The Snow Queen

by Joan D. Vinge

  “No, Miroe.” They think so little of me. She covered the Commander’s insignia on her collar with the fingers of a hand. “You could say it’s a case of blind justice.”

  “Do you want the job?” He stroked his mustache.

  “No.” She frowned. “It’s a dead end, an insult—” She caught her breath.

  “Didn’t you complain, then? After all, you’re a Commander of Police—” trying to comprehend the suddenly incomprehensible.

  It was her turn to laugh without meaning. “I am a joke, that’s what I am.” She shook her head. “I either go where I’m assigned, or I quit.”

  “Quit, then.”

  “Damn it, that’s all I ever hear from a man! Give up ... give in ... you can’t handle it! Well, I can! I expected more from you, but I should have known better—”

  “Jerusha,” shaking his head, “for gods’ sakes. Don’t turn me into a thing.”

  “Then don’t treat me like one.”

  “I don’t want to see you turn yourself into one! And you will, running a place like that ... when you treat another human being like something less than human, you make yourself less than human. Either it’ll destroy your humanity, or it’ll destroy your sanity. And I don’t want to remember you going toward that; or imagine you—” He moved his large hands futilely.

  “Then what else am I supposed to do? All my life I wanted to do something with my life—something worthwhile, something important. And becoming a police officer gave me that. Maybe it hasn’t exactly been everything I thought it would be—but what ever is, anyway?” If only there was something.

  “You consider what you’ll be doing there worthwhile?” thick with sarcasm. He pushed his hands into his pockets.

  “I already answered that.” She turned away. “In time, maybe I’ll be able to get a transfer. And besides, what else can I do? There’s nothing else.”

  “You could stay here,” an uncertain invitation.

  She shook her head, not looking at him. “And do what? I’m not cut out to be a fishwife, Miroe.” Tell me there’s something else.

  But if there was an answer, he was kept from making it by the arrival of two of the officers she had called in. They had Festival confetti in their hair and faintly martyred expressions on their faces, but they saluted her with reasonable deference.

  She returned the salute, tugged her uniform and her thoughts into order. “Make yourselves official; you’re going to the Change ceremony with me as soon as Mantagnes gets here.”

  They brightened some at the prospect of getting front-row seats for the human sacrifice; stole curious glances at Tor Starhiker as they moved away. Jerusha recalled her presence with belated chagrin, until she saw that Tor had fallen asleep again.

  Miroe stood broodingly beside her, his gaze on the floor. “You’re attending the—sacrifice?” He seemed to have a hard time getting the word out, just as Tor had. “The Snow Queen’s death?”

  She nodded, feeling uncomfortable with the thought despite having lived with the prospect of it for so long. The Snow Queen’s death. A human sacrifice. My gods. And yet she wondered why the prospect of the clean, public execution of a woman who richly deserved it should seem more terrible than the living death of punishment at the place she was going to. The gods knew, a society that could undergo a total restructuring with only two executions as a result was better off than most. “It’s my last official act as a Hegemonic representative; we turn over to the new Queen the keys to her kingdom, so to speak.” And watch Arienrhod drown in regret. She glanced down, faltering. “Will you come, Miroe? I know it’s not a thing you want to see—so I don’t ask it lightly.”

  He shifted his weight, shifting his emotions. “Yes, I’ll come. You’re right, it’s not a thing I ever thought I’d want to see. But knowing what I know of her now ... They say it’s supposed to be a catharsis, to watch the living symbol of the old order die: something that everyone needs, to clean the ugliness out of their souls. Well, I never thought I’d need it ... but maybe I’m not so much better than anyone else, after all.”

  “Welcome to the club,” not quite smiling. “I’ll be right back.” She went to her office for her cloak and helmet.

  When she returned she found Mantagnes waiting, with supercilious aloofness, in answer to her call. She returned his salute without expression and ordered him to take her place in the station.

  She stopped again on the way to the entrance and shook Tor awake. “Wake up, Winter. It’s nearly dawn.”

