The Summer Queen (122 page)

Reede turned his head slowly, seeing her legs, her back;
unable to see her face where she lay, unable to see him now. He heard his own
voice keening mindlessly, helpless to stop it as aftershocks of pain from his
sudden motion rolled through him, wave upon wave. Drowning ... the sea ... the
mers ... drowning in pain ... death ... Help me, help me, please help me ....
Someone was screaming inside his head, someone else, he didn’t know who, the
prisoner, screaming .... Vanamoinen—

He shook his head, trying to clear it. By the time the
stunshock wore off, he would be unable to stop Ariele from calling anyone. She
still didn’t believe him—that no one could protect her from the Source. Damn
her to hell, making everything worse for him, everything harder—Why hadn’t she
listened to him? He’d wanted to end it cleanly. He’d never wanted anyone to see
him like this; and it had to be her, watching him puke and rot and die ...
because she loved him. He dropped the stunner, lifted a hand to his throbbing
head; brought it down again with a fistful of his own hair trapped between his
swollen, necrotic fingers. He stared at it for a long time.

He should disable the radio. He had to do that. If he could
only find the strength to do that, then he could rest, then he could let it
finish. Everything would end, his suffering ... the mers ... everything would
be lost, futile, pointless ....

He dragged himself around and up somehow, ignoring the
sounds he made as the fires of hell consumed his flesh. He crawled into the
cabin, lay across the pilot’s seat, sobbing, coughing up blood, unable to see,
to think, but only to feel pain. At last he reached out, fumbling toward the
comm link on the instrument panel beside him. His hand crossed the range of his
vision; he saw the bones of a finger protruding through the half-dead flesh.

His hand jerked back, without his willing it, as if he were
suddenly controlled by a puppeteer. And somewhere inside his shattered brain,
the prisoner exulted, holding the keys. You are my vessel. You have no choice,
the Other said. / have to live. I have to live.

His cry of fury and betrayal died stillborn. His broken
voice called the panel to life, as the Other squeezed words from his throat,
and spat them out of his mouth, dripping red. He had to repeat himself twice
before the instruments understood him and responded.

“Jaakola ...”he whispered into the open comm, weeping tears
of blood. “I have her. I’ll do anything you want. Help me ....”

“Ho, Dawntreader—”

Sparks looked up from his blank-eyed scrutiny of the empty tabletop,
to see Kirard Set Wayaways picking a path toward him across the crowded dance
floor of Starhiker’s.

“I was hoping I’d find you here.” Kirard Set smiled,
stopping in front of the table with the knowing look that Sparks had begun to
grow tired of.

“What is it?” Sparks asked, leaning back in his seat.

Wayaways slid into the booth across from him. “I have a message
to deliver ... and so do you.”

Sparks raised his eyebrows, more than a little surprised. “Is
this a Brotherhood matter?”

“Of course.” Kirard Set rubbed his chin, glancing idly into
the crowd. “The Source has been called away; business back on Ondinee. He
expects to return to Tiamat soon—”

“The heady joys of hyperlight transit,” Sparks muttered,
feeling envy stir the sediment of his long-ago dreams.

“We should drink a toast to progress,” Kirard Set said
wryly, “but we have no drinks.” He gestured at the empty table surface, his
face inviting explanation, or invitation.

Sparks shrugged, without making either. “What’s the Source’s
leaving got to do with me?”

Kirard Set’s congeniality faded, replaced by an equally unsettling
directness.

“We are to continue our present activities with the
processing laboratories, and diverting of supplies .... The Newhavener, TerFauw,
is in charge at Persipone’s until Jaakola returns.”

“You said there was a message to deliver.”

Kirard Set hesitated, in a way that only made Sparks’s
unease intensify. “It’s a message for your wife. About Anele, and the Source’s
man Kullervo.”

“What about them?” he said, too sharply.

Kirard Set leaned back, as if he were getting out of range. “You
already know they’ve been seeing each other .... What you may not know is that
Kullervo is an addict—addicted to a drug he created himself, a kind of bastard
form of the water of life. He calls it the ‘water of death.’ It’s fatal. And he’s
given it to Ariele.”

