The Snow Queen

by Joan D. Vinge

  He looked, and looked away again, still less than comfortable with the publicity of sexual advances here in the city. “No, thanks. I just want to get out of here.” The silver of her gown, for a flashing instant, made him think of silver-white hair .... He pushed on past, trying not to touch her. He felt no real desire for any woman except Arienrhod now: Arienrhod who was teaching him to desire things he had never even dreamed about. And the idea of sex for money seemed grotesque and perverted, even though he knew that half the women and men who offered their bodies in these places were Winters. Bored or money-hungry, they had adapted their normal easiness about sex to the off worlders mercenary appetities.

  There were off worlder prostitutes here, too, controlled by other off worlders higher up in the covert power web that covered the Maze. There were worlds in the Hegemony where slavery was an accepted fact or a tacit one—and Arienrhod did not interfere with the customs of her customers. Some of them looked no different from the local body sellers (only, to his eyes, more exotic); but there were the zombies, too, flesh-and-blood victims for hire who satisfied the kind of customers who weren’t content with dreams. They moved nearly naked through the crowds, flaunting their scars—no, flaunting was the wrong word. They were the living dead, they moved vacant eyed, like sleepwalkers; theirs was the dream, and the nightmare. They were drugged, he had been told, or drugs had already destroyed their brains. He had been told by Arienrhod that they felt nothing. And once, when his own mood had turned especially black, he had almost ...

  But the memory of lying helpless in an alley while four slavers called him “pretty” had broken the black mood the way his shell flute had broken that night; left him wondering whether it was really the off worlders he despised, or the off worlder in himself.

  But Arienrhod had eased his conscience again, brushed away his questions, laughed gently and told him that there would always be evil, on any world, in any being, because without it there would be no measure for good ...

  Sparks took a deep breath as the casino doors swept shut behind him, stood letting his lungs clear on the inset slab of rare metallic ore that served as a doorstep. A tawny cat slipped past his feet, disappeared into a hidden cranny in the wall, hunting.

  “... Come on, S’eing, gimme a break.” Something familiar yet strange about the voice made him turn and look along the building front. “I’ll do anything, for gods’ sakes, anything to get out of this hellhole and back to someplace where they can help me! Sign me on—” The speaker was an off worlder thick dark hair, brown skin, a sparse half-grown beard. He sat on a box, propped against the wall, wearing a stained crewman’s coveralls with no insignia. He was a stranger; he looked like a strong man slowly starving to death, and Sparks began to turn away from the sight of him. But the voice ... “You owe me, damn you, S’eing!” He watched the stranger push away from the wall with an awkward twist of his spine, catch the pants leg of the second man’s flightsuit.

  The second man was a freighter captain, he guessed, or something less official: a heavy man with a scarred face. He stepped back suddenly, jerking the seated man off-balance. Sparks watched the first man sprawl helplessly into the street, realized with a shock of empathy that the man’s legs were paralyzed. The scarred officer laughed, the kind of laughter he’d never wanted to hear again. “I don’t owe you shit, Herne, if you can’t collect.” Herne’s curses followed him down the alley.

  The man called Herne rearranged his useless legs laboriously, ignoring the subtle and the not so subtle stares of the passersby. Sparks stood staring like the rest, trapped in the voyeurism of pity. He moved forward at last, tentatively, as he watched the man try to drag himself back onto his seat. The man glanced up at him; slid back down onto the pavement.

  “You!” Hatred followed recognition like night behind day. “Did she send you here? Did she tell you where to find me? ... Yeah, take a good look, kid! Fill up your eyes, fill up your brain; and then don’t ever forget that someday she’ll do the same to you.” Herne’s hand closed on a fistful of dust, flung it away.

  “Starbuck.” He was not sure he had even spoken it aloud, but he knew it for the truth. “She—she said you were dead.” He had imagined she meant fallen thousands of meters into the sea. But there were platforms and machinery jutting out into the shaft. One of those must have broken his fall ... and broken his back. And now he might as well be dead—but he was alive. Sparks felt the sudden release of an unconscious pressure somewhere in his chest, a thing he became aware of only in its absence. “I’m glad ...”

