The Snow Queen

by Joan D. Vinge

  But besides the rigorous basic discipline, Aspundh and the other sibyls of the Hegemony learned about the complex network of which they were a part, the vast reach of the Old Empire’s technological counter spell against the falling darkness. They understood that the Nothing Place lay in the heart of a machine somewhere on a world not even a sibyl could name; and the knowledge gave them the strength to endure its terrifying absence, which had nearly destroyed her with her own fear.

  They learned the real nature of their power: the capacity not only to ease the day-to-day burdens of life, but to actually better it; to contribute to the social and technological growth of their world more profoundly than even the greatest genius—because they had access to the accumulated genius of all human history ... if only their people had the wisdom, and the willingness, to make use of that knowledge.

  And they were taught the nature of their unnatural “infection,” how to use its potential to protect themselves from harm, how to protect their loved ones from its risk. A sibyl could even bear a child. The artificial virus did not pass through the placenta’s protective filters—ensuring the birth of children who might not share their mother’s temperament, but who would have more chance than most of becoming sibyls to a new generation. To have a child ... to lie in the arms of the only one she would ever love, and know that they could be all to each other that they had ever been ...

  Moon sat up, startled out of her reverie by the sound of someone coming toward her across the patio. But he loves another now. The memory of the thing that separated them now, more than just a gap of distance and time, hurt her abruptly as she saw KR Aspundh approaching.

  “Moon.” He smiled a greeting. “Shall we our evening stroll take?” Every evening he walked down through his gardens to the small building of pillared marble in the heart of a shrubbery maze, where the ashes of his ancestors rested in urns. The Kharemoughis worshiped a hierarchy of deities, neatly extending their view of a stratified society into the realm of heaven, and incorporating the pantheon that watched over the Hegemony’s other worlds. On its first tier were a person’s revered ancestors, whose success or failure determined their child’s place in society. Aspundh paid homage devoutly to his own ancestors; Moon wondered if a father’s success made it easier to believe in his divinity.

  She got up from the swing. Each evening she joined him on his walk, and in the privacy of the gardens they discussed the questions her day’s studies had left unanswered.

  “Are you warm enough? These spring evenings are chilly. Take my cloak.”

  “No, I’m fine.” She shook her head, secretly defiant. She wore the sleeveless robe she had picked out on the threedy shopper’s-guide show. She had the feeling that even the sight of a bare arm embarrassed these people; she resented being forced to wear more than she wanted to, and so she wore less.

  “Ah, to have a hardy upbringing!” He laughed; she felt a small frown form. “You’re not your lovely smile tonight wearing. Is it because tomorrow you back to the spaceport must go?” They began to walk together, Moon controlling her strides to match his slower steps.

  “Partly.” She looked down at her soft slippers, the pattern of the smooth stones underfoot. Silky would spend hours crouching over them in fascination ... She would even be glad to see him again, more glad to see Elsevier; to escape from the stifling perfection of this world’s artificial beauty. She looked forward to these evening walks, but during the day KR was preoccupied with business and ALV oversaw her studies, making certain that discretion was maintained while a young girl of questionable background stayed in her father’s house. ALV treated her respectfully, because of the trefoil at her throat; but ALV’s very presence could turn her every move into a clumsy stumble, a spilled bowl, a broken vase. ALV’s relentless sophistication made mispronunciation fatal, questions gauche, and laughter unthinkable. This was a world afraid to laugh at itself, afraid of losing control—control of the Hegemony, control of Tiamat.

  “Do you feel that you more time need? I think there’s little more I can you teach ... and time is critical now, unfortunately.”

  “I know.” A startled creature spread its ruff of winking scales and shrieked in their path. “I know I’m as ready as I can be. But what if I’ll never ready enough be?” She had felt her belief in herself and in the trefoil tattoo she wore, the power that it represented, slowly reform as she learned the truth; but still she had not been able to begin an actual Transfer, for fear that a failure now would mean failure forever.

