The Summer Queen Read Free Page A

fever-sweat here. He felt himself sweating, not entirely from the fetid
heat. One of his escort unlocked a door, and the noises he had been trying not
to listen to suddenly became impossible to ignore. They led him through the
chamber beyond.
    He did not look right or left, staring fixedly at the back
of the man ahead of him; but the corners of his eyes showed him a naked,
bleeding body suspended from chains, an inquisitor irate at the interruption;
an array of torture equipment ranging from the primitive to the sublime.
Nothing ever became obsolete, in this business. The stench was overwhelming,
like the heat, the sounds .... A rushing filled his head, his eyesight began to
strobe; he swore under his breath, and turned it into forced meditation,
pulling himself together. He finished crossing the room.
    Beyond the far door was another corridor, and at its end another
room: a laboratory this time. The air was suddenly, startlingly cool. He
realized that this must be where the government kept the research installation
he had heard rumors about. No wonder the secret of its location kept so well.
He took a deep breath, let it out as Irduz, the High Priest of the Western
Continent, came forward to greet him. Irduz was here in person; this was a
bigger mess than he’d expected.
    “Shibah be praised you’ve come so soon—”
    He shrugged off the touch of Irduz’s hand. The High Priest
must have his own entrails on the sacrificial plate, to make him touch an
unbeliever as if they were friends. “What’s the problem1’” the Smith asked, his
voice rasping.
    Irduz stepped back. “That is,” he said, and pointed. Behind
him stood half a dozen men in lab clothing, some Ondinean. some not. “Our
researchers were trying a replication process. Something went wrong.”
    The researchers moved aside as the Smith started forward, giving
him access to what lay behind them. He stopped, staring. Beyond the
electromagnetic barrier of an emergency containment shield he saw a seething
mass of glittering, cloudlike material. He looked at the display on the wall
beside it. just as one more subsystem went critical, and another indicator
slipped into the red in a spreading epidemic of crisis. “What the hell ... ?”
he murmured. He turned back to the research team. “What is it?”
    They looked at each other, glancing nervously at the High
Priest. “We were trying to create a replication process that would restructure
carbon into diamond, for a building material—”
    He gave a bark of sardonic laughter. “By the Render!” He
looked back at Irduz, watching the High Priest’s barely controlled anxiety
become barely controlled anger, at his blasphemy, at his mockery. “Maybe Shibah
and the Hallowed Calavre don’t approve of your unnatural methods.”
    “Our plans for the new temple require large expanses of a material
that is both transparent and extremely strong. Diamond veneer will not suffice.
The Holy of Holies knows that everything we do in this place is to the greater
exaltation of the Name,” trduz snapped. His heavy robes rustled like leaves of
steel.
    The Smith glanced toward the door he had entered by, and
what lay beyond it. He smiled sourly. “Why don’t you just evacuate, and drop a
nuke on this place? That would solve your problem.”
    “That is not an acceptable solution,” Irduz said, frowning.
    “You mean it’s too obvious?” The Smith shook his head, turning
back to the displays. They had been trying to create a primitive replicator, as
limited in function compared to the Old Empire’s smartmatter as an amoeba was
to a human being. They had wanted something that would mindlessly realign the
molecular structure of carbon, transforming it into diamond. They had tried to
create an imitation of life; and they had been too successful.
    Instead of an army of cell-sized mechanical slaves, whose purpose
was endlessly replicating the molecular pattern of diamonds, they had gotten an
army of mindless automatons whose