Sparks jerked upright, gripping the table edge with his
hands. “What?” he whispered.

Wayaways suddenly had trouble looking at him. “The Source
wants something from the Queen, or Gundhalinu,” he muttered. “He wants them to
understand that unless they provide it, he will cut off Ariele’s supply of the
drug.” He reached into his overshirt. “Here. This is a tape of what happens to
the ... addict. I wouldn’t watch it if I were you.” He tossed the tape button
onto the tabletop.

Sparks picked it up, held it between nerveless fingers. He
looked at Wayaways again. “Where are they?” he said. His hand fisted over the
tape. “Where’s he got her? By all the gods—”

“It’s not your problem, for gods’ sakes!” Kirard Set hissed.
“You belong to the Brotherhood now! Your wife is cuckolding you with the father
of her bastard children—Ariele isn’t even your child, you said it yourself. Get
a grip on things, man. Everything’s that’s happening is to your gain—your gain,
if you play your part in this well. All you have to do is give the Queen the
message. Claim you were accosted by faceless strangers, act as distraught as
you need to; but always remember that it’s got to be an act—”

Remember. Sparks sat rigidly, forcing himself to remember
the hard, useful lessons that time and the Brotherhood had taught him. He inhaled
deeply, concentrating on control. “Only an act,” he repeated, without
expression. He looked down at his hand, lying loose and open now on the table
surface. He put the tape bead into his belt pouch, before he looked up again at
Kirard Set. “What does the Source think they have, that no one else does? Besides
each other, I mean?” His mouth twisted sardonically.

A faint, relieved smile pulled at the corners of Kirard Set’s
lips. “It’s something about the mers.”

Sparks frowned. “They don’t know anything about the mers
that I don’t know.”

“Maybe Survey has given them new information.”

He shook his head. “Jaakola has Survey connections all over
the Hegemony. He could find out something like that without having to—” to kill
my daughter—“resort to blackmail, for gods’ sakes.”

“Then maybe they really do know something that no one else
knows.” Kirard Set shrugged. “That’s not our problem. Be glad.”

“What proof is there that he actually has Ariele? That there’s
really such a drug?” Sparks said, not quite casually. “They’ll want more proof
than this tape.”

“Have you seen Ariele around the city lately? Or Kullervo?”

“No,” he said, his mouth tightening.

“No one has. Jaakola’s taken them with him back to Ondinee,
to give the concerned parties here sufficient time to realize that they have no
alternatives. That there’s no way to save her except to do what he wants. When
the time is right, he’ll bring her back.”

Sparks looked away, searching the crowd, willing himself to
see a shock of silver hair, a poignantly familiar smile; to hear Ariele’s
laughter, even her voice raised in anger, denying him as he had denied her ....
But he found only random motion and meaningless noise: the face of chaos, in a
crowd of strangers ....

“The sooner the message is delivered, the better,” Kirard
Set said quietly. “For everyone’s sake.” He rose from his seat and started away
without any farewell, disappearing into the crowd.

Sparks sat for a long moment staring at the empty tabletop.
And then, unable to help himself, he took the tape button out of his belt pouch
and dropped it into the player at the edge of the table. A three-dimensional
image flickered to life in the air before him. He began to watch ... went on
watching, paralyzed by disbelief. At last he forced his hand to move, unable to
tear his eyes away from the agonizing images even as his fist came down on the
viewer’s touchboard, cutting off the flow of obscene horror.

“Excuse me, Sparks Dawntreader—”

He looked up, dazed, into the non-face of Tor’s hired servo
unit.

“We do not permit public use of such visuals in the club,”
it said tonelessly. “Please take a private room for future viewing, out of
consideration for the club’s other patrons.”

He nodded wordlessly, unable even to respond to the droning
solicitude of its speech.

“May I bring you something to calm your nerves, sir. A pack
of iestas, a bowl of pickled fish?” Its twin vision sensors studied him with
inhuman forbearance, like insect eyes.

“Bring me a drink. A strong one. Bring me six,” he said. It
looked at him. “I’m expecting friends,” he added irritably.

