The Snow Queen

by Joan D. Vinge

  Jerusha felt the patrolcraft buck and swoop in a strong downdraft, reset the controls. “Which means she’s an illegal returnee.” And maybe a whole lot more. “Where’s she been in the meantime?”

  “Kharemough.”

  She grunted. “Wouldn’t you know. Tell me, Miroe—are you sure her being taken off world was an accident?”

  His brows tightened. “One hundred percent. What do you mean?”

  “Hasn’t it ever struck you that Moon Dawntreader Summer bears a remarkable resemblance to the Snow Queen?”

  “No.” Utter blankness. “I haven’t even seen the Snow Queen in years.”

  “What would you say if I told you the Queen knew who she was—was furious over her disappearance? If I told you all my troubles started because I let her get away. What would you say if I told you that Moon Dawntreader is the Queen’s clone?”

  He stared. “You have proof?”

  “No, I don’t have proof! But I know it; I know Arienrhod had plans for that girl ... plans for making her other self the Summer Queen. And if she finds out that Moon is back—”

  “They aren’t the same person. They can’t be.” Miroe frowned out at the sea. “You’ve forgotten something about Moon.”

  “What?”

  “She’s a sibyl.”

  Jerusha started, as memory doubled the words. “So she is .... But that still doesn’t mean I’m wrong. Or that she isn’t a danger to the Hegemony.”

  “What are you going to do about it?” Miroe twisted in his seat until he was facing her.

  She shook her head. “I don’t know. I won’t know until I get there.”

  “Get those hides stripped off, there. Hurry up ... a white one coming ... shelter by dark ...” Dogs barking.

  Moon felt the words ebb and flow, like the cold tongue of the tide licking her feet, her ankles, her legs. She opened her eyes, to the memory that she did not want to open her eyes and see-But all she saw was the sky, meaningless cloud flotsam drifting. She did not move, afraid to.

  “This one’s dead.”

  “... is luck, praise the Mother! ... never found so many hides ...”

  “Praise the Snow Queen.” Laughter.

  “This one’s not.” A face blotted out the sky, shrouded in white. It knelt, dragged her up to sitting.

  “Black.” Moon heard her own voice mumbling like a madwoman’s. “In black. Where ... where?” She reached out; dug her fingers into the thick white shoulder for support, as she saw the body that lay beside her own—”Silky!”

  The figure in white shoved her away, getting to its feet. “One of those mer-loving bleeders, I guess. Must’ve killed the Hound. Hounds left the job half done on her.” The voice was male, young.

  “Silky ... Silky ...” Moon stretched to reach the ends of inert tentacles.

  “Finish it.” A harsh, timeworn voice.

  Moon struggled back onto her side as the youth squatted, picking up a rock. She clawed at the fastening of her suit, jerked it open halfway down her stomach as the rock arced over her head. “Sibyl!” She threw the word up like a shield.

  The boy dropped the stone from twitching fingers, pushed back his hood. She saw his face lose its inhumanity, saw his confusion follow the track of dried blood upward to her wounded throat.

  “Sibyl ...” She pointed at the tattoo, praying that it was clear enough, and that he would understand.

  “Ma!” The boy sat back on his heels, shouted over his shoulder. “Look at this!”

  Other ghost-white figures materialized around her like a spirit tribunal, doubling and shining in her uncertain focus.

  “A sibyl, Ma!” A slight female figure danced with eagerness beside her. “We can’t kill her.”

  “I’m not afraid of sibyls’ blood!” Moon identified the crone’s voice among the glaring whites as the old woman struck herself on the chest. “I’m holy. I’m going to live forever.”

  “Oh, the hell you are.” The girl shoved her brother aside, bending over to peer down at Moon’s throat. She giggled nervously, straightening up again. “Can you talk?”

  “Yes.” Moon sat up, put a hand to her throat, one against her swollen face, hoarse with trying not to swallow. She looked across Silky’s sprawled body, saw beyond it more white figures using their skinning knives, mutilating the bodies of the dead mers. She swayed forward, clutching her knees, hiding from the sight of them. 7 didn’t see him. I didn’t. It was someone else! She moaned; her voice was the desolate mourning of a lone met song.

