Joan Vinge - The Summer Queen

They slammed through the high double doors in a mountain of building facade, into the vast cavern of its interior, the befuddling darkness barely defined by the glow of countless candles. Up ahead of them a wall of hologramic illumination burst across Kedalion’s vision—a thousand views of paradise painted in light, rising to an ecstatic apex, a finger pointing toward heaven like the pyramidal structure of which it formed one wall.

“We’re in a temple!” he gasped. “Can we ask for sanctuary?”

“From the Church Police? Who do you think they work for?” Reede muttered He dropped Kedalion onto his feet again and hesitated, searching the candlelit darkness. There were still a few worshipers prostrating themselves before the high altar and the radiant images of light. He turned back as the heavy doors burst open behind them. “Lose yourselves,” he said. “I’ll draw them off… . Hey! Police!” he shouted, a warning or an invitation, Kedalion wasn’t sure.

“Reede—” Kedalion began, but Reede was already bounding away, silhouetting himself against the blinding light. “Gods! Come on.” He nudged Ananke forward through the forest of candelabra, hoping that they could fade into the random motion of bodies as people picked themselves up from their prayers and scurried toward the exits. He pulled on the boy’s arm, forcing him into the crowd. Ananke followed like someone in a trance; Kedalion felt the boy’s body tremble.

Kedalion glanced back as people in the scattering crowd cried out, to see Reede scramble up onto the gold-crusted altar, climbing higher among its rococo pinnacles in an act of unthinkable desecration. Ananke gasped in horror, and Kedalion swore in empathy and disgust as the black-uniformed figures of the police closed in on Reede.

And then Reede leaped—throwing himself off of the altar into the embrace of the light, into the wall of heaven.

Kedalion heard a splintering crash and stopped dead, gaping in disbelief. The image hadn’t been a hologram at all—it had been a wall of backlit glass. Now it bore a gaping black hole where Reede had gone through it into the night outside. Kedalion groaned, beyond words to express what filled him then.

He stared on again, but too late. Armored hands fell on his shoulders, wrenching him around and into the embrace of a body manacle; a volley of blows and kicks drove him to his knees, retching.

The police dragged him outside, with curses so graphic that he couldn’t even translate most of them … or maybe they were promises. Ananke staggered beside him, bloody and dazed. Something was digging into his ribs beneath his jacket—the silver and gold flask of the water of life. Sweet Edhu , he thought, I’m going to die. They’ll kill us for this. And I never even got to taste it. A gasp of hysterical laughter escaped him, and someone slapped him hard.

Behind the temple, in a glittering snowfall of broken glass, the rest of the police were gathered around Reede’s sprawled body. Kedalion thought with a sick lurch that they’d killed Reede already. But as he was dragged closer he saw them haul Reede up, his face bloody but his eyes wide open, and knock him sprawling again into the field of glass.

Wanting to look away, Kedalion kept watching as a man who looked like an officer pulled Reede to his feet, shaking him. “You think that’s pain you feel, you whey-faced filth’? You don’t know what pain is, yet—”

Reede stared at him with wild eyes, and laughed, as if the threat was completely absurd. Kedalion grimaced.

“Take him to the inquisitor,” the officer snarled, gesturing toward the police ground-van waiting across the square. Reede did not protest or resist as they hauled him roughly toward it. “Take them all!”

Reede looked back as the officer’s words registered on him. He stiffened suddenly, resisting the efforts to force him inside. Something like chagrin filled his face as he watched the police drag the others toward the van, and saw their own faces as they were dumped beside him. “Wait—” Reede called out, and ducked the blow someone aimed at his head. “Elasark!”

The second officer, who had overseen Kedalion’s capture, turned toward them abruptly, away from staring at the gaping hole in the glass wall of the temple. “You—’?” he said, registering Reede’s presence with something that looked like disbelief. He swore, and broke off whatever he had been going to say next. He came toward the van, stood before Reede for a moment that seemed endless to Kedalion, before he turned away again, his eyes hot with fury. “Let him go.”

The other officer, the one who had knocked Reede down, let out a stream of outraged protest that Kedalion could barely follow. The first officer answered him, in Ondinean as rapid and angry, in which the names “Reede” and “Humbaba” stood out like alien stones. He finished the outburst by drawing his finger across his own throat in a blunt, graphic motion. “Let him go,” he repeated.

The other officer didn’t move. The rest of the police stood sullenly glaring at him, at the prisoners, as Elasark turned back and released the manacle that held Reede. No one moved to stop him.

Reede climbed down out of the van, shaking himself out. He turned and glanced up at Kedalion and Ananke, looked back at Elasark. “Those two work for me,” he said.

Elasark stiffened, and the sudden hope inside Kedalion began to curdle. “The window will be repaired perfectly inside of three days,” Reede said. “You will receive a large, anonymous donation to the Church Security Fund.” Slowly Elasark moved back to them and released their bonds, his motions rough with barely controlled rage as he shoved them down out of the van. He shouted an order and the police climbed inside, without their prisoners. The doors slammed and the black van left the square, howling like a frustrated beast.

Ananke stood watching silently until the van was out of sight. And then his eyes rolled up and back in his head, and he collapsed in a billowing heap of robes. Kedalion crouched down beside him, glad for the excuse to sit as he lifted the boy’s head.

“Is he all right?” Reede asked, looking more surprised than concerned.

“No,” Kedalion said, the word sounding more irritable than he had intended “But he will be. Are you?”

Reede wiped absently at his lacerated face, no! even wincing. Kedalion winced Reede studied his reddened fingers in mild disgust, as if it were paint staining them, and not his own blood. He wiped his hand on his pants. “Sure.” A bark of mocking laughter burst out of him as he looked away across the deserted square in the direction the van had taken. “Stupid bastards.” he said.

“You just saved all our lives,” Kedalion murmured, well aware that the Church Police were anything but stupid; and equally aware that there couldn’t be more than half a dozen people on this entire planet who could do what he had just seen Reede do to them. “You don’t have to be so goddamn casual about it!” His voice was shaking now. He reached into the numerous pockets of his coat, and found the one with the silver bottle still safely inside it.

Reede looked at him, and shrugged. “Sorry,” he murmured. But there was no comprehension in it.

“Goddammit,” Kedalion muttered again, still glaring at Reede as he struggled to pull the bottle free. He unstoppered it and took a large mouthful of the silver liquid heedlessly. He gasped as it slid down his throat with an almost sentient caress, bringing his shock-numbed body back to life from the inside. “Gods,” he whispered, almost a prayer, “it’s like sex.”

“I like a man who knows what’s really important,” Reede said sardonically.

“If you think I was going to miss a chance to drink this, after all that’s happened tonight, you’re crazy,” Kedalion snapped, beyond caring by now whether Reede really was crazy. “Who the hell are you, anyway?” Not really expecting an answer to the question this time, either.