The Snow Queen

by Joan D. Vinge

  She made her way back up the Street toward Jerusha PalaThion’s townhouse, fending off giddy worshipers and eager would-be lovers in the crush of costumed bodies, feeling all around her the quickening pulse, the rising passion of the night’s promise. But the electric energy all around her only made her more sharply aware of her own solitary journey through it, and that she might spend the rest of her life alone if she spent the rest of tonight that way.

  Night was bluing into black at the alley’s end when she reached PalaThion’s townhouse at last and banged on the door. PalaThion opened it, wearing a shapeless robe instead of her uniform; started, at the face of the Summer Queen confronting her.

  Moon lifted the mask from her shoulders, held it in her arms, saying nothing.

  “My gods ...” PalaThion shook her head, as though this were only one more blow in a beating that had already left her dazed. She stood aside, letting Moon escape into sanctuary, out of the mauling mobs beyond her door.

  Moon went on through the atrium and into the living room, her heart in her throat, searching. No. Nothing yet.” PalaThion followed her in. “He hasn’t come back.”

  “Oh.” Moon forced out the word.

  “There’s still time.”

  Moon nodded silently, laid the Summer Queen’s mask across one end of the reclining couch.

  “Is that too heavy for you already?” PalaThion’s voice grew less kind.

  Moon glanced up, saw the weary disillusionment that turned the woman’s eyes to dust. “No ... But tomorrow at dawn, if Sparks isn’t—isn’t—” looking down again.

  “Did you win that mask honestly?” PalaThion asked bluntly, as though she actually expected an honest answer.

  Moon reddened, smoothing its ribbons. Did I? “I had to win it.”

  PalaThion frowned. “You’re telling me that you really believe it was fore-ordained ... sibyl?”

  “Yes. It was. I was meant to do this, if I could. And I did. The reason for it is more important than either one of us, Commander. I think you know what the reason is ... do you still want to stop me?” She held the challenge out in her open hands, watching the unnameable uncertainty on PalaThion’s face.

  PalaThion rubbed her arms inside the sleeves of her caftan. “That depends on the answer you give me next. I have a question, sibyl.”

  Moon covered her surprise, nodded. “Ask, and I will answer.. Input.”

  “Sibyl, tell me the truth, the whole truth about the mers.”

  Moon’s surprise followed her down, into the black void of the Nothing Place, as the computer’s brain replaced her own to tell another off worlder the truth.

  But behind the truth there lay a deeper truth, and as she floated formlessly in the darkness the vision came to her, and spoke to her alone. She saw the mers, not as they were—innocent, unknowing playthings of the Sea—but as they had originally been created: pliant, intelligent beings that carried the germ of immortality. The first step toward immortality for all of humankind ... and still more than that. They had been given immortality for a reason, intelligence for a reason. And the reason was one that she alone knew: the sibyl machine, the secret repository of all the sibyls’ guidance that lay here on Tiamat, below Carbuncle, beneath its sea. She saw the mers reigning peacefully over this water world—guardians of the sibyl mind, possessing the knowledge that would maintain it and allow it to function. The Old Empire scientists whose plan this had been had hoped the sibyl network might even buy them time enough to perfect immortality for human beings; or that it would at least halt the spreading decay that ate away the Empire from within.

  But the decay had reached this world first, in the form of petty kingdoms broken loose from the atrophying higher order, whose shortsighted freebooters wanted imperfect immortality for themselves now, if perfect immortality wasn’t available. The Empire’s own subjects began a slaughter of the mers that destroyed their ability to perform their duties, crippling the potential sibyl network before it had really taken hold. The Old Empire fell completely, irrevocably, of its own weight ... but the deadly open secret of the water of life hung on in informational stasis into the present, resurrected with the Hegemony’s rise, and the cycle of slaughter had begun again. But by this time the mers had lost all understanding of their purpose here and fallen back into primitive, unquestioning unity with the sea. The refugee human colonists, struggling to make a new home here, no more understood the secret beneath the sea than the mers themselves did; but they paid its vestigial memory homage as the Sea Mother, and called its immortal children sacred.

