Joan Vinge - The Summer Queen

“Was that what you did when you went down into the Pit?”

“Yes,” she said gratefully, and let it go.

“Moon. …” Jerusha hesitated. “What else happened down there? You were gone for hours. Tammis … was it an accident? Or did Kullervo—?”

Moon shook her head. “No. Not Kullervo. Tammis … Tammis stood in the way of fate. It was his goodness that killed him, Jerusha.” And Mi ro e’s memory . But she did not say that. “I can’t … I can’t talk about it. Mother of us All—” Her hand tightened around the vial, trembling. “I can’t.”

Jerusha held herself tautly, as if she were uncertain of what move to make, afraid to make the wrong one … afraid.

Moon saw the shadow of doubt that had clung to the other woman ever since the moment when they had begun their descent into the Pit. “Jerusha, are you afraid of me?” she murmured.

Jerusha looked at her for a long moment; shook her head, finally. “I’m only afraid that Vhanu won’t rest until he knows how you did that.” She gestured toward the glowing well.

Moon looked behind her, and away again, without answering.

“What about the mers?” Jerusha asked. “Is the return of the city’s power all you brought back?”

Moon hesitated. “No… . But it was all I had that I could use as leverage with Vhanu.”

Jerusha frowned, and Moon saw her doubt deepen into frustration. “Then maybe we would have been better served if you’d driven a harder bargain,” she said. She gestured at the vial. “Reede Kullervo hardly seems worth what you’ve just paid for his life.”

Moon felt a pressure growing in her chest. “It isn’t just his life—it’s Ariele’s. Reede Kullervo may be able to save my daughter.”

Jerusha grimaced apologetically, and nodded.

“And beyond that, he doesn’t deserve to die—and he doesn’t deserve to be used any longer, by anyone. I intend to see that he is not.” Moon turned away, starting back across the bridge toward the heart of the palace.

Jerusha followed her wordlessly as they traveled back through the endless halls and chambers to the room where she had left Reede.

Clavally and Danaquil Lu looked up as she entered, with Jerusha behind her. Merovy sat beside Clavally, her eyes closed, her head on her mother’s shoulder, while Clavally stroked her hair with soothing, rhythmic fingers.

Moon went to Reede’s bedside. His eyes were closed too, and he did not acknowledge her presence when she spoke his name. “Reede,” she said again, afraid that this time he actually did not hear her. “I have the water of death.” Speaking its name left a bitterness in her mouth.

His eyes opened; he looked up at her face, down at the vial she held in her hand.

“Can you make more of this?” she asked, kneeling down beside him. “I’ll find laboratory space for you—”

He shook his head. “Can’t.”

“If you drink it—” She held it out to him, her heart beating too hard. “If you drink this, you’ll have the strength to make more.”

His swollen hand twitched on the bedclothes, lifted—dropped. “No good,” he whispered. “Start from scratch, takes too long, two doses won’t buy enough time. Save it. Save it for Gundhalinu. If he makes it back he can help you … save her.” Ariele . He shut his eyes again, as if the sight of the vial was a kind of torture.

“It’s not too late. There has to be a way to help you —” She put her hand on his arm.

He swore, gasping; she jerked her hand away. “Cut my throat,” he said, his eyes filled with hatred.

She pushed to her feet, holding the vial; hesitated. “How much do you love my daughter?” she asked softly, and saw his face tighten with pain. She looked down at the vial. Slowly, as if she were moving underwater, she lifted her free hand and broke its seal.

“No!” Reede said. “Stop her—”

“Moon!” Jerusha leaped forward, catching her arm. “By the Lady and all the gods, what are you doing?”

Moon held her gaze, until Jerusha’s hand dropped away. “BZ said that the water of death is a failed form of the water of life. That means it uses a kind of smartmatter as its base—isn’t that right?” She looked toward Reede.

“Yes, but …” He pushed himself up onto an elbow, swearing with the effort. “It’s defective. I didn’t have … the right control environment … or equipment, when I made it. There’s no way to fix it. I tried, and tried … I couldn’t find a way.”

“The sibyl virus is also a form of smartmatter, isn’t it?” Moon asked. “All the existing forms are related.”

He nodded, frowning.

“BZ told me that you and he found a way together to reprogram the stardrive plasma when it was damaged … to ‘vaccinate’ it, he said, to alter its function.”

“Yeah,” he murmured. “What’s the point?”

“There is a perfectly functioning form of smartmatter in my body, and the sibyl mind acts through it. If I take the water of death, and go into Transfer, I will be the laboratory—the net can interact with the drug through me to alter its function.”

“Moon!” Danaquil Lu rose from his seat. “He said it’s not possible. You can’t know whether this will even work—”

“Unless I try it,” she finished for him. She turned back to Reede. “Do you think your … the sibyl net’s AI can do that?”

“Gods. I don’t know… .” He groaned faintly, falling back onto the bed as his strength gave out. “Maybe … maybe it could. But if you’re wrong,” his eyes found hers again, “this is how you’ll die.”

She looked away from his face, at the innocuous silver metal vial, open now in her hand.

Jerusha’s hand fell on her arm again. “By the Bastard Boatman, Moon—” Jerusha whispered. “Your son is dead, and Reede Kullervo is not going to take his place! He’s the man who addicted your daughter to a fatal drug! You can’t take a chance like this for a man like that. What if you both die?”

“Then you will bury us at sea, I suppose,” Moon murmured.

“What about the Hegemony, and the mers—?”

“What about them?” she said, her voice raw. “For years, the sibyl net has made me give it what it wants, no matter what it cost me. It’s stolen half my life from me. And his too.” She looked at Reede, feeling the uncomprehending stares of the people around her. They had done everything for the sibyl mind that it had been humanly possible to do. “Now it’s time for it to give us something back, something we need. Or else it will get nothing from me ever again.” Lady, hear my prayer … . She felt a sense of impossible freedom and terrifying resolve, and she realized that the geas that had controlled her for so long had finally, truly, released her. She raised the vial to her lips and swallowed half its contents, so quickly that no one could stop her—not even herself. She pressed the vial with the remaining sample into Jerusha’s waiting hands. “ Input —”

She fell away down the hidden well inside her mind, the access into another dimension, where once she had seen only the blackness and utter silence the sibyls called the Nothing Place. But now that she knew how to listen, how to see, her vision revealed to her the corridor of light that bound her to Her, to the mated minds of the net’s creators, joined with Her own, the past and the future combined, the Dreaming Place. Lady, help us, she thought, prayed, demanded. For the love of Vanamoinen, give us back what is only our right. Give us back our lives. Heal me . Gazing backward through the golden filament that bound her to the sibyl mind, she saw her own body as a glittering network, each cell winking briefly as the multiplying water of death invaded and seized control of it, death imitating life.