  Herne twisted in futile rage; his hand leaped out at Sparks’s leg. “You son of a Summer slut! If I could get my hands on you I’d finish what I started!” He slumped back again, letting his hand drop. “Go ahead, enjoy it, kid. I’m still twice the man you are, and Arienrhod knows it, too.”

  Sparks stood just beyond reach, his face burning. The memory of what Herne had done to him, and failed to do, there in the Hall of the Winds drowned his compassion like a gnat in a bowl of bitterness. “You’re no man at all, Herne, any more. And Arienrhod is all mine!” He turned and started away down the alley.

  “You fool!” Herne’s angry laughter beat at his retreating back. “Arienrhod is no man’s! You belong to her, and she’ll use you until she uses you up—”

  Sparks walked on. not looking back, until he reached the corner of the Street. But he did not start uphill toward the palace; he stood while his anger drained away and left him purposeless, before he chose the downhill route. He walked aimlessly for a long time, moving into the heart of the Maze. He passed the bars and casinos that had become a second home to him; glanced desultorily at shop windows filled with imported spices and herbs, jewelry, paintings, caftans, terminals ... and a hundred different technological toys: costly, sophisticated baubles spread out for the jostling free port trade and the wondering eyes of the natives. Once every window had stopped him in his tracks, and a walk in the Maze had been like a walk through heaven. Now they barely caught his eyes; and somehow, without his being aware of it, time had coated his awe with a rind of disillusionment, and the wine of wonder had turned to vinegar.

  Even the many-colored alleys, the fert’le meeting ground where artisans of this world and seven more let their creativity bloom, had grown strangely dim and separate from his own reality. He was no longer drawn into the sight and fragrance and music as he moved along them; and now the vivid bruise left on his awareness by Herne’s living death pressed painfully, acutely, against the walls of yielding glass that closed him in. Surrounded by the beating heart of the city he had come here to discover, he discovered instead that somehow the thing he had reached out for had slipped through his hands again. Like everything he had ever cared about, or counted on .... His hand closed violently over the stem of a kinetic sculpture in the display stall he was passing; harsh notes clashed among its spines, leaping like cats. But the jangling isotonic music stopped at his skin, the cool metal stem swayed into another dimension. Or maybe he only imagined their unreality; but still it did not pass ... Why? What’s wrong with me? What’s wrong?

  He let it go in disgust as the sculptor came indignantly to the door of his shop. He went on, realizing only now what alley he had come into: It was the Citron Alley, and ahead of him he could already see Fate

  Ravenglass sitting as she always did with her trays and trimmings on her doorstep. The place he had come to once before for shelter, and been taken in without question or demand. The place that he could always come back to, a haven of calm and creation in a universe of indifference and broken parts.

  He saw that Fate was not alone, saw her visitor rise from the step in a cloud of midnight-blue veils embroidered with rainbows. He recognized her friend Tiewe—by the veils, he had never seen anything more of her than her ebony hands. He heard the sweet song of her hidden necklace of bells. He had asked Fate why she never showed herself, thinking that she must be disfigured; but Fate had said that it was a custom of her homeworld. He had seen only one or two o
thers like her since, carefully protected by chaperones. Tiewe was uneasy in the presence of men, and he felt a jealous gratification as he realized that she was leaving because she had seen him. Fate had many friends—but there were none who seemed to be anything more than friends to her. He had wondered from time to time about her ceKbacy.

  As Tiewe moved away, trailing music, Fate’s face turned to his approach: half a smile, half a frown of concentration. “Sparks—is that you?” Malkin the cat meowed affirmation from his crouching spot in her doorway.

  “Yes. Hello, Fate.” Sparks stopped in front of her, suddenly uncertain.

  “Well, what a nice surprise. Sit down, don’t be a stranger. You’ve been too much of a stranger these past months.”

  He grimaced his guilt as he sat down, carefully, among the trays on the stoop. “I know. I’m sorry, I—”

  “No, no, don’t apologize.” She waved her hands, absolving him goodnaturedly. “After all, how often have I come to the palace to visit you?”