  The sibyl network continued to function, dispensing its knowledge to the crippled cultures picking themselves up out of the Old Empire’s ruins; but its answers had grown obscure and exasperating through lost potential ... And Moon saw at last that it had lost an even more profound aspect of its power. The fumbling manipulations it had used to guide her in doing its will were not a fluke, were never meant to be a rare or erratic phenomenon. Sibyls had been designed as more than simply speakers of secondhand wisdom—they had been designed as agents of social change, to bring stability and humanity back to the cultures they were born a part of. And their function had almost been lost, along with much of the clarity of the original data files.

  But she, Moon, had become the Summer Queen—as the sibyl mind had meant her to. And now that she was Queen, she would begin the task of rebuilding all that had been destroyed. She was the last hope of the sibyl mind; it had put all of its faltering resources into guiding her quest. Only if she could reverse its disintegration could it begin to function again fully—and only then could it help her put an end to the cycle of off world exploitation forever. It would continue to guide her while it could; but she would carry the burden of making the ideal real ...

  “No further analysis!” Moon swayed on her feet as the Transfer set her free. PalaThion supported her, let her down safely onto the couch.

  “Are you all right?” PalaThion searched her face for a reassuring sign of comprehension.

  She shook her head, sagging forward under the weight of her final revelation. “Oh, Lady ...” A moan, as she realized at last to what she made her prayer. “How? How can I change a thousand years of wrong? I’m only one, only Moon—”

  “You’re the Summer Queen,” PalaThion said. “And a sibyl. You have all the tools you need. It’s just a question of time ... Do you have enough of that, before the Hegemony comes back again?”

  Moon lifted her head slowly.

  “No,” PalaThion looked away. “I’m not going to stop you. How could I live with so much death, and live with myself? And for what—?” Her hands tightened.

  It took Moon another moment before she understood that what PalaThion had heard was only what Ngenet had heard, and not what had been whispered in her own mind there in the secret darkness. What PalaThion saw as the challenge was not the real challenge—not a match of sheer technological strength, but a challenge on a far different level, with far greater repercussions—a change that would ripple across a galaxy. But PalaThion had understood that there was a challenge, and that its outcome could be measured in suffering and death; and that had been enough. Moon nodded. “This means more to more people than I can ever tell you.”

  PalaThion smiled tightly. “Well, that’s some consolation.” She moved away, across the room, to the shell sitting on a table by the doorway. She picked it up, held it for a long moment with her back to Moon.

  Moon stretched out on the couch, her body leaden, her mind numbed with overload; wondering how she would get past tomorrow dawn to face the long years of the future.

  “I have to be getting back to—” PalaThion glanced up as another knock sounded at her door. Moon sat up, her hands twisting on her belt as PalaThion disappeared into the atrium. She heard the sound of the door opening, of people entering the hall ...

  “You!” A voice sick with betrayal. A voice she knew Moon pushed herself up, started across the room. She saw three figures silhouetted in the light from the
open door, red hair limned with gold.

  “Hold it. Don’t be in such a hurry, Sparks.” PalaThion caught his arm in a steel grip as he tried to bolt back out into the alley. “If this was a trap you’d be in my jail, not my parlor.”

  “I—I don’t understand.” Sparks eased under her hand, confusion showing.

  “I’m not sure I do, either.” PalaThion let him go. His father stood beside her, smiling reassurance.

  “Sparks—”

  His head came up. “Moon!” He started toward her.

  She put out her arms. He came into the room where she stood waiting; the rest of the world ceased to exist beyond the meeting point of their hearts.

  “Oh, Moon! Moon ...” Sparks breathed the words against her ear, stopped her own words with another kiss.

  “Sparkie ...” She tasted tears.

  “Sparks.” They looked up together, at Sirus’s voice.

  “I must be leaving you now. Now that you’re in—safe hands.” He smiled his sorrow.

  Sparks nodded, separated himself from Moon slowly and went back to his father’s side. Moon watched them embrace for a last time, feeling her own heart torn, before his father went back out into the alley noise. PalaThion closed the door, looked at Sparks expressionlessly.