The servo bobbed politely and moved away. It returned with
six drinks in less time than he expected. He drank them all, in less time than
he would have thought possible. They had no discernible effect on what was
happening inside his head. He sat with the empty glasses in a line before him,
as the tape replayed over and over in his memory; sure that he would never be
able to see anything’clearly again, without that overlying vision.

The servo returned to his table after a time. He felt it
regard the line of empty glasses, the empty seats around him, and himself, with
silent speculation. “Your guests were detained, Sparks Dawntreader?”

“Bring me six more,” he said.

“Yes, sir,” it responded, and went away. He went on studying
the six empties, rearranging them with his hands into one futile geometric
configuration after another. / have no children. She’s not my daughter. He had
actually said that, aloud, in front of strangers ... he had actually believed
that he meant it. He had turned away from his children, in their confusion and
grief; turned his back on them because, knowing the truth, he suddenly could
not bear to look at them ....

He swore softly, as the obscene hallucination filling his
mind surrendered to memories of his children ... his children laughing,
clinging to his legs, building castles out of sand; with sunlight in their
hair, and hands filled with shells and colored stones: precious treasures ....
He remembered them playing at games through the halls of the palace, bringing
life and joy to that cold tomb where his own youth had died. He remembered
their delight, their tears, their tantrums; the music of flutes, the crash of a
shattered bowl—the eyes looking up into his own with unquestioning love, asking
only that he love them without reservation.

Their lives, their youth, their hearts had been his.
Gundhalinu might have planted the seed, but Gundhalinu had not watched them
grow. They were his ....

Visions of hideous death suffocated his memories suddenly:
but this time it was Ariele he saw, suffering, dying, her flesh dropping from
her bones before his horrified eyes ....

“Sparks—”

He looked up again, startled, knocking over glasses. Tor
Starhiker stood beside his table, with the Pollux unit behind her, staring down
at him. “Thanks, Polly.” She sent it away and settled, uninvited, onto the seat
across from him. She counted the disarray of empty glasses, and grimaced. “Pollux
told me you were drinking the sea tonight,” she said, “and that’s not like you.”
She glanced down, away from his sudden frown. “You want to drink some more, or
would you like to talk about it?”

He opened his mouth; shook his head, glancing at the tape
viewer.

“This have anything to do with the tape you were watching?
That isn’t like you, either.” He looked back at her, and she shrugged. “Pollux
sees all, Tor knows all ....” She touched his hand lightly, with unexpected
concern. “Someone you knew?” she murmured.

“No,” he said; his hand made a fist. He cleared the
congestion out of his throat “Tor ... have you seen Ariele, the last week or
so? Or Reede Kullervo?”

Her own hand closed suddenly. “Wait here,” she said, getting
up. “I’ll be right back. You wait—” She pointed at him, her face urgent.

He waited. She returned with two men ... Kullervo’s men, he
realized; he remembered the striking contrast between them. He felt hope and
relief sing through him, until he saw their faces. They slid into the booth
across from him, the short man lifting himself onto the bench with the agility
of long practice. Tor sat down with Sparks, but her hand reached across the
table unexpectedly, to meet the short man’s blunt fingers in a brief, sensual
twining. Sparks noticed that his face was a twilight landscape of cuts and
bruises.

The other brand, the Ondinean, removed some kind of animal
from his clothes and set it on the table in front of him, stroking its back.
Watching his expression, Sparks wondered which of them, the man or the animal,
was more in need of the reassurance. The creature made a strange chuckling noise,
like gentle laughter, as the Ondinean’s fingers ruffled its fur.

“Niburu and Ananke.” Tor introduced the two men as if they
were a unit. “They—”

“—work for Kullervo. I know,” Sparks murmured.

“This is Sparks Dawntreader Summer,” she said, to them.

“We know,” the short man answered, looking wary. Sparks realized
he was better known to them for his dealings with the Source than he was for
his relationship to the Queen.

“You need to talk,” Tor said. She leaned back and folded her
arms.

“Where’s Kullervo?” Sparks asked flatly.

The two brands glanced at each other, uncertain.

“By the Lady and all the gods, Kedalion,” Tor urged impatiently,
“tell him what you know.”

“Reede’s on Ondinee,” Niburu said, glancing down at his
palm. “At least, that’s what 1 heard.”