Come with me, the voice said. Help me.…
“Come with me.…”
He raised his head, looking up into the face of the Summer Queen. He realized slowly that he was down on his knees, crouched fetally on the fragile span above the glowing Pit, his body shaken by tremors as though he were having a seizure.
“Help me,” the Queen murmured, her hands lifting him, gently but firmly. “Help me get you away from here, to somewhere you’ll be safe.”
“Nowhere…” he mumbled. “Nowhere I’m safe.”
“Yes,” she whispered, with soft conviction. “With me.”
He got clumsily to his feet, drawn by something in her gaze, and let her lead him on across the bridge, to the safety of the far rim. She carried no light; she did not seem to need one. PalaThion followed them; when they stood on solid ground she breathed a sigh of relief, and released the binders he still wore.
Reede brought his hands up; pressing his eyes, trying to burn away the suffocating echoes of green. He let his hands drop again, and found the Queen’s steady, searching gaze still on his face. He saw other figures standing behind her, but registered only one—thinking, for a brief, heart-stopping moment, that he saw Gundhalinu waiting in the shadows. But it was only the Queen’s son, Tammis, with his wife standing beside him, her expression guarded and fearful.
Tammis was not looking at him, but past him; staring at the Pit. He sees it too. Reede moved slightly, for a better view; saw the glint of a trefoil against the boy’s tunic. Does he know—? He let them lead him away, on up the wide stairway into the palace’s heart; gazing in fascination at the glimpses of form and decoration illuminated by their passage. He recognized nothing, and yet he knew, with an indefinable sense of space, exactly where he was, as if he were a traveler returning home after an absence of many years.
They brought him into a small room that had been made into a library, filled with varieties of information storage from primitive to state-of-the-art. One wall opened on the city’s silver-lit silhouette, on the sky and the sea. He looked around him, only remembering to sit down because his body abruptly insisted on collapsing. The Queen herself brought him something to drink. He accepted the cup without comment and sipped the cool, bitter liquid, feeling its pungency begin to clear his head.
“Where is my daughter?” the Queen asked, as he raised his head again. “Where is my pledged?” Reede saw how she looked at him, taking in the bloodstains, his ruined clothes, his face.
“Ariele’s safe, for now,” he said. “On board my ship, in stasis. Your husband … your husband died.” He looked down, away from her stricken face. “He caught a bad one, getting us out. He died. I’m sorry.…”
The Queen made a small, wordless noise as grief choked her. She turned away from him, moving toward the windows. She stood there alone looking out at the stars; no one around him moved, granting her the illusion of solitude. Reede set his cup down roughly on the opalescent table surface beside his seat; wanting to shout at her that there wasn’t time for grief, there wasn’t time— He kept his silence, like the rest of them, until at last she turned back again.
“What about the drug?” she said to him. Her body gave an involuntary spasm. “The water of death?”
“The Blues got all I had.” He shook his head. “I thought Gundhalinu would be here, damn it! I thought he’d be able to help us—”
The Queen was silent again for a long moment; fighting for control, he realized, when he looked back at her at last. “He will come back,” she said finally. “When we’ve done what we have to do.”
“It’ll be too late,” he whispered. He felt giddy suddenly, as if his head were lighter than air. He swore under his breath.
“Vanamoinen,” the Queen said softly. “Do you know why you’re here? Did it tell you—?”
He raised his eyes again, studying the strange paleness of her hair, the porcelain translucency of her skin. “Yes,” he murmured.
The Queen glanced at the others waiting behind her. “We need to speak alone.” They nodded, starting one by one toward the door. PalaThion hesitated, her eyes asking a question. The Queen nodded, and she followed the others out.
“Not you,” Reede said suddenly, as Tammis moved away from his mother’s side. “You stay.”
Tammis hesitated, half frowning with doubt or surprise. His wife closed her hand over his, trying to pull him after her without seeming to. Reede recognized the slight swelling of her belly, and wondered if that was what made her try to change his mind. But Reede held the boy’s gaze with unrelenting insistence. “You saw something,” he said to Tammis. “You know something.”
Tammis nodded, and urged his wife silently, apologetically, away from him. She went out, and her doleful stare was the last thing they saw as she shut the door.
When they were completely alone, he said, “I need two sibyls—the sibyl net picked you,” he gestured at the Queen, “and Gundhalinu. But Gundhalinu’s gone.” He turned back to Tammis. “I think you’re here to replace him. Can you swim? Use underwater gear?”
Tammis nodded, settling into an ornate corner chair. “What’s this about?”
The Queen took a seat on the long couch where Reede was already sitting, and he saw the dubious glance she threw his way. She was prevented from explaining; the sibyl mind controlled her, as it had controlled Gundhalinu. But it didn’t control him, and it was too late now for second thoughts. “The artificial intelligence that runs the sibyl net—the entire database, and the programming that controls it—is located here, below Carbuncle,” he said.
Tammis stared at him. “How do you know that?” he asked. “I thought nobody knew where it was.”
“Your mother knows.” Reede glanced at her. “And Gundhalinu. And I know it, because I put it here.”
