The Summer Queen (66 page)

“I intend to, from now on,” Moon murmured, as sudden urgency
took the sting out of the other woman’s sardonic reprimand. She was not sure
how accurate the Summers’ knowledge was; but any new resource they could add to
what they had already observed could only help them.

“What makes you say they are in danger?” Capella Goodventure
repeated impatiently. “The offworlders won’t be back for nearly a century. And
even you have not dared to suggest we begin murdering the Lady’s Children ourselves
and drinking their blood to stay young.”

Moon flushed again, and bit her tongue. “We don’t have a lifetime
or more before the offworlders come back,” she said flatly. “We have maybe
three years.”

Capella Goodventure looked at her as if she had suddenly
gone insane.

Moon rubbed her arms, inside the loose, shell-clattering
sleeves of her shirt. “I have learned in sibyl Transfer that the offworlders
have discovered a source of the stardrive plasma the Old Empire used. They’re
building starships right now that can reach Tiamat without using the Black
Gates. They don’t have to wait. When the starships are ready, they’ll come.”

Capella Goodventure’s stare turned incredulous, and then disturbed,
as she absorbed the full implication of the words. “Lady’s Eyes—” she murmured,
walking a few more steps lost in thought. And then she looked up again. “So,”
she said. “This was the Lady’s plan.” Moon hesitated, wondenng against hope
whether the Goodventure elder had finally understood what she had been trying
for so long to make her see But then the other woman smiled bitterly. “You
strove to make us like the offworlders, to make us forget our old ways and be
like them. And now that blasphemy has brought the Lady’s curse down on you—perhaps
on all of us. The offworlders will return with their technology, which you
wanted to possess so badly. And they will put the Winters back into power and
throw you into the Sea, like the Motherlorn, unnatural creature you are—”

Moon caught the Goodventure woman’s sleeve, jerking her
around as they reached the edge of the cliff; as she heard her own unspoken
fears mock her from the other woman’s lips. “Are you blind as well as deaf,
Capella Goodventure? Goddess! Why can’t you see that all I’ve done to change
Tiamat has been to keep us from losing everything to the offworlders when they
come back again? Not because I love what they are that much more than what we
are! They have things, and ways of doing things, that we can profit from—just
as we have things they could profit from understanding, like ... reverence ...
for the mers. Even your own people know that, or they wouldn’t be using that
synthetic silkcloth as a tent to shade food that’s been stored in those insulated
coolers for the festival!” She gestured fiercely back the way they had come. “But
that isn’t the point. The point is that I’ve done everything that I’ve done for
the single purpose of protecting the mers.”

Capella Goodventure snorted. “You can’t make me believe
that.”

“The ... Lady told me that I would have to save them. That
it was more important to Her than anything else. That I was Her tool, that I
must do anything that was necessary to help the mers, because they ... they are
... sacred to Her.”

She stumbled over the words, hearing them fall awkwardly on
her own disbelieving ears. She hoped that Capella Goodventure would not hear
her doubt, but only her desperate urgency. She looked up again, realizing that
she had always had a genuine reason in her heart for protecting the mers, one
which needed no deeper explanation. “The mers saved my life, once. I would do
the same for them, if I can.”

Capella Goodventure was silent now, her eyes hard but clear,
her face expressionless; listening, at last.

“I have worked all these years to give us independence, so
that the mers would never be slaughtered again. But now everything has changed
again—for all of us, like it or not. The offworlders are coming back too soon,
we aren’t ready, and they will slaughter the mers before the mers have had a
chance to rebuild their colonies They’ll go on killing them, in blind greed,
until they’ve killed every single one. And that will be a tragedy beyond
imagining, not only for us but for them. We will all be ... under the Lady’s
curse. Unless I can find some other way to prevent it”

“And how do you think that can be done?” Capella Goodventure
asked finally, with doubt still in her voice, but at least without hostility.

Moon started down the steep, narrow stairs, watching her
feet; glancing back as she beckoned Capella Goodventure after her. “The Lady
has shown me the truth about the mers: that they are ... intelligent beings,
just as we are.”

