The Snow Queen

by Joan D. Vinge

  Tor raised her eyebrows. “Back at the casino, I expect—By all the gods,” with a kind of wonder, “I think I finally understand something in this conversation.” She grinned congenially at Jerusha. “Eat your heart out, Blue.”

  - 47 -

  Jerusha lay sprawled on the low couch in the den of her townhouse, one foot hanging, tethering her to the floor, or I might just float up to the ceiling. She smiled, watching the past day’s events replay again on the inside of her eyelids; listening with half an ear to the noisy celebration out in the alley, and letting herself believe that it was all for her. Well, hell, at least half of it ought to be. She loosened the seal of her uniform tunic a little further. For once she had not taken it off immediately when she got home ... for once it felt too good to be a Blue, and the Commander of Police.

  She heard Moon Dawntreader moan and sigh in her sleep in one of the darkened spare rooms. Even as tired as the girl must be, she didn’t rest well in this place either. Jerusha had not slept at all, and another day had begun already, somewhere beyond the time-stopping walls of the city. But it didn’t matter; in another few days shed be gone from this place forever. And for once she didn’t mind reliving over and over the day just past, or anticipating the new one to come: There was a message on her recorder asking—not ordering, asking—her to a meeting with the Chief Justice and members of the Assembly. After breaking up Arienrhod’s plot and capturing C’sunh, after making the Source too hot for any world ... after all that, her black-and-blue career was alive and well again, and so was she.

  Then what was she doing with a criminal asleep in her guest room? She sighed. By the Bastard Boatman, the girl was no more a criminal than she was. And no more Arienrhod than she was. Who cared if Moon had seditious thoughts about the Hegemony? Gundhalinu was right—what could she do about them, once the off worlders were gone? And although she wanted to deny it even to herself, the memory of the mers and what the girl had said about punishment and guilt still gnawed at her like an ulcer. Because it was true—it was, and she would never be able to deny that again, or deny the hypocrisy of the government she served. Well, damn it, what government was ever perfect? She had stopped Arienrhod, and she could tell herself that looking the other way about Moon was her payment of conscience to Tiamat’s future. She could even let it go for Sparks, let him be Moon’s grief, if he delivered the testimony she wanted. And if she let him go, her conscience damn well ought to be clear forever ... But she knew it wouldn’t be. She had seen too many things she should never have seen here, and had too many people she had tried to categorize slip out of her psychological shackles and overcome her resistance. Some of my best friends are felons.

  She smiled painfully, pinched by sudden regret. Miroe ... good-bye, Miroe. She had not heard from him since that last death-cursed day they stood together on the bloody beach ... But that’s no good-bye. Not remembering that scene. She sat up on the couch, shaking out cobwebs. No—I can tell him that I’ve found Moon, that she’s all right, and that Arienrhod is going to pay. Yes, she should call him now, while she had the time, before they cut communications, before it was too late. Call him, Jerusha, and tell him goodbye.

  She got up, moved stiffly across the room to the phone, unexpected flutterings in the pit of her stomach, as though she had swallowed moths. She punched in the code, cursing the adolescent attack of nerves under her breath as she waited for the call to go through.

  “Hello? Ngenet Plantation here.” The voice was absolutely clear, for the first time she could ever remember. It was a woman’s voice; Jerusha heard the coldness come into her own:

  “This is Commander PalaThion calling. Let me speak to Ngenet.”

  “I’m sorry, Commander, he’s gone.”

  “Gone? Gone where?” Damn it, he can’t be smuggling now!

  “He didn’t say, Commander.” The woman sounded more embarrassed than conspiratorial. “He’s had a lot on his mind lately—we’ve all been getting ready for the Change here. He went on board his boat a few days ago and left. He didn’t tell anyone why.”

  “I see.” Jerusha exhaled gradually.

  “Is there any message?”

  “Yes. Three things: Moon is safe. Arienrhod will pay. And tell him I—tell him I said goodbye.”

  The woman repeated the message carefully. “I’ll tell him. A good voyage to you, Commander.”

