The Snow Queen tsq-1

by Joan Vinge

  Yes, I know everything about you… I’ve seen your echoes for a hundred and fifty years. “The ledoptra is by far the more profitable cargo. And once you reach Tsieh-pun, and the mistake is discovered, it will be too late to do anything about it — the Gate will have closed. It’s all very simple, you see. Even simple enough for you. Profit — that’s all that really matters, isn’t it?” A profit in knowledge for Winter; a reward that money can’t buy. She smiled inwardly, at the secret knowledge of all the similar profits she had accumulated, in similar ways, down the long years; quietly stockpiling technology and information against the coming time of famine.

  The trader nodded, his eyes still searching the corners of the room furtively. “Yes, Your Majesty. If you say so.”

  “Then I’ll see that it’s arranged. You may go.”

  He went, without further urging. She looked down, speaking reference notes into her desk recorder.

  When she looked up again Starbuck stood in the doorway, bemused admiration showing in his eyes.

  “I see… Well, is that all, then?” Arienrhod leaned against the cushioned back of the chair at her desk, listened to it sigh familiarly as she set it gently rocking.

  “

  “Is that all?”“ Starbuck laughed, with an aggrieved edge on it. “I’ve been out on the Street all day long busting my ass to please you. Don’t I bring you a big enough load of rumors? Doesn’t that bitch Blue have more trouble than she can handle already, without me buying her more? Doesn’t—”

  “There was a time, you know, when that question would have cut you to the quick.” Arienrhod leaned forward again, into the cup of her hands. “Sparks Dawntreader used to sail on my smile, and quiver at my frown. If I had said “Is that all?” he would have gone down on his knees and begged me to set him another task; anything, if only it made me happy.” She set her lips in a petulant pout, but the words wrapped razors, and cut her inside.

  “And you laughed at him for being a sap.” Starbuck’s black gloved fists rested on his hips defiantly. But she sat without responding, letting the words do their work; and after a moment his hands dropped, and his gaze with them. “I am what you wanted me to be,” softly, almost inaudibly. “I’m sorry if you don’t like it.”

  Yes ,… and so am I. Once she had known the warmth of a forgotten summer when she looked at him, when he held her. But he had forgotten Summer, and she saw no past in his changeable green eyes; not hers, not even his own. Only her own reflection: the Snow Queen, eternal Winter. Why must I always be too strong for them? Always too strong… send me someone I can’t destroy.

  “Are you sorry? Sorry you let it happen — let me become Star buck? Haven’t I done the job?” He was not defiant any more.

  “No, I’m not sorry. It was inevitable.” But I am sorry that it was inevitable… She found a smile, an answer for the insecure boy who had stolen away his voice. “And you have done very well.” Too well. “Take off your mask, Starbuck.”

  He reached up and pulled the black helmet off, held it under his arm. She smiled at the blaze of hair spilling out, the fair face still the same, fresh and youthful… no, not really the same. Not any more. Not any more than her own was. Her eyes stopped smiling behind her smile; she watched his smile fade in response. They looked at each other for a space of time, silently.

  He broke free at last; stretched, struck a pose with feline self awareness. “You mind if I sit? It’s been a long day.”

  “By all means, sit, then. I’m sure it must be enervating to wallow in depravity day after day as diligently as you do.”

  He frowned as he settled into one of the matched wing-form chairs, across the intimate gulf between desk and doorway, and himself and her. “It’s boring.” He leaned forward suddenly, reaching across the space with his voice. “Every minute seems like a year, it bores the hell out of me when I’m away from you.” He sat back again, restlessly, hopelessly, fingering the off worlder medal that dangled in the silken gap of his half-open shirt.

  “You shouldn’t find it boring to make trouble for the Blues — for the woman who lost Moon for us both.” She forced her tone to stay businesslike, shaping her emotion into a weapon to punish… whom?

  He shrugged. “I’d enjoy it more if I could see some results. She’s still on top.”

  “Of course she is. And she’ll stay there to the bitter, bitter end. And every day of what should have been sweet victory she’ll spend walking barefoot over broken glass… Stay here in the palace tomorrow, and I’ll let you watch her.”

