But now, after so many years, it also surprised him to realize that although he could barely remember what he had eaten for dinner yesterday, he still remembered every stinging word of mockery and censure that had been spoken to him that night in the infirmary; how if he had had the strength left in him to do it, he would have taken the nearest sharp medical instrument and finished what he had so ineffectually started.…
He felt himself blinking too much; forced his mind to concentrate on the complexities of an adhani until his emotions were back under control. He glanced at Moon, wondering what she remembered of that night, so long ago for both of them, when his own people’s self-righteous cruelty had driven him to turn renegade, rejecting everything he had ever believed; and by that act, helped Moon Dawntreader achieve her destiny.
She was not looking at him now, but stood listening to Vhanu discuss more details of the starport’s function, with her own face carefully composed. She wore a long, fluid robe that would not have been out of place on Kharemough, although there was something about the subtle dappling of greens in the restless fabric that made him think of leaves moving in the wind, waves on the sea; something wholly Tiamatan. She wore her hair in a simple loose plait down her back, woven with golden thread, and on her head a diadem made of what looked like crystal. He had never seen her wear anything like a crown before; realized that it must be one of Arienrhod’s, and worn for a calculated effect. She held herself like a queen; but that, he realized, was something she had always done.… He looked away from her as the ache in his chest suddenly grew too strong.
Sparks Dawntreader was listening too, his face taking on a rare animation, as if he were honestly interested in the subject Vhanu was discussing. He was dressed in an imported tunic and pants, formally cut, and there was nothing, superficially, that would have marked him as a native.
“… but forgive me,” Vhanu said, “I must be boring you, droning on about such technical matters.” Gundhalinu heard the unconscious dismissal of the Queen and her husband as less than rational, educated human beings.
“Not at all,” Moon said. Gundhalinu saw the brief glint of anger in her eyes, and knew that she had heard the unthinking judgment too. “This has certainly satisfied a healthy curiosity in me to know what your starport is like. It has been a restricted area for my people for so long, even though it has played such a vital part in the fate of our world.… Although I have to admit it really doesn’t compare with the orbital cities that circle your homeworld, Commander Vhanu.”
Vhanu looked at her blankly. “Have you … seen a tape of the starport hub, then?” he asked.
“No, I’ve seen the starport. I visited there when I was a girl. That was when I learned about the sibyl net.” She smiled, pleasantly, in the face of Vhanu’s suddenly acute discomfort.
“How did you get there and get back again?” he asked. “No one has been able to leave your world for years—and before that, I believe any Tiamatan who did leave was proscribed from returning. Isn’t that right—?”
“I’m afraid I broke the law,” she said simply. “But that was long ago … what I did is no longer illegal, under the terms of our new relationship with the Hegemony. And I am most grateful to you for your wisdom in changing the old, oppressive system. It was an unjust law … there were many of them in those days. Isn’t that true, Justice?” She looked suddenly at Gundhalinu, as if she had felt his eyes on her.
He smiled, his own smile as guarded as the one he saw on her face now. “True justice is what we hope to establish in our relations with your people this time, Lady,” he said softly. He glanced at Vhanu’s face, seeing barely controlled annoyance, and at Sparks Dawntreader. Dawntreader looked at him with a cold speculation that was not the expression he had been expecting to see; one that triggered an unpleasant reaction in his gut.
Dawntreader looked away again, staring out at the landing grids, at the recently arrived ships of the Assembly in the docking bay beyond the windows, with a kind of fierce hunger. Gundhalinu wondered whether he was really wishing that he could fly away, disappear, leave this world and all its sorrows. Or maybe he was only wishing the Hegemony would disappear, instead.…
He heard a sudden stirring in the crowd across the room: The Prime Minister and the Assembly members were making their entrance at last. For half a second, he knew exactly the emotion Dawntreader had been feeling.
“Well, the Living Museum of Ancient History has arrived,” Jerusha PalaThion said dryly, and quite clearly.