  “Then I want her.” The girl turned back to the old woman. “I want her for my zoo. She can answer any question!”

  “No!” The old woman slapped at her; she ducked her head. “Sibyls are diseased, the off worlders say they’re diseased. They’re all deceivers. No more pets, Blodwed! You stink the place up with them already. I’m getting rid of those—”

  “You just try!” Blodwed kicked her viciously. The old woman howled and stumbled back. “You just try! You want to live forever, you old drooler, you better leave my pets alone!”

  “All right, all right ...” the crone whined. “Don’t talk to your mother like that, you ungrateful brat. Don’t I let you have anything you want?”

  “That’s more like it.” Blodwed put her hands on her hips, looked down at Moon’s huddled grief again, grinning. “I think you’re going to be just what I need.”

  “Gods! Oh, my gods,” more a curse than a prayer.

  Jerusha stood silently beside Miroe on the lifeless beach, listened to the far, high skreeling of the displaced scavenger birds. Her eyes swept the death-littered field of stones restlessly, not wanting to settle anywhere, register any detail of the scene, but unable to look back at Miroe ashen-faced beside her. Unable to speak a word or even touch him, ashamed to intrude further on a grief past comprehending. This was the Hunt, the mer sacrifice—this stinking abattoir on the barren shore. This was the thing she had resented in principle, without ever trying to approach its reality. But this man had hated the reality.

  Miroe moved away from the patrolcraft began a path through the mutilated corpses of the mers, inspecting each hide-stripped, bloody form with masochistic thoroughness. Jerusha followed him, keeping her distance; felt her jaws tightening until she wondered whether she would ever be able to open her mouth again. She saw him stop and kneel down by one of the bodies. Moving closer, she saw that it was not a mer. And not human. “A—a dead Hound?”

  “A dead friend.” He picked the dillyp’s limp body up like a sleeping child, she saw the dark stain that it left behind on the beach. She watched uncomprehendingly as he carried the body to the edge of the water, entered it without hesitation, wading further and further out until the frigid sea lapped his chest. And then he let the exile go quietly home.

  As he came out of the water again Jerusha took off her coat and threw it around his shoulders. He nodded absently; she almost thought that the cold did not reach him. She remembered suddenly that one of the tech runners five years ago had been a dillyp.

  “She must be dead, too.” His voice was like steel. She realized that there was no sign of Moon Dawntreader. “Starbuck, the Hounds, did this.” He gestured; the word was a curse. “The last Hunt. On my land.” His hands coiled into fists. “And leaving them like this, mutilating them, this—flaunting. Why?”

  “Arienrhod ordered it.” The simple statement seared her like a beam of light, as she saw the only conceivable reason that Arienrhod might have for lashing out at an off worlder a total stranger. Because of me? No, no ... not because of me!

  Miroe turned as though her guilt shone out like a beacon. “This is a crime against a citizen of the Hegemony, on his granted land.” His voice accused her without needing to say the words. “You’ve seen it with your own eyes, you have the jurisdiction. Do you have the control to charge Starbuck with murder—Commander?”

  She stiffened. “I don’t know. I don’t know any more, Miroe ...” touching the badges on her coat collar. She took a deep breath. “Bu
t I swear to you, before your gods and mine, that I will do anything in my power to make it happen.” (seeing the ruined bodies) “She destroys everything she touches, goddamn her—” (BZ’s life gone up in a ball of flame) “—and I’ll make her pay, if I have to die to do it! She won’t get away with it—” (LiouxSked’s life ruined) “—she thinks she’s untouchable, she thinks she’ll be Queen forever; but she won’t get away with it—” (her own life ruined) “—if I have to drown her myself!”

  “I believe you, Jerusha,” Miroe said, unsmiling; she heard the cold accusation fade from his voice. “But there isn’t much time.”

  “I know.” She looked away, deliberately imprinting her mind with the gaping ruin of a creature whose only crime was life. “I’ve never seen a mer—” She pressed her lips together.

  “You haven’t seen one here, either.” His voice was unsteady.

  “Not those mounds of dead flesh—those are nothing at all. You haven’t seen the mers until you’ve seen them dance on the water, or heard their song ... You haven’t understood the real crime until you know the truth about what they are. They’re not just animals, Jerusha.”