Tammis laughed in disbelief. “There’s been a sibyl net for millennia! Even the Snow Queen didn’t live that long.”
“I’m not just someone named Kullervo. I’m something more now. My name was—is—Vanamoinen. The real Vanamoinen died long ago; I’m a construct, a database … his avatar, for want of a better word. I’m using Reede Kullervo to do what I have to do, here, now. The network I helped design brought me back because it’s failing. The mers are part of the system, they were meant to interact with and maintain the sibyl network: it’s a technogenetic system with two radically different substrates—” He broke off, seeing the incomprehension on their faces. He tried again, groping for terms that they would have some chance of understanding. “The mersongs contain information that the smartmatter of the computer requires, and certain chemicals released during the mers’ mating cycle also trigger self-maintenance sequences, allowing the computer to purge itself of errors, and restructure any drift in its logic functions.”
“Their—mating?” Tammis said. “I thought they mated at sea.”
“It’s a two-stage process.” Reede shrugged. The initial stage occurred when the mers were actually within the computer; all of them together. Their communion with the sibyl nexus primed them biologically, so that when they did mate, they could conceive. He had intended for it to keep their population stable, because they were so long-lived. And he had intended for it to bring them pleasure, so that they would be glad to return, for their own sakes, as well as the sake of the net.
He shook his head, with a smile that held as much pain as irony. “We thought we had it all planned perfectly. We never imagined the people the net was meant to serve would begin killing them off.… We never realized what forces would work on a system that survived this long, through so much history.” He looked up at them, and his smile became self-mocking. “You try inventing a fault-tolerant system with superhuman intelligence that has to survive forever.…” He laughed once. “We made a mistake; we were only human, after all—”
They were both staring at him now, in wonder and fascination. He felt an unexpected tenderness fill him, as he looked back at them—the descendants, the survivors, the people for whom he had created all
of this. Seeing the trefoils they wore, the same symbol he had worn, so long ago; knowing that they carried in their blood the same transforming technoviral that he had been the first to carry. He had designed the choosing places to seek out people like these, counted on people like these to go on seeking out the choosing places; and after more than two millennia, even with all that had gone wrong, it was still happening as he had planned.
He smiled, even as Reede Kullervo’s body twisted and shifted position, made restless by the growing discomfort of its failing systems. He wiped his sweating face on his sleeve, and wished suddenly that he had not drunk whatever it was they had given him. Even the thought of drinking or eating made his stomach rise into his throat. He swallowed hard, feeling panic start inside him, not certain whose it was, who he was.… “What—?” he said, as he realized the Queen had asked him something.
“Is there … is there anything I can get for you?” she repeated, her eyes troubled.
He shook his head, and stretched his cramping hands. “Just listen. We don’t have a lot of time. Do you know why the city’s gone dark?”
“No,” the Queen said, her gaze sharpening. “Do you?”
“Yes.” He glanced away, looking out at the sky and its reflection in the sea below. For a moment he remembered another darkness, with only the faintest whisper of ruddy light, so fragile he might almost be imagining it, to make its dark heart all the more terrible. He looked down again, focusing on the fractal patterns of the rug beneath his feet. “Because it’s time—the right time, the only time when anything can be changed. The turbines that provide the city’s power—and power for the sibyl nexus—shut down once during every High Year, at the time when the mers return to the city. At all other times, the turbines make the passage in to where the computer lies completely inaccessible. Anyone who tried to get past them would be killed. But for those three days the way is clear, to let the mers pass inside. When the turbines start up again, the computer will be unreachable for another two and a half centuries. Any attempt to get at it any other way will fail, or destroy it.”
“Why?” Tammis asked.
“Because I had to be sure that it would never become the possession of a single faction in any human power games. That’s why I made absolutely certain that its location would remain unknown. That’s why your mother and Gundhalinu could never explain what they were doing.”
Tammis glanced at his mother. “Then how did you find out?”
“Once, as I was crossing the Pit, it called up to me…” the Queen said, her voice growing faint. “It … chose me, to help it. And all these years, I’ve tried—” Reede saw the terrible weariness in her eyes. “Tried to understand what it needed from me … why it chose me.”
“It chose you because you were in the right place at the right time.” He hesitated. “I’m not saying it was an accident.…” He touched his own head. “I’m not saying it was entirely predestined, either. But you’re Arienrhod’s clone for a reason.” He saw her flinch. “Arienrhod proved she had the strength and the intelligence to get what she wanted from her own people and the offworlders, whether they liked it or not. You are what you are, Moon Dawntreader.… But you’re also the Lady,” he added gently, “the holder of this world’s trust. You are what Arienrhod should have been. Because you were raised by the Summers, who kept—kept peace with the sibyl net, and protected the mers, you have the ability to see the long view. Arienrhod couldn’t have done that. You understand why it matters, why it really matters—” He broke off. “You are the future I wanted to believe in.”
She looked down; looked up at him again, with gratitude shining in her eyes. But then her expression changed. “You said there would be access to the computer for only three days. More than two of them are gone.”
He nodded. “That’s why we can’t wait. One reason.” He glanced down at his unsteady hands. “Your husband had data on the lost elements of the mersong. I have to reconstruct them—” He realized, with a sudden sinking feeling, that there was probably not a functional computer with the kind of database he required anywhere in the city.
