Joan Vinge - The Summer Queen

Her mother held her close, pinioning her struggles. “ You have a child…” Clavally murmured, holding her tighter. “You have his child, my heart; take care of the child.…” hushing her as she began to sob. The sound of Merovy’s grief magnified in the vastness of the room until it seemed to Moon as if the entire world wept. Clavally and Danaquil Lu looked up at her over their daughter’s hidden face, in sudden, terrible understanding.

Moon turned away, unable to face their compassion, afraid of breaking down. She looked toward the Pit. “I saved the world,” she murmured, with sudden bitterness, “but I lost my children.”

She saw Reede move, out of the corner of her eye; saw him starting for the Pit’s rim. “Stop him!”

Jerusha caught him in two strides, knocked him aside as he reached the edge and tried to fling himself over. She subdued him without effort, forced him away from the rim, back toward the people who stood in silent judgment of him.

He fell to his knees. Her hands stayed on his shoulders, holding him there; but Moon could see that she needn’t have bothered. He glared at them, his face lurid with fresh blood, his eyes wells of despair. “You want to watch me die?” he spat. “Watch it happen then, damn you!”

Moon moved toward him, feeling as if her own body had become the body of an old woman, stiff and slow and full of pain. She stopped, looking down at him. “Who are you?” she asked.

He lifted his head; let it fall again, without speaking, when she had seen the impossible truth still in his eyes.

“I don’t want you to die,” she said softly. She put her hands against his face as he tried to turn away, her touch as gentle as if she held snow. “I want to help you. Tell me how.”

He shook his head slowly, wetting her hands with blood, staring up at her again in utter confusion. But he only said, “You can’t. I can’t.”

“You said that the Police took all the water of death you had, when they arrested you?”

“Yes,” he muttered wearily.

She glanced at Jerusha. “Would they still have it?”

Jerusha shrugged. “Maybe. But it’s not likely they’d hand it over to us.”

“On humanitarian grounds—?”

Jerusha laughed humorlessly. “To save the life of a criminal you’re sheltering from the Hegemony? Under the circumstances, I’d say it’s bloody unlikely.”

Moon moved away from Reede’s side. “Send a messenger to Vhanu, Jerusha. Tell him that if he wants the lights on in this city again, he’ll send the drug to me, no questions asked.”

Jerusha stared at her. “I thought you had nothing to do with the city’s power going out.”

“I didn’t,” Moon said.

“But now you can bring it back?”

Moon glanced away, into the dark reaches of the Hall of the Winds. “Yes,” she said.

Jerusha stared at her. “I’ll send someone right away,” she murmured, “Lady.” She bowed, and went quickly from the hall.

Moon turned back, to face Merovy and her parents, still waiting like mourners at a funeral. “Clavally, Dana, will you help me get Reede to a bed? I want him made as comfortable as possible.” They nodded, with doubt as plain on their faces as anguish, and their hands still on their daughter’s quivering shoulders. “Merovy,” Moon said quietly, “you have medical training. Will you see what you can do to help him? He’s in considerable pain.”

Merovy blinked; the white, dumbstruck emptiness of her face slowly regained a suffusion of color, and for a moment Moon thought it was fresh anger, and refusal. But Merovy turned, forcing herself to look at Reede, and her expression wavered. “Yes,” she said finally, almost inaudibly, her eyes downcast. She came forward with her parents; still looking down, her hand pressing her stomach.

Reede lifted his head, watching them warily as they approached. But he allowed himself to be half-led, half-carried up the curving flight of stairs, and back into the palace.

Moon made certain that he was settled into a bed, used a cool cloth to wipe vomit and blood from his face with her own hands. She watched Merovy tend him as best she could with what medical supplies they had. Merovy’s face eased, her movements grew calm and sure as she worked, as contact with his flesh forced her to acknowledge his humanity.

Reede lay with his eyes closed, breathing shallowly, as though he were unconscious. But Moon knew from the rigidness of his muscles, the stark whiteness of his clenched fists, that he was only trying to ignore their presence, their unasked-for intrusion into his suffering.

At last, satisfied that she had done everything for him that she could, she left him in their care and went back through the dimly lit palace halls, down through the throne room and back to the Hall of the Winds. She stepped out onto the bridge above the Pit, feeling its siren light call up to her. She felt only a distant echo now of the many-colored splendor she remembered in her mind, but still it made her senses sing with yearning. The Lady …

She breathed in the smell of the sea that rose up the well to fill the air here; a constant reminder of the presence of an unseen power, one that she had believed in profoundly in her island youth. Then there had been a goddess incarnate in the waters of the sea, who spoke through the lips of every sibyl, granting the special gift of Her wisdom only to the Summers, Her chosen people.

That belief had been destroyed by her head-on collision with the ways of the offworlders, their far vaster and more sophisticated web of knowledge and deception. She had learned what she believed was the real truth about the sibyl net, and lost her innocence in the same moment. There had been no Lady any longer, except as the empty source of curses, through all the years since; only the ache of loss, whenever she had needed the strength of belief.

But now at last she had seen the greater truth hidden within the lesser one of the offworlders’ cynical self-deception. The intelligence that guided the sibyl net was not a supernatural force, but it was something more than human—other than human, although affected by human needs and desires. It was itself partly created of minds like her own, and it lay at the heart of Survey, influencing the fate of countless beings on countless worlds she would never even hear the names of.

And the two separate but uniquely joined peoples of this world were its chosen ones in a way that was both natural and profound. She had not been insane, she had not been deluded, obsessed with power, driven by ambition—she had not been Arienrhod. She had been right. And all that she had believed had, in some way, been true after all.

She looked down, unafraid, into the green light; and looking down, felt her mind recoil like a spring as she remembered her son . . , remembered suddenly what price she had paid to be Her chosen one, to serve the needs of the true Lady. A tremor shook her. She went on across the bridge, moving now by the strength of her own will, her own need and urgency, no longer controlled by any compulsion. She did not stop until she reached the other side. And there she stood alone, in the empty silence beyond the Pit’s rim, with the heels of her hands pressed into her eyes until the only light she saw was a burning brilliance of phosphenes.

At last she raised her head, picking up her lantern, hearing the hollow echo of footsteps coming toward her. She saw another light appear ahead; saw Jerusha leading Vhanu himself into the Hall.

She wiped her face hastily, lowered her hands to her sides. She read the unease that Vhanu could not entirely disguise at being in the palace without any escort; saw it turn to surprise as he found her waiting here for him, equally alone.

“Lady.” Jerusha bowed. “The Commander has what you asked for.”