  Jerusha glanced down, glad that her face didn’t show. “Thank you. And good fortune to all of you.” She switched off the speaker and turned away from it—seeing the shell on the shrine table by the door, still sitting where it always had, its broken spines a mute testimony to what had been, and was not to be. It’s better this way ... better that he was gone. But her eyes were hot and brimming suddenly; she did not blink until the reservoir of tears subsided, so that none escaped her control.

  She turned back to the phone, changing the subject with an effort of will. Gundhalinu ... should she call again about him? But she had already called the city medical center twice, and they had told her the same thing: He was delirious, she couldn’t talk to him. They didn’t know how he’d managed to stay on his feet, the shape he was in, as sick as he was; but they didn’t expect it would kill him. Reassuring. She grimaced, leaning against the wall. Well, maybe by the time she got back from the meeting with the Chief Justice ... Yes, shed have everything to tell him, then. And in the meantime she’d better wash up and get back to headquarters again before it was time for her audience.

  She pulled a pack of iestas out of her pocket, went into the bathroom to wash up and change. Moon slept on, restlessly, exhaustion setting her free from her fears about whether Sirus would get her cousin out of the palace. Jerusha still could not really believe that the First Secretary of the Hegemonic Assembly had ever agreed to attempt such a thing, even if Sparks Dawntreader was his son—a son he had never seen, and could hardly be sure was even his. But he had come willingly to meet with Moon, and he had gone away willing to try.

  More inexplicable to her was how Moon had gotten the crippled Kharemoughi bartender from Persiponë’s to agree to take Sparks’s place. Gods, the girl had barely been in the city two days! If she really believed Moon’s personal magnetism was enough to make men willing to die for her, she’d lock that kid up so fast her head would spin—But there had been undercurrents in the conversation between the girl and the two men that told her there was more to Herne’s going than just the way he looked at Moon ... and one glance at his legs gave her a good reason. In her own private judgment Herne looked like a man the Hegemony would be better off without; and in any case, she had asked no questions, for fear of getting an answer she couldn’t ignore.

  Jerusha heard someone stirring in the next room, looked out the refinished the doorway to see Moon stumble foggily into the hall. “You might as well go back to bed, sibyl. Time passes faster when you aren’t watching it. For better or worse, Sirus won’t be back for a while yet.”

  “I know.” Moon rubbed her sleep-blurred face, shook her head. “But I have to get ready if I’m going to run in the race.” Her head came up, and her eyes were not soft with sleep.

  Jerusha blinked. “The Summer Queen’s race? You?”

  Moon nodded, daring her to try to stop it. “I have to. I came here to win the race.”

  Jerusha felt someone step on her grave. “I thought you came for your cousin Sparks.”

  “So did I.” Moon looked down. “It lied to me. It never meant for me to save him; it only used him, to make me follow its plan. But it can’t keep me from trying to save him anyway ... And I can’t keep it from making me Queen.”

  Millennium come. Jerusha breathed unspoken relief, felt her pity stir. Gods, it’s true—sibyls are a little crazy. No wonder Arienrhod didn’t want her after all. “I appreciate your being honest about it with me.” She pulled a fresh tunic on over her damp skin, and sealed it up the front. “I won’t stop you if you want to try.” But if you win, don’t tell me; I don’t want to know.

  - 48 -<
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  Moon would not have believed it was possible to clear a space as long as her arm and keep it clear for even a moment in the quicksand shifting of the Festival mobs. But somehow order had been created out of chaos; somewhere in the seemingly formless super entity that was the Festival an underlying structure existed. A course had been cleared along the Street’s upper reaches for a mile below the palace, and eager spectators lined the way like the elegant townhouse walls at their backs. Most who had a viewing place had been holding it for hours, and the Blues who patrolled casually up and down before them had little trouble keeping them there. They had come to watch the beginning of the end, the first of the ancient ceremonies of the Change: the footrace that would thin the numbers of the women who had come to compete for the mask of the Summer Queen.

