The Snow Queen

by Joan D. Vinge

  “What business do you have with our Queen, fish farmers?” The jewel-turba ned woman who had lost control when she lost the sibyl collar tried to take it back again. “You’re not welcome in this palace while it still belongs to Winter.”

  “Your Queen has business with us!” a Summer shouted. “She’s trying to kill us all, and we’ve come to make sure she doesn’t get away with it. And to make sure she goes down to the Lady for the third time.”

  Moon listened without moving, overwhelmed with aching, irrelevant joy at hearing a voice speak with a Summer burr. “I’m Moon Dawntreader Summer—” Her voice was in rags. “The Queen is inside. Cross the bridge now! As long as I stand on it you’ll be safe.” She waved them forward, felt BZ’s astounded eyes on her.

  The mob came more confidently as they saw her trefoil and put their trust in it. Her own belief wavered as the first of them joined her on the bridge; but the air lay resting, and the Summer smiled briefly and bent his head as he passed. One by one the others followed, treading nervously but driven by the furious need to reach their goal. Moon waited until the last Summer had stepped safely onto the ledge at the far side of the hall before she took the final steps onto solid ground. The Winters backed away, sullenly watching her and Gundhalinu. She turned as she reached his side, hearing a tremulous sigh behind her. She saw the storm walls open like languorous whig spreading, felt the chill winds rise again, the curtains shudder into life. The Pit groaned and stirred, reeking of the sea.

  “Gods! Father of all my grandfathers,” BZ whispered. “It was you, holding back the wind. How—how did you do it?” He kept distance between them.

  “I can’t tell you,” hugging herself. That it’s Carbuncle. I can never tell anyone; never. “I don’t even know.” Must never let anyone know. She followed the Pit down in her mind, down, down to the sea and below it, into the timeless bedrock of the planet itself, where the ultimate receptacle of human wisdom lay in secret omniscience. “Take me away from here, BZ. This is no place for a sibyl; the Winters are right. It’s too dangerous.” She felt the hostile, disbelieving stares of the nobles crawl over her.

  BZ led her from the Hall of the Winds with regulation propriety, back down the corridor past the scenes of Winter’s reign. No one followed them. BZ still kept a small distance between them as they walked. Shaking out her mind, she picked through the dazzling fragments of her last hours for the terrible secret that had been uppermost until she stepped out onto the bridge: “What were they doing here, the Summers? Did they tell you what Arienrhod—” who almost killed me; she was suddenly dizzy, “what she had done?”

  He shook his head, his concentration fixed on the motion of his feet. “I couldn’t make anything of it; they were in too much of a hurry. I don’t think they even knew. All a mob needs is a crazy rumor.”

  “It’s not a rumor. It’s true. And they won’t stop it by holding her prisoner. She’s hired off worlders to start a plague.” Moon threw the words out at him heedlessly.

  “What?” He stopped, stopping her. “How do you know—?” breaking off as the possibilities registered.

  “Sparks told me.”

  “Sparks.” He looked down again, nodding to himself. “So you found him, then. And it—you and he, still ...”

  “Yes.” Her hands locked in front of her.

  “I see. Well.” He sagged against the wall, kept his face averted for a long moment, with his coughing as an excuse. She realized that his reluctance to touch her wasn’t all because of what he had seen in the Hall of the Winds. “He didn’t come out with you.”

  “The—Arienrhod caught us. She took him back.” She looked back along the hall, felt herself tearing inside. But the spur of alien prescience goaded her again: Leave him, leave him. Leave now ... “He’ll be all right, now that the Summers have come to guard the Queen. They don’t know him,” trusting the power that protected her to guard him too. “I have to stop the plague. I know who’s behind it; Sparks told me everything. I’ve got to tell someone, the police ...”

  “He didn’t turn you over to the sibyl baiters, then?” BZ said, as though his mind couldn’t leave the idea alone. He wiped his forehead on his sleeve, pulled open his coat.

  “No. Arienrhod did it.”

  “Arienrhod! But I thought she—” He didn’t finish it, didn’t need to. She felt his wordless compassion reach out to her.