  “You will ready be.” He smiled. “Because you must be.”

  She managed a smile of her own as affirmation echoed in her mind. There were some things about the sibyl network that even the Kharemoughis couldn’t explain—anomalies, unpredictabilities—as though the all-knowing source of the sibyls’ inspiration was somehow imperfectly formed. Some of its answers were so involuted that no experts had ever been able to make them clear; sometimes it seemed to act toward ends of its own, although ordinarily it only reacted. This time it had chosen to act, and chosen her as its tool ... She wouldn’t fail; she couldn’t. But what was her goal, if Sparks no longer wanted her? To get him back. I will. I can. She tightened her fists, not letting it go. We belong to each other. He belongs to me.

  “That’s better,” Aspundh said. “Now, what final questions will you of me ask? Is anything still unclear?”

  She nodded slowly, asking the one question that had troubled her from the beginning. “Why does the Hegemony want it on Tiamat a secret kept, that sibyls everywhere are? Why do you the Winters tell that we evil are, or crazy?”

  He frowned as though she had broken some particularly strong taboo. “I cannot that to you explain, Moon. It’s too complicated.”

  “But it’s not right. You said that sibyls vital were—they only did good things for a world.” She realized suddenly what that said about the Hegemony’s intentions; realized how much more she had learned here than simply what she had been taught.

  Aspundh’s expression told her that he realized it, too, and regretted it—because he was powerless to stop it. “I hope I haven’t done, and shan’t do, too great a harm to my own world.” He looked away. “You must to Tiamat returned be. But I pray that it no grief to Kharemough brings.”

  She had no answer.

  They left the fragrant pathway through the flowering sillipha, wound into the topiary maze until the marble shrine appeared, reflecting pastel skylight, at its hidden heart. Aspundh went on into the shadowed interior; Moon sat on a dew-damp marble bench to wait. The scent of propitiatory incense reached her on the rising breeze; she wondered what prayers KR Aspundh spoke to his ancestors tonight.

  Birds whose colors would be strident in the daylight fluttered down into her lap, pastel and gray, murmuring placidly. She smoothed their delicate feathered backs, remembering that it was for the last time; that after tomorrow there would be no peaceful gardens, but only the Black Gate ... She rubbed her arms, suddenly feeling the night’s chill.

  - 21 -

  “Citizen, what are you doing in my office?” Jerusha glared across the landfill of official refuse heaped by her terminal and mounting in drifts to the corners of the desk, in the corners of the room. “I was told to come here. About my permits.” The shopkeeper twisted his ties, midway between uncertainty and truculence. “They said you’d tell me why I haven’t heard any th—”

  “Yes, I know that. And any sergeant could look it up for you, any patrolman with half a brain!” Gods, if I could get through a day without raising my voice ... if I could get through one hour. She ran a hand through the tight red-black curls of her hair; tugged. “Who the hell sent you here?”

  “Inspector Man—”

  “—tagnes,” she echoed him. “Well, he sent you to the wrong place. Go back to the front desk and tell the duty officer to find out.”

  “But he said—”

  “Don’t take no for an answer this time!” She waved him toward the door, already looking down at the half-read
report still waiting her acknowledgment on the screen, reaching for the intercom button. “Sergeant, wake up your brain and screen these idiots! What do you think you’re out there for?”

  “Hell of a way to run a world, damn—” The invective was lost as the door shut behind the shop man

  “Sorry, Commander,” the sergeant said, sullenly disembodied. “Shall I sent in the next one?”