  “What?” She turned back. “What are you saying?” No, don’t tell me this; I don’t want to know.

  “They’re intelligent beings. There weren’t two murders on this beach today, there were half a hundred. And over the last millennium—”

  She swayed, shaken by the wind. “No ... Miroe, they’re not. They can’t be!”

  “They’re a synthetic life form; the Old Empire gave them intelligence as well as immortality. Moon Dawntreader told me the truth about them.”

  “But why? Why would they be intelligent? And how could the Hedge not know ... ?” Her voice faded.

  “I don’t know why. But I know the Hegemony has to have known the truth, for a millennium. I told Moon when I heard it that I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.” Muscles twitched in his face. “I do now.” He turned his back on her.

  Jerusha stood without words, without motion, waiting for the brittle bowl of the sky to crack open and fall, waiting for the weight of injustice to crush this eggshell world of lies and bring it crashing down on her ... But there was no change in the sea, in the air, no difference in the profile of the cliffs or the suffocating awareness of death, waste, mourning. “Miroe ... come back to the patroller. You’ll—you’ll catch your death.”

  He nodded. “Yes. The survivors will return, in time. I have to leave them to—to their own. I can’t help them, I can’t help my own, any more.” He looked toward the small outrigger beached at the water’s edge, its sail flapping mournfully. “She gave me the most important gift anyone could have given me, Jerusha: the truth ... She said she was told to come back here; shed had a sibyl’s sending. I don’t understand, I can’t believe it was meant to end like this for her. What does it all mean?”

  “I don’t know. Nothing.” Jerusha shook her head. “Maybe everything we do is meaningless. But we have to try, don’t we? We have to go on looking for justice ... and settling for revenge.” She started back toward the patrol craft her arms wrapped around her. As they passed the abandoned outrigger it occurred to her that Arienrhod’s Hounds had destroyed Arienrhod’s clone child ... and Arienrhod would never know it.

  - 32 -

  “I was worried about you when they reported the storm.”

  “It was nothing. We just rode it out,” listlessly.

  Soft laughter. “How many of my Starbucks could say that without lying?”

  Sparks did not answer, lying motionless on the bed, watching himself in the mirrors, watching her watch him watch, into infinity. Arienrhod lay beside him; the curving lines of her body were the folds of a continent rising from the sea, cloaked in the snow fields of her hair. Strands of thread-fine silver chain spilled down from her waist like a river of light. She massaged the fragrant oil into his skin with slow, exploratory fingers; but his body did not respond. Would not respond, to her most intimate touch, her most knowing suggestions. Like a corpse ... gods, help me, I’m buried alive.

  Arienrhod’s hand slipped from his thigh as his muscles hardened, rigor mortis. She rolled onto her stomach, resting across his chest as she looked down at him with concern in her agate-colored eyes. The wrong eyes—as he saw the shadows that lay just below the surface, the depths of wisdom without mercy ... the eyes of a changeling who had made him a prisoner locked in his own mind. He closed his own eyes. But I did it all for you, Arienrhod.

  “Are you so tired, then, after all?” She lifted the off worlder medal from his chest, turning it idly between her fingers; he heard the undercurrent of cool resentment below the shallows of her solicitude. “Or so bored? Shall I make it a threesome—?”

  “No.” He put his arms around her and pulled her down on him, filling his hands with the silken cloth of her hair, kissing her lips, her eyes, the hollow of her throat ... and feeling nothing. Nothing.

  The ghost-girl who had come to him out of the sea would lie between them whenever they lay together from now on, and he would see her eyes—the right eyes, the only eyes. They would accuse him, weeping tears of blood, forever ... “Arienrhod,” despairingly. “Damn it, you know I love you! You know you’re everything to me, everything she ever was, and more—” But the word was a moan. His hands fell away from her.

  Arienrhod turned rigid on top of him. “

  “She?” ... What are you talking about, my love? Our Moon?” Her voice was soft and clouded-over. “Does she still come back to haunt you, after so long? She’s gone. We lost her a long time ago; you have to put her out of your mind.” She stroked his temples with her fingers, in slow circling motions.