  She wrapped a strand of hair around her finger, looked at it, pulled on it. “There were nine of us, BZ ... and none of us suited her. We weren’t what she wanted us to be. So she—she abandoned us, she threw us away.” Moon lifted a hand, a farewell to her own lost soul. But sudden sun shafts penetrated her clouded sight. “You knew. You knew about me too. Why did you trust me here, if you knew all along?”

  “I knew all along that shed never make you into her image. Do you think I could spend—so much time with you, and not feel the difference between you?” He shook his head; his smile grew stronger. “And it won’t be long now before she’ll damn her haste in getting rid of you. Come on, and tell me what you know about this plot.”

  Moon walked with him again, holding the healing warmth of his trust against the scars of grief as they went on toward the looming palace entrance, moving toward the end of Winter. She told him everything she knew, forcing herself to keep her mind on the narrow path through wild lands The doors opened, letting in the life force of the city, sucking them back into its vortex of vitality. There were no royal guards at the entrance now, but instead a knot of belligerent

  Summers squatting in a watch of their own. Moon stayed close in BZ’s shadow, until she realized that they had no more idea of what the Queen looked like than she had had. She saw one or two spot her trefoil tattoo instead, and look their surprise at her. “BZ, how did you know to come after me? How did you know I needed you?”

  “I didn’t. When the Summers showed up, I decided I’d waited long enough. So I flashed my ID and made myself into a police escort.” He nodded left and right as the Summers let them by. “I’m going to miss that badge ...” There was nothing to support the lightness in his tone, and it collapsed. He began to cough again, the ugly coagulation rattling deep in his chest. He stopped moving as they reached the no-man’s-land between the Summer guards and the milling onlookers. “Now ... listen, Moon.” He wiped at his eyes, struggled for a breath. “I’ve got to face charges ... sooner or later anyway. I’ve got to go back, I might as well get it over with now. I’ll report everything you’ve told me to the first patrolman I see. There’s no need for you to risk turning yourself in. Your people are here; tell them about you and Sparks before they learn he’s Starbuck. They can help you where I can’t.” His mouth pulled into a tight line, as though he couldn’t trust himself to say more. “BZ.” She covered her mouth with her hand. “How can I—”

  “You can’t. Don’t try.” He shook his head. “Just let me go ...” He began to turn away, but she saw his knees turn to water. He collapsed in slow motion and lay senseless on the white stones.

  - 45 -

  Tor sat in the corner, propped against the wall like a spineless rag doll; the laboratory’s white, formless light drove spears into her watering eyes. Beyond the wall behind her back she knew there was a whole city full of people oblivious to her folly or her doom-oblivious to their own doom. But no sound of the celebration reached into this sterile room, no laughter, no music, no shouting. The wall was sound sealed, and no sound of hers would ever escape it, if she had even had the power to make one. She struggled futilely, silently, against the invisible bondage of her paralysis. It would be nearly an hour before her voluntary nervous system would have the control to move even a finger again; and she was sure there wasn’t that much time left in the rest of her life. Oh, gods, if I could only scream! The scream echoed inside her head until she thought her eyes would explode ... and she whimpered, a thin, miserable thread of sound, the most beautiful noise she had ever made.

  Oyarzabal glanced over at her from the table, where
he sat in the hot glare of disfavor’s spotlight. His broad face with its leonine brush of side-whiskers showed discomfort approaching her own; he looked away again hastily. The casually surreal debate about the most effective means of starting an epidemic here in the city droned on, the buzzing of a ghoulish hive. One of the others had gone to talk to the Source. Oyarzabal, you lousy bastard, do something, do something!

  Oyarzabal suggested that they pollute the water supply. It was rejected as ineffective.

  Hanood, who had gone to the Source half an eternity ago, came back into the room, relocking the door behind him with exaggerated care.

  The insect drone fell silent. Tor watched heads turn to the judge’s verdict, not even able to roll her own eyes. “Well?” One of the men she didn’t know asked it.

  “He says get rid of her, naturally.” Hanood bent his head in her direction. “Dump her body into the sea; nobody’ll be able to figure out where she disappeared to in all this.” He waved a hand toward the unreachable reality beyond the wall. “They say, “The Sea never forgets’... but Carbuncle will.”

