The Snow Queen

by Joan D. Vinge

  She lifted her own gloved hand to her throat, where pain was spreading from ear to ear, chin to breastbone; shielding her wound, shielding the trefoil from his gaze. “Moon,” she whispered, not sure why she gave her name, but grateful that she still had a voice left to speak it. “Sibyl—” her voice roughened, “yes, I am! And I tell you that you’ve committed murder. You have no right to hunt these lands. And no man has the right to murder an intelligent being!” She swept a hand toward the carnage on the beach, not following it with her eyes. “It’s murder, murder!”

  His eyes followed, came back as green and hard as emeralds. “Shut up, damn you—” But they stayed on her face, incredulous, demanding, and his hands knotted on his knees. “Damn you, damn you! What are you doing here? How could you come here, to see me like this? After you left me—I could kill you for this!” He twisted his head, wrenching his eyes away, throwing the words into the wind.

  “Yes! Yes! Kill me too, mer slayer, sibyl slayer, coward—and damn yourself!” She bared her throat to him again, grimacing with the motion. “Spill my blood, and take its curse on you!” She stretched out her bloody fingers, trying to reach him, wound him, infect him-

  But her hand lost its strength, fell from the air forgotten, as she saw at last the symbol that gleamed on his black suit: the circle sign crossed and recrossed, the sign of the Hegemony; the medal that she had seen every day of her life in Summer ... Her hand rose again, and he did not stop her from touching it. Slowly, slowly, she lifted her eyes, knowing that in another moment she would-

  No His fist came at her without warning and crushed her into blackness.

  - 31 -

  “Hello, Miroe.” Jerusha climbed out of the patrolcraft wearing her uniform and her best imitation smile. The wind clapped its chill hands on her shoulders, tried to jerk her half-sealed coat open for ruder intimacies. Damn this weather! Her smile struggled.

  “Jerusha?” Ngenet came striding down the slope from the outbuildings, summoned by field hands who had seen her coming in.

  His own widening smile of welcome looked real to her, and hers began to warm. But she read ambivalence in the glance that took in her uniform before it met her eyes. “It’s been a long time.”

  “Yes.” She nodded, an excuse to look down, wondering if time was all that lay behind his hesitation. “I know. How—how’ve you been, Miroe?”

  “About the same. Everything’s about the same.” He pushed his hands into his parka pockets, shrugged. “It usually is. Is this official business, or strictly a social call?” He peered past her into the empty patrolcraft

  “A little of both, I guess,” trying to make it sound casual. She saw his mouth tighten ever so slightly, twitching his mustache. “That is, we had a report on a tech runner downed near here”—fully two or three weeks ago—”and since I was in the area checking it out ...”

  “The Commander of Police chasing down strays in the outback? Since when?” amused.

  “Well, I was the only one they could spare.” She grinned ruefully, stretching the unused muscles in her cheeks.

  Laughter. “Damn it, Jerusha, you know you don’t need an official excuse to come by here. You’re welcome any time ... as a friend.”

  “Thank you.” She understood the qualification and was grateful for it. “It’s nice to be singled out as a human being for a change, and not as a Blue.” She plucked at her coat, suddenly embarrassed by it. My shield, my armor. What will I do when they take it away from me? “I ... I tried to call you, a couple of weeks ago. But you were gone.” It occurred to her suddenly to wonder why he hadn’t returned the call. Gods, who could blame him, when I never returned any of his?

  “I’m sorry, I couldn’t—” He seemed to reach the same question, without finding an answer either. “You’ve been—busy, I suppose.”

  “Busy! Oh, hell and devils, it’s been ... sheer hell, and devils.” She leaned against the patrolcraft pulled down the door and slammed it. “BZ is gone, Miroe. Dead. Killed by bandits outside the city. And I just can’t ... I can’t stand it any more.” Her head bowed in invisible bondage. “I don’t know how I’ll be able to stand going back to Carbuncle again. When all I can think of is how much better it would be for everyone, how glad everyone would be, if I never came back at all. How much better it would be if I’d been the one who’d been lost.”