  He forced himself to meet her eyes. “I’ll tell you what I know about the Source. That’s what you want, isn’t it, to let me go ... that’s all you want?” as if he didn’t really believe it.

  She nodded, but her face was strained.

  “Look, Commander—” He shut his eyes. “I don’t know why you’re doing this ... except I know it’s not done for me. But I want you to know I’m sorry—” Hastily, “I know it doesn’t do any good,, it doesn’t change anything, it doesn’t even mean anything. But I’m sorry.” He spread his hands.

  “It means something, Dawntreader.” PalaThion looked as though she were surprised to realize that it actually did.

  “There’s one thing I can do for you, anyway,” abruptly. He strode to the far end of the room, pried the ugly geometric clock-face out of the wall. Moon watched, incredulous, as he threw it to the floor and stepped on it. He smiled, rubbing his hands together. “If you’ve hated this place for no reason—that was the reason: a subsonic transmitter in the clock.” He came back to Moon’s side, hung onto her hand as though he were afraid she would disappear. “There might be others I don’t know about.”

  The awareness of years of needless agony, of questioning her own sanity ... the awareness that it had finally come to an end, filled PalaThion’s face. “I always meant to make this museum into a real room again. But somehow I just never got around to it ...” Dreary disillusionment settled in again, as if it had never really left her. “Well, Moon. You got everything you came here to get; I’m glad, for somebody’s sake. After Sparks gives his testimony, the two of you cease to exist as far as I’m concerned. That’ll be the end of the problems you’ve caused for me .... I just hope you can solve your own now.” She went past them and into the back rooms of the apartment.

  “What did she mean?” Sparks turned back.

  Moon shook her head, not meeting his eyes. “All that happened in the last year, I suppose.” Five years. “And all that’s going to happen, after the Change.” She looked away at the mask of the Summer Queen.

  “What’s that?” He followed her glance.

  “The mask of the Summer Queen.” She felt him stiffen and pull away.

  “Yours? You won it?” His voice thickened. “No! You couldn’t have—you couldn’t have won, unless you cheated.”

  Moon saw herself reflected, saw Arienrhod reflected in his eyes. “I won because I was meant to! I had to win—and not for myself!”

  “I suppose you did it for Tiamat! That’s what she always said, too.” He stood away from her.

  “I’m a sibyl, Sparks, and that’s why I won! And yes, I care about Tiamat—and Arienrhod does too. She’s seen more of what this world was, and became, and will stop being again, than anyone else has ... And she cared about you; you can’t deny that.”

  Sparks looked down abruptly; Moon felt different kinds of pain start in her chest.

  PalaThion came back into the room wearing her uniform; went on past them and out, without saying anything more. The door opened and closed behind her, cutting them off again from the celebration of the world outside. Moon fingered the trailing streamers of the Summer Queen’s mask. Her mask ... my mask.

  “Sparks, please, believe that it’s right. My becoming Queen is part of something much greater, much more important, than either you or me. I can’t explain it to you now—” She knew, with misery, that he had never been meant to know; that he had always been the enemy to the shapeless sentience that guided her. “But we have to stop the off world exploitation of Tiamat. When I was off world I met a sibyl on Kharemough; I learned that there are sibyls on all the worlds of the Old Empire—the whole reason they exist is to help worlds rebuild and relearn. I can answer any question.” She saw his eyes widen, and change.

  “And while I was on Kharemough I began to see what you always saw, about progress, technology, the magic of what the off worlders do, and how it isn’t magic to them. They understand so much more, they don’t have to be afraid of disease, or broken bones, or childbirth. Your mother wouldn’t have died. We have a right to live that way too, or there wouldn’t be sibyls on this world.”

  She saw hunger in his eyes, for what she had seen that he would never see. But he only said, “Our people are happy the way they are. If they start reaching for power, wanting what they don’t have, they’ll end up like the Winters. Like us.”