  Tor moaned, but the sound stayed trapped inside her.

  “No, damn it, I don’t believe it!” Oyarzabal stood up to a confrontation. “I’m going to marry her; I’m going to take her away. He knows that, he wouldn’t say to get rid of her!”

  “Are you questioning my orders, Oyarzabal?” The Source’s hoarse, disembodied voice descended on him from the air; all of them looked up involuntarily.

  Oyarzabal hunched under the weight of it, but his resolution held. “You don’t need to kill Persiponë. I can’t just stand here and let that happen.” His eyes searched the walls, the corners of the ceiling, uncertainly. “There’s got to be some other way.”

  “Are you suggesting I should have them kill you, too? Your incompetence caused this situation, after all. Didn’t it?”

  Oyarzabal’s hand slid toward his gun under the tail of his long leather vest. But it was five to one against him, and Oyarzabal never took suicidal odds. “No, master! No—But ... but she’s going to be my wife. I’ll make sure she’s not going to talk.”

  “You think now that Persiponë knows what you’re doing here she’ll still want to marry you?” The voice turned colder. “Amoral animal that she is, she still hates you for this. You’ll never be able to trust her.”

  Oh gods, oh Source, just let me talk! I’ll promise him anything! Sweat trickled maddeningly down her ribs.

  “And I’ll never be able to trust you again, Oyarzabal, unless you prove your loyalty is still to me.” The voice paused, seemed to smile; Tor shuddered inside. “But I’m not totally unsympathetic to your position. So I’ll give you two choices: Either Persiponë dies, or she lives. But if she lives you’ll have to take measures to make sure she can never testify against us.”

  Oyarzabal’s sudden hope went behind clouds. “What do you mean?” He dared to glance at her, looked away again.

  “I mean I want her unable to tell what she knows to anybody, no matter what they do to her. I think an injection of xetydiel would be effective enough.”

  “The hell! You mean turn her into a zombie?” Oyarzabal swore. “She won’t have any brain left!”

  One of the others laughed. “What’s wrong with that: mindless and yours. Since when did a woman need a brain, anyhow?”

  Oh, Lady, help me ... help me, help me! Tor called on the faith of her ancestors, abandoned by the thousand uncaring gods of the betraying off worlders. I’d rather die. I’d rather die.

  “You see the trouble women cause when they take too much freedom on themselves, Oyarzabal—see the trouble this stupid female’s curiosity has brought on you. And think of the trouble her Queen is about to cause her own world.” The Source’s voice was a rasp wearing down metal. “Then make your choice: dead or brain wiped And choose for yourself, when you choose for her.”

  Oyarzabal’s hands clenched and opened at his sides as he swept the room and the five other faces, seeing what was obvious. “All right. But I don't want her killed. I don’t want to watch her killed. I want her alive.”

  Tor whimpered again, felt a dribble of saliva ooze out at the corner of her mouth. A tremor ran up her legs out of her toes- Move, move!- but no further.

  “Then I can take care of the lady’s needs.” The spokesman for the group of technicians a man she had finally recognized as C’sunh, a biochemist, an expert on drugs stood up from the table and moved to one of the sealed cabinets beyond her cone of sight. She listened to him sorting bottles and utensils, listened to the hissing cloud inside her head begin to drown out every other sound.

  Oyarzabal shifted from foot to foot, his head down, as though he hadn’t expected things to happen so suddenly, so irrevocably. Tor murdered him with her eyes.

  “Shall I go ahead and inject her, master?” The biochemist came back into her line of sight, holding a syringe.

  “Yes, take care of it, C’sunh,” the voice said softly. “You see, Persiponë, you never win. It always turns out the same.”

  Tor watched C’sunh come toward her, watched everything within her sight turn golden; the static in her head deafened her. Oyarzabal watched him, too; watched her, his hands at his sides, his eyes glazing.

  A heavy pounding sounded through the sealed door. The chemist froze in midstep as a muffled voice shouted, “Open up! Police!” The men at the table leaped to their feet, looking at each other and up into the air in disbelief.

