And then he had stopped giving it the drug, and begun to record the results. Its decline had been rapid, and terrifying. The drug had been designed for a human system, but its function—too simplistic, as he had realized, too late—was generic enough to affect a quoll in similar ways. And to kill it in similar ways.
It was the killing he had told himself he wanted to see in detail—not just a computer model, but the real, intimate, bloody, puking symptoms. Because after all, he had such a very personal interest in those symptoms.
He had been trying to recreate the water of life, and he had failed. He had knowingly and intentionally infected himself with the semisentient material he had recreated so imperfectly, even though his test models had shown him what would probably happen to him—what had happened to him. His body had become dependent on the drug as an arbiter of its normal functioning. His body still aged—one more way in which the drug was a failure—but, ironically, it functioned at peak efficiency while it did.
But the substance was unstable. Like the real water of life, it required continuous doses to sustain its effects. Except that the body did not develop a dependency on the genuine water of life. It developed a dependency on his. Without a continuous supply of the drug, virtually every cell in his system would cease to function—dying, running wild; millions of infinitesimal machines all gone out of control.
He stood in front of the cage, forcing himself to look at the agony of the creature inside it; forcing himself to look into the mirror. He watched its body spasming with uncontrollable seizures, the bloody foam flecking its mouth, its soft, spotted fur matted with filth, its eyes rolling back in its head. … He had wanted to see it, wanted to know what he had in store— Then look at it, you fucking coward! You did it; you did it to yourself, because you wanted to….
The dreadful keening of its torment went on and on, filling his head. Slowly, with hands that trembled from something more terrifying to him than fear, he reached into the cage and lifted out the quoll. He held it a moment in his arms, oblivious to the bites it inflicted on him in its agony. And then, with a sudden, sure motion of his hands he snapped its neck.
He dropped the limp, lifeless form into the incinerator chute, watched it dematerialize before his eyes, cleanly, perfectly, freeing its soul—if it had one—to eternity. And who will do the same for me?
He turned away, stumbling back across the lab, the telltale early-stage discomforts of his own body suddenly magnified a thousandfold. He had to stop and inhale a tranquilizer before he could concentrate. He woke up his work terminal, fumbled his way across the touchboard, lighting up the wrong squares as he tried to feed in the security code that would let him get what he wanted. At last he heard the faint sound that told him the proper segment of secured stasis had released. He went to it and pushed his hand through the tingling screen, pulling out an unlabeled vial. The drug had no official designation. It had only one user. He called it the “water of death.” He unsealed the vial, and swallowed its contents.
TIAMAT: Carbuncle
“Lady—”
“Lady.…”
Voices with a poignantly familiar Summer burr called to Moon as she made her way down the long, sloping ramp at the terminus of Carbuncle’s Street. The ramp dropped from the Lower City down to the harbor that lay beneath Carbuncle’s massive, sheltering shellform. Workers bowed their heads to her, lifted their hands in greeting, or stared dubiously as she entered their world, which had once been her own world. She wore the drab, bulky work clothes of a deckhand—linen shirt, canvas pants, a thick graybrown sweater her grandmother had made for her by hand. She had come at her grandmother’s urging, with Sparks at her side—leaving behind the Sibyl College, the dickering Winter entrepreneurs and the struggling Winter engineers, to remind her people, and herself, of the heritage she had left behind. Gran was with her, pointedly keeping her distance from Jerusha PalaThion, who had also accompanied them, as she insisted on doing whenever Moon left the palace. Standing midway up the ramp was the small knot of Goodventure kin who also followed her everywhere, hounding her and spying on her; one good reason Jerusha was always by her side.
“Lady, what can we do for you?” A sailor came up to her, dragging a ship’s line. There was something like awe, but also uncertainty, in his eyes when he faced her; as if he were afraid that she had come down here to pass judgment on her people for their recalcitrance in embracing the new order of things.
But she took the tow rope from his hands, feeling its rough fibers scrape het palms, realizing how her own hands had lost the leather-hardness that physical labor had once given them. “Nothing,” she said humbly, “but to let me be Moon Dawntreader Summer for a time, and work the ships, and answer the questions a Summer sibyl has always answered, for anyone who wishes to ask.”
He looked at her in surprise, and released his hold on the rope, leaving it in her hands. She tied it around the mooring-post, her hands by habit making knots that her mind had almost forgotten how to form.
Slowly and almost reluctantly, the other Summers began to show her what they were doing. Sparks followed her, selfconsciously easing into the pattern of their activities. Their rhythms became her body’s rhythms once more, more swiftly than she would have imagined was possible. Gran sat down on the pier and took over the mending of a net from a willing sailor; Jerusha leaned against a barrel, looking uncomfortable, with her gun slung at her back. She had just told them this morning that she was pregnant for the fourth time, after three miscarriages. Miroe had ordered her to avoid any heavy work. Moon knew he would have kept her confined to bed if he dared, but not even he dared that.
No crowd gathered. The other Summers watched her discreetly, still either suspicious or uncertain; but she knew that word of her presence was spreading through the sighing, creaking underworld, where sailors and dockhands loaded and unloaded supplies, scraped, lashed, and refitted hulls, mended nets, all as surely as the cold sea wind moved through the rigging of their ships. She forced herself to forget that there were easier, safer, faster ways of doing most of these things; letting herself remember the satisfaction of everyone working together like one body, each separate part knowing its role. She savored the smell of the sea, its soft, constant, murmurous voice, the feel of a deck shifting under her feet as she loaded cargo.
Sparks smiled at her as he worked, and gradually she saw his face take on a look of ease and peace. It was an expression she had not seen for so long that she had forgotten he had ever looked that way. And in his eyes there was the memory of the unexpected passion that had taken them two nights ago, the fulfilling of a need that was not just physical but souldeep, and which had not been satisfied in either of them for too long.
She smiled too, breathing in the sea air, remembering a time when each time they lay together had seemed to be all she lived for, when they had been young and free and never dreamed that they would ever be any other way… . But the memory of the Transfer, calling her away into the night, suddenly filled her vision with the face of another man, his hand reaching out to her, his mouth covering hers; made her remember the words I need you.
She looked down and away, her thoughts giddy. She forced her mind to go empty, as she had had to do time and again these past two days; suppressing the emotion that the memory stirred in her, a feeling as dark as remembered eyes, as desperate, as haunting. There is nothing you can do about it now. Nothing. She repeated the words over and over again, silently, letting them flow into the pattern of her work until the helpless grief inside her faded.