“You believe this?” Capella Goodventure asked. Moon realized
her incredulity was not for the words themselves, but for hearing them spoken
by someone she believed had turned her back on the tradition that held the mers
sacred.

“I believe it as profoundly as I believe in my own
existence,” Moon answered. “They have a language of their own. One of the
things that I have been doing—with the sibyls of the College—is studying their
language, so that we can find a way to communicate with them. If we can do that
successfully, we may be able to warn them of their danger, at least.”

Moon had reached the foot of the steps now. She nodded to Jerusha
and Miroe, who stood together on the pier. Behind her she heard Capella
Goodventure’s footsteps stop suddenly.

“What do they want?” Capella Goodventure asked. “Why have
you brought them here? They’re not welcome—”

Sudden motion in the water interrupted her, as a mer’s head
and long, sinuous neck appeared suddenly beside the two waiting figures. Silky
looked quizzically at Jerusha and Miroe, away at the new arrivals, and back at
them. Jerusha crouched down, murmuring something inaudible, stroking the
merling’s head. The Goodventure elder watched as if she were hypnotized.

“I asked them to come because she is theirs,” Moon said
softly.

“No one owns a mer,” Capella Goodventure snapped. “And
certainly no offworlder has the right—”

“They raised her,” Moon said. “They found her orphaned on
the shore about seven years ago. They are her family. She left the bay at
Ngenet plantation, where she has lived all her life, and followed them here ...
because they asked her to. That’s why they’ve come. To show you that I’ve
spoken the truth.”

Capella Goodventure went slowly past her, moving toward Jerusha
and Miroe She moved as though every muscle in her body resisted it, as if she
was helpless. under a compulsion. “Did you raise this merling?” she asked.

Miroe nodded. “We did.” Jerusha still crouched down, holding
on to a mooring post for support as she coped with Silky’s head-butting
caresses.

“How is that possible?” Capella Goodventure said bluntly, unable
to reconcile what her eyes showed her. “You aren’t Tiamatan.”

“My family has lived on Tiamat for three generations,” Miroe
said, looming over her, matching her irascibility with his own. Moon remembered
her own first meeting with him, and felt a brief flash of pity for Capella
Goodventure. “My wife chose to stay on Tiamat when the rest left here for good,
because she preferred this world to anything she’d seen out there. How can we
belong here less than you? Your own people came here as refugees from somewhere
else, on a ship called the Goodventure. Only the mers are truly of this world.”
He glanced over his shoulder at Jerusha and Silky. “I’ve studied the mers all
my life. My life was protecting them in any way I could, until Winter’s end
.... But it wasn’t enough. I don’t ever want to see again what I saw on my own
shore—” He looked back at her.

Capella Goodventure studied their faces a moment longer,
then turned back to Moon. Moon met her stare; felt as though the Goodventure
elder looked at her and really saw her for the first time in sixteen years. “I
feel as though I must be dreaming,” Capella Goodventure murmured, as she looked
out at the sea. “Perhaps the Lady has spoken to us all, in Her way.” She looked
again at Moon, at Jerusha and Miroe. “You claim that you can actually talk to
this merling; that she followed you here at your command?”

“Request,” Miroe corrected.

Jerusha nudged him into silence. “It was as much out of
trust as real communication,” she said. “There seem to be very few concepts we
have in common ... we don’t even know how to ask them questions. So much of
what they do seems to involve mersong—and the mersong is incomprehensible to
us.”

“The mersong is how they worship the Lady,” Capella Goodventure
said flatly. “No more, no less. It wasn’t meant for us to understand.”

“But we’ve found patterns in the mersong that are like those
in traditional Summer music,” Moon said, forcing patience into her voice. “We
would like to speak with people at the Festival today and record songs they
remember, especially songs about the mers—and any lore they know, stories,
superstitions. If you would help us, then all of Summer would begin to
understand that what we’re doing is vital to everyone on this world.”

Capella Goodventure hesitated again, looking uncertain.