  “Blues!”

  “Master, there’s Blues in the casino! What’ll we do?”

  But no answer came, and sensation too excruciatingly high to register as sound drilled into Tor’s brain. The men covered their ears with their hands. “They’re cancelling the seals! Do something, for gods’ sakes! Finish her, C’sunh!”

  The chemist came toward her again, his face contorted with pain, the thin plastic cylinder still in his hand. Oyarzabal went after him abruptly, grabbed his arm. But then the others were on Oyarzabal, and C’sunh was bending over her.

  “No!” Tor gasped the word, her last-

  The door burst open and her vision filled with fluid blue: the room filling with half a dozen uniformed police. “Hold it!” Weapons trained everywhere; two or three found C’sunh’s back and face. He straightened slowly away from her. “Drop it.” The Blue stared him down. He let the syringe fall; she cringed as it landed centimeters from her unprotected leg.

  “Doctor C’sunh, as I live and breathe!” Tor saw the Commander of Police herself materialize out of the amorphous wall of blue tunics. “You’ve been in our files for as long as I can remember—it’s a real pleasure to finally meet you in the flesh.” She grinned with the pleasure of it, and clamped binders on him. Her men were doing the same for Oyarzabal and the rest. She leaned over, searching Tor’s face, glancing aside at the fallen syringe. She smiled again. “Well, Tor Starhiker. You look like you’ve got something you just can’t wait to tell us. And I can’t wait to hear it. Hey, Woldantuz! Get over here and give this woman a shot. The right kind.” She winked reassurance as one of the patrolmen appeared at her side and kneeled down.

  Tor barely registered the burn of the antidote as the Commander’s space was filled by an even more unexpected face. “Pollux!” The word didn’t quite form, but control was coming back to her; she felt it climb through the levels in her mind like a drug rush.

  “Tor. Are you all right?”

  “What ... what ... did you ... say?” She gulped and gasped.

  “Tor. Are you all right?”“ he repeated, as tonelessly as before. He bent forward, offering her his arm as she tried to get her feet under her. She took the arm gratefully, hauling herself up.

  “Whoo.” She put a hand to her head, dizzy with relief, leaning heavily against him. Her fingers sank into the soft frizz of her skewed wig; she pushed at it absently ... hearing again the last words the Source had spoken to her. She closed her hand, jerked the wig off her head and threw it down. “Since when have you had a vocabulary, you ca
n of bolts?” She leaned back, staring into Pollux’s inscrutable non face felt a grin of triumph spread across her own. “Hellfire ... I was right about you. You old fraud! Why didn’t you ever talk to me before, damn it?”

  “Just a little joke, Tor.” Deadpan.

  “Hah. That’s the kind of laughs you’d expect from a machine. How long’ve you been able to talk like that?”

  “Since I was programmed at the police academy on Kharemough.”

  “The what?”

  “Cancel that, Pollux.” The Commander reappeared on his other side, frowning. “You really do need work ... You can thank Pollux for your timely rescue, Starhiker. And I think I can thank him for a lot more—if you’ll tell me I’m right in what I figure was going on here.” She pointed a thumb at the lab and the captives behind her.

  “Thanks, Pollux.” Tor burnished his chest softly with her hand. “They were going to start a plague,” she felt her legs weave under her again, “and kill all the Summers with it.”

  PalaThion nodded as if it was what shed expected to hear. “Who put them up to it?”

  Tor looked down.

  “The Snow Queen?”

  Startled, she nodded, feeling inexplicable shame at admitting it to an off worlder “That’s what they said.”

  “That’s what I thought.” PalaThion smiled coldbloodedly no longer seeing her. “I’ve beaten her at last! Unless ...” She shook her head, glancing away as another Blue entered the room, an inspector this time. “Mantagnes?” she said eagerly.

  But the inspector shook his head grimly. “We missed him, Commander.”

  “Jaakola? How the hell could you possibly—”

  “I don’t know!” He met her anger with his own. “When we broke into his office, he was gone. We searched everywhere—a fly couldn’t have hidden in there! They’re still searching ... but he had a way out, and we haven’t traced it yet.”