Joan Vinge - The Summer Queen

The Summer Queen [071-142-066-4.6]

By: Joan D. Vinge Category: Fiction Science Fiction

Synopsis:

Volume 3 in the Snow Queen Cycle The long-awaited sequel to Vinge’s enormous The Snow Queen (1980), an interstellar tug-of-war between the far-from-benevolent Hegemony and the backward-but-indispensable planet Tiamat. It is now Summer on Tiamat; the Hegemony has withdrawn, leaving the planet in the hands of the Snow Queen’s clone, Moon. Numerous—too numerous—subplots get underway. Moon’s former lover, BZ Gundhalinu, will be sent to World’s End, where a wrecked Old Empire ship has spilled semisentient stardrive plasma; if Gundhalinu can control the plasma, faster-than-light travel will again be possible, ending Tiamat’s periodic isolation. Elsewhere, Reede Kullervo, a researcher with a rebuilt brain, addicted to his own supercharging designer drug, will be ordered by the leader of the supercriminal Brotherhood to seek the immortality elixir whose only source is Tiamat. Meanwhile, Moon struggles to control Tiamat’s rebellious factions, knowing that the planet’s intelligent sea-dwelling mers” are the source of the elixir, and that the ancient computer that links the galaxy’s clairvoyant sibyls in an information network lies buried under Tiamat’s chief city, Carbuncle; she dares not permit the Hegemony to control either the sibyl network or the elixir. Pledged to forever end offworld exploitation and save the mers, the Lady of Tiamat, also known as Moon Dawntreader, finds her job made difficult by Summer tribes and the treacherous Winters.

Last printing: 09/03/02 `>332’ ISBN: 0-5707-103-7157-1 ALSO BY JOAN D. VINGE

Book design by Giorgetta Bell McRee

To the Mother of Us All To my mother And to my children

I owe many thanks to many people for their help in making this book a reality, after so long. In particular, I would like to thank Michall Jeffers and John Warner, for bringing Hamlet’s Mill to my attention; Giorgio de Santillana and Hertha von Dechend, authors of Hamlet’s Mill; Barbara Luedtke; Jim Frenkel; Vernor Vinge; Brian Thomsen; the Clarion West class of ‘88; Deborah Kahn Cunningham; Lolly Boyer; Steve and Julia Sabbagh; Merrilee Heifetz; and Richard Plantagenet, King of England, who may be the most misunderstood man in history.

AUTHOR’S NOTE

The following names of characters and places are pronounced as shown:

Ananke (Uh-NONkee)

Arienrhod (AIRY-en-rode)

Danaquil Lu (DAN-uh-keel LOO)

Gundhalinu (Gun-dahLEEnoo)

Jerusha PalaThion (Jer-OO-shuh PAL-uhTHY-un)

Kedalion Niburu (Keh-DAY-lee-un Nih-BUR-oo)

Kharemough (KAREuhmoff)

Kharemoughi (KAREuhMAWG-ee)

Kullervo (KulLAIRvoh)

Miroe Ngenet (MIR-row EngEN-it)

Mundilfoere (MUNdil-fair)

Sandhi (SAHNdee)

Tiamat (TEE-uhmaht)

Tuo Ne’el (TOO-oh NEEL)

Vhanu (VAHnoo)

‘Do

‘You know nothing? Do you see nothing? Do you remember

‘Nothing?’

I remember

Those are pearls that were his eyes.

‘Are you alive, or not? Is there nothing in your head?’

—T. S. Eliot

There’s someone in my head, but it’s not me.

—Pink Floyd

The mills of gods grind slowly, and the result is usually pain.

—Georgio de Santillana and Hertha von Oechend

PART I: THE CHANGE

Do I dare

Disturb the universe?

In a minute there is time

For decisions and revisions which a minute

will reverse.

—T. S. Eliot

TIAMAT: The Windwards

The hand released the bright ribbon of scarf, and it fluttered down. A hundred eager voices made one voice as the cluster of young girls exploded down the shining strand of beach.

Clavally Bluestone Summer sat watching on the cliff high above, feeling the sea wind against her face, feeling it sweep back her long, dark hair. Smiling, she closed her eyes and imagined that it was the wind of motion, that she was running with the others down below. She had run when she was a girl in races like this one, on so many islands across the Summer seas; hoping to be the winner, to be the Sea Mother’s Chosen for the three days of the clan festival, garlanded with necklaces of clattering polished shells, fed the best and the sweetest of foods, given new clothes, honored by the elders, flirted with by all the young men…

Her smile turned wistful; she fingered the trefoil pendant that gleamed in the sunlight against the laces of her loose homespun shirt. It had been a long time since she had run in one of those races. She had been a sibyl for nearly half her life now. How was it possible…? She opened her eyes, filling them with the endless bluegreen of sea and sky, ever-changing and yet ever constant; the mottled clouds, the shimmering ephemera of rainbows from a distant squall. The Twins smiled down on their gathering today, warming her shoulders with luxuriant heat. Spring was in the air, making her remember with longing her body’s own springtime.

She glanced over her shoulder at the sound of footsteps. Her smile widened as she saw her husband making his way up the path with a basket of fish cakes and bread, a jug of beer in his other hand. She saw the gray-shot brown of his braided hair, his own trefoil gleaming in the sunlight.

Her smile faded as she watched him struggle up the steep hill. The stiffness in his joints was getting worse every year—too many years spent in drafty stone rooms, or making cold, wet crossings from island to island for weeks at a time. Danaquil Lu was a Winter; he had not been bred to the hard life of a Summer, and his body rebelled against it. But he rarely spoke any word of complaint or regret, because he belonged here, where he was free to live his life as a sibyl … and because his heart belonged to her.

The weather was warming; the Summer Star was brightening in their sky, Summer had come into its own. Perhaps the warmer days would ease his pain. Her smile came back as she saw his eyes, bright and bluegreen like the sea, smiling up at her.

He sat down with the basket of food, trying not to grimace. She put an arm around his shoulders, massaging his back gently as she pointed down at the beach. “Look, it’s almost over!” Another shout rose from the watchers below as the runners reached the finish line drawn in the wet sand. They watched a young girl with a bright flag of yellow hair sprint across the line first, watched her being embraced and garlanded and borne away.

“It was a good race, Dana,” she said, hearing the memories in her voice.

Danaquil Lu sighed, nodding; but somehow the gesture felt to her as if he had shaken his head. “We’re young for such a short time,” he murmured, “and we’re old for such a long time.”

She turned to look at him. “Come now,” she said, too cheerfully, because she had been feeling the same way. “How can you say that on a day like this?” and she kissed him, to make certain he didn’t try to answer.

He laughed in surprise. They ate together, enjoying the day and each other’s company, an hour of solitude stolen from the questions of the festival-goers in the village below.

They came down the hill again at last. A clan gathering was always a joyful time—a time for being reunited with relatives and friends from all across the scattered islands of Summer; for remembering the Sea Mother, giving the Lady the tribute She deserved. This was the annual gathering of the Goodventures, one of the largest clans in the islands. They had been the religious leaders of Summer before the last Change—the clan of the previous Summer Queens—and they still held great influence.

Down by the stone wall of the quay the winner of the footrace, a laughing, freckled girl of no more than fourteen, was tossing the ritual offerings of worshipers and supplicants into the restless green water. Out in the bay, several mers from the colony that shared this island’s shores looked on, a sure sign of the Sea’s blessing. Clavally watched the girl’s face, the sunlight radiant in her hair, and felt a sudden, unexpected surge of longing.