The Summer Queen (38 page)

Gundhalinu turned back to face him, said softly and swiftly,
“This is the way it’s done here. I have no problem with this.” He put a hand on
Kullervo’s arm, made Kullervo meet his gaze, and keep it. “What is your problem—?”

Kullervo went rigid under his hand. “I’ll tell you very
bluntly what your problem will be,” Gundhalinu whispered, cutting Kullervo off
before he could speak. “If you push these people any more, Reede Kullervo will
be permanently banned from entering World’s End; or else this entire expedition
will end up a beached klabbah, and I don’t know if even your gods or mine—” he
touched the trefoil hanging at his chest pointedly, “will be able to get it
back afloat. A viable stardrive now means nothing to those people over there.
It means everything to me. How much does it mean to you—?”

Kullervo stared at him, and Gundhalinu watched the wild
light fade from the other man’s eyes. Kullervo said nothing more; he shrugged
off the contact of Gundhalinu’s restraining hand with an abrupt motion.

Gundhalinu turned back to face Ahron, glancing at the three
troopers again. He knew the designated pilot from a previous trip inside—a
corporal named Ngong, a capable man, but no more enthusiastic about making the
journey to Fire Lake than anyone in his right mind would be. “Agent Ahron,” he
said, “let me propose this. We use our own certified pilot, who is also one of Dr.
Kullervo’s assistants, but we take the two others. That way our team will be
slightly smaller, which somewhat reduces our risk from the Lake; but we will
still have adequate security. I don’t expect Corporal Ngong will be too
disappointed to take some other duty. Will you, Corporal?”

Ngong stole a slightly nervous glance at the sergeant
standing beside him, before he answered. “No, sir!”

“I am a Police Commander after all.”

Ahron eyed him suspiciously for a long moment, as if she was
trying to fathom whatever conceivable plot he was devising against her. “It isn’t
in the regulations—”

“I know your only thought is for our safety, Agent Ahron,
and the success of the project we’ve all been working on for so long together
....” He took a deep breath. “Of all the agents I’ve had to deal with, you’ve
been the most dedicated and diligent—qualities I value highly.” Gods, he
thought, lay it on with a shovel, you hypocritical bastard; hating the taste of
his own words. “World’s End is a terrifyingly treacherous environment. I know
you, of all people, would not want us to risk our lives, or the success of the
stardrive project, needlessly—”

“All right,” she said abruptly, spitting out her decision
like a clot of phlegm. “You may use your own pilot, Commander Gundhalinu. If it
was anyone else—” she glanced at Kullervo, “I wouldn’t allow it. But you will
take Sergeant Hundet and Trooper Saroon with you.”

“Thank you,” Gundhalinu said, with heartfelt sincerity. He
dared to look at Kullervo. “I hope that’s a more acceptable risk to you,
Doctor?” Kullervo looked at the two troopers with narrowed eyes. Gundhalinu
followed his gaze. He had never seen either of the two men before. The sergeant
was short and whip-thin, but all muscle, with a narrow, mean face and
impenetrable eyes. Gundhalinu disliked him on sight. The private was hardly
more than a boy, probably a conscript; he looked right now like the prospect of
being sent to Fire Lake was about as appealing to him as his own castration.
Gundhalinu sighed.

Kullervo glanced away, down at Niburu. “I guess I can handle
that,” he murmured. Niburu looked more uncomfortable than relieved; Ananke
looked back and forth between them as though they were speaking some language
he didn’t know. Kullervo looked up at Gundhalinu again. “Thank you,
Gundhalinu-esMrad.” He smiled, unexpectedly.

Something fluttered and dropped in the pit of Gundhalinu’s
stomach, as if he were some form of small vermin that was being considered by a
cat. He shook off the feeling, annoyed at himself. It was not the first time
Kullervo’s unpredictable responses had set off alarms in his brain. He had been
a Police officer for too long; he read other people’s body language almost
instinctively. Kullervo’s body language was eloquent, and it read all wrong:
His volatility and, when he wasn’t thinking, his manners and his speech, were
better suited to a hotheaded young street thug than to a respected scientist.
But he was, undeniably, a brilliant researcher.

Gundhalinu nodded, looking away. He reminded himself that he
had grown up with Kharemoughi researchers, the men and women who had been his
father’s friends and colleagues—scientists whose refined behavior reflected
their position at the top of a highly structured, classist society. Kullervo
was not a Kharemoughi. Gundhalinu had learned nothing more about his background,
perhaps because Kullervo was ashamed of it. That was not an unreasonable
response for a man with a mind so superior that it had lifted him out of the
gods-knew-what kind of life and dropped him into a nest of elitists. But no one
ever left their past behind completely; he knew that, if anyone did.