  “By all the gods, Jerusha—why didn’t you tell me?”

  She turned away from his outstretched hand, leaning on the hood, looking desperately out to sea. “I didn’t come here to—to use you for a garbage can, damn it!”

  “Of course you did. What are friends for?” She heard his smile.

  “I did not!”

  “All right. Then why not? Why not?” He pulled at her elbow.

  “Don’t touch me. Please, Miroe, don’t.” She felt his hand release her, felt her arm still tingling with the contact. “I can handle it. I’ll be all right, I can handle it alone.” Her control hung by a thread.

  “And you feel like dying is the way to do it?”

  “No!” She brought her fist down on the cold metal. “No. That’s why I had to get away ... I had to find some other way.” She turned back, slowly, but with her eyes shut.

  He was silent for a moment, waiting. “Jerusha—I know the kind of screws they’ve been putting to you, all this time. You can’t handle that kind of pressure by holding it all back. You can’t do it alone.” Suddenly almost angry, “Why did you stop calling? Why did you stop—answering? Didn’t you trust me?”

  “Too much.” She pressed her mouth together, stopping an absurd giggle. “Oh, gods. I trust you too much! Look at me, I haven’t been > here five minutes and already I’ve spilled my guts to you. Just seeing you breaks me down.” She shook her head, keeping her eyes closed. ;: “You see. I can’t lean on you, without becoming a cripple,”

  “We’re all cripples, Jerusha. We’re born crippled.”

  Slowly she opened her eyes. “Are we?”

  He stood with hands locked behind him, looking out toward the , sea. The wind stiffened, whipping his raven-feather hair; she shrank down inside her heavy coat. “You know the answer, or you wouldn’t ] have come. Let’s go up to the house.” He looked back at her; she ] nodded.

  She followed him up the hill, making hesitant small talk about crops and weather, letting all her resistance flow out of her and down to the sea. They passed the creaking windmill that stood like a lonely sentinel over the outbuildings. He used it to pump water from his well; it occurred to her again, as it had occurred to her before, ; that it was an absurd anachronism on a plantation that functioned ‘ on imported power units.

  “Miroe, I’ve always wondered why you use that thing to power your pump.”

  He glanced back at her, away at the windmill, said good-naturedly, “Well, you took away my hovercraft, Jerusha. You can never tell when I might lose my generators.”

  It was not the answer she had been expecting, but she only shook her head. They reached the main house, went in through the storm shuttered porch, into the room she still remembered perfectly from the first time; and from the handful of stolen evenings in the years since then that she had spent cross-legged before the fire, wrapped in warmth and golden light, caught up in a game of 3D chama or feeding Miroe’s quiet fascination with her reminiscences about another world.

  She pulled off her helmet, shook out her dark curls. She let her eyes wander over the comfortable junk-shop homeliness of the room, where relics of his off worlder ancestors, heirlooms by default, kept uneasy truce with rough-hewn native furniture. Moving to the broad stone hearth she turned to face him, letting her back begin to thaw. “You know, after all this time I feel like I haven’t even been away. Funny, isn’t it, how some places are like that?”

  He looked up at her from halfway across the room; didn’t answer, but smiled. “Why don’t you take your things upstairs? I’ll get us something to eat.”

  She picked up the shoulder bag she had hah filled with a chang
e of clothing, climbed the worn staircase to the second story. It was a large house ... filled with echoes of children and laughter ... filled with memories. The banister under her hand was worn smooth by the polishing of countless hands; but the halls, the rooms, were empty and silent now. Only Miroe, the last of his line, alone. Alone even among the Winters who worked for him here. She sensed the bond of trust and respect that seemed to exist between them, a stronger bond than she would have expected between owner and workers, natives and off worlder But there was always an intangible field of reserve surrounding him, keeping him separate, self-contained. She felt it, sometimes, striking sparks against her own.

