Joan Vinge - The Summer Queen

She pulled herself to her feet, clinging to the panel, clinging to consciousness with an equally relentless grip. She peered out and down. Far below in the green-lit water she saw a figure—thought at first that it was human. But it was not, it was a mer. A human figure was struggling up the wall below her, clinging to the footholds she could not even see among the outcrops of equipment. Only one figure. She looked out again, trying to make the mer’s form into a second human being. But she could not, and still there was only one man climbing the wall. She remembered her last sight of Reede’s tortured face, as she had looked out at him through Tammis’s eyes, there in the hidden caves: the face of a man with pride, but without hope … the face of a dying man.

She turned away from the instrument panel to the car’s access opening; staggering, as if she had forgotten how to use her physical body in the time that she had been incorporeal and infinite. She stepped out onto the narrow catwalk beyond the exit, holding on to the edge of the doorway, pressing a hand against the solid support of the wall as she edged forward.

A helmeted head pushed up over the lip of the platform in front of her. She jerked back, startled; leaned forward, her weakness and giddiness forgotten as she caught his arms. “Tammis!” She helped him drag himself onto the platform and stumble with her back inside the car. He collapsed inside the doorway, falling to his knees as if all his strength were gone. His faceplate was smeared inside with something that obscured her view of him. She dropped to her knees beside him as he fumbled with the helmet’s seals. Pushing his useless hands aside, she unfastened his helmet and pulled it off.

She fell back, from the smell of sickness, the sight of blood. Eyes as clear and pure a blue as the skies of summer gazed back at her from a face that was an unrecognizable mask of vomit, runneled with red. “Reede.” She felt her heart stop.

He nodded, swaying unsteadily. “Lady …”he whispered, his voice barely recognizable. He broke off, trying futilely to wipe his face clean on the sleeve of his suit.

“Where is Tammis?” She caught him by the shoulders; he cried out as she jerked him upright. Sick at heart, she shook him, forcing him to give her an answer. “Where is he! What happened?”

Reede focused on her again, finally responding to the anguish in her voice. “He’s gone …” he mumbled, and she felt a spasm wrench his body. “The turbines—”

“No,” she whispered. “What? How? No—” mouthing words without meaning. “Why—?”

“It was supposed to be me! I had to stay alive, I had to survive, until the sibyl net was healed… . And then I had to die.” Reede sagged forward, his hands knotting. “He wouldn’t let me. He saved my life, the bastard, for what—? He was safe! He had everything … everything to live for. But instead he died, for me. It should have been me… .”

She let him go, let him slide down into the puddle of seawater pooling around her on the floor. She closed her eyes against the sight of him; seeing Miroe suddenly, his death reflected in Tammis’s eyes. Tammis. Tammis … “Tammis . …” She became aware of a thin keening, realized that it came from her own throat.

When she could bear to open her eyes again, Reede lay motionless, staring up at her. He raised a hand, clutching at her sleeve. “Sorry …”he whispered, “I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry… . What I did to you—your daughter, your son. Should have been me. Me—” His voice broke down into sobbing. “Me! Me!”

She leaned forward, lifting him up, her weary arms trembling with the effort. She ordered the car to take them to the surface; held the clumsy dead-weight of him close against her as she watched the access door close, merging seamlessly into the wall. The car started into motion again, carrying them upward this time through the still-darkened well. She went on holding him, pretending for that brief space of time that there was no time, that she was still inside the outside, within that epiphany where everything was always happening … that this was really her own child, held safely in her arms, and not the half-mad stranger who had destroyed her family in the name of the sibyl mind… .

But in time their motion ceased, and the ceiling hatch opened silently above her. She looked up, without the strength to do more, heard voices calling down to her—Jerusha’s, Merovy’s. She looked down again, unable to bear the sight of their faces, their reaction to what they were about to find.

Reede stirred as he heard them; he had not moved or spoken during their entire journey upward. Now, he struggled upright until he was sitting alone. He looked at her, with dazed incomprehension; looked away wordlessly.

“Moon—?” Jerusha’s voice came again, more demanding, with more concern.

“Here …” she answered, barely able to force herself to speak that acknowledgment. She heard someone climb down through the access, glanced up again as Jerusha dropped to the floor beside them.

Jerusha’s gaze flickered from one of them to the other; the lines of her face deepened with her sudden frown, as she saw what had become of them. “Tammis,” she said, not really a question; her eyes were back on Moon’s face.

Moon shook her head.

“Gods …” Jerusha breathed. She moved forward, giving Moon the strength of her arms, pulling her to her feet. She looked at Reede, back at Moon. “Nothing’s changed, up here.” It was half a question, half a statement of fact. “The city is still dark. Moon what happened? Can you tell me?”

Moon only shook her head again. “Get me … get us out, Jerusha. Out of here.”

Jerusha nodded, helping Moon toward the ladder, and up. Moon caught the hands waiting for her up above, was pulled free from the reeking prison of the car. She stood inside a lamplit circle of familiar faces, the arms around her reaffirming her existence in the world to which she had finally found her way home.

Clavally and Danaquil Lu supported her as Merovy brought her strong medicinal tea. She took it in her hands and drank it down, her eyes on the figures emerging now from the car’s glowing interior. Jerusha came first, reaching back to pull Reede up the final few feet of the ladder, half-dragging him out onto solid ground at the Pit’s rim. He collapsed as she let him go; she left him like a broken doll at the edge of the well. The others turned expectantly, looking past him. “Tammis?” Merovy called, her anticipation turning to concern as no one else appeared.

“Merovy,” Moon said, her voice as thick as treacle in her throat. “He isn’t coming.”

Merovy turned to look at her, looked toward the Pit again, with an expression that Moon felt in her bones. “Yes, he is,” she insisted, with mindless conviction. “He went with you. He’s coming—”

“He’s not coming,” Moon whispered, feeling her own eyes brim. “He’s dead, Merovy.” Her hands closed over the heavy stuff of her sweater, twisting the sodden yarn. “He’s dead.”

Merovy’s face emptied; her hands pressed the gentle swell of her belly. “How—?” Her voice squeaked like an unoiled hinge.

“I killed him.”

Reede’s voice made them all turn. Moon saw him stagger to his feet, a man climbing out of his own grave to stand before them. She heard Merovy’s guttural cry of anguish. Jerusha looked back at him, staring.

Merovy started forward, her face contorted with rage and loss; her mother caught her, holding her back. “Why?” she screamed.

“It was an accident,” Moon said; the words lacerated her throat. “Tammis saved his life.”

“Why? Who is he ?” Merovy cried, and there was no answer that Moon or anyone could give her. “It isn’t fair, we have a child —”