  Moon had come out into the Street as soon as the nucleus of Summer women began to form around an elder of the Goodventure family, who carried in her the blood of Tiamat’s last line of Summer Queens. Members of that family were forbidden to become Queen at this Change, but instead bore the honored responsibility of seeing that its rituals were faithfully preserved and carried out. She had pulled a colored ribbon from one of their sacks to tie around her head—the ribbon that would give her a place at the front, middle, or back of the starting mass. The band she drew was grew, the sea: the color that put her in the front, ahead of brown for the land, blue for the sky. She tied the ribbon across her forehead, her face paley expressionless against the triumph and the disappointment around her. Of course it had been green ... how could it not be? But a tension born of certainty wrapped her, tightening like tentacles; she pushed toward the front of the forming field of runners to escape it.

  She looked around her as she struggled to hold a new equilibrium in the jostling mob of colored ribbons and eager Summer faces in this crowd of strangers. Most of the women who had come to the Festival intending to run in the Summer Queen’s choosing had brought with them traditional-style holiday garments: soft wool shirts and trousers dyed sea-green, summer-green, to please the Lady. They were all elaborately sewn with designs made of shell and bead and traders’ baubles, ribbons that dangled fetishes of their family totems. But she wore the nomad’s tunic she had brought back with her from Persiponë’s, the only clothing she owned, its gaudy color as alien as she suddenly felt herself, among the people who should have been her own. She had covered her hair with a scarf, to hide her resemblance to the Queen. Some of the Summers had challenged her right to run because she wore no totem or proof that she was even a Summer. But then she had shown them her throat, and they had backed away. She felt the irony of wearing a Winter’s clothes today, and not ones that were rightfully hers; and yet somehow it was appropriate.

  She had not seen anyone she knew, either among the runners or in the crowd of spectators beyond. Even though she knew that she could hardly expect to find anyone from Neith or its few island neighbors in these hundreds, in the thousands that filled Carbuncle, still she searched, and was disappointed. The sights and the sounds and the smells of her home surrounded her here; but her grandmother was far too old to make this voyage, and her mother—“Festivals are for the young,” her mother had said to her once, with pride and longing, “who don’t have ships to tend and mouths to feed. I had my Festival; and I hold the precious memory of it close beside me every day.” Her arm had gone around her daughter’s shoulders, steadying her on the rolling deck ....

  Moon whimpered, seeing the ugly truth hidden in her mother’s merry begotten memory. The woman next to her apologized and edged nervously away. Moon looked down at herself as the half-fearful sibyl-space opened around her again; suddenly glad that her mother had not come, would not watch her in the race today, whatever its outcome was. Her mother and Gran must think she was dead, and Sparks, too, by now; and maybe it was better that way. Their time of mourning must be long past. Was it better never to let them know the truth, or to always be afraid that once they had learned part of it they would somehow learn the whole, terrible truth about their children? She swallowed her grief, choking on it, turned her vision outward again.

  She was not her mother’s child ... and not Arienrhod’s, either. Then what am I doing here? She looked around her in sudden doubt. She was the only sibyl she had seen here anywhere. Was she the only sibyl among all the Summer people who wanted to compete? Was it really the Queen’s ambition running in her blood that made her want to be a queen herself? No, I didn’t ask for this! There must be a change; I am only a vessel. Her fists tightened as she repeated the vow. If no other sibyl ran in this race, maybe it was only because none of them knew the truth.

  None of them know. She could read on the faces around her the spectrum of motives and gradations of desire that had brought the runners here: some of them hungry for the power (although the power of a Summer Queen had always been more ritual than secular), some for the honor, and some for the easy life of being worshiped as the Lady incarnate; some simply for the sheer joy of competing, a part of their celebration, with no cares at all about winning or losing. And none of them knows why it really matters, except me.

  She kept her fists tight as tension wound its springs inside her, pushed forward again until she could just see the piece of weighted ribbon that marked the course’s start. The Goodventure elder was shouting for quiet and announcing the rules. She did not have to be the first in this race, she only had to be among the sacred first thirty three—and the course wasn’t long, it was meant to give some besides the strongest a chance. But there were a hundred women behind her, two hundred more ... she couldn’t even see them all from where she stood.