  “Yes.” No. No, no more. “And get me Mantag-No, cancel that.” She let up on the speaker button. She could bust Mantagnes right off the force for his harassment ... but if she did shed have open mutiny on her hands, instead of just open resentment. In the years since she had become Commander her position with the force had gone from bad to worse. And he knows it. He knows, the bastard ... She stared at the report printout blindly. Their main computer had crashed monumentally—months ago—and thrown their entire records system into chaos. Even now it barely functioned at half normal efficiency; even Kharemoughi expertise hadn’t been able to put things right, because somehow they were missing the critical components... She had been trying to get their records back in order for months; trying to get through this one report for an hour, half a minute at a time, getting nowhere. She punched APPROVED, and let it pass unread. Getting nowhere. Sliding backwards, being buried alive- She rummaged among the crumpled, empty packets in her desk drawer for one with any iesta pods left in it. Damn, almost gone—how will I ever make it through the day?

  The door opened, not answering her question, and Captain— oh, gods, what’s his name?—entered and saluted. “Captain KerlaTinde reporting, Commander,” as if he hadn’t expected her to remember. She was used to the coldness, and the insolent tone, by now. The force hated her guts, almost every single man of them, and it was close to mutual by now. Discipline had gone to hell, but she couldn’t demote everybody on the force—and she had tried everything else. They would not obey her: because she was a woman, yes (and damn the day she had decided to be anything more) ... but also because she had taken the place that rightfully belonged to Man tagnes. And because it had been the Queen’s idea. They believed she was the Queen’s puppet; and how could she prove they were wrong, when Arienrhod’s strings had trapped her like spiderweb, held her suspended here between heaven and hell, draining away her will to continue?

  “What is it, KerlaTinde?” unable to keep the sharpness out of her own voice.

  “The other officers have asked me to speak for them, ma’am.” The word was heavy with incongruity. “We want an end to enforced patrol duty by officers here in the city. We feel that the duty belongs to the patrolmen; it’s damaging to the prestige of an officer to be forced to harass citizens in the street.”

  “You’d rather let the citizens harass each other?” She frowned, too easily, leaning forward. “What important duty do you feel you should be attending to instead?”

  “Attending to our designated duties! We don’t have time enough to get through all the file work as it is, without patrolling as well.” His broad face matched her, frown for frown. He looked pointedly at the stacks of tape containers on her desk.

  “I know, KerlaTinde,” following his gaze. “I’ve cut out every piece of red tape I can.” And you should see the scars Hovanesse put on me for it. “I know the computer crapping out made it all ten times worse; but damn it, our main job here is still protecting the Hedge’s citizens, and it has to be done.”

  “Then give us something worth doing for once!” KerlaTinde swept his hand across the nonexistent view from her window. “Not picking up drunks out of the gutter. Let us go after the big-time criminals, get some convictions that would mean something.”

  “You’ll never get those convictions. It’s a waste of time.” Gods, am I really saying that? Am I really the one, the same one, who stood there where he’s standing and said what he’s saying to me? She wadded an empty iesta packet into a painful ball below the desk edge. No ... I’m not the same one. But it was true, what she had just said to him ...

  As soon as she became Commander, she had tried to crack down on the big operators she knew were controlling networks of interplanetary vice from right here in Carbuncle. But they had slipped through her fingers like water. Any illegal activity that they might conceivably be caught in here on Tiamat turned out to be technically under the control of a citizen of this world. And the Winters were under the Queen’s law; she couldn’t touch them without the Queen’s permission.

  “Commander LiouxSked didn’t think that way.”

  The hell he didn’t. But there was no point in saying it. Had LiouxSked faced the same infuriating impasse—or had Arienrhod restructured Carbuncle society just for her? She couldn’t explain it to KerlaTinde, or any of the rest, anyway; they already knew she was in the Queen’s pocket, and nothing she could say would ever make any difference. “You’re patrolling the Street for a good reason, KerlaTinde; you know crimes of violence have soared”—she saw Arienrhod’s hand behind that, too; saw herself taking the blame for it in KerlaTinde’s eyes—”as we near the final departure. And we won’t be getting any more replacements. So you’ll go on patrolling the Street until I tell you to stop; until the last ship is ready to lift off this planet.”