  “No.” He looked down at his feet abruptly. She saw with some surprise that his face burned. “No. I don’t want to see it, after all.” His hands felt along his studded belt for something that wasn’t there, had not been there for a long time.

  “Whatever you want. If you even know what you want,” half critical, half concerned. But he was unresponsive, and so she went on, “I must say PalaThion’s held together more stubbornly than I’d expected. Brittle as she is, I thought shed be showing deeper fractures by now. She must be getting support from somewhere.”

  “Gundhalinu. One of the inspectors. The others hate him for it; but he doesn’t give a damn, because he thinks he’s better than they are.”

  “Gundhalinu? Oh, yes…” Arienrhod glanced down, at the note recorder. “I’ll keep that in mind. And there’s another off worlder Ngenet is his name; he has an outback plantation down along the coast. She’s been out to visit him there, I understand. A friendship with questionable roots…” She smoothed her hair, gazing at the mural behind Starbuck’s head, the white blackness of a winter storm roaring down out of the ice-crowned peaks, obliterating the valley and the world around a solitary Winter holding. “His plantation has never been harvested, has it?”

  Starbuck straightened up in his chair. “No. He’s an off worlder I thought we couldn’t, unless he—”

  “That’s right. And I undertand that he strictly forbids it; he’s hostile to the whole idea. Now what would happen, I wonder, if you hunted his preserve, and PalaThion couldn’t punish you?”

  He laughed, none of the old reluctance showing now. “A good Hunt. And the end of an affair?”

  “All in a day’s work.” She smiled. “The final Hunt will net us some souls.”

  “The final Hunt…” Starbuck leaned into a wing of the chair back, playing with his fingers. “You know, I heard something interesting on the Street. I heard the Source had a midnight visitor a few nights back. I heard it was you. And the word is that maybe you’re not ready to see the end of Winter come.” He glanced up. “How’s my hearing?”

  “Excellent.” She nodded, listening to the silence keep them company. Surprised, yes — but only a little. She knew his sources of information, that he used Persipone to use Herne. She even approved of his resourcefulness. It only surprised her a little that her intentions were quite so obvious to them all. She would have to keep closer watch on Persipone.

  “Well?” Starbuck pressed his knees with his fists. “Were you going to tell me about it? Or were you just going to let me go on thinking we were both going into the sea together at the next Festival?”

  “Oh, I would have told you — eventually. I just rather enjoyed hearing you swear to me that you couldn’t, wouldn’t, live without me… my dearest love.” She stopped his anger with three words that came unexpectedly from her heart.

  He stood up, came across the room and around the silver-edged curve of desk to her. But she put up her hands, holding him back with quiet insistence. “Hear me first. Since you’ve asked, then I want you to know. I have no intention of going meekly to the sacrifice, and seeing all that I’ve struggled to make of this world thrown into the sea after me. I never had. This time, by all the gods who never belonged here, this world is not going to sink back into ignorance and stagnation when the off worlders go!”

  “What can you do to stop it? When the off worlders go, we lose our support, our base of power.” It pleased her to hear his unconscious pledge of allegianc
e. “They’ll see to it that we do. And then we can’t hold back Summer, any more than we can hold back the seasons. It’ll be then world again.”

  “You’re brainwashed.” She shook her head, gestured with a ring heavy hand at the city beyond the walls. “The Summers will gather here in the city for the Festival — here on our ground. All we need is something that will take them unawares… like an epidemic. One that we Winters are fortunately immune to, thanks to the miracle of off world medicine.”

  Starbuck’s face twisted. “You mean… you could do that? Would—?”

  “Yes, and yes! Are you still so bound to those ignorant, superstitious barbarians that you aren’t willing to sacrifice a few of them for the future of this world? They play right into the hands of the off worlders there’s a conspiracy between them to oppress us-Winter — the people who want to make this world a free partner in the Hegemony. And they’ve succeeded, for a millennium! Do you want them to go on succeeding, forever? Isn’t it time we had our turn?”