  The voice of the Goodventure elder called them all to the mark, and Moon felt her self-awareness slipping, caught in the swell of many moving forward as one. Through a gap between heads and arms she watched the fragile bunting that held back their tide—saw it fall at a signal. The mass of runners surged, sending her forward, helpless to resist if she had wanted to, and the race of the Summer Queen began.

  She danced like a reef spotter through the first hundred yards, needing all her concentration just to keep on her feet in the crush before the knot of bodies began to loosen. As spaces opened she broke between, not always easily, feeling elbows bruise her sides in retribution. She couldn’t keep track of how many were ahead in the shifting field; she could only weave and spring and try to put as many of them behind her as her feet could overtake.

  A mile was nothing, a mile was hardly enough to quicken her heartbeat when she and Sparks had raced along the endless gleaming beachs of Neith ... But this mile ran uphill, on hard pavement, not yielding sand. Before she had reached halfway her breath rasped in her throat and her body protested with every jarring step. She tried to remember how long it had really been since she had run on that shining sand; couldn’t even remember how long it had been since shed had enough food or sleep to satisfy the body of a bird. Damn Carbuncle! There were only a dozen women ahead of her, but they were slowly gaming ground. New runners began to come up on her and pass her from behind. She saw with a kind of dread that one of them wore a brown ribbon, not green—the second group of runners was overtaking the first starters; and she stumbled as her mind left her straining legs unguided.

  Two thirds of a mile, three quarters, and there were more passing her all the time, easily thirty ahead of her now, and a cramp in her side that took her breath away. They’re passing me ... and they don’t know, they don’t even know what they’re reaching for! Reaching after it with the last of her strength, she saw the final distance hurtle past; suspended all other awareness until the white stone courtyard of the Winter palace was under her feet, and the next-to-last winter’s garland had fallen around her shoulders.

  Laughing, gasping, dazed, she was swallowed by the ecstasy of the waiting crowd, joyously praised with handclasps, kisses, and tears. She made her way through them, took her place in the circle of winners that was forming at the very center of the courtyard. Looking back, she heard and then saw the gro
up of musicians dressed in white, draped in garlands like her own, and wearing black chimney hats with Winter totem crests. Behind them came a small procession of Summers—more Goodventures, bearing a canopy of ornamental net woven with shells and sprays of greenery, held aloft on oars delicately carven with a fantasy of sea beasts.

  And beneath the canopy came the mask of the Summer Queen. She heard the sighs and cries of admiration, like a wind through the crowd; felt her own wonder rise again at the sight of its beauty ... and its power, the face of Change. Her gaze moved to the one who carried it, and she jerked with recognition: Fate Ravenglass. The circle parted to let Fate through alone; the rest of the procession circled outside, mingling its music with the crowd’s.

  The Goodventure elder bowed before her, or before the strength of her artistry. “Winter crowns Summer, and the Change begins. May the Lady help you to choose wisely, Winter woman; for your sake as well as for ours.” She stood serene in her faith in the Lady’s judgment.

  “I pray that I will.” Fate bowed in turn, her white gown all but hidden by the mask’s trailing sunbeams as it rested on her arms.

  The Lady will choose ... Why had Fate Ravenglass been picked as Her representative, if not to choose in turn the one face, the one heart and mind behind it that knew the secrets she knew about this world? But she’s almost blind. Could she even tell one face from all the rest? How would she know?

  The Goodventure elder began to sway from foot to foot; the lacy drape of beaded network that covered her clothing clattered and chimed. She began to sing the ancient feast day invocation, and the ring of women began to circle slowly, stepping foot across foot, drawing Moon along. The words of the litany and response came to her easily, almost hypnotically, rooted as deeply in her memory, wrapped as profoundly around its most primitive images, as anything she still remembered. It had no true rhyme, like most of the holy songs, because the language it had once been shaped from had lost its own shape down the years; its tune fell strangely on her ears. She sang with the rest, but a part of her mind held separate, watching the pageantry that the rest of her flowed into unquestioningly: the part of her that was no longer certain Fate would choose her, blindly, unaided. Does the sibyl mind really control what happens here? It twists me in its own directions—but can it reach beyond my hand, can it really move anything that it doesn’t hold on strings?