He looked back at Agent Ahron, at the troopers waiting
beside her. “We’ll leave from the yard tomorrow at first quarter. I’ll expect
you to be waiting when I arrive I believe everything we’ll need has already
been assembled there—?”

“Everything is in order, Commander,” Agent Ahron said. The
troopers returned his salute perfunctorily, and he started for the door.
Kullervo and the others followed him out without a word. He did not speak
again, and neither did they, until they were safely back in the rover, and
rising over the town.

“That was impressive,” Kullervo said finally. “You’re one
slick manipulator, Gundhalinueshkrad.”

Gundhalinu looked up, frowning, as imtation and resentment
took root in his festering self-disgust. But to his surprise, Kullervo’s face
showed him no mockery, no emotion that he could name except perhaps curiosity. “It’s
not something for which I hope to be venerated by my descendants.” He looked
away again, out the window.

“You should,” Kullervo said. “You should be proud of it. It
means you’ve got a real talent for reading a bad situation. You knew just how
hard you could push them ... and me. It’s not something I’m good at, obviously.
I’m sorry. Bureaucrats make me nervous ... World’s End makes me nervous.” He
grimaced, shrugged. “I didn’t think you were that perceptive, frankly. It’s not
a trait Kharemoughis seem to value highly.”

Gundhalinu fingered the trefoil hanging at his chest, and
said nothing.

“That was a compliment,” Kullervo said at last.

“Thank you,” Gundhalinu murmured, automatically. He looked
down at his hands, at the insides of his wrists, the smooth brown skin that had
once been covered with the livid marks of his suicide attempt. His mouth pulled
down. “I suppose I’ve come to deserve some sort of credit, these past few
years.” He looked out at the jungle, thinking about what lay beyond sight,
beyond the distant mountains ... what lay beyond spacetime, waiting for him.

“What are you doing here, at this time of night?” Gundhalinu
stopped in the prism of light outside the open door of Kullervo’s office,
looking in.

Kullervo jerked around in his seat, blinking as if reality
made no sense to his eyes. “Gods ...”he muttered, “you startled the hell out of
me.” He shook his head, stretching, as Gundhalinu came into the room. “I often
work at night, when I can’t sleep.” He ran a hand through his disheveled hair. “But
what are you doing here? I thought you always retired early, and slept the
sleep of the just.”

Gundhalinu matched his ironic smile unwillingly, and shook
his own head. “I can never sleep, the night before I go into World’s End.”

Kullervo laughed. “So you do have nerve endings, after all,
Commander Gundhalinu-eshkrad-sibyl-Hero of the Hegemony.”

“Father of all my grandfathers!” Gundhalinu said,
exasperated and suddenly angry. He began to turn away.

“Wait.” Kullervo pushed up out of his seat. “By the Render,
you are on edge. Are you leaving?”

“Yes,” he answered, frowning, without turning back.

“So am I. Leaving,” Kullervo said. And when Gundhalinu did
not respond, “On edge ...”

Gundhalinu turned back. Kullervo was gazing moodily at the
display on the desk behind him. “What are you working on?”

“Nothing,” Kullervo said, with sudden bitterness. “A dead
end.” He ordered the display into oblivion before Gundhalinu could get more
than a glimpse of the constructs drifting through its screen. Gundhalinu stared
at the suddenly empty desktop; he glanced up at Kullervo’s face, expecting to
find the same impenetrable surface. But stark, unexpected hopelessness filled
Kullervo’s eyes.

Gundhalinu hesitated as Kullervo abruptly looked away; knowing
that he had seen that look before ... seen it in the mirror. “Reede, do you
want to talk about it?” he said quietly. “Can I help—?”

“No,” Kullervo snapped. He looked up again, as if he
realized how it had sounded, and muttered, “But I appreciate the offer.”
Something that could have been gratitude, or even longing, showed fleetingly in
his eyes. But he shook his head. Don’t waste your time; it’s too valuable. I’ve
wasted enough of my own. There are some mistakes that can’t be erased. You just
have to live with them ....” He turned away, striding toward the door; stopped,
looking back at Gundhalinu. Waiting.

Gundhalinu accepted the invitation uncertainly, and followed
him out of the room. They went up through the security levels and out into the
fetid embrace of the night.

Kullervo hesitated, as Gundhalinu stopped just beyond the dimly
glowing screen of the Project’s entrance to say a perfunctory good-night. “Share
a ride?” Kullervo asked.