  “Yes! But—”

  “But nothing. Offworlders, Summers — what have they ever done for you, either of them, but betray you, abandon you?” She watched the words work in the dark corners of his soul that she had probed so thoroughly.

  “Nothing.” His mouth was like a knife slash. “You’re right… they deserve it, for what they’ve — done.” His hands closed over his belt, like claws sinking into flesh. “But how can you arrange a thing like that, without the Blues finding it out?”

  “The Source will handle it. He’s arranged other accidents of fate for me; even one that happened to the last Commander of Police.” She watched Starbuck’s eyes widen. “This is on a somewhat larger scale; but then, for the possession of your take from this final Hunt, I’m sure he’ll see that the task is done efficiently. He’s an honorable man, after his fashion.”

  “But it’ll have to happen before the final ships go. Won’t the Blues still try—”

  “With the Prime Minister here, and the Gate closing? They’ll run; they’ll leave us in chaos, thinking that without them we’ll end up in the sea anyway. I know them… I’ve studied them for a century and a half.”

  He let his resistance out in a sigh. “You know them better than they know themselves.”

  “I know everyone that way.” She rose from her chair, letting his arms come around her at last. “Even you.”

  “Especially me.” He breathed the words against her ear, kissing her neck, her throat. “Arienrhod… you have my body; I’d give you my soul if you’d take it.”

  She touched a button on the desk, opening a door into a more appropriate room. Thinking, with sorrow, I already have, my love.

  26

  “Got warm bodies registering down there someplace, Inspector.” The pilot, TierPardee, roused from his usual truculent silence with rare animation. “Looks right for humans. Along that rift to the left; there’s bush for cover.”

  “Using any power?” Gundhalinu stuck the Old Empire novel into a pocket of his heavy coat, leaned forward in his seat, the patrol craft shoulder harness pressing the side of his throat. At last, some action… He peered out through the windshield, scanning with inadequate human eyes for a trace of what their all-seeing equipment saw. They had been tracking this party of thieves for a day and a half after the raid on the star port The trail had been muddled at the start, but it had been steadily getting fresher. The list of things missing included a crate containing a portable heavy-duty beamer that belonged to the police; he wondered how in hell they had managed to get access to that. The nomads were not usually well armed, which was why their raids depended on stealth and avoided confrontation. But they were as pitiless and unsubtle as the stark black-and-white land that sheltered them, and they had killed almost casually the handful of off worlders who had gotten in their way. He meant to make sure this acquisition didn’t change their method of operation.

  He glanced down at the readout on the panel again, to make his own assessment, as TierPardee sang out, “Yes, sir! We’ve finally nailed ‘em, Inspector, they’ve got snow skimmers down there.” TierPardee laughed gleefully. “I’ll take us in low and scare the piss out of them; ought to be no trouble picking the Mother lovers off after that, right, sir?”

  Gundhalinu opened his mouth to make a skeptical response just as his eyes found the next readout, just as it suddenly glared red-red warning—”Get us the hell out of here now!”

  He reached across TierPardee’s amazed and sluggish body, jerked the control bar back and around into a steeply climbing turn. He felt the bar tremble and fight his control. “Come on…”

  “Inspector, what the—” TierPardee never finished it, as the hidden bolt of directed energy caught them from below and punched them out of the sky.

  Gundhalinu had a brief, whorled image of black-white-blue photo printed indelibly on his brain; giddy free fall spun him like a lottery wheel before the craft’s stabilizers reintegrated and stopped their nightmare tumbling. But not their fall — they were dead in the air, dropping down like a stone through a soundless dive that would end with them dead on the ground. His hand stretched instinctively to press the restart button; he pushed it again and again, his numbed brain acknowledging at last the reason why there was no response: the beamer had slagged the shielding on the power unit, and there was nothing he could do. Nothing — TierPardee sat gaping like a plastic dummy, making a sound that at first he mistook for laughter. The sky disappeared, he saw the rumpled cloud-surface of the snow and the jutting black fangs of the naked cliff leap up to meet them…

  They hit the snow before they hit the cliff, and that was all that saved them. The snow plowed up in a cushion of blinding white, absorbing the impact that still threw him forward so hard his helmet warped the pliant windshield.