  He laughed. “Never.”

  “Then I should be grateful you come here at all.” She felt for the mask she had laid down. “Tell me gossip about the court—what they wear, how they play, what marvelous inconsequentialities they brood over. I need some cheering up. Tiewe is inspired with a needle and floss, but such a sad person ...” She looked away, frowning at nothing, reached out abruptly for a tray of beads and upset it. “Damn!” Malkin leaped up from the doorway and disappeared into the shop.

  “Here, let me—” Sparks leaned out, barely catching a cascade of shimmering green as it poured over the step’s edge. He righted the tray and refilled it patiently, soothed by the mindlessness of the task. “There.” He handed her three beads at a time, falling back gratefully into the habits and the comfortable feel of his days with her.

  “See how I’ve missed you.” She smiled at the beads dropped into her palm. “But not just for your patient hands—for your lilting Summer songs and the freshness of your wonder.”

  Sparks let his fingers dig into his knees, said nothing.

  “Will you stay and play for me awhile? It’s been too long between songs in this alley.”

  “I—” He swallowed the stone in his throat. “I didn’t bring my flute.”

  “No?” More incredulous than if he’d told her he wasn’t wearing clothes. “Why not?”

  “I—don’t feel like playing, lately.”

  She sat leaning forward over the mask form, waiting for something more.

  “I’ve been too busy,” defensively.

  “I thought that was what you did for the Queen—played your music.”

  “Not any more. I do ... uh, other things, now.” He shifted on the hard surface of the step. “Other ... things.”

  She nodded; he had forgotten how disconcerting the gaze of her third eye was. “Like gambling and drinking too much wine at the Parallax View.” It was a statement of fact.

  “How’d you know—where I’ve been?” not quite willing to admit the rest of it.

  “I can smell you. Their incense is imported from D’doille. Every place has its own identity, and so does every drug. And your voice is just a little slurred.”

  “Tell me if I won or lost.”

  “You won. If you’d lost you wouldn’t sound so smug about it.”

  He laughed, but it was not an easy laugh. “You’d make a good Blue.”

  “No.” She shook her head, and searched a bead for its hole with her needle, “To become a Blue a person needs a certain sense of moral superiority; and I refuse to pass judgment on my fellow sinners Ah—” as the bead slipped into place. “Some green feathers, please.”

  “I know you don’t.” He passed feathers to her.

  “And is that why you’ve come here today?” She dipped her fingers in glue and dabbed the feather stems. “As long as you quit the tables while you’re ahead, the Queen can’t object to how you spend your free time and money, can she?”

  “She wants me to gamble. She gives me the money.” The words came out inexorably; he could feel the forbidden secret rise inside him, knowing that it was only a matter of time.

  “She does? Are you that good?” Fate said it as though she doubted it.

  “No. I do it to learn things, about how the off worlders think, what their plans are, so I can tell her ...”

  “I thought that’s what she has Starbuck for.”

  “It is.” The invisible wall of his anomie seemed to close them into a place of utter silence, and his voice that should have been proud barely carried across it: “I am Starbuck.”

  The small sigh of her indrawn breath was all the answer she made, at first. “I heard that there was a new Starbuck. Is this true, Sparks? You, a Summer, a—” A boy, but she didn’t say it.

  “Half Summer.” He nodded. “Yeah. It’s true.”

  “How? Why?” Her hands lay motionless over the mask’s gaping mouth.

  “Because she’s so like Moon. And Moon is gone.” Arienrhod was the only thing that had not changed for him. the only thing whole and real, more real to him than his own flesh. “She knew about Moon, knew what she meant to me. She’s the only one who could understand ...” The wounded words crept out, to tell her what (but not all) had passed between Arienrhod and himself after the news of Moon’s kidnapping reached them. “... So I had to challenge Starbuck; because I love her. And she let me challenge him, because she loves me. And I won.”

  “How did you manage to kill a man like that?”

  “I killed him with my flute ... in the Hall of the Winds.” Only he didn’t die.

  “And you haven’t played it since.” Fate shook her head, her thick braid rolled on her shoulder. “Tell me—has it been worth it?”

