The Snow Queen tsq-1

by Joan Vinge

  Blodwed herded her into a narrow, down sloping passage half in shadows at the rear of the cave; she saw light dimly, on ahead. A miasma of strange smells prickled like smoke inside her head as she went forward, to find her way barred by a gate of wood and twisted wire. Blodwed pushed past her, pressed a thumb into the bottom of the heavy lock. The lock opened, and she waved Moon through.

  Moon went ahead, hearing Blodwed come through behind her; stood still in place as she took in the details of her new prison. The rock chamber was twenty or thirty feet in diameter, with a ceiling almost as high, and an incandescent heater sat in its center like a sun. Around the perimeter, locked in cages, tethered by rope or chain, were creatures of half a dozen unidentifiable species, furred, feathered, covered with scales or masses of naked wrinkles. She covered her nose and mouth with her hand as the smell of their squalid misery struck her full force. She saw them cringe, saw them snarl; saw the ones that lay sullenly apathetic with no response at all… saw the human being lying on a bare cot by the far wall, as far from the gate, as far from the rest, as possible.

  “Damn her! Damn her!” Blodwed shouted suddenly. Moon jerked around, the menagerie hissed and yowled and clamored, as Blodwed turned and ran back up the passage. The gate banged shut behind her. Moon turned back, looking across the room toward the figure still lying unresponsive on the cot. She went forward slowly, limping as sensation began to burn in the soles of her feet again. The frightened animals cowered back from her.

  She reached the stranger’s side without waking him, seeing as she approached that it was a man, an off worlder… a Blue. His heavy uniform coat was splattered with dark stains, and he wore the dingy white leggings and boots of the nomads. Looking down at his face she saw the finely-drawn features she had seen so often on aristocratic Kharemoughis; but this face was like cut crystal, the skin strained over the hollow bones. And still he did not wake. His breathing was labored, wrong. She put out a hand uncertainly, touched his face; pulled it back from the burn of fever.

  She let her quivering legs go out from under her, sank down be side his cot on the cold floor. The animals had grown quiet, but she felt their frightened eyes still on her, and their misery overwhelming her, until her own cup of misery overflowed. She let her head fall against the cot’s edge, hard dry sobs shaking her apart. Help me, Lady, help me… everything I touch I destroy.

  “What’s… wrong?” A feverish hand ruffled her hair; she jerked upright, swallowed her sobs. “Are you… for me crying?” The words were in Sandhi. The sick man struggled to lift his head; his eyes were red and crusted, she thought he barely saw her.

  “Yes.” Her answer was scarcely louder than his question.

  “No need—” A fit of coughing knocked the breath and the words out of him.

  “Look at this! Look at it!” Moon stiffened back and around as Blodwed burst into the chamber again, dragging a larger girl after her. “Smell it! I told you to keep them right while I was gone!”

  “I did—” The older girl cried out as Blodwed caught her by the braid and yanked.

  “I ought to rub your face in it, Fossa. But I won’t, if you get this place clean before—”

  “All right, all right!” The older girl backed toward the gate, wiping away pain-tears. “You snotty little wart.”

  “Wait. What’s wrong with him?” Blodwed pointed past Moon at the off worlder

  “He’s sick. He tried to get away when we let him out to take a piss; he ran right out into the blizzard, you know? He went in circles and we found him right outside.” She made the crazy sign, and shook her head, backing up the passageway.

  Blodwed came on across the chamber, crouched down beside Moon, looking at the sick man’s face. “Ugh.” She clamped his jaw roughly in her hand as he tried to turn his head away. “What did you do that for?” His eyes closed.

  “I don’t think he hears you.” Moon put a hand over his, squeezed his fingers lightly before she let go. “He needs a healer, Blodwed,” tentatively.

  “Is he going to die?” Blodwed sat back on her knees, the truculence unexpectedly melting out of her voice. “There’s no healer here. Ma used to do it, but she’s not right in the head. She never taught anybody else. Can’t you help him?”

  Moon glanced up at her. “Maybe I can…” She began to put her hair into braids. “Do you have any off worlder medical supplies?” Blodwed shook her head. “How about herbs, anything?”

  “I can steal Ma’s. They’re old—” Blodwed stood up expectantly.