Moon glanced away from her, as unexpected motion on the
steps caught her eye. She realized, surprised, that it was Ariele and not
Tammis coming down to them. Ariele was trailed by three Summers, two boys and a
girl; she swept past the four adults on the pier like a warm breeze, calling
out to Silky with a series of trills. Silky came obediently back to the
pierside, and she presented them to the merling with the obliviousness of
youth.

Capella Goodventure watched them, and Moon watched all that
the other woman saw: Ariele, so much like her mother, growing up in the city
and yet somehow in her element, here with the mers. The Goodventure elder shook
her head m something that could only be resignation. “Very well,” she said
slowly. “I never thought I would live to see this day; but I have.” She looked
back at Moon. “You and ‘ have one goal from this day forward, Moon Dawntreader.
We will do the Lady’s work together, from now on. I only hope that we can do it
well enough.”

“How did it go, Commander?” Vhanu rose from his seat, putting
back the headset he had been using to pass the time as Gundhalinu stopped
beside him. The conference had run overlong, as usual, and Vhanu had arrived
here promptly, as usual.

Gundhalinu smiled. “It was just what Faseran and Thajad
wanted to hear. I think everything is going to work out exactly as Pematte
predicted.” They began to walk, threading their way through the workers, human
and servo, who were laboriously fitting a new series of murals into place in the
hallway of the Hegemonic Coordinating Center. “It will still take almost two
years of preparation before they send the expedition to Tiamat—that’s if the
ship production continues on schedule too, of course—” He looked back over his
shoulder as they were forced to go single file. “But Faseran actually told me
today that I can have the Chief Justiceship if I want it.”

Vhanu started in surprise. “Father of all my grandfathers!
That is good news .... I do hope you’ll consider my application for a place on
your provisional staff, Commander. That is, as you know, I—”

“After all you’ve done to help make this happen, NR,” Gundhalinu
said, “you can name your position in the new government.” He smiled. “Even
Commander of Police, if you still want it.” His smile widened as he saw sudden
pleasure light up Vhanu’s face.

“Yes, sir. Very much—” Vhanu’s own smile widened; his fist
tightened at his side like a surreptitious shout.

“Then consider it a—” Gundhalinu collided with the body that
backed suddenly into his path. Hands flew up to steady him; the youth he had
run into met his gaze with urgent gray eyes, and he felt the brush of a
familiar hand-sign as a piece of paper was pressed into his palm.

His fingers closed over it, he opened his mouth—noticing
just in time the registry numbers printed on the young worker’s forehead, that
marked him as an Unclassified. Gundhalinu swallowed the words he had been about
to speak as the day-laborer’s expression became deliberately abject fear. The
worker flung himself flat in an abasement. Gundhalinu looked down at the dark,
unkempt curls of the youth’s hair, and kept silent. By law Technician and Unclassified
could not even speak directly, without an interpreter of intermediate rank.
Even an apology was impossible, on either side. And no matter who was right,
the Unclassified was always wrong.

“Look out, you dumb bastard—” A Nontech foreman caught the
laborer by the neck of his coveralls as he began to rise, hauling him out of
Gundhalinu’s path. “He begs your pardon, Commander-sathra—” the foreman said,
shoving him; the worker grunted as his face collided with the chiseled stone
images of their mutual ancestors on the wall.

“It was my fault,” Gundhalinu said, feeling the paper
crumple as he tightened his fist. The laborer turned to look at him, with one
cheek red, leaving a red smudge on the wall as he turned away from it. There
was no expression at all in his eyes now.

“No, sathra. It was his fault.” The foreman shook his head. “You—!”
The worker flinched as the foreman’s voice caught him. “You’re fired.” He
nodded, head down, and started away without looking back. “Sir,” the foreman
said, pleased with himself. He bowed and backed out of their way.

“Thank you,” Gundhalinu muttered as he started on, because
it was expected.

“Gods,” Vhanu said, glaring at the laborer’s retreating
back, “why do they even let these people work on such an expensive project?”

“Because they work for almost nothing,” Gundhalinu answered
wearily, looking straight ahead as they went on toward the tram stop. “Vhanu,
did you ever imagine how it would feel to live as a lowborn?”

Vhanu glanced at him. “Certainly not.”