  “Yes!” He flinched back in surprise from his own voice.

  “Why did I think I heard ‘no?”“

  His fingers tightened over a tray of beads, his muscles tightened; she didn’t see it. “I had to be Starbuck. I had to be the best, or I wouldn’t be—worthy of her. I have to be the one who counts. But I thought once I won the challenge, the rest would be easy; and it’s not. I thought it would be everything I ever wanted.”

  “And it’s not.”

  He shook his own head. “What the hell’s wrong with me, anyway! Everything always goes wrong for me ... everything I do.”

  “Then maybe you weren’t meant to do it. You could still go back to Summer; nothing’s stopping you.”

  “Back to what?” He spat the words. “No. I can’t go back.” He had already asked it of himself, and been answered. “Nobody goes back, I know that now; we just go on and on, and there’s never any reason .... I won’t leave Arienrhod; I can’t. But if I can’t be what she wants me to be, I’ll lose her anyway.” Herne knew; Herne knows everything ...

  “You’ll find a way to take the off worlders pulse. If you were smart enough to outwit Starbuck, you’re smart enough to take his place. You’ll get the feel of being him; you’ve already begun to.”

  Something in the words, a sorrow, surprised him. He made a fist, wrapped it in his hand. “I’ve got to. I’ve got to believe it—before the Hunt comes again.”

  “The Hunt that brings in the water of life? The mer hunt?”

  “Yes.” He stared down through the pavement, through the heart of the city and the world, toward the spaces of the sea controlled by the Winter nobles. In his mind he could see the Hunt again: the necklace of barren rocks strewn over the open sea; the rhythm of the ocean swells singing through the ship timbers, the song of the world he had left behind. Remembering how he had searched the horizon with sudden longing ... But if the Lady called him home, he could not hear Her voice any more. Perhaps because he had come to hunt mers; or perhaps because the Sea was only the sea, a body of water, a chemical solution.

  He had watched the shore of the nearest island, where the dwindling colony of mers had lain along the black-pebbled beach ... until the Hounds had driven them back into the sea, and into the waiting nets that would enta
ngle and drown them. If they could not resurface twice in an hour to breathe, they died.

  No Summer would kill a mer; they were the Lady’s children, born to Her after stars fell into the sea and became the islands, her consorts, the Land. It was said that the sailor who killed a mer by accident had no luck from that day on ... the sailor who killed one intentionally was drowned by the rest of the crew. He had heard a hundred different stories of mers saving sailors gone overboard, even whole crews of a ship that had foundered; seen the mer that lived in the harbor at Gateway Island, its brindle back stitching a track across the supple cloth of the harbor surface as it guided ships safely through the treacherous Gateway Reef. He remembered the mers that had greeted them at the sibyl island. He had never heard of a mer doing anything evil, or anyone harm.

  But for the good they could do humans—the ultimate good of eternal youth—they must die. He had always believed that the myth of mers being immortal, and granting immortality to humans, was only an old tale ... until he had come to Carbuncle. And then he had met the Queen, who had reigned for one hundred and fifty years ... and Arienrhod had placed the vial of viscous silver liquid into his hands, and he had let the spray fall into his throat, and realized that he too could stay young forever.

  And so he had stood by, paying for his immortality with his presence, betraying all that he had ever been or believed in, while the Hounds netted and drowned their helpless victims somewhere below.

  Then they had hauled the carcasses aboard the ship, and shoving him aside like the useless thing he was, they had squatted down with their knives to rip open the dappled throats. They drained away the precious mer blood while their tentacles reddened and the deck turned slippery under his feet.

  And the red leaked back into the sea, and the mutilated bodies followed, their dark eyes still incredulous with death. Wasted ... all wasted! He had turned away, sick at heart, long before the butchery was finished, trying to lose himself in the infinite vista of ocean and sky. But there was no escape from the splash of carcasses plunged back into the sea, too late, too late, or the savage lashing of the water as the scavengers gathered, defiling the green-blue purity with the ecstasy of their feeding. The Sea Mother in her pitiless wisdom wasted nothing, and cursed the wantonness of those who did ....