  For a long time he lay without moving, doubled over in the embrace of the harness; listening to bells, unable to focus his eyes or even make a sound. Knowing that there was something important he must say, must warn — but it wouldn’t take form in his mouth or even his mind. The cabin felt hot to him, which struck him as strange because they were buried in snow. Buried. Buried. Dead and . ? He shut his eyes. Something stank. His eyes hurt… The air. The air was going bad, smelled like buried — like burning.

  His eyes watered; he opened them again. Burning insulation. That was it. The avalanche of snow was slushing, slipping down outside the windows. ““Pardee. Overload. Gedoud.” The words ware unintelligible even to him. He shook TierPardee, but the patrolman’s eyes stayed shut, and he hung forward across the straps unmoving. Gundhalinu struggled with his own harness latch, finally set himself free. He tried the door; it was still blocked shut by snow. He beat against it with his fist, uselessly, while every blow fed back through his bones into his throbbing head. At last he wedged himself sideways and shoved with his feet, threw all his returning strength and his fear into it. The door began to give, a centimeter at a time, until at last it sprang upward on its own, half dumping him out into the snow.

  He landed on his knees in a puddle of slush, shocked by the sudden assault on his aching body of painful heat and cold. He pulled himself up the side of the craft, forcing his rubber legs to lock and support him, separating the sinister heat of the power unit going critical from the icy embrace of the wind. He had to get TierPardee out and as far away as he could before the patroller turned into a star.

  He leaned into the cabin; but something caught his collar, jerked him away and back into the snow again. Not bells, this time, but the ugly music of human laughter echoing off the cliff face; ugly, because he knew it was directed at him. He rolled over, pushed up onto his knees to face his tormenters — saw with no surprise at all the white parkas and leggings, half a dozen pale, amorphous faces half obscured by slitted wooden goggles, like the bulging eyes of a family of insectoids. But these were human, all right — nomadic Winter pfalla herders turned thieves by opportunity, who had shed their bright, traditional clothing for the antiseptic camouflage of arctic
commandos. A blow on the back ended his assessment as he sprawled forward into the snow; he felt someone roll him onto his side and deftly disarm him. There was a whoop of triumph as the bearded male held his stunner up like a prize.

  Gundhalinu sat up, wiping snow from his face, forgetting the indignity of his position in the urgency of his need. “That’s going to blow—!” He pointed, not sure how much they would understand. “Help me get him out of there; there’s not much time!” He climbed to his feet, relieved at the murmur of consternation that ran through the group. He started back toward the patrol craft but another of the nomads had gotten there first, and straightened holding TierPardee’s gun, grinning satisfaction. “He’s good for nothing, that one — this’s all I found. It’s too hot in there; forget about it.” The roving muzzle of the stunner suddenly targeted Gundhalinu’s chest. “Zap, you’re paralyzed, Blue!” A high-pitched adolescent giggle escaped from the muffled figure.

  Gundhalinu stopped, looking past the teenager and the filamented muzzle of the gun. “He’s not dead, he’s hurt! He’s alive; we’ve got to get him out of there—” His breath rose up white in his face.

  But the man who had taken his own gun and another man caught him by the arms at a sharp command. They began to drag him back away from the craft. The teenager strutted behind him, on snowshoes like the rest, giggling again as his boots broke through the snow crust and he floundered.

  “No! You can’t do this; he’s alive, damn you, he’ll be burned alive in there!”

  “Then be glad you’re only watching, and not joining him.” The first man grinned at his side. They forced him to go with them as far as the outcropping of fallen rock where they had hidden their snow skimmers. They all stopped then, and turned back, crouching down to watch. The two men still held his arms locked between them, forcing him to keep his feet as they made him turn with the rest. He could see the distant patrol craft melted clear of snow now, and a dull glow spreading over its crumpled frame. He looked up into the sky, filling his eyes with the blue of heaven, and prayed to the gods of eight separate worlds that TierPardee would never know what was happening to him now.