“PalaThion!” Vhanu snapped, his indignation not simply for appearance’s sake. But Gundhalinu felt his own sudden paralysis disappear. A faint trace of smile pulled up the corners of his mouth as he looked at his Chief Inspector. He gave her an imperceptible nod; a thank-you. Moon smiled openly, behind Vhanu’s back. Sparks turned away from the windows, all his attention suddenly on the doorway. Gundhalinu remembered that Dawntreader was the son of one of the Assembly members, fathered during the same Mask Night when Arienrhod had had herself cloned.
Gundhalinu started forward, a signal to the people around him to follow, knowing that the Assembly members would expect that courtesy as their due. Even though they had functioned as nothing but figureheads through virtually all of Hegemonic history—and had just become even more of an anachronism, as the stardrive transformed the nature of the Eight Worlds’ real power structure—still they remained the living symbol of the Hegemony’s influence. He understood Vhanu’s reflexive anger at Jerusha’s casual remark, even though he had long ago ceased to feel the kind of pride and reverence that the sight of Assembly had once inspired in him.
Because the Assembly members were little more than actors living a perpetual role, their arrival anywhere was generally an excuse for holidays and celebration, for remembering what was good about Kharemough’s dominance as first among equals in the Hegemony.… He hoped suddenly, with all his heart, that it would be that way tonight.
The crowd of expectant offworlders and influential Tiamatans parted as though some word of magic had been spoken, opening a path between him and the waiting Assembly members. They were resplendent in gem-brocaded, perfectly tailored uniforms, crusted with the honors and decorations awarded to them during their endless cycle of returns to the Eight Worlds.
Gundhalinu glanced down at his own clothing, seeing the austere black uniform of a Chief Justice. Tonight its uncompromising plainness was crossed by a band of silver, on which his family crest and his own honors and decorations were displayed. He had felt disagreeably ostentatious when he put it on; but suddenly he was glad he had, as if he had remembered to put on body armor before confronting a mob of rioters.
He stopped before the Prime Minister, flanked by Vhanu and Tilhonne, with the other officials of his government gathered behind them. He made his bow as they were introduced, one by one, by the Prime Minister’s protocol officer.
Prime Minister Ashwini touched Gundhalinu’s upraised hand briefly, with a look of benign distraction, and murmured a polite pleasantry which Gundhalinu immediately forgot. The Prime Minister appeared to be in his mid-sixties, but his body was still youthful-looking; he was distinguished and obviously Technician in his bearing. He was only the fourth Prime Minister since the Hegemony’s formation, and Gundhalinu had no idea how long ago, in the realtime history of his homeworld, Ashwini must have been born. He had probably known it once, in school, but he had long since forgotten. Given the access the Prime Minister had to the best available rejuvenating treatments, and frequent use of the water of life, he was certainly much older in actual years than he looked to be. And because he, and the rest of the Assembly, had spent most of their time in sublight travel between Gates and worlds, their memories carried back even further, a patchwork of random moments of history—most of them probably too much like this one.
“Honored, sadhu,” Gundhalinu murmured, speaking Sandhi, as everyone else was now. He stepped aside to give the Prime Minister and the Assembly a clear view of the others who waited behind him. “
May I present to you the Summer Queen—”
“Arienrhod!” the Prime Minister said, his face filling with surprise. “I say.…” He touched his nose briefly with his hand, glancing at Gundhalinu again. “Isn’t she supposed to be dead? Didn’t we see them drown her, a few months ago—?” He broke off, before Gundhalinu could make an answer; his eyes glazed over as if he were listening to someone speaking inside his own head. Gundhalinu realized that Ashwini was getting a datafeed from somewhere, possibly from his protocol officer, or else some file of stored information tuned to his own speech. “Oh,” Ashwini said, after a brief moment that had begun to seem interminable; and then, “Of course. This is the Summer Queen. My apologies. Honored, Lady, to be sure.” He stepped forward, holding out his hand like a local. Moon bowed, with equal dignity, and shook it solemnly. “Is this something new, then?” he said to her. “Do you have yourselves altered to match your predecessors, now?”