  Tor sat up, rubbing bleary misery over her face.

  “I’m going down to the Change ceremony now.” Jerusha gentled her voice. “I didn’t know whether you wanted to be there. If you do, you can come with us.” Though I wouldn’t blame you if you wanted to sleep through it.

  Tor shook her head, stretched out her arms; her eyes cleared. “Yeah ... I guess I will, after all. I can’t stay here forever, can I?” rhetorical. She stood up, turning to Pollux, who still stood in the same place beside her. “I’d better go see the end of the world, Polly; there won’t be another one. And if I don’t see it, I might not believe it.”

  “Good-bye, Tor.” The voice sounded thinner and even more dreary than Jerusha remembered. “Goodbye.”

  “G’bye, Polly.” Her mouth worked. “I won’t forget you. Trust me.”

  “I trust you, Tor.” The pol rob raised its hand, imitating a farewell.

  “Good boy.” She backed away slowly.

  Still watching, Jerusha saw Tor wipe briefly at her eyes as she followed them out of the station.

  - 54 -

  Arienrhod took her place on the thick pile of white furs that draped the ship-form ceremonial cart in the palace courtyard. She entered her role in the ritual calmly, with perfect control, with the royal presence of nearly one hundred and fifty years. The cheers and the jeers of the gathered Summers closed around her, as inescapable as death; and the wailing grief of the waiting Winters. Their combined dirge was like the moaning hunger of the Pit, where the sea lay waiting ... as the Sea lay waiting today. Her hunger would be satisfied, at last.

  Starbuck was already seated among the silver-tipped furs, sitting like a figure chipped from obsidian in his mask and black court garb. She was surprised to find him here before her. You were always so impatient, my love. But I didn’t think you’d be impatient for this. She felt a cold weight drop inside of her. Because I’m not. I’m not. “Good morning, Starbuck. I hope you slept well.”

  He turned his face away as she tried to look him in the eye, and said nothing.

  “So you think you’ll never forgive me? Forever is a long time, Sparks. And forever is how long we’ll be together.” She put an arm lovingly around his shoulders and felt him shudder, or quiver. His shoulders through the heaviness of cloth and leather felt broader than she remembered. Only a boy, with a man’s strength ... and weakness.

  At least we’ll spend it forever young, trying again to believe as she had once believed, that she would sooner die than live in a world where she would have to be poor, and sick, and old ...

  The escort of Winter nobles gathered around the cart, all clad in formless white, amorphous in white-on-white masks that mimed their family totem creatures. Half a dozen of them picked up the traces to draw the cart forward, starling it down the hill; the rest, all bearing some precious off worlder thing, formed a human curtain around it to shield her at least partly from the view, the insults, the occasional pieces of garbage flung by the Summers in the crowd along the way. Then: positions, this menial labor, were both an honor and a kind of penance.

  She arranged the fall of her own ancient feather cloak, melting into the whiteness of the furs: the cloak she wore on all ceremonial occasions, the one she had worn at every challenge to Starbuck through a century and a half. Beneath it she wore only a simple white gown. White, the color of Winter, and of mourning. Her hair fell free down her back like a veil, netted with diamonds and sapphires. She wore no mask—she was the only one who wore no mask—
so that all the world could be certain that she was really the Snow Queen.

  I am the Snow Queen. She watched the richly decorated townhouses of the nobility passing for the last time; imagining how they would look bare of their off world elegance, remembering the loyal service she had been given by their many occupants who had been members of her court down through the years. And even today. She glanced from side to side at her retinue, listening to the defiantly off world song they sang to honor her and to drown out the crowd. A handful of the masked honor guard were nearly as old as she—although none were quite as well preserved. They had proven their loyalty and their usefulness again and again, and they had always been rewarded, while the less useful and less pliant grew old and were banished to the countryside. They grieved sincerely today, she knew, like all the weeping, wailing Winters—and like all the Winters, grieved mainly for themselves. But that was only human. There was no one among them that she really regretted leaving behind: many whom she had enjoyed and even respected, but none for whom she had ever felt any real personal warmth that hadn’t paled again like infatuation over the long reaches of time. There was only one whom she really loved—and she was not leaving him behind. She put a hand on Starbuck’s cape-covered knee; he brushed it away before it could settle. But after a moment, as though in apology, his own hand slipped across her back beneath her cloak, his arm circled her waist. She smiled, until a fish head thumped into the furs behind her.