  “Just get them.” Moon watched her go, confused by her willingness. She lifted the off worlder hand again, feeling for the pulse in his wrist; caught her breath as she saw the inside of his arm, crisscrossed with ragged scars. She stared in silent disbelief, lowered his arm again carefully, wrist down. She kept her hold on his hand as she sat waiting, and kept her mind empty.

  “Here they are.” Blodwed came back through the gate at last, carrying a skin-wrapped bundle beaded with tiny bones and bits of metal. She opened it, spread it out on the floor between them. “Neutron activation,” she said, waving her hands. “Ma always says power words. Do you say power words, sibyl?” There was no taunt in it.

  “I suppose so.” Moon picked over the leafy bundles of dried plants, sniffing at clear plastic bags of seeds and flower heads. Her hope faded. “I don’t know any of these.”

  “Well, that one’s—”

  She shook her head. “I mean, I don’t know how to use these.” KR j Aspundh had told her about the Old Empire’s exploration service, that before they opened new worlds for human colonists they had seeded them with a panacea of medicinal plants, different series for different ecosystems. “In the islands we used a lot of sea plants for curing.” And called them the Lady’s gifts. “I’ll have to ask — you’ll have to ask for me, input me; will you?” Blodwed nodded eagerly. “Ask me their uses,” Moon gestured. “Remember what I say — exactly, or it won’t do any good. Can you?”

  “Sure.” Blodwed grinned arrogantly. “I can sing all the landmarks of the trail song. Nobody else can, any more. I can sing any song I ever heard on the radio even once.”

  Moon managed half a smile, stopped by the stiff bruise on her cheek. “Then prove it. Ask, and I will answer. Input…”

  Blodwed cleared her throat, sat up straighter. “Oh, sibyl! Tell me . uh, how to use these magic plants?”

  Moon took up a bundle of herbs in her hand, felt herself begin to fall backwards down the well of absence… Clavally. She came into the light again, to find a face she knew, Clavally’s flushed and startled face, tousled hair, bare shoulders as close to her as… Danaquil Lu. She saw Clavally pull a blanket up to cover herself hastily. She thought, uselessly, Danaquil Lu, I’m sorry… Clavally, it’s only Moon… But she could not affect their lives even while she intruded on them so profoundly, to share her apologies or her happiness at even this reunion; to ask their help, or to communicate in any way at all.

  But a tentative smile formed at the corners of Clavally’s wide mouth, as though she saw a message fill the window of Danaquil Lu’s eyes. She touched his cheek tenderly, still smiling, and with knowing patience lay back on the bed to wait…

  “…No further analysis!” Moon slumped forward, drained, felt Blodwed’s quick hands catch her and keep her upright.

  “You did it! You’re not a fake—” Blodwed propped her against the cot and took her hands away, suddenly leery. “Wake up! Are you awake? Where did you go?”

  Moon nodded, let her forehead rest on her knees. “I… visited old friends.” She wrapped her arms around her shins, holding on to the memory: the only warmth, the only happiness she could remember.

  “I know all the herbs now, sibyl.” Blodwed’s voice pawed at her. “I’ll show you. Are you going to cure him?”

  “No.” Moon raised her unwilling head, opened her eyes. “I’m going to bring a real healer to use the herbs. But you’ll have to help me, give me whatever I need.” A nod. Moon readied herself, knowing that
if she simply had the strength to begin, the Transfer would take her through to the end. Her body rebelled, refusing to gather for another ordeal, but she knew that if she surrendered to exhaustion now, it might be too late for the off worlder by the time she could start again. And she was not going to watch another person die because of her. She focused her attention on his face.

  “All right, ask me how to treat him. Input!” and she flung herself through… Into a white-walled anti-gravity chamber, where she watched a cluster of men clad in pastel and transparent suits drift weightless, tethered to a table, arguing an incomprehensible medical procedure. Beyond them, beyond the reinforced glass of a wide window, she saw thick fingers of ice deepening beneath an eave, and floodlights illuminating a field of drifted snow…

  “…analysis!” She came back into herself, barely hearing the dry rattle of the end sign inside her head. She smelled the pungent reek of half a dozen strange herbs on her hands and clothing as she crumpled forward. Mind fog hal oed her view of Blodwed’s peering face and the inert blanket-bundle of the sick off worlder turning them to a holy vision. Reassured, she found her hands and knees I and crawled toward the heater in the room’s center. When the cloud of energy became so intense that her body could not endure more, she let herself down at last, and slept.