  She entered the room she had always taken, threw her bag and her helmet down on the rumpled bed, watched them sink into the comforters. The wooden-framed bed itself was as hard as a board—was a board, for all she knew—but she had never lam awake here for half the night, praying for sleep while her eyes burned a hole through her lids in the dark ...

  She unfastened her coat, took it off, started toward the massive wardrobe with it. Stopped, as her gaze landed on the eye-stunning chartreuse flightsuit lying in a heap on the wardrobe’s floor. She hung her coat on a hook mechanically, picked up the jump suit and held it against herself. Held it at arm’s length again, studying the contours. Then, slowly, she took her coat back and hung the flightsuit in its place.

  She went back to the bed, looked again at the rumpled covers; picked up the brush lying on a stool at bedside, fingered the strands of long, fair hair. She put it down again. She stood silently, suddenly in her mind seeing a small, solitary, curly-haired child, in threadbare underpants and sandals, who crouched to watch silvery wogs flit in a dying pool. The sunlight poured over her like hot honey, suffocating all sound, and the stone-studded, blistered moraine of the dry riverbed stretched away forever ...

  Jerusha took back her helmet and her bag from the bed, and went quickly down the stairs.

  “Jerusha?” Miroe straightened away from the low planked table near the fire, frowning his lack of comprehension. “I thought you were—”

  “You didn’t tell me you had—other guests.” The word took on meanings she hadn’t intended. “I won’t stay.”

  His face changed, like the face of a man who had just been caught in a terrible oversight. Her own face seemed to have froZen to death.

  He said quietly, “Aren’t you ever off duty?”

  “Your morals are no all—concern of mine, even on duty.”

  “What?” Another expression entirely. “You mean-Is that what you thought?” His relief burst out in deep laughter. “I thought you were looking for smugglers!”

  Her mouth opened.

  “Jerusha.” He picked his way across the cluttered room to her. “Ye gods, I didn’t mean it like that. It isn’t what you think; she’s only a friend. Not a romance. She’s young enough to be my daughter. She’s out on a boat right now.”

  Jerusha looked away, down, “I didn’t want to—intrude.”

  He cleared his throat. “I’m not a plastic effigy, gods know—” He picked up a flabby, faded cushion, put it down.

  “I didn’t expect you were.” She knew she was saying it badly.

  “I ... you said once that I wasn’t a stupid man. But in all this time, all the visits you’ve made here, I never realized ...” his hand rose to touch her in a way he had never touched her, “... that you wanted something more.”

  “I didn’t want you to.” Didn’t want to admit it, even to myself. She tried to move, tried to step away from his hand, tried, tried-trembling like a wild bird.

  He took his hand away. “Is there someone else? In the city, back on your world, another—”

  “No,” her face burning. “Never.”

  “Never?” He held a long breath. “Never? ... No one has ever touched you like this—” along the nape of her neck, her earlobe, the line of her jaw “—or like this—” tracing the seal of her tunic down over her breast “—or done this—” slowly surrounding her with his arms, tightening her against him until she felt the lines of his body melt into hers, and his mouth was on her mouth like nectar.

  Murmuring, “Yes ... now ...” as his kiss released her. She found his lips again, demanding.

  “Beg your pardon, sir!”

  Jerusha gasped, breaking his hold in reflex; saw the ancient cook with back turned to them in the doorway.

  “What is it?” Miroe’s voice was frayed around the edges.

  “Midday, sir. Midday meal is ready ... but it’ll keep until you are, sir.” Jerusha heard the knowing smile as the cook shuffled back into the pantry.

  Miroe sighed heavily, his face trying to smile and frown but only managing to look aggrieved. He reached for her hand, but she slipped it through his fingers before they closed. He looked at her, she saw his surprise.

  “You asked the question eloquently.” Her own smile wavered with the static of her emotions. “But you should have asked it another time, Miroe.” She shook her head, pressing her hands to her lips for a moment. “It’s too close to the end for me now ... or not close enough.”