Gundhalinu saw Moon flush, and winced inwardly. “No,” she said, without using titles, as one equal to another. She spoke Sandhi that was slightly stilted but perfectly clear. “We do not.”
“Oh,” he said, and the look of consternation filled his face again. “But what are you doing here at all? Your people weren’t even permitted in the starport, the last time I was here.”
“Things have changed, sadhu,” Gundhalinu said, with gentle urgency. “If you recall. Because of the stardrive. Our relationship with Tiamat included.”
Ashwini half frowned, and seemed to listen to his inner voice. “Of course they have,” he said, blinking. “Well, of course, that makes perfect sense.” He nodded to Moon again, as if they had just been introduced, before looking back at Gundhalinu. “And you are the man we have to thank for it all, are you not, Justice?” he said, with a smile that actually seemed genuine and full of appreciation. “You must tell me the whole story of it, in your own words, at dinner—”
“It would be my pleasure, sadhu.” Gundhalinu returned the smile, briefly, before the Prime Minister’s attention wandered. Gundhalinu exchanged glances with Vhanu as Ashwini looked away; seeing his own disconcertion reflected in Vhanu’s eyes. Gods, the man is a shufflebrain, a walking cipher. But he went on making introductions, as if nothing had happened, presenting Sparks Dawntreader, “… the Queen’s consort, the son of First Secretary Sirus…”
A murmur went through the gathered men and women of the Assembly, and he saw someone push forward for a better look—Sirus himself, if he recalled the half-remembered face correctly. The man looked no older than Sparks Dawntreader did now; but he smiled, with pride and feeling, as his eyes found his son. Gundhalinu felt Dawntreader look back at him in brief surprise, before turning to face his father.
The Prime Minister was being guided on into the room with gentle insistence, chaperoned by a handful of advisors and protectors. Gundhalinu felt his neck muscles loosen with relief as other members of the Assembly and their companions came forward to greet him and his staff, by turns blandly congenial, or unthinkingly arrogant, or seeming vaguely disoriented, as the Prime Minister had. They spent the majority of their time in their own hermetically sealed floating world, except when they left their ships to attend functions like these—an endless succession of sparkling soirees and elegant dinners among the ever-changing elite of world after world. Generally they only elected new members when someone died. He supposed it was surprising that their behaviors did not seem even stranger.
He accepted a drink from the assortment of mild drugs offered by a passing servo, as its highly burnished form wove an expert course through the flesh-and-blood bodies of the gathered guests. He swallowed down half the drink at once, disgusted at himself for needing it, for letting his memories get on his nerves so much. He had encountered the Assembly only once before, in that brief, bitter meeting at the port hospital. That meeting had been thirteen years ago for him, but these people had scarcely aged, and it seemed to him that some of their faces were familiar, too like the ones burned indelibly into his brain.
What was it, he wondered, that gave humiliation such a terrible power over the human soul, making the painful memories of half a lifetime ago more vivid than his memories of last week, let alone of all the good and worthwhile things he had accomplished in the years between? When he had returned to Kharemough with the stardrive, no one had dared mention his disgrace. Years had passed without a single disapproving stare or a cutting remark about his past. His suicide attempt had even begun to seem like ancient history to him.
But for these people, the memory of their last encounter with him was only a few months old. He had been barely twenty-five then, and looking half-dead besides; but even so he found himself praying to the shades of his ancestors that no one would remember, or make the association …
“Justice Gundhalinu,” a voice said, too loudly, from just behind his left ear. “A great pleasure to meet you, sadhu—someone who has come to be a living symbol of what makes Kharemough great, of why we still rule the Hegemony, after so long.”
Gundhalinu turned, backing up a step from the other man’s uncomfortable proximity, and the overpowering scent of cologne. His stomach turned at the odor, one he had never forgotten.
“IP Quarropas,” the man said, “Speaker of the Assembly.”