  “Chief Inspector Mantagnes isn’t—”

  “Mantagnes isn’t Commander, damn it! I am!” her voice slipped away from her. “And my orders stand. Now get out of my office, Captain, before I make it Lieutenant.”

  KerlaTinde retreated, his olive skin darkening with indignation. The door shut her off from one more unresolved confrontation, one more stupid mistake.

  No wonder they hate me. Hating herself, she stared at the opacity of the polarized windows, her only shield against the radiation of hostility from the station beyond. The windows reflected her own image faintly, like a hologrammic transmission ghost, a flawed recreation of a false reality. There was no Jerusha, no woman, no solid human flesh, any more: only a nerve-racked, knife-tongued harridan with paranoid delusions. Who the hell was she kidding? It was her own fault, she couldn’t handle the job, she was a failure ... an inferior being, weak, overemotional, female. She leaned back in her chair, looking down along her body, knowing the truth that even the heavy uniform could never fully conceal. And she didn’t even have the guts to admit that it was her own fault, not some wild plot of the Queen’s. No wonder she was a laughingstock.

  And yet—she had seen the Queen’s face on a Summer girl. She had seen the Queen’s fury at the girl’s loss. And she had seen LiouxSked crawling in his own filth—for no conceivable reason, if not for Arienrhod’s revenge. She wasn’t losing her mind! The Queen was systematically taking it away from her.

  But there was nothing she could do about it; nothing. She had tried everything, but there was no escape—only the awareness that her career, her future, her faith in her own ability were inexorably bleeding away. Her career was being ruined, the record of her command would be one long list of failures and complaints. The end of their stay on Tiamat would mark the end of everything she had worked toward or ever wanted. Arienrhod was destroying her, too, not swiftly, not like LiouxSked—but in a way that would let her perceive every agonizing nuance of her own destruction.

  And best of all, Arienrhod must have realized that she would stay on, keep defying her own destiny—as she had always done, all her life. Because to quit now and leave Tiamat, give up her position, would be to admit that it had all been futile. It would all be futile yet, when they finished with this world; but in the meantime even this hellish charade of her dream was better than a life with no dream at all.

  She couldn’t strike back at the Queen, hadn’t been able to cause her even the smallest inconvenience in return. Accidentally she had foiled one plot by Arienrhod to keep Winter in power. But it hadn’t given her even a moment’s satisfaction, the gods knew—and since then she had turned up no clue about what new webs the Queen might be weaving. There was no doubt in her mind that there would be another plan ... but more than enough doubt that this time the Hegemony,
in the person of herself, would be able to stop it. And that failure would be the crowning act in her own rum.

  But there was still time. The contest wasn’t over yet, she had to turn herself around ... “Are you listening, bitch? I’ll get you yet; by the Bastard Boatman, I swear it! I won’t break, you can’t destroy me before I—”

  The door opened again, batting the words back at her; a patrolman entered, realizing with one swift look around that she was alone. He set another stack of cassettes on her desk with a sidelong glance.

  “Well, what are you staring at?”

  He saluted and left.

  With another choice one for the wardroom gossips. Her resolution crumbled. How do you really know; How can you tell if you’ve really lost your mind ... ? She reached past the terminal toward the new pile of records, but her hand closed over a solitary printed sheet lying half-pinned beneath them. She pulled it free, read one line: LIST OF GRIEVANCES. She crushed the paper between her hands. Who put it there? Who?

  The intercom began to chime; she hit the go-ahead mutely, not trusting her voice.

  “Radiophone call from the outback, Commander. Somebody named Kennet or something. Should I put it through?”

  Ngenet? Gods, she couldn’t talk to him now, not like this. Why the hell does he pick the worst times, why does he even bother any more?

  “And Inspector Mantagnes is here to see you.”

  “Put the call on my line.” But what will I say? What? “And tell Mantagnes to—” She clenched her teeth. “Tell him to wait.”

  She heard storm static crackle from the speaker, and the familiar distortion of a familiar voice. “Hello? Hello, Jerusha—”