  Moon came awake with the urgency of terror, stared at the unexpected walls that closed her in. Stone walls — not the endless desolation of sky above a lifeless, stony beach, where an executioner in black wore a medal as familiar as the face of her only love… She hid from the phantom behind a wall of fingers, pressing the swollen soreness of her face. No, it isn’t true!

  A soft trilling intruded on her, expanding her awareness, pulling her back into the stone-walled chamber. She lowered her hands, seeing the cluster of cages across the room, and felt time’s flood sweep her into the present. Someone had moved her to a pad of blankets. The animal stench had cleared, as though someone had cleaned the cages out as well, and the air was strong with the smell of herbs. No sounds reached her from beyond the locked gate; she guessed that it must be far into the night. The animals stirred and rustled, tending to their own lives, watching her with only half an eye now. “You know I’m just another pet.” She climbed uncertainly to her feet, swayed a moment, seeing stars, before she could cross the room.

  The off worlder lay under a half-tent of blanket, wrapped like a swaddled infant in more covers. A pot of pungent herb-brew steamed on a hot plate by his head. She kneeled down by the cot, put her hand against his face. Cooler, not really sure that he was. “Please come back…” Prove I have a right to be alive, and be a sibyl. She bowed her head, pressed her forehead against the hard frame of the cot.

  “Have you… back for me come, then?”

  She looked up, saw the off worlder struggling to open his eyes. “I — I never left you.” He frowned, shook his head as though it didn’t make sense. “I’ve never away gone.” She repeated it in Sandhi.

  “Ah.” He watched her through slitted eyes. “Then I’m not afraid. When… when will we go?”

  “When? Soon.” She smoothed his wiry hair, and saw him smile. ;^,. Not knowing what he was asking, she said, “When thou art “‘* stronger.” She used the familiar form unthinkingly.

  “I didn’t think you so fair would be. Stay by me… until then?”

  “I will.” Glancing down, she saw the untouched mug of thick medicine broth on the floor by her knee. She picked it up. “Thou must this drink.” She put her arm under his shoulders, rolled him onto his side. He worked a hand free obediently, but it could not hold the cup; she saw the livid scars along the inside of his wrist again. She held the cup for him, helped him drink it down. Coughing took him as he finished it, rattling in his chest like stones. The plastic mug slipped from her hand and rolled under the cot. She held him tightly in her arms, sharing her own strength with him, until the attack passed; and then a little longer.

  “Thou feel… so real.” He sighed against her shoulder. “So kind…”

  She let him slip back onto the cot, already asleep. She sat for a long moment watching him, before she settled against the cot frame, resting her head on her arm, and closed her eyes again.

  “You are real.”

  The words greeted her like old friends as she woke again, slowly raised her head from her sleep-deadened arm. She sat back, disconcerted, blinking.

  The off worlder slumped against the wall, propped into place by a knot of blankets. “Did I it dream, or… did you to me in Sandhi speak?”

  “I did,” in Sandhi. Moon worked her fingers, felt the needles starting as circulation stirred in her arm. “I — cannot it believe. You were so sick.” She felt a shining warmth fill her. But the power came through me, and I healed you.

  “I thought you the Child Stealer were. When I was young, my nurse said she as pale as aurora-glow is…” He leaned more heavily on the heaped blankets. “But you’re no ghost. Are you—?” As though he still half doubted his senses.

  “No.” She massaged her twisted neck muscles with her other hand, wincing. “Or I wouldn’t so much hurt!”

  “You’re a prisoner too, then.” He leaned forward slightly, squinting his eyes were still inflamed. She nodded. “Your face. They didn’t you… molest?”

  She shook her head. “No. They haven’t me hurt. They — fear me; so far.”

  “Fear you?” He glanced toward the gate, and what lay beyond it. The distant sounds of a new day out in the camp reached them like an echo of another world.

  She lifted her chin, saw him grimace at the wound on her throat, before his face went slack: “Sibyl?”

  She lowered her head again.

  “Gods, this moves too fast.” He lay down again, resting on his side through another attack of coughing.