“It’s already been done for you,” the Queen said.
He looked back at her. “Gundhalinu? Did he do it before his arrest?”
“No,” she said, with a faint smile. “The Sibyl College finished his work.” She touched the trefoil she wore. “I can get the tapes for you—we reproduced the mersong, inserting the missing passages.”
He smiled too, in spite of himself. “I’ll need underwater gear for two people—him, and me.” He gestured at Tammis.
She half frowned. “What are you going to do?”
“We’ve got to go down into the … into the—” He broke off, found himself with his hand pressed to his mouth, like a man about to be sick. He forced his hand down to his side again. “Into the sea, through the turbines, into the computer with the mers. I have to check out the system myself, to see what’s gone wrong with it, and reprogram.… We have to give the right songs back to the mers.”
Into the sea, under the water … drowning, death, blackness. The images filled his mind, and again he did not know whose fear filled him, who had always been terrified of death by water, who had always known that it would be his destiny.… He swore under his breath, wanting to cry out. You’re damned anyway, you miserable bastard, he thought, with furious self-loathing. Death by water, or the water of death. It doesn’t matter how you die! But it did.… He looked out at the night, so that he would not have to look into the eyes of the two people watching him.
“Why does Tammis have to go with you?” the Queen demanded, and he heard fear for her son in her voice. “I’m a sibyl; the sibyl net chose me.”
“That’s why. You have to remain clear, where you’re protected. You’re going to be in deep Transfer, for hours, inside its mind … it will show you, and you’re going to tell me, what’s wrong. I need you to guide me, let me know when the healing is done. That’s going to be dangerous enough.” He felt the heat of her resistance, her uncertainty as she searched the face of the man who had poisoned her only other child. “You won’t be functional, damn it! I need someone who can work with me—and it has to be another sibyl who can act as go-between for us.” He gestured at Tammis.
“But I thought you were a sibyl,” she said, still frowning, even though there was the beginning of understanding in her eyes now.
He laughed, with another man’s bitter terror. “No, Lady,” he whispered, with another man’s voice. “I am not a sibyl. Sibyls are sacred. I am a human sacrifice.…” Tammis shuddered, staring at him.
The Queen’s face changed. She reached out slowly, as if she were afraid he might bolt, and touched his cheek, as gently as she might have touched her own child. The barest contact of her fingers sent a shock jittering through the nerve endings in his face. But he did not pull away.
He felt her withdraw her hand, after a moment. “I’ll get the data and underwater equipment for you as quickly as I can,” she said. “But how will you reach the computer? You can’t go into the city; you can’t get to the sea without Vhanu’s patrols seeing you.”
“Yes, we can.” He rubbed his eyes, forcing himself to concentrate again, to stay focused, to function as one human being. “The Pit is an access well, it goes down to the sea. It goes exactly where we need to be.”
“But there’s no power—even the well is shut down.”
“Not for us,” he said gently. “It knows about us. I want you to come with us down into the well. We can’t risk being interrupted. Even Vhanu can’t reach us once we’re down there.” He hesitated, seeing her face change. “Have you ever experienced an extended Transfer?”
She nodded. “Once. It was—” She broke off, and he saw the memory of an endless absence that still haunted her. Like drowning …
“It won’t be like that, this time,” he murmured. “It will be—nothing like anything you’ve ever known. But it will still be difficult.…”
“I know.” She looke
d up at him with a weary, sorrow-filled smile. “Isn’t everything?” She rose from the couch. “I’ll see to things,” she said, looking away again, suddenly distracted. For a moment she gazed at Tammis, and then she went silently out of the room.
* * *
Moon entered the room that had become her husband’s entire world within the palace, before his journey to Ondinee … to the Land of Death. She moved slowly about its perimeter, her eyes taking in every detail of its contents … the study materials, the imported electronics equipment, the makeshift bed to which he had exiled himself, after she had driven him away. He had never allowed servants to enter his private workspace; she had not allowed it either, since his disappearance.
She sat down on the edge of his cot, picking up a rumpled shirt that he had carelessly thrown aside. She pressed it to her face, inhaling the familiar scent of his skin until her mind filled with images of lying beside him in the sweet abandonment of love … memories of all that they had meant to each other, for so many years. Even knowing all that they had done to each other, all that they had thrown away or let slip through their hands, still in this moment she could remember only the good things. Because there was no need now to remember anything else. Because he was dead. He was dead.…
She dropped the shirt and rose from his bed again, moving on around the room, passing the terminal, remembering the work he had done, alone and unappreciated: the hidden secrets of the mersong he had discovered, the difference that his discoveries were about to make, which no one would ever be able to thank him for, now.
She stopped again before the small table whose private drawer she had forced, seeing its contents still scattered on the tabletop where she had left them, thoughtlessly, on the day she had lost the only other man she had ever loved. The sign of the Brotherhood still lay on the floor where she had dropped it: the symbol of Survey, in all its endless permutations of treachery and betrayal—yet with a gemstone as beautiful as the sun, the symbol of enlightenment, glowing at its heart.