  They had come to the edge of the Maze already. Is this city really so small? She glanced down the flotsam-full alleys, their throats choked with crowd; met the abandoned eyes of the empty storefronts directly. Seeing it all for the last time ... which shared something with the first time, every image as perfect and fresh as a walk through new-fallen snow. The first and the last were the same, and had nothing in common with all of the countless passages in between.

  And they shared things in common in a literal sense: the Festival crowds, the abandoned and half-empty buildings. But the first time she had seen Carbuncle it had been at the end of Summer’s reign, when she had come here from her family’s plantation to the first Festival in a hundred years, to see the return of the off worlders and to compete in the choosing of the new Queen. Although she had come from a noble Winter family, growing up at the end of Summer had meant growing up barely more civilized than the Summers themselves were. All of the off world artifacts that were so common place to her now had seemed as strange and marvelous to that naive country girl as they must seem to any Summer.

  But she had learned quickly enough the usefulness of the gifts the off worlders brought to this world—the strange magic of technology, strange customs, strange vices. And she had learned, too, what their patronizing lords wanted from her world in return, and from her as its inexperienced representative—begun to learn, painfully, how to take without giving, how to give without surrendering, how to squeeze blood from a stone. She had taken her first Starbuck, a man whose alien features she couldn’t remember, whose real name she had long since forgotten. Dozens more had followed, until she had found the one ....

  And meanwhile she had watched Carbuncle transformed into a thriving star port, she had kept learning, year upon year, more about the usefulness of technology, more about the frailty of human nature, more about the universe in general, and herself in particular. Ten lifetimes would barely begin to teach her all that she could have learned, and she had barely been given two. But she had realized at last that this world was an extension of herself, and immortal in a way that no human body could ever be. She had made plans to leave it a legacy when her own reign had to end—to set it free to go on learning and growing when she could not.

  But she had failed. Failed to hold onto the key to Tiamat’s future; failed to carry out her altered plan of guiding Tiamat’s future herself; failed again to keep her hold on Moon, when Moon would have been her last hope ... And somehow, in the meantime, she had lost her perspective about her own future. She had lived the way the Summers lived, once, but it had been far too long ago now. She could not even imagine going back, doing without, living like a barbarian again. And even if the Summers weren’t allowed to destroy every bit of technology they found remaining in Carbuncle, the city and all of Tiamat would still cease to be even a blurred hologram of the thriving interplanetary stopover that it had been.

  She had believed once—secure in her faith that Moon, her clone, would reincarnate her—that she would go willingly to sacrifice. She would play out the traditional role to the end; and death would be one final new experience for a body that had experienced every other imaginable sensation. She would not regret leaving her life behind, because life as she knew it would have ceased to exist.

  But after she had lost Moon, and found Sparks instead, after she had begun to build new plans whose foundation lay in herself, she had lost sight of all that. She had forgotten that she and her lover would have to grow old and endure hardship to keep Winter and its heritage alive. No, not forgotten—she had ignored it, because the greater goal, and the greater chance for immortality, had so outweighed it.

  But now—now she had failed, utterly, completely. She would end here in this dawn forever; become one more in an endless chain of forgotten Queens who lived and died without meaning. And she wasn’t ready to die that way! No, no—not without leaving her legacy to the future! Damn them, damn the bastard off worlders who had ruined her plans for the future to keep their own intact. Damn the miserable stupidity of the Summers, those jeering, stinking imbeciles who would cheerfully carry out their purge of knowledge ... She looked from side to side, radiating her useless fury.

  “What’s wrong, Arienrhod? Did you finally realize this is the end?”