  Something out of place caught the corner of her eye. She twisted, found a pile of blue-black cloth trimmed with braid behind her, a jug, and a bowl of dried meat. “Someone brought us food.” Her hands were reaching for it even as she spoke. “Food—” not even knowing how long it had been since she had eaten anything.

  “Blodwed. Hours back. I pretended to sleep.”

  Moon took a long drink from the pitcher, a creamy blue-white liquid that slid down her parched throat into her shriveled stomach like ambrosia, “Oh—” Suddenly ashamed, she lowered the pitcher, pushed up onto her knees. “Here.” She filled the plastic mug, held it up to him.

  “No.” He put an arm across his eyes. “I don’t it want.”

  “You must. To heal, you need strength.”

  “No. I don’t—” The arm came down from his eyes, he lifted his head to look at her. “Yes… I guess I do.” He took the drink in his good hand; she saw scars on that wrist, too. He caught her looking at him, raised the mug to his mouth without comment and sipped slowly.

  Moon chewed a mouthful from a strip of dried meat, swallowed it whole before she asked, “Who are you? How did you here get?”

  “Who am I…” He looked down at his uniform coat, touched it; his face changed with a kind of wonder, like a man coming out of a coma. “Gundhalinu, sibyl. Police Inspector BZ Gundhalinu—” he grimaced, “from Kharemough. They shot down my patroller, and took me.”

  “How long have you here been?”

  “Forever.” He opened his eyes again. “And you? Did they you from the star port kidnap? Where are you from — Big Blue, or Samathe?”

  “No, Tiamat.”

  “Here? But you’re a sibyl.” He lowered the cup from his lips. “The Winters don’t—”

  “I’m a Summer. Moon Dawntreader Summer.”

  “Where did you Sandhi learn?” Something darker than curiosity shadowed it.

  Moon frowned uncertainly. “On Kharemough.”

  “You’re proscribed, then! How did you back here get?” His voice broke, too feeble to support the weight of an authoritarian demand.

  “The same way I left — with tech runners She slipped into her own speech without realizing it; taken by surpris
e, indignant at his indignation. “What are you going to do about it, Blue? Arrest me? Deport me?” She put her hands on her hips, clenched with resentment.

  “I’d do both… if I were in any position to.” He followed her doggedly from language to language. But the righteousness drained out of him and left him limp on the cot. He laughed, a hoarse, hating sound. “But don’t worry. Flat on my face… with the cosmic crud, and living in a kennel… I’m not in any position.” He finished the liquid in the mug, let it hang empty from a finger over the cot’s edge.

  Moon refilled the mug and put it into his hand again.

  “A smuggling sibyl.” He sipped carefully, watching her. “I thought you were supposed to be serving humanity, not yourself. Or did you have that tattoo… put on purely for business reasons?”

  Moon flushed with fresh anger. “That isn’t allowed!”

  “Neither is smuggling. But it’s done.” He sneezed violently, spilling his drink on himself, on her.

  “I’m not a smuggler.” She flinched, brushed droplets from her parka. “But not because I think it’s wrong. You’re the ones who are wrong, Gundhalinu, you Blues — letting your people come here and take what they want, and give us nothing in return.”

  He smiled mirthlessly. “So you’ve swallowed that simplistic line bait and hook, have you? If you wanted… to see real greed and exploitation, try a world that didn’t have our police force to keep the peace. Or to keep… people like you from coming back to make trouble, once you’ve been off world

  Moon settled back on her heels, saying nothing, holding the words prisoner. Gundhalinu matched her silence; she sat listening to the breath wheeze in his throat. “This is my world, I have the right to be here. I am a sibyl, Gundhalinu, and I’ll serve Tiamat any way I can.” Something harsher than pride filled her voice. “I can prove my claim any time you ask. Ask, and I will answer.”

  “No need, sibyl.” A whisper of apology. “You already have. I ought to hate you, for curing me—” He rolled onto his stomach, looking down at her; she blinked at his expression, her hands closed over her own wrists. “But knowing I’m alive and not alone, seeing your face… hearing you speak a civilized language, my own language: Gods, I never thought I’d ever hear it again! I thank you—” his voice broke. “How long… how long were you on Kharemough?”