Gundhalinu shook his head. “I feel like walking tonight.”

“That’s a hell of a walk,” Kullervo said, looking surprised.
“Or aren’t you going home?”

“I’m not going home.” Gundhalinu glanced away, mildly annoyed
by Kullervo’s uncharacteristic impulse to camaraderie. He gazed out across the
starkly ht artificial landscape, the deceptively open grounds that separated
the Project’s semi-subterranean fortress from the old Company town. “There’s
someone I have to see.”

“A woman?” Kullervo raised his eyebrows. “Personal?”

“Yes,” Gundhalinu said, growing more annoyed by the second. “Not
what you’re thinking.”

Kullervo stared at him, his eyes shadowed by the night. “Then
would you mind if I walked with you awhile?”

Gundhalinu hesitated; realized that he was trying to think
of a way to refuse. His mind remained stubbornly blank, and so he nodded. “If
you like,” he said, resigned

They crossed the gentle vagaries of the parklands together.
Gundhalinu looked up at the sky, able to see it for once; seeing an
unremarkable scattering of stars on the utterly black face of the moonless
night. He remembered Tiamat, where the stars were like glowing coals, where
once he had seen his own shadow at midnight .... He looked down again, watching
his steps as he felt himself stumble.

Kullervo walked beside him, looking down intently, with his
hands pushed deep into the side pockets of his loose-fitting blue overshirt.
Gundhalinu thought of a boy searching for lost coins; not an image he would
have associated with Kullervo before tonight. It occurred to him again, as it
had occurred to him before, how young Kullervo was. But then, most geniuses
burned their brightest when they were young

“So it’s not a tryst we’re going toward ....” Kullervo
looked up at him, watching him back. “Are you married?”

Gundhalinu shook his head, watching his steps, suddenly uncomfortable
again

“Ever?”

“No,” he said softly. He glanced up at the sky. “How about
you? Are you married?”

“Yes.” Kullervo looked straight ahead now, as if he were remembering
someone’s face. “Gods,” he said fiercely, “I want to finish this, and get back
to her!” His hands made fists inside his pockets. “She’s my life—”

“How long have you been married?” Gundhalinu asked, trying
to keep the incredulity out of his voice.

“Not long ... forever,” Kullervo murmured.

Gundhalinu realized that he had never seen Kullervo look
twice at a woman in all the time he had been here. He tried to imagine what son
of woman could hold Kullervo’s quicksilver temperament in that kind of thrall,
when he knew that years would have passed for her before they saw each other
again. What kind of woman ... He looked up again, at the stars. “Is she
Kharemoughi?”

Kullervo laughed once. “What? No! She’s on—from Ondinee. No
offense, but jQiaremoughi women aren’t my type.”

Gundhalinu glanced back at him. “No, I suppose not,” he
said, a little shortly. “But we’re not all of us dead from the neck down,
Kullervo.”

Kullervo bent his head, meeting Gundhalinu’s half frown with
a mocking smile. “But you’re mamed to your work. There’s really nobody waiting
for you out there, somewhere? No lovers—no regrets?”

Gundhalinu felt his throat tighten; he swallowed, and the
ache slid down into his chest. “Yes,” he said at last. “There is a woman. There
was. There is. And a lot of regret ... Maybe I’ll see her again. After all this
is finished.”

“Where is she?”

“On Tiamat.”

“Tiamat!” Kullervo said, incredulous. “Ye gods ... Tell me
that you did all of this just to find a way to get back to her—” He grinned
suddenly, waving a hand at the Research Project behind them. “Go on, surprise
me.”

“I did it all to get back to her,” Gundhalinu said, feeling
a faint smile turn up the corners of his mouth.

“Liar,” Kullervo said, and his grin widened.

Gundhalinu shrugged. “Have it your way.” The warm night
breeze kissed his face.

They entered the maze of streets that led into the old part
of the town, the part that had been there as long as the Company, maybe longer.
Cracked, time-eaten walls showed the scars of battle with the inhospitable
climate. Here, beyond the protected parklands, mottled graygreen creepers and
fleshy, spined shrubs left the jungle’s spoor everywhere; its living fingers,
working with infernal patience to undo what humans had made. Gundhalinu had
found the town and everything about it depressing the first time he had seen
it; he still found it depressing. The streets were better-lit at night now, and
the nighttime diversions more varied, although they held no more appeal for him
than they had three years ago. The streets were noisier and more alive, too,
because the credit flowed more freely. More outsiders passed them as they
walked than the residents of this place had probably ever dreamed existed, before
the Project had come into their lives.