  “By all the gods, I thought I had!” He rolled his head from side to side, trying to look away from his own reflection, but it followed him inexorably.

  “Then why? Why think about her now? Are you afraid of the Change coming? I promised you it would never come.”

  “I don’t care about that.” About killing my people ... then I don’t care about anything at all. He shifted her carefully off of him, rolled over onto his stomach and propped his head in his hands. She sat up beside him, the girdle of silver threads whispering over her skin.

  “Then what—?” a wildness in it. Her hands closed over his shoulders. “You’re mine, Starbuck; you’re all that I love in this world. I won’t share you with a Summer dream. I won’t lose you to a ghost ... even my own.”

  “She wasn’t a ghost! She was real.” He bit down on his fist.

  Arienrhod’s fingernails bit his flesh in turn. “Who?” knowing who.

  “Moon.” Something shook him, close to a sob. “Moon. Moon, Moon! She was there, at the Hunt; she came out of the sea with the mers!”

  “A dream.” She frowned.

  “No dream, Arienrhod!” He threw himself onto his back, feeling her nails rake him. “I touched her, I saw the sign on her throat-and the blood. I touched her blood ... she cursed me.” Death to kill a sibyl ... death to love a sibyl ...

  “You fool!” But not for his foolhardiness. “Why didn’t you tell me about this immediately?”

  He shook his head. “I couldn’t. I—”

  She slapped him; he fell back on the pillows in disbelief. “Where is she? What happened to her?”

  He rubbed his hand across his mouth. “The Hounds—would have killed her. I stopped them. I—I left her there on the beach.”

  “Why?” A world of loss in one whispered word.

  “Because she would have recognized me.” He tore the words out by the roots. “She would have known ... she would have seen what I am!” His reflection pinwheeled him, around and around and around.

  “So you’re ashamed to be my lover, and the most powerful man on this planet?” She tossed back her hair.

  “Yes,” ashamed to look at her, too, as he said it. “When I was with her, I was ashamed.”

  “But you left her alone on the shore with a blizzard coming, and you’re not ashamed of that.” Ar
ienrhod wrapped herself in her arms, shivered as though it was herself he had abandoned.

  “Damn it, I didn’t know about the storm, there wasn’t any report!” You only needed to look up at the sky to know-But he had shut himself into his cabin to hide his trembling loss of control from the Hounds; and he had come out again only when the storm was already sweeping down on them, when it was too late to think of anything but their own survival. And afterward—it was too late for anything at all. He looked up angrily into Arienrhod’s anger. “I don’t understand you! Why does she matter so much to you? Even if she is your kinswoman, you were never close to her. Not like I was ...”

  “No one in this world is closer to her than I am.” Arienrhod leaned toward him. “Haven’t you realized that? Haven’t you seen by now—I am Moon.”

  “No.” He pulled away from her; she caught the chain of his medal and held him tethered.

  “Moon is my clone! I had her raised as a Summer to take my place as Queen. We’re identical in every way—every way.” She took his hands and ran them down along her body. “And we both love you, above all others.”

  “It isn’t possible ...” He touched her face and knew that it was. They were night and day, iron and air, gall and honey ... Then why do I love you both? He bowed his head. Because I do love you both; gods help me!

  “Anything is possible. Even that she’s come back to me.” Arienrhod looked through him, through time. “But do I still need her ... I do I still want her?” Her focus narrowed to him again. “And do you, my love?”

  He sagged against her; felt her arms circle him, her hands stroke I him lovingly, possessively. “No.” No more than I ever wanted her, only her. “Only you, Arienrhod. You made me everything I am. You’re all I need.” And you’re all I deserve.

  - 33 -

  “Come on, sibyl! Come meet my other pets.” Blodwed’s sharp, high voice pricked Moon like a goad, started her through the crowd of gawkers gathered at the entrance of the cavern. They had all come forward to stare at her, pointing and muttering, calling out vulgar questions that she ignored with all the restraint left in her dazed body: a prize fish, dangling on the pier. But none of the nomads would get close enough to touch her, and they parted before her stumbling progress like grasses before the wind. Even Blodwed had never actually touched her; but Moon recognized the stunner hanging from the girl’s belt.