Joan Vinge - The Summer Queen

She nodded, and sighed, feeling belief struggle toward the light inside her as he held her gaze.

He looked away at last. “You contacted the inner circles of Survey, didn’t you, while you were in Transfer, in symbiosis with the matrix?”

She started. “Yes,” she said. “I—the net—threatened them with what would happen if the slaughter of mers goes on, and promised them access to the starmap, if they stop the Hunt. I think it will turn the tide; but I don’t know how long it will take—”

“Then we wait.” He shook his head. “That’s all we can do.”

She sat up straighter, her eyes going to the window behind him, its view of the sea hidden by drawn drapes. “The mers are in the waters around the city again; Vhanu was going after them. Did Jersuha call out ships—?* She pushed to her feet.

“No need,” Reede said. He rose from his chair and moved stiffly to pull aside the heavy, brocaded cloth. “They’re protected.”

Moon stopped where she was, staring without comprehension at the expanse of boundaryless gray that met her eyes. There was no ocean, no sky; only storm, merging one into the other, a rippling ferocity of wind and water pounding the unbreakable window surface with a rage that made it tremble.

“The sea lung …” Moon murmured, clutching a table for support. Reede looked back at her. “It’s what the Winters call a storm like this, when there is no difference between the sea and sky.” She had never experienced it, but she knew Winters who had. “The Summers say it’s the Sea Mother’s fury.”

Reede smiled strangely, and went on looking at her. After a moment he glanced back out the window at the storm. “I wonder …”he said.

“We heard reports that a storm was moving up the coast, for days,” she said. “A bad storm. But they said it would move out to sea and miss the city.”

“It’s come inland directly over Carbuncle, instead.”

She found herself for the first time in years, making the triad sign of the Mother with complete sincerity. She thought of Capella Goodventure suddenly— remembered her without pain for the first time. “Vhanu won’t be able to send out his hunters until it’s over. By then the mers will have gained some distance at least.”

He nodded, looking at the storm again. Her own eyes went to it as if she were hypnotized.

The door to the room opened suddenly, and one of the palace servants came in. “Lady!” she gasped, bobbing her head in apology. “The offworlders are in the palace! We couldn’t stop them—”

Blue-uniformed figures appeared in the space behind her, carrying weapons. Moon looked toward Reede, where he stood frozen beside the window, still holding back a sweep of curtain.

She looked down again, at the tray of food someone had left by her bedside. She picked it up, moved to Reede’s side without a backward glance of acknowledgment for the intruders who had forced their way into the room. She held the tray out to Reede, pressed it into his unresponsive hands. “That will be all. You may go,” she said, urging him with her eyes.

He came alive, taking the tray from her without too much awkwardness. “Yes, Lady …”he murmured, bowing his head. Carrying the tray, he went toward the door, moving lamely, his shoulders knotted with tension. The Police edged aside, letting him pass. The woman who had brought the warning crept out in his wake, followed by their baleful stares.

Their stares turned back to her. Curiosity and faint amusement crept into the men’s expressions at they saw her standing before them, disheveled, exhausted, in her nightgown. “Commander Vhanu wants you—” the sergeant in charge began.

She felt her sudden selfconsciousness turn to anger. “You will wait outside, and allow me to dress,” she said, lifting her hand. “Now.”

They hesitated, glancing at each other, suddenly uncertain. And then, lowering their guns, they went one by one back out the door, closing it behind them.

She took her time, having no eagerness for whatever came next. She dressed pragmatically, in trousers and a robe cut Kharemoughi-fashion, but made of cloth in the shades of green that always soothed her eyes. She reached for her trefoil where it lay on the bedside table; hesitated, and left it behind.

When she opened the door they were waiting, nearly a dozen of them. She ignored the raised weapons, and said in a voice like glass. “What do you want? If it’s Reede Kullervo, your Commander gave me his word that—”

“No, Lady,” the sergeant in charge said. “It’s you he wants brought to him.”

“Where is Jersuha PalaThion?” she asked sharply.

The sergeant looked down, up again. “Under arrest. For obstructing justice.”

“Justice,” Moon murmured. She held out her hands. “Does Commander Vhanu want me bound?”

The sergeant grimaced, and nodded. They were all looking at her again, at her throat. Even without her trefoil, her tattoo was still visible. One of the men stepped forward at the sergeant’s abrupt order. He drew her hands behind her, locking them into binders. She felt suddenly giddy; she had not believed they would actually do it.

They led her away through the halls, past the stunned, uncertain stares of the palace staff. She did not see Reede anywhere. She did not ask where they were taking her.

The sergeant and two of his men transported her in a hovercraft down through the city; she watched in surprise and half-fear as they passed by Police headquarters and kept going—through the Maze, down through the Lower City, without explanation. She remembered Arienrhod: her mother, her other self; remembered the final journey she had made down through the city to her death. Arienrhod had tried to change her world, defied the offworlders … and it had ended in a journey like this. There was only one imaginable destination they could be heading for now … and a storm was raging outside Carbuncle’s walls.

They stopped at last at the head of the ramp which led down to the docks, and she was urged out as the craft’s doors rose. She obeyed, moving awkwardly with her hands pinned behind her. The wind struck her and she staggered; one of the patrolman caught her, steadying her. The wind’s fist drove them back against the side of the hovercraft with another blow. The impact knocked the breath out of her; she heard him swear in surprise and pain. She was drenched to the skin, without even realizing how it had happened.

The others gathered around her; they pulled her forward together, moving into the wind’s teeth with arms linked, as if they were facing an angry mob. She could see nothing, blinded by pelting rain; but she heard the wind screaming, the thud and boom of storm-driven waves crashing over the docks far below her feet. She felt the city itself shudder with the blows. Her feet were suddenly in water up to her ankles as the sea swept up the ramp, flooding the pavement, and poured back down it again.

Vhanu was waiting for them, flanked by half a dozen more Police, in the security watchpost to one side of the ramp. The men around her crowded inside eagerly, dragging her with them out of the direct force of the wind. But even here the wind found them, drenching them with fresh volleys of rain and spray, whipping her hair loose, blowing it into her eyes maddeningly.

Vhanu pushed between his men until he stood face to face with her, and there was something in his eyes that made her want to shrink away.

She held her ground, even as he violated her space, pressing too close to her, intimidating her physically under the pretense of making himself heard. “What do you want?” she demanded, shouting over the wind’s screaming moan. “Why am I here?”

“This!” he shouted. He caught her painfully by the arm, turning her, pushing her between bodies toward the watchroom’s wide window. She caught a blurred glimpse of the causeway leading down, into what appeared to be nothing but the ocean. There were no moorings, no ships at all visible—only the sea, swirling with unidentifiable wreckage. As she watched, another wave broke against the city’s pylons; its crest barely cleared Carbuncle’s understructure, which was fifty feet above the normal high tide. She felt the city shudder again with the impact; saw water surging up the ramp into the city’s open throat, before windblown spray struck the window in front of her, obscuring her view. She felt cold water lap her ankles again and withdraw.