  She froze, her gaze on Starbuck. “Who are you?” Whispered, it was louder in her mind than all the shouting of the crowd. “Who are you? You aren’t Starbuck!” She wrenched herself free from his encircling arm. Sparks—Oh, gods, what have you done—with him?

  “I am Starbuck. Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten me already, Arienrhod.” He caught her hand in a vise grip. “It’s only been five years.” He turned his black-helmeted head until she could see his eyes, pitiless earth-brown eyes with long, dark lashes ...

  “Herne!” shaking her head. “It can’t be—gods, you can’t have done this to me! You cripple, you dead man—you can’t be here, I won’t permit it!” Sparks ... damn you, where are you! “I’ll tell them you’re the wrong man!”

  “They won’t care.” She felt his grin. “They just want an offworlder body to pitch into the sea. They don’t care whose it is. Why should you?”

  “Where is he?” frantically. “Where is Sparks? What have you done to him? And why?”

  “So you really love him that much.” Herne’s voice rasped. “So much that you want him in your grave with you?” Black laughter. “But not enough to let him live on without you ... or with your other self instead: greedy to the end. I traded places with him, Arienrhod, because he doesn’t love you enough to die for you—and I do.” He pressed the hand he held to his forehead. “Arienrhod ... you belong with me, we’re two of a kind. Not with that weakling; he was never enough of a man to appreciate you.”

  She buried her hands beneath her cloak as he let her go. “If I had a knife, Herne, I’d kill you myself! I’d strangle you with my bare hands.

  You see what I mean?” He laughed again. “Who else but me would want to spend forever like this? You tried to kill me once already, you bitch, and I wish you’d finished the job. But you didn’t, and now I’m going to get my wish, and my revenge too. I’ll have you forever now, all to myself; and if you spend forever hating me for it, all the better. But like you said, love, ‘forever is a long time.’”

  Arienrhod wrapped herself in her cloak, shutting herself away, shutting her eyes against the sight of him. But the singing of the nobles was not enough to stop her ears against the wailing and taunting of the crowd; it seeped in through her pores and gave her despair a killing weight and subs
tance.

  “Don’t you want to know how I did it? Don’t you want to know who put me up to it?” Herne’s mocking voice tangled in the voice of the crowd. She didn’t answer him, knowing that he would tell her anyway. “It was Moon. Your clone, Arienrhod, your other self. She arranged it—she took him away from you after all. She’s your clone, all right ... no one else gets her way quite like you do.”

  “Moon.” Arienrhod clenched her jaw, keeping her eyes shut. For the first time in more years than she could remember, the fear of losing control in public came back to her. Nothing, nothing short of this could break her—nothing short of losing everything that had any meaning at all. And to know that the last blow had been delivered by herself! No, damn it, that girl was never me—she’s a stranger, a failure! But they had both loved him—Sparks with his summer-green eyes, with his hair and his soul like fire.

  And not only had that defective image of her own soul defied her will, and escaped her curse, but she had stolen him back. And replaced him with this—this. She glanced again at Herne, her nails marking her arms. She caught a hint of sea tang in the air; they were in the lower city now. The end of her life’s journey was almost in view. Please, please, don’t let it end like this! Not knowing whom she asked it of—not the hollow gods of the off worlders not the Summers’ Sea ... yes, maybe of the Sea, who was about to take the offering of her life, whether she believed in the old religion or not. She had not put her faith in any power beyond her own since she had become Queen. But now that that power had been taken from her, the awareness of her own complete helplessness closed over her, suffocating her like the cold waters of the sea ...

  The procession reached the final slope at the Street’s foot, and started down the broad ramp to the harbor that lay below the city. The ubiquitous mass of humanity was even more tightly crowded here, a wall of solid flesh, a wall of grotesque beast-faces. The cheering and the wailing rose from below to greet her as the cart rolled forward, echoing and re-echoing through the vast sea-cave. The dank chill air of the outer world flowed around her. Arienrhod shuddered secretly, but pride masked her face.