar, for want of a better word. I’m using Reede Kullervo to do what I have to do, here, now. The network I helped design brought me back because it’s failing. The mers are part of the system, they were meant to interact with and maintain the sibyl network: it’s a technogenetic system with two radically different substrates—” He broke off, seeing the incomprehension on their faces. He tried again, groping for terms that they would have some chance of understanding. “The mersongs contain information that the smartmatter of the computer requires, and certain chemicals released during the mers’ mating cycle also trigger self maintenance sequences, allowing the computer to purge itself of errors, and restructure any drift in its logic functions.”

“Their—mating?” Tammis said. “I thought they mated at sea.”

“It’s a two-stage process.” Reede shrugged. The initial stage occurred when the mers were actually within the computer; all of them together. Their communion with the sibyl nexus primed them biologically, so that when they did mate, they could conceive. He had intended for it to keep their population stable, because they were so long-lived. And he had intended for it to bring them pleasure, so that they would be glad to return, for their own sakes, as well as the sake of the net.

He shook his head, with a smile that held as much pain as irony. “We thought we had it all planned perfectly. We never imagined the people the net was meant to serve would begin killing them off…. We never realized what forces would work on a system that survived this long, through so much history.” He looked up at them, and his smile became self-mocking. “You try inventing a fault-tolerant system with superhuman intelligence that has to survive forever….” He laughed once. “We made a mistake; we were only human, after all—”

They were both staring at him now, in wonder and fascination. He felt an unexpected tenderness fill him, as he looked back at them—the descendants, the survivors, the people for whom he had created all of this. Seeing the trefoils they wore, the same symbol he had worn, so long ago; knowing that they carried in their blood the same transforming technoviral that he had been the first to carry. He had designed the choosing places to seek out people like these, counted on people like these to go on seeking out the choosing places; and after more than two millennia, even with all that had gone wrong, it was still happening as he had planned.

He smiled, even as Reede Kullervo’s body twisted and shifted position, made restless by the growing discomfort of its failing systems. He wiped his sweating face on his sleeve, and wished suddenly that he had not drunk whatever it was they had given him. Even the thought of drinking or eating made his stomach rise into his throat. He swallowed hard, feeling panic start inside him, not certain whose it was, who he was… . “What—?” he said, as he realized the Queen had asked him something.

“Is there … is there anything I can get for you?” she repeated, her eyes troubled.

He shook his head, and stretched his cramping hands. “Just listen. We don’t have a lot of time. Do you know why the city’s gone dark?”

“No,” the Queen said, her gaze sharpening. “Do you?”

“Yes.” He glanced away, looking out at the sky and its reflection in the sea below. For a moment he remembered another darkness, with only the faintest whisper of ruddy light, so fragile he might almost be imagining it, to make its dark heart all the more terrible. He looked down again, focusing on the fractal patterns of the rug beneath his feet. “Because it’s time—the right time, the only time when anything can be changed. The turbines that provide the city’s power—and power for the sibyl nexus—shut down once during every High Year, at the time when the mers return to the city. At all other times, the turbines make the passage in to where the computer lies completely inaccessible. Anyone who tried to get past them would be killed. But for those three days the way is clear, to let the mers pass inside. When the turbines start up again, the computer will be unreachable for another two and a half centuries. Any attempt to get at it any other way will fail, or destroy it.”

“Why?” Tammis asked.

“Because I had to be sure that it would never become the possession of a single faction in any human power games. That’s why I made absolutely certain that its location would remain unknown. That’s why your mother and Gundhalinu could never explain what they were doing.”

Tammis glanced at his mother. “Then how did you find out?”

“Once, as I was crossing the Pit, it called up to me …” the Queen said, her voice growing faint. “It … chose me, to help it. And all these years, I’ve tried—” Reede saw the terrible weariness in her eyes. “Tried to understand what it needed from me … why it chose me.”

“It chose you because you were in the right place at the right time.” He hesitated. “I’m not saying it was an accident… .” He touched his own head. “I’m not saying it was entirely predestined, either. But you’re Arienrhod’s clone for a reason.” He saw her flinch. “Arienrhod proved she had the strength and the intelligence to get what she wanted from her own people and the offworlders, whether they liked it or not. You are what you are, Moon Dawntreader… . But you’re also the Lady,” he added gently, “the holder of this world’s trust. You are what Arienrhod should have been. Because you were raised by the Summers, who kept—kept peace with the sibyl net, and protected the mers, you have the ability to see the long view. Arienrhod couldn’t have done that. You understand why it matters, why it really matters—” He broke off. “You are the future I wanted to believe in.”

She looked down; looked up at him again, with gratitude shining in her eyes. But then her expression changed. “You said there would be access to the computer for only three days. More than two of them are gone.”

He nodded. “That’s why we can’t wait. One reason.” He glanced down at his unsteady hands. “Your husband had data on the lost elements of the mersong. I have to reconstruct them—” He realized, with a sudden sinking feeling, that there was probably not a functional computer with the kind of database he required anywhere in the city.

“It’s already been done for you,” the Queen said.

He looked back at her. “Gundhalinu? Did he do it before his arrest?”

“No,” she said, with a faint smile. “The Sibyl College finished his work.” She touched the trefoil she wore. “I can get the tapes for you—we reproduced the mersong, inserting the missing passages.”