“Honored,” Gundhalinu murmured automatically, meeting the Speaker’s palm as he looked down into the other man’s fleshy, smiling face. The Speaker had obviously been a handsome man in his youth, but his life of ease and privilege had not worn well on him.
“I feel we’ve met this way before—” A strange expression came over the Speaker’s face as their hands touched. “Have we?”
“No, I don’t think so.…”
“But I remember your name, from before—” Quarropas wagged his finger, and Gundhalinu watched the answer struggling inexorably toward the surface of his mind.
Gundhalinu kept his expression neutral with an effort, as memory doubled his own vision. “Yes, Quarropas-sadhu,” he said quietly, “we have met. On your last visit to Tiamat. I was a Police inspector then.” And Quarropas had refused to touch his hand in greeting, because he had crippled it, in his attempt to slash his wrist.
“Inspector Gundhalinu,” Quarropas murmured. “Sainted ancestors! Are you that one—the one from the wilderness? How is it possible? I’d thought that you would have done the honorable thing years ago, after so debasing your family and your class that night—” Several people near him turned around to stare, in open disbelief or scandalized curiosity. Gundhalinu heard someone whisper, “I said so.…”
Gundhalinu said nothing for a long moment, seeing Vhanu among the onlookers who were suddenly bearing witness to this confrontation. “The ‘honorable thing’?” he repeated, finally, his voice perfectly even. “By that do you mean that I should be dead now?”
“You were a failed suicide,” Quarropas said. The term also meant coward. “And with a filthy native girl for a mistress besides—”
“Do you mean Moon Dawntreader?” Gundhalinu asked, damming the flood of words. “Then you are referring to the Summer Queen—” He nodded toward Moon, who stood motionless in the crowd near them, with her expression caught somewhere between anger and pain. Sparks was with her, and there was only bleak disgust on his face. “In that case,” Gundhalinu continued, with deadly calm, “you are mistaken. She was, and is, married, to First Secretary Sirus’s son. Their children are here among the guests tonight. She helped me in a time of need; I did as much for her, a long time ago. That was all. There is nothing more to be said about the matter.” He took a deep breath. “Except that I came to realize that to throw away my life was the real act of cowardice. The truly honorable choice was to go on living, and by my actions earn the right to forget the past.”
“Well said, Gundhalinu-ken.” Sirus, the First Secretary, was standing now behind Sparks Dawntreader. His dark, shrewd eyes met Gundhalinu’s. “And well done, too. I daresay, Quarropas,” he murmured, lowering his voice as he moved forward to st
and between the Speaker and Gundhalinu, “I would sooner commit suicide myself than speak such words to this man here. We both committed an unworthy act during our last visit, to have questioned his honor even once, under circumstances we could not fully understand. To insult the honorable Gundhalinu-eshkrad twice is unforgivable.” Quarropas bristled, glaring at Sirus with the shoe of attention suddenly on his own foot, and pinching.
“If it were not for the Chief Justice,” Sirus went on, “I would not have the great pleasure of seeing my son again tonight, or meeting his family. His wife would not be Queen of this world … we would not be here at all, with a new future before us, and the water of life back in our hands, if he had not given us the stardrive. I salute you, sadhu.” He looked toward Gundhalinu, and raised his enameled goblet. The crowd began to murmur again around him; but this time there was nothing hostile or mocking in the sound. Gundhalinu saw other glasses raised, and palms held up in solemn acknowledgment to him.
Gundhalinu nodded, letting Sirus read the gratitude in his eyes. Sirus smiled and turned away, and time began to flow again.
“By the Boatman, you skewered that kortch neatly.” Jerusha PalaThion was suddenly standing beside him. She touched his arm, and he saw their shared past mirrored in her eyes.
His mouth pinched. “I’ve had enough years, lying awake nights, to think about what I would say this time.…” He shook his head, and smiled faintly. “Maybe I’m really not a coward.” He looked back at her. “How are you doing?”
She shrugged. “I’ll live. I’ve had worse receptions. But I think I need more fortification.” She moved away, following the track of a servo.