  “I understand.” He nodded, suddenly noncommital; as though the moment that had just been between them, the moment she had waited so long for, meant nothing to him.

  Disappointment and sudden shame pinched her chest. Is that all it would have meant to you? “I’d better be getting back to the city.” So you can tell your Winter doxies how you almost had the Commander of Police for lunch.

  “You don’t have to go. We can—pretend it didn’t happen.”

  “Maybe you can. But I can’t pretend, any more. Reality is too loud.” She pulled on her coat, began a crooked course to the door.

  “Jerusha. Will you be all right?” The concern caught at her.

  She stopped, turned back, under control. “Yes. Even a day outside Carbuncle is like a transfusion. Maybe ... will I see you again, at the Festival—before the final departure?” She hated herself for asking when he would not.

  “No, I don’t think so. I think this is one Festival I want to miss. And I’m not leaving Tiamat; this is my home.”

  “Of course.” She felt an artificial smile starting again, like a muscle cramp. “Well, maybe I’ll—call, before I go.” Go to pieces, go to hell ...

  “I’ll walk you out.”

  “Don’t bother.” She shook her head, settled her helmet on, pulling the strap down under her chin. “No need.” She opened the dark, iron hinged door and went out, putting it between them as quickly as she could.

  She was halfway down the hill when she heard him calling her name. She looked back to see him come running down the slope after her. She stopped, her hands making awkward fists inside her gloves. “Yes?”

  “There’s a storm coming.”

  “No there isn’t. I checked the weather bulletin before I left Carbuncle.”

  “The hell with the forecasts; if those bastards would get off their simulators and look up at the sky—” He swept a hand from horizon to zenith. “It’ll be here by daybreak tomorrow.”

  She looked up, seeing nothing but scattered clouds, a pallid double sundog haloing the eclipsing Twins. “Don’t worry. I’ll be home by dark.”

  “It’s not you I’m worried about.” His eyes were still on the northward horizon.

  “Oh.” She felt her face lose all expression.

  “The girl who’s staying here, she’s up the coast in a small boat.

  She’s not due back before late tomorrow.” He faced her grimly. “I’ve fished her out of the sea half-frozen once already. I might not be so lucky again. I’ll never reach her in time, unless—”

  She nodded. “All right, Miroe. Let’s go find her.”

  He hesitated. “I—don’t know how to ask you for this kind of favor; I have no right to ask you. But—”

  “It’s all right. It’s my duty to help.”

  “No. I’m trying to ask you to be—off duty, when you do this. To-forget that you ever met whoever you meet.”
He smiled, or grimaced. “You see. I trust you far too much, too.” He began to rub his arms; she realized he had come after her without a coat.

  And she remembered his unease at her arrival, and understood it, at last. “She isn’t a mass murderer or anything?”

  He laughed. “Far from it.”

  “Then I’ve got a terrible memory. Come on, let’s go before you freeze. You can fill me in on the conspiracy charges on the way.”

  They went on down the hill, into the wind’s teeth. Jerusha took them up in the patroller, heading north along the sere ribbon of the coast. “All right. I guess I can let myself put the parts together now. You did have something to do with that tech runner they zapped out here a fortnight or so ago. Your guest is a smuggler.” She slid back with a kind of relief into familiar patterns, familiar habits, their old uncomplicated relationship.

  “Half-right.”

  “Half?” She glanced at him. “Then explain.”

  “You remember the—circumstances of our first meeting.”

  “Yes,” with a sudden image of Gundhalinu’s face, full of righteous indignation. “He really had you nailed.”

  “Your sergeant.” She felt him smile, and then remember. “I’m sorry about—what happened. For your sake.”

  “At least it was quick.” And that’s all the mercy we can hope for in this life. “The girl—?” with a growing prescience.

  “Is the Summer girl who broke your arm; the one who went off world with the smugglers.”

  “She’s back? How?”

  “They brought her back with them.”