But not his soul alone—Ilmarinen’s. It would never have existed, he could never have realized his dream … he would never have had those dreams, if it had not been for Ilmarinen, whom he loved. Whose calm rationality and understanding of human weakness amazed him, whose dark eyes were deeper than infinity, whose sudden, unexpected smile had come to mean more to him than a hundred honors, a thousand empty gestures of praise from the corporeal gods of the Interface. Ilmarinen, who had been the other half of him, of his genius; whose soul was joined with his forever in the design and programming of the sibyl system. The system born of their mutual vision and sacrifice had survived the generations since their deaths, doing good, spreading knowledge freely; the symbol of all they had been to each other, all they had believed in. Ilmarinen … he called. Ilmarinen—?
But Ilmarinen was dead, laid to rest millennia ago, as he thought he himself had been. He should not be here now, like this, awakened from his centuries of peace, brought back to life as a total stranger in this strange and terrifying existence.
Except … He remembered it now, remembered everything that had been denied to him for so long: He remembered that he had willed this himself. After Ilmannen’s death, he had made the arrangements, had recorded his brainscan and hidden it in a secret place remembered only by the sibyl mind, in case the net should ever need him in some future time.
And now that time had come. He had been called back to life, and he did not need anyone to tell him what had happened. There had been no crucial errors in the system’s design or programming; there had been no mistakes in the genetic design when they had played god and created the mers. Their only failure had been in underestimating human greed. Giving human beings indefinitely extended lives had never been their desire, or their point. But someone had taken notice of the mers’ longevity, someone had unlocked their secret, and the Hunts had begun.
And because, over the centuries, they had slaughtered the mers, the sibyl mind was failing. Now it had called him back, to save it if he could. If he could…
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. I The Queen herself brought him something to drink. He accepted the cup without I comment and sipped the cool, bitter liquid, feeling its pungency begin to clear his I head.
“Where is my daughter?” the Queen asked, as he raised his head again. “Where 1 is my pledged?” Reede saw how she looked at him, taking in the bloodstains, his 1 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. t”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 I 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. I “The water of death?”
“The Blues got all 1 had.” He shook his head. “I thought Gundhalinu would be f 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, I when he looked back “at her at last. “He will come back,” she said finally. “When I 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 I side. “You stay.”
Tammis hesitated, half frowning with doubt or surprise. His wife closed her Ihand 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 this 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. I 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.” l 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 j 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.