  “What’s wrong with us? Nothing!” She shook her head. “We want knowledge, we’re asking for our birthright. That’s all. The off worlders want us to think it’s wrong to be dissatisfied with what we have. But it’s no worse than being self-satisfied with it. Change isn’t evil—change is life. Nothing’s all good, or all bad. Not even Carbuncle. It’s like the sea, it has its tides, they ebb and flow .... What you choose to do with your life doesn’t matter, unless you have the right to choose anything. We don’t have any choice. And the mers don’t even have the right to live.” And they have to live, they’re the key to everything.

  Sparks grimaced. “All right, you’ve made your point! Someone should try to change it. But why us?” His hand closed over his medal. “You know ... my father said he could get us off Tiamat. He could arrange for us to go to Kharemough. It would be so easy ...”

  “They don’t need us on Kharemough. They need us here.” Seeing Kharemough, the Thieves’ Market, the night sky: It would be so easy. Even if we can plant the seeds here, we’ll never see the final harvest, we’ll never know whether we lost or won .... “And we owe something to both places that we can only pay back here.” Her voice grew dark.

  “Some things can never be repaid.” Sparks moved to the window; Moon saw someone outside wave in passing. “And having to stay here, in Carbuncle, in the palace—” He broke off. “I don’t know if I can stand it, Moon. I can’t start over, in the same place where I was—”

  “Look at the people out there. This is the Mask Night—the night of transition. No one is what they were, or will be ... we’re not anything, our potential is infinite. And when the masks come off, they peel away the layers of our sins, and leave us free to forget, and start over.” Free to prove to the sibyl mind that you are as I see you, and not wearing a death mask.

  She went to stand beside him. “After tonight nothing will be the same. Not even Carbuncle. The Summers are coming here, and the future is trying to. It will be a new world, not Arienrhod’s.” But it will be hers too; it always will be. Knowing it, she didn’t say it. “And I promise you I’ll never set foot in the palace again.” And I’ll never tell anyone why.

  He looked over at her in surprise; when he believed what he saw, relief freed his face. But still he sighed, and still she felt the space between them. “It’s not enough. I need time—time to forget; time
to believe in myself again ... and believe in us. One night isn’t enough. Maybe a lifetime won’t be enough.” He turned to the window again.

  Moon looked with him, not able to keep looking at him, letting the crowd blur and swim out of focus, oily colors on a water surface. It never rains here. It ought to rain ... there are never any rainbows. “I’ll wait,” biting off the words, to keep from choking on them. “But it won’t take that long.” She found his hand on the windowsill squeezed it. “Tonight it’s my duty to be happy.” Her mouth quirked at the irony. “This should have been our Festival, to carry with us in our memories forever. It’s the last Festival; and we will remember it. Do you want to go out there and end our lives the way we were meant to? Maybe, if we tried, we could make tonight one we want to remember forever.”

  He nodded; a smile teetered on his face. “We could try.”

  She looked back at the Summer Queen’s mask, saw it overlain by faces, all the many lives that had sacrificed so much to make it hers. One face—”But first ... I have to tell someone good-bye.” She bit her lip, a counterpain.

  “Who?” Sparks followed her eyes.

  “A—an off worlder A police inspector. I escaped from the nomads with him. He’s in the hospital now.”

  “A Blue?” He tried to take back the tone of his voice. “Then he’s more than just a Blue: a friend.”

  “More than just a friend,” faintly. She faced him, waiting for him to understand.

  “More than ... ?” He frowned suddenly, and she saw his face flush. “How could you—?” His voice broke, like a stick snapping. “How could you ... How could I. We. Us ...”

  She looked down. “I was lost in the storm, and he was my sea anchor. And I was his. When someone loves you more than you love yourself, you can’t help—”

  “I know.” He let his anger out in a sigh. “But what about—now, you and him? And me?”

  She ran her fingers down the colored front of her nomad’s tunic. “He didn’t ask me for forever.” Because he knew he couldn’t. “He always knew that no one would ever come before you, or come between you and me, or take your place for me.” Even though he would have tried; wanted to try; did. She felt his face trying now to come between Sparks’s pinched face and her own. “No one!” blinking hard. “He—helped me to find you.” He gave up everything, gave me so much; and what did I give him? Nothing. “I have to know, to be sure, he’ll—be all right, when he leaves here.”