He smiled too, in spite of himself. “I’ll need underwater gear for two people—him, and me.” He gestured at Tammis.

She half frowned. “What are you going to do?”

“We’ve got to go down into the … into the—” He broke off, found himself with his hand pressed to his mouth, like a man about to be sick. He forced his hand down to his side again. “Into the sea, through the turbines, into the computer with the mers. I have to check out the system myself, to see what’s gone wrong with it, and reprogram. … We have to give the right songs back to the mers.”

Into the sea, under the water … drowning, death, blackness. The images filled his mind, and again he did not know whose fear filled him, who had always been terrified of death by water, who had always known that it would be his destiny. … He swore under his breath, wanting to cry out. You’re damned anyway, you miserable bastard, he thought, with furious self-loathing. Death by water, or the water of death. It doesn’t matter how you die! But it did. … He looked out at the night, so that he would not have to look into the eyes of the two people watching him.

“Why does Tammis have to go with you?” the Queen demanded, and he heard fear for her son in her voice. “I’m a sibyl; the sibyl net chose me.”

“That’s why. You have to remain clear, where you’re protected. You’re going to be in deep Transfer, for hours, inside its mind … it will show you, and you’re going to tell me, what’s wrong. I need you to guide me, let me know when the healing is done. That’s going to be dangerous enough.” He felt the heat of her resistance, her uncertainty as she searched the face of the man who had poisoned her only other child. “You won’t be functional, damn it! I need someone who can work with me—and it has to be another sibyl who can act as go-between for us.” He gestured at Tammis.

“But I thought you were a sibyl,” she said, still frowning, even though there was the beginning of understanding in her eyes now.

He laughed, with another man’s bitter terror. “No, Lady,” he whispered, with another man’s voice. “I am not a sibyl. Sibyls are sacred. I am a human sacrifice. …” Tammis shuddered, staring at him.

The Queen’s face changed. She reached out slowly, as if she were afraid he might bolt, and touched his cheek, as gently as she might have touched her own child. The barest contact of her fingers sent a shock jittering through the nerve endings in his face. But he did not pull away.

He felt her withdraw her hand, after a moment. “I’ll get the data and underwater equipment for you as quickly as I can,” she said. “But how will you reach the computer? You can’t go into the city; you can’t get to the sea without Vhanu’s patrols seeing you.”

“Yes, we can.” He rubbed his eyes, forcing himself to concentrate again, to stay focused, to function as one human being. “The Pit is an access well, it goes down to the sea. It goes exactly where we need to be.”

“But there’s no power—even the well is shut down.”

“Not for us,” he said gently. “It knows about us. I want you to come with us down into the well. We can’t risk being interrupted. Even Vhanu can’t reach us once we’re down there.” He hesitated, seeing her face change. “Have you ever experienced an extended Transfer?”

She nodded. “Once. It was—” She broke off, and he saw the memory of an endless absence that still haunted her. Like drowning …

“It won’t be like that, this time,” he murmured. “It will be—nothing like anything you’ve ever known. But it will still be difficult. …”

“I know.” She looked up at him with a weary, sorrow-filled smile. “Isn’t everything?” She rose from the couch. “I’ll see to things,” she said, looking away again, suddenly distracted. For a moment she gazed at Tammis, and then she went silently out of the room.

Moon entered the room that had become her husband’s entire world within the palace, before his journey to Ondinee … to the Land of Death. She moved slowly about its perimeter, her eyes taking in every detail of its contents … the study materials, the imported electronics equipment, the makeshift bed to which he had exiled himself, after she had driven him away. He had never allowed servants to enter his private workspace; she had not allowed it either, since his disappearance.

She sat down on the edge of his cot, picking up a rumpled shirt that he had carelessly thrown aside. She pressed it to her face, inhaling the familiar scent of his skin until her mind filled with images of lying beside him in the sweet abandonment of love… memories of all that they had meant to each other, for so many years. Even knowing all that they had done to each other, all that they had thrown away or let slip through their hands, still in this moment she could remember only the good things. Because there was no need now to remember anything else. Because he was dead. He was dead… .

She dropped the shirt and rose from his bed again, moving on around the room, passing the terminal, remembering the work he had done, alone and unappreciated: the hidden secrets of the mersong he had discovered, the difference that his discoveries were about to make, which no one would ever be able to thank him for, now.

She stopped again before the small table whose private drawer she had forced, seeing its contents still scattered on the tabletop where she had left them, thoughtlessly, on the day she had lost the only other man she had ever loved. The sign of the Brotherhood still lay on the floor where she had dropped it: the symbol of Survey, in all its endless permutations of treachery and betrayal—yet with a gemstone as beautiful as the sun, the symbol of enlightenment, glowing at its heart.

She looked away from it, kicking it aside with her foot. She sat down by the table, picking up the objects that lay on its surf ace, one by one … the wooden top that Sparks had played with when he was a boy … the lock of someone’s hair, as pale as milk, inside a blown-glass vial … the embroidered love-token that she had made for him, when they had first pledged their lives to each other… . Why had no one ever warned them about how long the years would seem … about how they would end, without warning? She fastened the small embroidered pouch to the inside of her shirt, next to her heart, as Sparks had always worn it in his youth. She wiped the wetness from her face with the edge of her sleeve.

And then she rose from her seat, dry-eyed, and went out of the room; because the sibyl mind was waiting, and her life was not her own.