Joan Vinge - The Summer Queen

One of the researchers came forward. He made a quick pass of his hands over the touchboards, and stood aside again. “You’re cleared.”

The Smith went back to his work as the accesses opened, searching for the fastest way to create his silver bullet from the simplistic assortment of analog toxins he had available. The solution to this problem was painfully obvious; but it had to be quick, subtle, and right the first time… . He was oblivious now to everything but the exaltation of his work—caught up in an ecstasy that was more like prayer than anything anyone else in this room had ever known.

When he had his prototype toxin designed, he activated the sequence that would begin to produce it in large quantities in aerosol form, and heat it to three or four thousand degrees centigrade. He estimated that half that much heat, combined with the toxin, should be enough to turn the seething mass of replicant ooze into useless slag that would harm nothing. This much would also leave their entire system in ruins. Destroying their system wasn’t absolutely necessary to this process; but it was better to be safe than sorry, when you were dealing with the end of the world. And besides, he felt like it.

“All right , . .”he said, turning back to his silent witnesses. “Turn off the emergency shields.”

“What—?” someone gasped.

“Do it!” he snapped. “I have to get this mixture in there, if I’m going to stop what’s happening, and the only way to do that is to shut it down.”

“But if the solvent escapes—”

“Shutting off the fields will slow it down, because it’s feeding on their energy,” he said, as patiently as if he were speaking to someone with brain damage. “That should give my agent enough time to do its work. This is your only chance… . You have about five minutes before the replicant mass overloads the barriers anyway, you stupid sons of bitches. And then there will be no stopping it. Shut off the goddamn field!” He went back to his position among the system displays, never taking his eyes off the researchers as they looked toward Irduz; as Irduz nodded, slowly, and someone gave the fateful command.

He watched the data on the screens, barely breathing; timing his own directives to synchronize, to feed the superheated gas into the space at the exact point in time when the shields went down.

Something happened beyond the protective window/wall of the observation room that registered in his eyes as blinding pain; he shut them, as the virtually indestructible material of the window, the room, and the building itself made sounds that no one in this room had ever expected to hear. The Smith felt an impossible heat reach him like the sun’s kiss, making his flesh tingle, even here. He stood motionless until he felt the sensation fade, the reaction snuffing out. He opened his eyes. The formerly transparent window before him was opaqued now by a sheen of metallic silver-gray. He could make out nothing beyond it.

He looked down at the displays, where to his relief a new and entirely different pattern of disaster warnings met his eyes, showing him the answers he needed to see. Data feeding in from the black box in the heart of the chamber he could no longer see told him that he had accomplished his goal. The replicant mass had been terminated. He looked away, drained, turning back to the researchers.

He saw in their eyes that they knew he had been successful—even Irduz. They were safe , their slack faces said; as if anyone was ever safe.

“You weren’t afraid,” one of the men murmured, looking at him as if the idea was incomprehensible. “How could you not be afraid?”

The Smith glanced at Irduz. “I’m not afraid of things I understand,” he said sourly. “Just things I don’t understand.”

Irduz’s gaze met his own, without comprehension. “It’s over, then?” Irduz asked. “It’s all right? The solvent has been utterly destroyed?”

The Smith nodded.

“You’re absolutely certain?”

“Absolutely.” The Smith let his mouth twitch. “Although, if I were you,” he added gently, “I’d keep a couple of containers of my brew on call, just in case.”

“Did you know all along that this would work, then?” one of the others said, half reluctant and half fascinated.

“The odds of success were ninety-eight percent—if nobody involved fucked up,” the Smith said, with a smile that did not spare them. “Have a nice day… And for gods’ sakes, when you rebuild this place hire Kharemoughis to do it right.” He crossed the room to the High Priest’s side. “I’ll be going,” he said. “I came in the back door; I’m not going out that way. After you—” He gestured, knowing there had to be other ways into this hidden complex, forcing Irduz to acknowledge it.

Irduz nodded, frowning but not daring to object. He led the way out.

The Smith left the Church inquisitory by the main entrance, followed by the High Priest’s hollow blessing and many naked stares of disbelief. He pushed the solii pendant back into concealment inside his clothes as he went down the broad steps. He began to walk out across the open square, breathing deeply for the first time in hours as he passed through the shifting patterns of the marketday crowd. The dry, clean, spice-scented air cleared out his lungs. But even the sun’s purifying heat could not burn away his fragmented visions of a disaster far more widespread and profound than the one he had just averted. The sibyl net had made a mistake. There was something wrong with the sibyl net. And that terrifying knowledge haunted his confused mind as though it were somehow his fault, his responsibility… .

“Tell your fortune? Tell your fortune for only a siskt” Someone’s hand caught his arm as he passed yet another canopied stall.

He stopped as the dark hand brushed his own, looked down into the woman’s deeply blue-violet eyes gazing up at him. “What?” he said.

“Your future, stranger, for only a sisk . I sense that you are a lucky man. …”

He followed her glance back the way he had come. He had come out of the inquisitory’s doors in one piece, walking on his own two feet. A lucky man . He was about to refuse her, with a cynicism that probably matched her own, when he noticed she held a circular tan board on her lap. Most fortune-tellers used jumble-sticks, or simply the palm of your hand. The intricate geometries painstakingly laid out on the board’s polished surface symbolized many things, just as his hidden pendant did: the moves to be made in a game that was probably older than time; the hidden moves of the Great Game, in which he was a hidden player. He had never seen a tan board used to tell fortunes. “Sure,” he murmured, with an acid smile. “Tell me my future.”

He sat down across from her on the pillows in the shade, his curiosity piqued. He leaned forward, intrigued in spite of himself as she cast the smooth gaming pieces out across the tan board’s surface. They scattered, colliding, rebounding off its rim with the random motions of fate, coming to rest in a configuration that looked equally random.

She stared at the pattern they made, and sucked in a breath. Her night-black hands covered the board with spread fingers, as if to shield his eyes from it. She looked up at him again, with both incomprehension and dread. “Death …” she murmured, looking into his eyes as deeply as if she saw time itself there.

He almost laughed. Everybody dies—

“Death by water.”

He froze, feeling the blood fall away from his face. He scrambled to his feet, swayed there a moment, dizzy with disbelief. He fumbled in his pocket, dropped a coin on her board, not even noticing what it was that he gave her, not caring. He turned away without another word, and disappeared into the crowd.