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.”